Andrena Zawinski
"The Narrative Thread" was written after the exhibition of quilts, The Narrative Thread: Contemporary Women’s Embroidery in Rural India, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D. C. In E. India, embroidering quilts (or kanthas given as gifts on festive occasions) depicting scenes from daily life (work, play, domestic activity) dates back to the 18C. The craft disappeared until the Adithi organization revived and transformed it into grassroots activism in its expression of social-political concerns as well as a source of income for house bound women of the lowest caste. Phoolan Devi--to whom the poem is dedicated--was a lower caste woman from N. India who came to be known as the Bandit Queen and who was a victim of multiple rapes, brutalization, then murder after her spree of violent vendettas. The unrhymed villanelle, with its lines coming back upon each other, made it possible to add the quality of a stitching movement to drive the poem.
"I Have Seen Terezin" was written long after visiting the concentration camp, Terezín or Theresienstadt, outside Prague. The “Gate of Death” is where prisoners passed enroute to execution. Some 10,000 victims are buried in its cemetery upon which roses bloom. Terezín held children whose artwork (now displayed in its museum) inspired Rispanti’s "I Never Saw Another Butterfly," from which many plays have been performed by children worldwide. The dedication of the poem is to Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, who taught the children art there until she was transferred to Auschwitz in 1944 where she was killed. The poem, a testament to poetic memory as well as historic evil, takes the haunting and hypnotic quality from the pantoum form with its recurring lines that intertwine.
"Call Her" moves along a trajectory that starts in a neighborhood and ends in the poetic mind, a mind that keeps circling back to witness a moment in the life of a homeless girl and to reconstruct that life with fanciful possibilities. The truncated corona form, or four sonnet cycle, allows this dance around the reality of "what is" and the imaginative "what could be," taking the reader full circle back to the poet's mind and place in the scene.
___________________________________________
Call Her:
Morning,
circling Lake Merritt in Oakland, California
and imagining Paris, France
This morning circling Lake Merritt, the birds
rouse the imagination with squawks, honks,
raspy cries. Slick cormorants line log booms
beating wings at mist, clumsy pelicans
slap at the water’s sheen, everything
awake on a snake of lake-light crawling
the gnarl of tree trunks--and Angelina
turns beneath her blanket on dewy grass,
turns there to kiss her lover on his cheek
as they rise there, as he calls out her name
like an urge, like a drive, like a hunger.
So in this poem name him Romero,
because you can. Imagine them instead
as they dance lakeside, Bois de Boulogne.
They dance lakeside at Bois de Boulogne
in Paris, France--dance with the same fluster
as birds circling in a raucous laurel
of wing beats, coos. But this is not Paris
but Oakland, California, and they
are homeless where sentries of city doves
preen at water’s edge on the lake wall’s lip
along a ducky little waterway.
This could be Bastille Day, could be Paris
dressed in pomp and flair, a firecracker
sky flushed in a blush of hoopla. Lovers
are the thing there. If you are not in love,
you will be, or steal into someone else’s,
too much Bordeaux too early in the day.
Too much Bordeaux too early in the day,
name them what you will--him Remy, call her
Adeline, because you can. That’s the thing
with poetry, it can pose lovers where
imagination wishes to have them
stir or waken or even dance around
in Paris. Here, part of the scenery
and art of invention, her hand in his
rests for now on her grumbling stomach
while a legion of pigeons guards the bank,
feet a polish of pink, eyes golden sequins,
garden varieties, yet necks lustrous
in a royal sheen of purple and green--
but this poem is not one for the birds.
This poem is not one for the birds, but
it is for that homeless girl blanketed
in this Paris of the imagination
wearing a wide-brimmed hat and scented
lavender, not at this man’s coarse and thick
hands grabbing mussels young gulls fuss over,
flurry of feathers caught in the brambles,
city doves strutting their velvet nightcoats,
pecking peanut shells she scrambles after.
She dances lakeside, Bois de Boulogne,
too much Bordeaux too early in the day
where a sweet rich napoleon calls her
with strong coffee all the muscle she needs,
someone else busy with birds in Oakland.
Previously published in Many Mountains Moving VII
I Have Seen Terezin.
A pantoum from Frankie's on the Divisadero in San Francisco
The sign at Frankie’s Bohemian Cafe reads: We are 6,303 miles from Prague.
From inside the shadowed corner where I have brambory, rough bread, Pilsner--
much the same way I did in that sleepy Bohemian bordertown of Terezin--
from here I can still almost hear mothers’ voices, appoggiaturas on the wind.
From inside the shadowed corner where I have brambory, rough bread, Pilsner,
I think of children painting flowers sprawling meadows, their butterfly skies
and still almost hear from here mothers’ voices, appoggiaturas on the wind.
Now we make a study of this, housefronts tattooed in SS occupation brass plaques
and of children painting flowers sprawling meadows, their butterfly skies,
quilts’ large folds feather-soft daily airing our sins across an opened window ledge.
Now we make a study of this, housefronts tattooed in SS occupation brass plaques,
across the way the Camp’s mass grave’s numbered markers bedding down in roses,
quilts’ large folds feather-soft airing our sins across an opened window ledge,
the gallows wreathed in candles, slips of prayers tucked beneath rings of stones.
Across the road a grave of numbered markers beds down below a blanket of roses
for ones who hung at the Gate of Death. I have walked camp tunnels from the cells
to the gallows wreathed in candles, slipped prayers beneath the rings of stones,
jumping at my own shadow darting behind and before me, at how horror twists it,
for those who hung at the Gate of Death. I have walked camp tunnels from the cells,
dark angels taunting me with voices and plaques, quilts and roses, butterfly skies,
jumping at my own shadow darting behind and before me, at how horror twists it--
the same way I did neatly squared walkways in the sleepy bordertown of Terezin--
its dark angels taunting me with voices and plaques, quilts and roses, butterfly skies,
while the sign at Frankie’s Bohemian Cafe reads: We are 6,303 miles from Prague.
--for Friedl Dicker-Brandeis
Previously published in the Comstock Review 15:1
The Narrative Thread, or Practice of Kanthas
Villanelle after the exhibition of quilts, The Narrative Thread:
Contemporary Women’s Embroidery in in Rural India
at The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D. C.
They stitch as if we need these blankets to crawl under,
these thoughts that toss sweet dreams into fretful nights.
They stitch patches of stories onto a tongue of cloth.
They stitch--girls left to sicken, to die, books torn from them--
stitch in women’s fisted faces on a stammer of speech.
They stitch as if we need these blankets to crawl under.
They take to needle and thread in a revolution of stitch,
stitch speaking in streets without asking for permission.
They stitch patches of stories onto a tongue of cloth.
They stitch in women veiled at home, poisoned widows,
stitch mango groves to chemical spills, wheatfields to AIDS.
They stitch as if we need these blankets to crawl under.
They stitch--girls burned by inlaws at husbands’ pyres--
stitch palms ripe with fruit to gang rapes in hands of authority.
They stitch patches of stories onto a tongue of cloth.
They stitch quilts for shoppers to slip under with their dreams,
for dreams between borders stitched in a revolution of fingers.
They stitch as if we need these blankets to crawl under.
They stitch patches of stories onto a tongue of cloth.
--for Phoolan Devi, 1963-2001
Previously published in Haight Ashbury Literary Journal 21:1
_________________
Andrena Zawinski, born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA, has made the San Francisco Bay Area her home for over seven years. Her poetry appears widely in print and online, and she is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com.