by Maureen Owen

caregivers log 7.27.19    home in Denver
            mom in Truckee    for a few days    without me

Mom calls
her caregiver didn’t show up
no one has refilled her daily pillbox
she has no pills today

At the kitchen window    I watch
a dinosaur next door hiss & stretch out its metallic neck
scooping deep into soil above a sewage drain pipe
black cords where its mane might be glisten in the torrid
afternoon sun
it sways    rears    trunk up over truck bed    dropping a maw full
of dirt
from its jaws   Rumbling  beeping  scooping  heaving  shaking grit
into the truck bed

My brother calls   in route to ER
mom’s legs swelled up   suddenly   in a couple of hours both legs
he and Jacki sitting right there talking to her
visiting Steve   my ringer was off
declaring infection doctor has put her in the hospital
on antibiotics and back on her diuretics
I have to return   my little break   broken

Some days later
Diana & Alvin pick me up at train station main street Truckee
Arriving at the cabin I find mom out of the hospital but
her legs still severely swollen
she appears aged in the short time I was away   or maybe
I’ve been away long enough that I can notice how frail and pallid
she is
I put things in order
& make coffee   cook dinner   set up pills   wash her jacket   make
prescription calls, etc.
her neediness calls for me   if I’m away more than a minute.
I take a quick shower.  Put her legs
up   prepare clothes, etc. for early church   make her bed   cream
on her back   find 49ers football
game on tv   set her alarm   $ in church envelop
every breath she takes floats
on an audible moan.
she’s glad I’m here        she’s realized        she can’t do it alone

by James Sherry

My Ukrainian Grandmother connected joy
With weakness, scoffed at pleasure,
Except her finger in a socket.
She called each grandchild by all
Our names: Jimmy, Dicky, Danny
And ended babbling like a brook.

My Ukrainian Grandmother kept her sons close
And her husband under her thumb.
When I was 25 my uncle still slept in his childhood bed.
Her apartment smelled like chicken
And the elevator was scary.

She looked down on Jews from other places
“The Hunkies,” “the Krauts.”  Can you still read
This awful poem about this selfish woman
Who like Dostoyevsky’s first tale
Would prefer to burn in hell
Than give a beggar an onion ?

Yet at no time should she be left alone,
At no time does she deserve less,
At no time should Ukrainian people
Be battered by Russia’s leader’s vendetta
Against European and American
Who defeated Russia in the cold war.

Let the Celts recover northern Europe
Let Asia be returned to the Mongols.
Let America be given to primeval
Hunters who followed the glaciers north.
Let Babylon reclaim the Tigris Euphrates.
Time goes in one direction
Except in your imagination
For which there are no treaties.

“My Ukrainian Grandmother” will be published
elsewhere in an online tribute to Ukrain

by Anne Waldman

Fille de Rhizome
     for No Land, her poet–photo Eye

trauma
like
porcelain

b r e a k s

parched lips
not part of this world.  yet
but the outside turning its heels

drawing down the moon

gone to mobility
catastrophic mise en scene

we met at protest, in protest,   above it

and downcast the newscaster

never looks,   really “up”

in media res, caught in the act:

(but chatty)   none the less

we started or plot to save the world
all epics of love and incantation
flow in with tide
roar.     the cinematrix elicits a motion forward

will arrive with alphabets for clouds
catching the
Elusian
won’t stop
the parable won’t
stop photographing

(no aphasia will interfere with the photo)
her word store’s sanctuary
for the daughter, my arm in yours

she can get cops
she can take the fallen
she can be in love
with the fragment

She can catch the children
and of a delicate wrist, its bands

Catch your heart — of No Land, hand

of all land

blessed by the Sorcerer of Birds

by Anne Waldman
Anselm Hollo Memorial, Naropa University, July 7, 2013

Ted Berrigan with whom Anselm continued to have a long conversations (in his head and in his poetry) long after Ted’s death, used the phrase to me once: “tattered bodhisattva” (and also in a talk he gave at Naropa in describing in a sense what many of us were all doing circa mid-60–70s).  And he said “like Anselm Hollo.”  This was before the more secure teaching jobs, grants and the like raised the stature of poet survival.  The itinerant poet was singing for supper.  Have ticket will travel.

And this notion — bodhisattva — infuses a commitment to the role and ethos of poet, as one benefitting other interested and curious ones, on a kind of language trajectory, not exactly a do-good mission.  Buddhism speaks of how you are riding “in the vehicle of the bodhisattva.”  It’s not some solid identity of you as Bodhisattva.  This is what we do.  Ride in the vehicle.  Not about

la gloire or the money.  This particular ethos has been a key component to the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s as well as Colorado poetics community here on the Front Range, and in and around and building on the continuing trajectory of The Jack Kerouac School.  Action poetics.  Action language.  Showing up.  I can hear Anselm’s laugh as he entered any room.

“Tattered” has a distinctively poete maudit ring to it.  Anselm said to me once that the top goal of a poet — what would make you a superstar — would be to have 2,000 loyal readers.  Quite an ambition for poetry, he said.  Meanwhile you slog on.

Speaking of traveling in the vehicle I remember traveling with Anselm, late seventies around D.C. and Virginia when he was doing a stint at Sweet Briar, which had a lot of wealthy students with thoroughbred horses and fancy cars and yachts.  (Some interesting commentary from Anselm there; he preferred life on the other side of the road).  We tore around that area to meet and honor reading gigs often fueled by a few “drinkies” in a questionable car Anselm owned that broke down frequently.  And while heading for an event at the Corcoran gallery in D.C.  running a light, Anselm exclaimed, “Did I ever tell you I love
you! ?  And this whole ride!  Why not ?”  This was our risky tattered bodhisattva moment.

Bah obstacle!

take wing
fly toward enigma’s
red light

never stop ?
a jagged ride

poets with a vow
up their sleeves
scarecrow poetics

wake up! caw caw

Anne Waldman, Anselm Hollo Memorial, Naropa University, July 7, 2013