michael brownstein | a history of melons

POETRY DISPATCH No.366 | March 25, 2012

A HISTORY OF MELONS

by
Michael Brownstein

Editor’s Note: As much as I admire and preach the small poem as the way to good writing, I love, too, writers who take chances, who go their own way, whatever way the wind blows. Risk-takers who may fail to connect with editors and readers (perhaps even themselves), yet often discover it was worth it. That whole storm of words seeking substance and form, (writing/rewriting…adding/subtracting…moving/reshaping), though traditional editors, old fashioned readers may find the final piece not to their liking, unfit for publication…too experimental…lacking meaning, let alone art.

Every serious act of writing has something to teach. Especially if it fails.

I write this by way of an introduction to Michael Brownstein’s “A History of Melons.” I’ve been too long at this as reader, writer, editor to know that too many readers will look at the opening of “A History of Melons” and stop reading by the third or fourth line—assigning it to “What’s this? Oh, Come on.” Or consign it to another Whitmanesque list of words trying to be poetic or worse—just plain boring. Turn the page: Egads, there’s more?

Stay with it. Start, quit, and begin again. Go through it once…pause…read it again. Read it once more. Read it aloud. Come back to it tomorrow. Next week. Next month. Next year.

It may stay with you forever. All or parts of it.

It’s as luscious as an Orange Sherbet Cantaloupe…as a Moon and Stars Watermelon. – Norbert Blei

A History of Melons

by
Michael Brownstein

Types of melons: Ambrosia Cantaloupe, Angel Cantaloupe, Athena Cantaloupe, Blenheim Orange Cantaloupe, Burpee Hybrid Cantaloupe, Burrell’s Jumbo Cantaloupe, Bush Scar Cantaloupe, Earlisweet Cantaloupe, Male’s Best Jumbo Cantaloupe, Hollybrook Luscious Cantaloupe, Honey Rock Cantaloupe. Noir Des Carmes Cantaloupe, Orange Sherbet Cantaloupe, Pulsar Cantaloupe, Early Silver Line Asian Melon, Queen Anne’s Pucker Melon, Plum Granny Lambkin Hybrid Christmas Melon, St. Nick Winter Melon, Amy Casaba, Golden Beauty Casaba, Sungold Casaba, Honey Girl Charentais, French melon, Hybrid Charentais, Early Hybrid Crenshaw, Earlidew Honeydew, Green Flesh Honeydew, Honeydew Magic to Dew, Orange Sorbet Honeydew, Sweet Delight Honeydew, Unforgettable Honeydew, Black Diamond Watermelon, Bush Sugar Baby Watermelon, Crimson Sweet Watermelon, Garrison Rattlesnake Watermelon, Jade Star Watermelon, Jubilee Watermelon, Moon and Stars Watermelon, Red Bush Watermelon, Royal Jubilee Watermelon, Sangria Watermelon, Sugar Baby Watermelon, Sweet Beauty Watermelon, Sweet Diane Watermelon, Tiger Baby Watermelon, Yellow Doll Watermelon—list compiled by Edward Greenhouse

Prologue

Ancient Japanese and Hong Kong traditions tell of a path to heaven that crosses the peak to a mountain lost in cloud worlds of snow and weather; fields cultivated with melon.

Educated Sumerians studied The Scrolls of the Casabas, layers of cuneiform describing their demi-gods’ lust for its flesh.

The Book of Going Forth One Day contains the geography of the cave of the Dead Sea Scrolls, The Book of the Dead and countless watermelon seeds preserved in folds of papyrus.

Temple prostitutes of Mesopotamia ate the seed of Sweet Delight Honeydew and remained barren, but when they tossed these same seeds onto bare ground, great vines filled the horizon with abundance.

Travelers on the Silk Road left rinds of yellow melon everywhere for scavengers to find. It was written: Better vultures go after the remains of fruit than what we men are made of.

In one of the few surviving passages from Tehnti (48,000 BCE), he described a large cantaloupe at the entrance to the passage of the Scales of Judgment: “If the soul’s roots and the melon balance in The Book of Deeds, the newly dead enter into life after death. If not, the soul is forced to wander forever within its rotten core.”

1.

We did not live forever then
nor do we learn to age gracefully now.

Would you rather be
somepIace else?
Would you rather be
shadow in shade?

2.

Stop giving up.
Think this is one life I live
and I can live another,

3.

but if you continue to slap
the face of god
and hit the wall of standing
know this:

4.

5.

a snow pocked empty lot
weed filled and drunk,
discarded glass, discarded diets,
psoriasis, eczema, a cancer,
infected tears in the skin.

Interlude

(melons) taste like watered-down perfume—Amy Gebsler

(Did you really drink perfume, Amy Gebsler?)—M. H. Brownstein

6.

We are made of mad men,
hard tack and possibility bags,
prosperity boxes and droplets
seeded with color and light,
smothered with clouds smoldering.

7.

How do you give someone a broken cup?
The same way bone is broken?
The same way underwear is found?

Is it not enough to know
the voice of words
after death, a geometry
of shade across sidewalk
and street, the empathy
of clouds cooling off heat,
a litany of breeze,
a burning of wheat?

And still what a glorious day
for all the animosities
between us

8.

even as you bundle your words into growls
and pitch them against the scars of others.
Aren’t you the glad one able to build
bonfires, lightning storms, a great tornado.
It is no wonder plagues move away from you,
history repeats itself?

Epilogue

No mention is made of melons in the Norseland Book of Magic, the Druid Tome to Destiny, the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, the Qur’an, The Buddha Meditations. The Tao or the Book of Mormons.

[From: AFTER HOURS, a journal of Chicago writing and art, Issue No. 24, Winter 2012]

james joyce | the dead

POETRY DISPATCH No. 365 | March 20, 2012

JAMES JOYCE

by
Norbert Blei

Editor’s Note: Happy St. Patrick’s Day—somewhat belatedly. Since my recent return, there’s been considerable catching-up, day and night. I hate to let St. Paddy’s pass me by without a few choice (Joyce) words.

I love the Irish. I love listening to their voices, their stories, their blarney…their music, their writing. (One of my best friends in Door County was the late, legendary bartender/character, St. Pat, who was so stereotypical ‘Irish’ that hardly anyone knew his real name). I’ve always respected their service to humanity–neighbor to stranger—anyone who needed a helping hand. I even once had a memorable, loveable Irish uncle (Jeremiah O’Brien) in our predominantly Eastern European tribe. He was certainly a presence both vital and unique. And though I’ve been to Ireland only once, years ago, I loved the country—and set off one morning in Dublin to retrace Joyce’s steps.

I brought Irish writing into the classroom since way back when (forty plus years ago) I was honored to teach Honors English on a high school level. The short story writers were the first to catch my attention. Frank O’Connor for one. Followed by the poets–Yeats, for sure. I came to “the essential Joyce” late. Around college, where and when I was certainly a loner on a small Midwestern campus, finding and making my own way, reading everything, ‘pretending’ to want to teach, to be a good teacher, but determined to become a better than good writer.

I came to Joyce entirely on my own. On hearsay. On his name continually popping up in my reading, in conversations with used bookstore owners who knew fiction. Joyce was never taught in any of the classes I took. But I seemed to have that seventh, eighth, or ninth sense of a budding writer: something that whispers you can’t begin to write or know anything about writing without a sense of Joyce in your head and heart.

Luckily I came to his collection of short stories, DUBLINERS, first. Had I opened ULYSSES or FINNIGANS WAKE before DUBLINERS, God knows what would have become of me. I’m entering “old man territory” presently, and still not ready for FINNIGAN/ “begin again”–and may have to carry it with me to the other side. A book probably written for eternity anyway.

In years past, there were St. Patrick’s Day celebrations in Chicago–the river turned green (Mayor Daley’s orders), parades, good Hibernian nights of good friends and good drinks and good conversation in Old Town at O’Rourke’s. Followed years later by a quieter time of my young family in the living room of a neighborhood apartment—and my persistent, traditional St. Paddy’s night: viewing “The Quiet Man” …John Wayne, Maureen O’Hara, Barry Fitzgerald…directed by John Ford. How could it possibly be any better, green beer or not?

Some of this has slipped by me in my later years since living here in the rural where I find myself in a distinctly unHibernian atmosphere–still staring at that copy of FINNIGANS WAKE on my shelf of Irish lit books.

But I do take one of my copies of DUBLINERS from the shelves once a year, usually around St. Patrick’s time. And if I don’t read all of the stories, only favorites…I never fail to read the last story in the book, “The Dead” (and later watch the film). I never fail to feel the passion in the lines, hear the music in Joyce’s prose, especially the final paragraphs of “The Dead”, one of the most celebrated passages in all of literature …never fail to read it aloud…give thanks for the Irish in Joyce, the blessing of his artistry…rejoice… – Norbert Blei

The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched him­self cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.

Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman but he knew that such a feel­ing must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not ap­prehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which these dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the win­dow. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey west­ward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and. farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

[Excerpt, Joyce’s, “The Dead,” from his first collection of short stories, DUBLINERS.]

michael ryan | bunny

POETRY DISPATCH No. 364 | February 27, 2012

BUNNY
by
Michael Ryan

In the scarred desk behind me
in history class,
she lulled her nyloned knee
against my ass,

its message pressing home
as dully we went
from the interminable Fall of Rome
to the Council of Trent

and through the even duller
steel-town afternoons
locked in a collar
of dim green rooms,

old nuns, and ever new
bewilderment.
1962.
Like the hood ornament

on some chopped-down hot rod
of the apocalypse,
above the blackboard stood
the crucifix

Flanked on either slope
of this tiny Calvary
by color head shots of the Pope
and John F. Kennedy—

an arrangement meant to convey
not thievery being done
but God’s work every day
by the Two Johns

drawing us like dynamos
through them to Heaven
while we shook in our rows
as if on toboggans.

So what if we had known
what J.F.K. was doing
in Laos and Vietnam,
who he was screwing

(including the teen-age mistress
of the head of the Mafia,
delivered to the White House
like a midnight pizza)?

The greater world to me,
present and past,
was the space between Bunny’s knee
and my ass,

and I needed it collapsed
as soon as class began.
So what if I thought she had
the brains of a pecan,

mascara so black and thick
she must have smeared it on
with a popsicle stick,
and a nickname incredibly dumb?

Each day when she had helped me
annihilate an hour,
and we were going away,
I’d stare at her,

and she’d stare back and wink
I know you live with it:
one flashlight blink
at the bottom of a pit.

[from THE NEW YORKER, Aug. 21 & 28, 1995]

WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA | 1923 – 2012

POETRY DISPATCH No. 363 | February 8, 2012

WISŁAW SZYMBORSKA
1923 – 2012

jim harrison | five poems

POETRY DISPATCH No. 362 | January 5, 2012

JIM HARRISON

FIVE POEMS

Editor’s Note: I just trashed a lead-in piece, essay, on Harrison that I spent too much of yesterday (and the afternoon of the day before) writing. I liked where it was going, but after a trip to town, after a cup of coffee and reflection, after I came back to the desk here in the coop, I was tired of the piece, tired of what we’ve done to Harrison, maybe even more tired of what Harrison has done to himself.

Success in American writing means the making of the myth. Then living up to it till it eventually kills you, spiritually if not physically. I don’t want to get started on this or I’ll spend another day or more writing that piece. I don’t want to be reminded of how many times Harrison has been compared to hard drinking, hard living, hard loving, hard writing Hemingway. And how the myths sometime converge. But…

Fuck it! (I’m angry). Harrison may be our Hemingway of today (he may have even preened himself for this distinction through time…including what seems his present, ‘heroic’ road to self-destruction), but he is not Hemingway. He is Harrison. In some ways, a better writer than Hemingway. Certainly a better poet. Certainly a fuller grasp of the narrative of the natural landscape of America (the Midwest in particular), how it speaks, what it says, how it saves us from ourselves…how it shapes Harrison’s words far beyond the Nick Adams Stories.

Forget the myth. Forget the photographs. Go to the work. There you’ll find him. — Norbert Blei

Calendars

Back in the blue chair in front of the green studio
another year has passed, or so they say, but calendars lie.
They’re a kind of cosmic business machine like
their cousin clocks but break down at inoppormne times.
Fifty years ago I learned to jump off the calendar
but I kept getting drawn back on for reasons
of greed and my imperishable stupidity.
Of late I’ve escaped those fatal squares
with their razor-sharp numbers for longer and longer.
I had to become the moving water I already am,
falling back into the human shape in order
not to frighten my children, grandchildren, dogs and friends.
Our old cat doesn’t care. He laps the water where my face used to be.

[from IN SEARCH OF SMALL GODS, Copper Canyon Press, 2010, $16, pb.]

I Believe

I believe in steep drop-offs, the thunderstorm across the lake
in 1949, cold winds, empty swimming pools,
the overgrown path to the creek, raw garlic,
used tires, taverns, saloons, bars, gallons of red wine,
abandoned farmhouses, stunted lilac groves,
gravel roads that end, brush piles, thickets, girls
who haven’t quite gone totally wild, river eddies,
leaky wooden boats, the smell of used engine oil,
turbulent rivers, lakes without cottages lost in the woods,
the primrose growing out of a cow skull, the thousands
of birds I’ve talked to all of my life, the dogs
that talked back, the Chihuahuan ravens that follow
me on long walks. The rattler escaping the cold hose,
the fluttering unknown gods that I nearly see
from the left corner of my blind eye, struggling
to stay alive in a world that grinds them underfoot.

[from IN SEARCH OF SMALL GODS, Copper Canyon Press, 2010, $16, pb. ]

Tomorrow

I’m hoping to be astonished tomorrow
by I don’t know what:
not the usual undiscovered bird in the cold
snowy willows, garishly green and yellow,
and not my usual death, which I’ve done
before with Borodin’s music
used in Kismet, and angels singing
“Stranger in Paradise,” that sort of thing,
and not the thousand naked women
running a marathon in circles around me
while I swivel on a writerly chair
keeping an eye on my favorites.
What could it be, this astonishment,
but falling into a liquid mirror
to finally understand that the purpose
of earth is earth? It’s plain as night.
She’s willing to sleep with us a little while.

[from IN SEARCH OF SMALL GODS, Copper Canyon Press, 2010, $16, pb. ]

BROOM

To remember you’re alive
visit the cemetery of your father
at noon after you’ve made love
and are still wrapped in a mammalian
odor that you are forced to cherish.
Under each stone is someone’s inevitable
surprise, the unexpected death
of their biology that struggled hard, as it must.
Now to home without looking back,
enough is enough.
En route buy the best wine
you can afford and a dozen stiff brooms.
Have a few swallows then throw the furniture
out the window and begin sweeping.
Sweep until the walls are
bare of paint and at your feet sweep
until the floor disappears. Finish the wine
in this field of air, return to the cemetery
in evening and wind through the stones
a slow dance of your name visible only to birds.

[from SONGS OF UNREASON, Copper Canyon Press, 2011, hb, $22]

Death Again

Let’s not get romantic or dismal about death.
Indeed it’s our most unique act along with birth.
We must think of it as cooking breakfast,
it’s that ordinary. Break two eggs into a bowl
or break a bowl into two eggs. Slip into a coffin
after the fluids have been drained, or better yet,
slide into the fire. Of course it’s a little hard
to accept your last kiss, your last drink,
your last meal about which the condemned
can be quite particular as if there could be
a cheeseburger sent by God. A few lovers
sweep by the inner eye, but it’s mostly a placid
lake at dawn, mist rising, a solitary loon
call, and staring into the still, opaque water.
We’ll know as children again all that we are
destined to know, that the water is cold
and deep, and the sun penetrates only so far.

[from SONGS OF UNREASON, Copper Canyon Press, 2011, hb, $22 ]

three native american prayers

POETRY DISPATCH No. 361 | December 14, 2011

Editor’s Note: Though my working environment in the coop is saturated with ‘spirit’…the pine walls, glow with sacred memorabilia of all sorts, from hand-made wooden crucifixes to paintings, photographs, holy cards, carvings…windowsills of glass, pottery, sculpture…much of it reflecting the Southwest and the old country…much of it appealing to myth, mystery, meditation…there’s a particular place above my desk, to my right, where at least thirty years ago I posted a copy of “A Prayer of the Navaho Night Chant” which I found during one of my New Mexico sojourns, and which I have never removed since.

Though I don’t read it every day, or pray every day, I consider it a kind of blessing of words which hover around me, good days and bad days. Words that make a difference. Which is all any writer is ever after. His sole reason for being.

Along with the artwork on the coop walls done by many of my friends, here and there a warm, comforting and perfect piece of pottery by Chris Spanovich, a woman I truly loved, makes its presence felt. I smile. I walk over to it. I touch it. Her pottery begs to be held in both hands, like an offering—received. More spirit. More reverence. More prayer. I did a long story on her once, “Chris Spanovich, The Potter of Chimayo” which appears in DOOR TO DOOR, Ellis Press, 1985.

Prayerful, thankful…that’s how I feel today. That the arts speak to us in ways no organized religion can ever understand. All this spirit that surrounds me is all that really matters. ..Norbert Blei

I’m an Indian.
I think about common things like this pot.
The bubbling water comes from the rain cloud.
It represents the sky.
The fire comes from the sun
which warms us all, men, animals, trees.
The meat stands for the four-legged creatures,
our animal brothers,
who gave of themselves so that we should live.
The steam is living breath.
It was water, now it goes up to the sky,
becomes a cloud again.
These things are sacred.
Looking at that pot full of good soup,
I am thinking how, in this simple manner,
The great Spirit takes care of me.

— John Lame Deer

Greeting, Father’s Clansman,
I have just made a robe for you, this is it.
Give me a good way of living.
May I and my people safely reach the next year.
May my children increase; when my sons go to war,
may they bring horses.
When my son goes to war, may he return with black face.
When I move, may the wind come to my face,
may the buffalo gather coward me.

This summer may the plants thrive,
may the cherries be plentiful.
May the winter be good, may illness not reach me.
May I see the new grass of summer,
may I see the full-sized leaves when they come.
May I see the spring.
May I with all my people safely reach it.

— Crow Indian prayer

Tségihi,
House made of dawn.
House made of evening light.
House made of the dark cloud.
House made of male rain.
House made of dark mist.
House made of female rain.
House made of pollen.
House made of grasshoppers.
Dark cloud is at the door.
The trail out of it is dark cloud.
The zigzag lightning stands high upon it.
Male deity!
Your offering I make.
I have prepared a smoke for you.
Restore my feet for me.
Restore my legs for me.
Restore my body for me.
Restore my mind for me.
This very day take out your spell for me.
Your spell remove for me.
You have taken it away for me.
Far off it has gone.
Happily I recover.
Happily my interior becomes cool.
Happily I go forth.
My interior feeling cool, may I walk.
No longer sore, may I walk.
Impervious to pain, may I walk.
With lively feeling may I walk.
As it used to be long ago, may I walk.
Happily may I walk.
Happily, with abundant dark clouds, may I walk.
Happily, with abundant showers, may I walk.
Happily, with abundant plants, may I walk.
Happily, on a trail of pollen, may I walk.
Happily may I walk.
Being as it used to be long ago, may I walk.
May it be beautiful before me
May it be beautiful behind me.
May it be beautiful below me.
May it be beautiful above me.
With it be beautiful all around me.
In beauty it is finished.

– A Prayer of the Navaho Night Chant