In the Language of Women
Charles Adès Fishman
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2011, Charles Adès Fishman. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or recording without the prior written permission of Charles Adès Fishman unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. Address inquiries to Permissions, Casa de Snapdragon Publishing LLC, 12901 Bryce Avenue NE, Albuquerque, NM 87112.
Cover illustration “Meditation in Red” (oil on canvas) - copyright © 1986 Edward Tabachnik. All rights reserved.
Author photo “Charles Fishman: Portrait No. 6” - copyright © 2011 Eddie Vega. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fishman, Charles Adès.
In the language of women / Charles Adès Fishman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-9845681-5-4 (pbk.), 978-1-937240-99-8 (ePub)
1. Women--Poetry. I. Title.
PS3606.I83I5 2011
811'.6--dc22
2011008963
20110610
Casa de Snapdragon Publishing LLC
A traditional, independent publishing company
In Memory of Natalie Pasca (Feb. 20, 1915–Feb. 7, 2010)
a great spirit watched over us
The Women
Fátimah Baragháni: Táhirih: The Seventeenth Disciple
Luana Barago: One Black and One Gray Stone
Janet Brennan: The St. Patrick’s Day Concert ~ The Writer
Usha Chandrasekharan: Queen of Recollection ~ A Woman from
Coimbatore ~ Your Teachers
Lynne Cox: In the Slipstream
Rita Cummings: A Dream of Tigers ~ An Early Sign
Marguerite Curtin: Miss Curtin
Charlene Dumas: A Woman of Earth
Glory Sasikala Franklin: The Driver ~ Forgotten Songs ~ Night
Floods Back Like a River of Fire
Mavis Grant: Golden Syrup
Judy Guheen: A True History of Food
Amelia Haselkorn: Amelia in China ~ Amelia in Vietnam
Jean Hollander: A German Official Listened to Her Words
Kathleen Horan: A Dream of the Morning ~ She Remembers Winter
~ Your Dog
Kate Kelly: Some Kind of Light
Marie-Pierre Manet-Beauzac: Why Marie-Pierre Will Not Show You
Photos of Her Children
Latha Mohan: Diwali Morning ~ Starry Night
Jessica Nichols: Discovering Greenland
Georgia O’Keeffe: Slightly Open
Natalie Pasca: For Natalie at 94 ~ Natalie Remembers Union Avenue
Harriet Pasca-Ortgies: Three Views of Harriet
Natalia Sangama: A Lost Language
Reva Sharon: Motek
Victoria Speckman: Falling Asleep with Your Children
Lynn Strongin: All Things Broken Gather in Her Arms
Julia Terwilliger: Julia’s Garden
Catharina Van Leeuwen: Distances from Heaven
Florence Weinberg: Six Southwest Memories
Frances Zalcberg: Under Jerusalem’s Sun
Malka Zimetbaum: A Translator in Auschwitz
Women are not identified in these poems:
Sisters, the Water Is on Fire
Young Girl, Pretending
Small Gifts
A Night in Jerusalem
Blues for the Drummer’s Daughter
She Is Running
Two Winters
Lebensraum
A Child Survivor
A Guide at the Synagogue of Rome
Contents
Sisters, the Water Is on Fire
Forgotten Songs
Natalie Remembers Union Avenue
Some Kind of Light
Falling Asleep with Your Children
All Things Broken Gather in Her Arms
Distances from Heaven
Blues for the Drummer’s Daughter
Night Floods Back Like a River of Fire
A Lost Language
A German Official Listened to Her Words
A Guide at the Synagogue of Rome
Why Marie-Pierre Will Not Show You Photos of Her Children
The Writer
Táhirih: The Seventeenth Disciple
For Natalie at 94
I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.
— Audre Lorde
There are fires we cannot put out because they are fanned by eternity.
— Edmond Jabès
Sisters, the Water Is on Fire
Sisters, the Water Is on Fire
I.
You are reading on the roof with the sea before you — how free
you feel, how freely you explore your innermost thoughts!
Unknown to me, you gaze over the open pages of your life.
*
Water
runnels under your feet, and ripples in the distance
make the sea
wall’s lamplight reflections dance.
Tonight, there are no stars, no glitter in the black cupola of sky
the Catalan gods have hung over slate and stone and damp brick
as you look up and slowly walk away.
*
Wind increases and boats are winched and lifted. This inlet
of the sea is nearly emptied of them: a morning’s work
in Aigua Blava, where the red and yellow flag of the Catalan nation
floats in the salt-and-sugar breeze.
*
I have traveled to this coast to write these words for you, sisters
of a brave country. Drink each day like the deep red wine
that flows at your tables, let the sun of your history embrace you.
II.
Sisters of all nations, this poem is for you. I see that now,
as flames of the night sky stream out above me.
Flames of the dawning night, turn up your brightness!
*
See, in the blue-black-green-and-carmine water, my sisters swim,
even as waves of poverty and violence seek to drown them,
even as the cresting seas of terror and ignorance rush
to blind them.
Sky, unveil your fires!
*
What is the link between poets and the sea’s scarlet lightning,
between the torturers and murderers of women and those
who love and empower them?
Let us recede, let us pull back the way the hem of a gown
flares away from an ankle, the way a wave breaks
and falls seaward.
*
Sisters, I give my voice to your memories, to honor them.
I give my words to the music of all you wish to say.
Forgotten Songs
Diwali Morning
On Diwali morning
her childhood returns: dew
on the burnt grass, birds in flight
singing, pampering by her aunts,
the rustling of new dresses,
delectable meals and sweets
prepared under Grandma’s guidance.
Joy sugared the air, as bright
as firecrackers exploding.
On a November night
the festival would arrive: the perfect
opening notes of a symphony
that would decide the fate of the planet.
moment was alive:
it was like being washed in the geyser
of memory.
She was a child then
and bathed in the glow of golden flames
that licked the sides of the anda.
In the halo of lamps that were a sacred path
for Lakshmi, and with a kumkum dot
on her forehead, she knew that she herself
was the victory of light over darkness
and the most beautiful child
in the universe.
“And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, a little bit of something
you have been waiting for . . . The Devan Sisters!”
What is it that saves a person from torpor
and propels her toward delight? What kindles the flame
in her? A little talent, I think; a little luck in ancestors;
a mother who could sew beautiful dresses who once sang
with a big-time orchestra — a mother who could sew
and sing and was not jealous of her children
but held their hands gently. Something like a church
in Manchester, New Hampshire, and a sister named Peg
who kept the melody. A stage where a child who sang sweetly
could step into the spotlight and be praised:
something like the harmony of two sisters nervously
but angelically singing.
*
And what did you and Peg sing in that far-flung parish?
“Catch a Falling Star” and “Mick McGilligan’s Ball.”
Or “Where the River Shannon Flows” and “I Believe.”
So much to embrace, so much to be called to!
And wasn’t it your grandparents who had come over
from County Sligo speaking with a “grand Irish brogue”?
That note of joy, that groan of sadness, had been born
in the old country, a human music that warmed your throat
and filled your mouth with song.
A little bit of something grew up with you — with you
and your sister, two Irish girls waiting in emerald darkness
for the curtain to be raised.
Three Views of Harriet, 1953
I. Harriet Holds the Cat
In this image, the cat is awake
though cradled in my sister’s arms.
Harriet loves this animal
in a fierce protective way
Her face — next to the striped gray
of the cat’s vaguely composed face —
is sharply focused, her mouth
satisfied: a small oblong blotch
of reflected light paints her lower lip.
Her eyes, as always, squint
against the sun.
The cat stares into distance, aiming
to draw it near: maybe a nuthatch
or goldfinch has perched on the pitched
asphalt roof of our dad’s detached garage
Harriet doesn’t care: she has the beast
in hand, its padded paws gripped securely,
its thick-furred gray back gently supported.
My sister stands on the concrete patio
of our suburban yard. She is eight years old
and already wise: the one bright star
in this rapidly fading firmament.
II. The Cat Sleeps
In this shot, my hand seems to have
slipped: I’ve taken the top of my sister’s head off
so only the Buddha smile remains.
It must be the same day, for her short-sleeve
beige shirt is the same, the loosely fitting jeans
the same, and it’s the same gray-furred cat —
its name interred in memory — that sprawls
against my sister’s knees. Look how it ‘sits up’
with her help, its fluffed tail curled under it,
its ears in sleep-mode.
My sister holds this cat close to her body,
its heart music thrumming, the small engine
of its existence pounding. She kneels
near the back fence under the summer sky
where, finally, the box camera’s cloudy lens
has caught something worth preserving:
the cat’s lethal paws falling limp at the door
to this universe, its green eyes squinched shut,
its black-splotched tail curled slightly at the tip,
and my sister’s strong young hands clasping
a long-dead but once entirely loved being.
III. Harriet Dresses Up
In this last image, Harriet has changed
her clothes: no longer casual, she wears
a calf-length white, or pink, dress
whose twelve round buttons —
running neck to hem — bisect her life.
Her right hand grasps her chin, the smile
has escaped her lips. I can tell that this, too,
is my sister, though something mysterious
has abandoned her, though she looks straight
at the clicking camera, as if at the black center
of an approaching storm.
Your parents wanted a boy
and your Grandmom persisted —
already, her large family had too many
sisters. How sad this caused you pain
and your parents sorrow.
Yet your great spirit made you “Daddy’s
Darling”: bold walker in summer woods,
winner at “Cops and Robbers,” wearer
of your brother’s fancy jeans — the contrary one
who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
What a fighter you were!
*
All this occurred in Bombay in the years
before the Hindu-Muslim riots, before your city
was renamed Mumbai.
Then the angry mornings came.
Someone banged on your door and raved
in a foreign language. Someone arrived
with both hands bleeding.
Always there was more, always something
could happen. Walls were stained with blood
and loud whispers hissed and sizzled.
It was hard to breathe or think.
Finally, your parents moved to Coimbatore
where the earth was not on fire
and the six languages your mother embraced
and the five your father married gave each day
the gift of words and sleep.
Your father had wanted a boy but loved
when you lived your life. No wonder
he’s your hero: you were his darling daughter.
You were pickling mangos and gooseberries
when I asked about your teachers —
who had challenged you or intrigued and who
had tweaked your powers of memory and deduction.
You were pickling mangos but recalled
one teacher who’d called you her “fat bundle of Brahmin
corruption” but with a half-exasperated sigh that told you
she loved your boldness and your fire.
Another had taught you grammar with particularity
and fondness and had shown you the intricacies
of English spelling so, even now, you wince
when someone mangles the language. You were pickling
gooseberries and mangos but stopped to tell me
about the oldest of your teachers, she who’d sworn
that a minute has sixty seconds and then demonstrated
just how short that is. She’d always had time for you
and had guided you from one revelation to another,
with affection and without haste.
Queen of Recollection
Each New Year’s Eve
until she was married,
she sat on straw mats
with her mother, in the hive
of memory, abuzz with arrivals
and passings, with five-day
weddings and nine-day festivals,
with poojas and dances and bhajans
for Shiva, alive with the flair
of cousins’ saris, the flash and flame
and fading of images, with half-
remembered songs:
those lilting and languorous days
recalled on the last night of December
— that raucous recounting —
each moment glorious: ten thousand
and one glinting bangles, a fiery splash
of swaying bodies, gold earrings,
gold necklaces, bracelets of gold
and fire and that final lingering:
bell-notes of laughter on twilit
verandahs, moods turning
on a whiff of perfume,
on the fragrance.
Discovering Greenland
The coast of Greenland had many fjords
where anchorage was good.
You and your sister were little but fought
like unleashed dogs, like feral cats. You bit
and scratched, then kissed and hugged.
You didn’t forget but kept small wounds
inside you, and when you laughed, there was
an edge, and your lips and tongues felt cut.
Later, you blew weird noises into each other’s
mouths and listened to see if what you whimpered,
snarled and hummed would fade or echo back.
Though not Inuits, you were denizens of a realm
as rare as Greenland. Where you played, streams
dwindled to nameless rills, and each knoll
was brightened by glints of shale and sunlit moss.
Later still, you rode on bikes to the far-off hills
of Ulster County, where you used river stones
to paint each other’s faces. With each small brush-
stroke, you could tell that you and your sister
dwelled in the same blessed country.
An Early Sign
It was a time of awakening — to art, music,
ideas, to the beauty and power of books
and your own peerless body, to the intricacies
of your mind and the senses that guided you
deeper and higher or led you astray —
that showed you even laws that govern
the universe may be broken or torn up or made
to obey. At thirteen, you found Van Gogh
who showed you what the night sky or a row
of trees in Arles or a sunflower in a vase
might look like, and at fifteen, De Kooning
and Dalí taught you that nothing which endures
is safe, that nothing assured is desirable — not
in art, and not in life — for rain and the tides
will wash it away. And so you found poems
in your wrists and fingers and the dazzle of color
in your eyes that was the dazzle of the world
which had eluded you like a sudden gust of wind.
How else explain the mustache you drew on a red
2½ d stamp — on the queen’s royal face — on a day
when the stars were unreadable yet illuminated
who you are: an artist of the quick, transformative act
that changes everything.
You were 7 or 8, a lover
of animals: the bark
of a dog didn’t frighten you
or bring nightmares
but was a harsh music
your ear was attuned to
a discord your young spirit
craved. A kitten’s chirping song
a bird’s warning notes
were disharmonies that engaged you
and made you listen to your body.
What changed you
was the dog your brothers
brought home: she was not beautiful
and you had no desire to own her
yet she touched you in some profound way
as if she carried a bell in her mouth
that had not yet sounded
but that you heard ringing.
And your mother sensed this bond
you had no name for: this song
that remained untitled and unfinished
but that your mind could not
relinquish. What changed
was the blood that spattered
the kitchen floor — those dark red notes
that intense brightness.
The blood did not go unnoticed
and your mother was soon shrieking:
She could not love this animal
and would not have it in her house
but she’d frightened the dog —
your dog now — and the blood
splashed everywhere: a red fugue
neither you nor your brothers
could hold in check
and so she screamed at you
her youngest, as if you
had unleashed that flood
of dark music. How could you
not hide from your mother
when your own blood came?
She Remembers Winter
I.
She remembers the overpass
along Sunrise Highway
where she would sled all day
with friends in that winter
of 1970: how the sled would freeze
in late December coldness
making it hard to steer, the way
her feet extended over the wooden slats
and her stomach and chest pressed
flat to them so she could breathe
only in shallow gasps as the wet snow
raced under her, how she would put
her whole being into turning
as momentum built and each small
adjustment became necessary.
She remembers that downhill rush
as her first lesson in freedom:
how her heart raced with the sled
and beat with a frantic pleasure
that opened gates inside her.
It was heaven to let go, to feel
briefly supported yet unable
to control speed or direction,
to be lifted in a gentle rocking flow
or bumped along roughly
but released from confinement
and stricture, bruised and cold
but brushed with glittering whiteness.
She remembers how she played