Grace Beeler

Salt

2006-12-21T21:41:00.000-05:00

I have a simple longing, one which
falls well within the realm of women:
a shelf of blue glass,
an open kitchen window,
sunlight, and a fruit tree
beyond,
cherry or apple,
something that will ruin the lawn
with its bounty in the fall.

And all the salt in the house
contained
in one wide mouthed canning jar on the counter
whiter than bleached bones
to be carefully measured:
a scant ½ teaspoon
for a golden lump of dough.

You remember how it feels,
the breeze on your arms
as you work the rolling
pin across the surface,
each fingerprint
disappearing under the
smooth wood,
reemerging reborn,
pure as fresh butter
and almost as yellow.

The Buttonwood Reading

2006-12-09T21:56:00.000-05:00

Thank you, all of you for coming to the Buttonwood and making Friday's reading a great success. I really appreciated your support.

For those who could not make it, it went very well. Astoundingly, I only know about four of the 25 or so people who showed up! I think they liked the reading too - I sold a couple of books, and everyone was very friendly, and there was a very nice open mic afterward. Today Middletown, tomorrow the WORLD!

peace,

Gracie

Buttonwood Tree Reading, Dec. 8, 2006

2006-11-20T22:18:00.000-05:00

On December 8 I will be the featured poet at The Buttonwood Tree, located at 605 Main Street Middletown CT. An open Mic will follow, so bring something to read. See you there!

Ode to the Road

2006-11-05T16:50:00.000-05:00

Stepping out onto the pavement
from the gravel shoulder
I feel the asphalt electric
reaching
tentacles across the
continent.

I can get anywhere from here.

I long to
course through the
arteries of America
trickle into the small towns
slide belly down into
the Bowery
I could walk from here
to Panama
eating nothing but fresh tortillas
or hitch
to the Hudson Bay
further even
to the arctic circle
to see the sun.
There is no greater dream
than a new map
unfolded, paper crisp,
edges longing to become
as ragged
as the petals of
a roadside
daisy.

Hunger

2006-09-25T22:36:00.000-04:00

It’s only in the last year, really
that I’ve allowed myself to think
about it – about
what it might have been actually like
There.

I’ve permitted myself
to read.
And once, late,
past midnight, to
view photographs
posted on the internet:
stark black and whites,
three of each person
one from each side,
one full front.
Although I was not
allowed
to stop and examine them closely, some
details were inescapable.
A woman’s wiry hair
matted into a halo around her
head as though she had
just been used to mop the
floor; Fear, thinly
disguised as intellect,
peering shadowlike
though wire-rimmed spectacles;
Fear, bursting beneath a black silk
bosom. Fear in every eye
that catches mine.
They
know. They all know.

The photos I was looking for were not posted.
Perhaps there
was no time for foolery
and cameras on that day.

With each morsel of
knowledge I gain,
my hunger grows.
I’ve never been able to throw even
a potato skin away
but now the pots of
leftovers in the fridge
whisper insistently to me in the
night. I stumble into the kitchen not
an hour after dinner and
gorge myself on
cold pasta, congealed beans,
a sandwich with
questionable mayonnaise
which has been to a picnic at the river
and back and spent
a week in repose wrapped
in sandy tinfoil on the
second shelf, pink slices of
ham, the flesh tearing as
I hastily extract them from the plastic
encasing, explaining (as I push the soft
folds into my mouth)
to the
air that it is allowable to
break kosher in cases of emergency.

The more I know, the
more I need to atone,
to stuff my gullet,
round my bodyinto curves and
counter curves.
I’m doing it now, I
tell you. I’m eating a
bagel as I write, the seeds
dripping onto the
paper, cream cheese
smudging the corner
as I turn the page,
plate resting on the hill of my belly.
eating as if sheer gluttonywere the antidote to
starvation. I bought half a
dozen this morning
and the three that
are left are calling
to me, plaintively
twining their poppyseeded fingers
through the razor wire,
begging.

Mother

2006-09-25T13:52:00.000-04:00

In an old row house in Queens, a house built to look like all the other houses: a flowering bush in the front, a cherry tree leaning over the garage at the back of the driveway, shoved under the stairs or into a dark corner of the basement, anywhere that will be out of sight, anywhere that will keep the ghosts murmuring quietly to themselves and leave the living to go on living, lies a grey canvas suitcase with a silver metal handle and a wide metal zipper that sticks around the corners.

It is filled with letters.

Neatly penned, words waltzing
across the page in
elegant loops and dips
that belie their content.
The years are 1939, 1940,
1941, 1942.
They are almost all in German.

Anna, one of the few writing
in English, types her communications
in a hurried, though not careless manner.
She has no correction tape. She
strikes over the mistyped
letters and goes on, unable
to stop the pouring out of
words once she has begun.
“Forgive me,” she types. She
is sitting at a strange desk
in a strange city, writing in a
language that is not her own.
Everything she writes will be
read by strangers before it is
allowed to be sent. The fog creeps
in through the cracks
around the edges of the windows,
winds itself through the keys, dragging
them down.
She feels as old and heavy as the metal
before her.
Her fingers slip. She back-spaces,
and retypes.
“Forgive me for telling you this,
when you have just lost
your own parents.”

She forces the keys down, each
letter leaving a furrow in the onion skin paper.

“But you are my best friend,” she types
“Shall always be my best friend.”

She beats the words into the keys,
splatters them out
onto the clean white page.

“If I didn’t tell you, I don’t know who
I’d tell.”

It is easier this way. Her body doesn’t have to understand yet, when her hand is not forming the words. There is no chance of an accidentally stained finger which will remind her throughout the day of what she had just said.

There is nothing here. Nothing but
the clack clack on the walls of the empty room.
Nothing but a machine churning out
clumsy, disconnected words.

New Book

2006-09-23T15:06:00.000-04:00

Hi all,

Here is the site for the new Anthology "A Chaos of Angels" which is hot off the presses. My poem "The Task" is included.

http://www.lulu.com/content/394748

The book can also be purchased at Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino: http://www.gallerybooks.com/locbkalphab.html#L

And soon it will be available on Amazon.

Branscomb California, September 2006

2006-09-22T22:45:00.000-04:00

Branscomb California, September 2006

for angie

When you're caught in the current
of the freeway
tumbled and tossed
until the music's turned to noise,
Return.
Sit by still water.
Go uphill
to a spot where
the stream is narrow
enough to dam.
Slow the rush to a trickle
make a pool
which reflects the
color of the mountains,
and if you can,
a bit of the sky.
Watch that bit carefully
keep your eyes on that spot
where the last tree
breaks off and blue
begins.
Pay attention to the
birds.
The swoop and swallow
of the small ones,
the open winged soar
of the ravens and the buzzards,
the lazy turns of the
raptors.
Leave the pelicans
for another day.
There is no need
for their ragged line on the horizon
nor their sudden dive and splash
into the breakers.
Leave the sea today.
Go up hill.
Sit still.
Return
to still water.