roberta allen | yellow

Poetry Dispatch No. 116 | October 31, 2006

Here’s another chapter/poem/story/minimalist fiction, etc. by Roberta Allen whose writing yesterday, “Blouse” brought resulted in so many fine comments. Norbert Blei

YELLOW by Roberta Allen

The doctor is on call one night a week in Amsterdam, otherwise he lives with his wife and children in the country. He is already half drunk when the woman enters the disorderly apartment he keeps in town. The rooms, painted bright yellow, his favorite color, are filled with drawings and prints, books and musical instruments, mementos of his private world. He tells the woman about another girlfriend, makes her jealous, though she doesn’t show it.

“She gets a rash each time she gets a job,” he laughs. “Last week she was distributing leaflets on the street, got fed up when the rash broke out, threw the leaflets into the canal. A co-worker saw her, told her boss. As soon as she was fired her rash disappeared.” He laughs again. “That girl is allergic to work!”

The woman pours herself a drink. The man refills his glass. The doctor is quite drunk by the time he receives an emergency call. “Come with me,” he tells her. She is accustomed to this routine. “Another old woman who wants someone to hold her hand,” he says, annoyed. He drives, swerving through the streets until he finds the house, goes upstairs while she waits in the car. “Just as I told you,” he says returning a quarter hour later.

The woman is glad he is not her doctor, but when she recalls the yellow rose he gave her once, picked from his garden, she knows she belongs in those yellow rooms, that private world, and other thoughts disappear.

from THE TRAVELING WOMAN

roberta allen| blouse

Poetry Dispatch No. 115 | October 30, 2006

Here’s another example of a kind of writing I mentioned before (“Confirmation”, Poetry Dispatch #107, October 6, 2006) which rests on that thin line between poetry/prose. Something critics once called minimalism, or flash fiction, or sudden fiction, instant fiction…etc. A form somebody ‘rediscovered’ in the 90’s and decided the poetry of prose needed a new name.

The interesting thing about “Blouse” is that it stands alone as—a poem, a short story, and (this is the real stretch) a chapter in what some might call an ‘experimental novel’. Though it’s very accessible, very compressed (haiku-like?), very fine indeed. I’ll print another chapter/story/poem from the same book tomorrow. Norbert Blei

Blouse by Roberta Allen

On impulse she buys a secondhand green silk
blouse. She feels strange wearing something
that belonged to someone else. She wants to
feel strange. She wants to be someone she has
never met. She imagines her mind’s house
stripped – layers of loose paint slide off the surface
wallpaper with worn patterns – whitewashed. Naked,
she lets the green silk blouse take root inside
her – lets the strangeness stay.

from THE TRAVELING WOMAN