perie

Three

Poems

by

Perie

Longo

audio

 

This Gravity

The one who is not grave
though she has seen many of us through
such times

The one who is named not for balance
or defying anything
but time

The one named before she arrived
by my daughter in the highest balcony
of the dark theatre

when she was only nine
where she and her grave brother and I sat
on the edge of our seats watching Cats

and in the middle of a caterwaul
she sang and her name shall be Gravity
like Jacob or God, with that kind of seriousness

or belief, and she shall be black and white
so it was not surprising some months later
Gravity, abandoned in an apartment, appeared

in the arms of a real estate woman
who asked if we could use a cat.
My daughter darted from her room to gather

this softness in the middle
of a dark day, the black and white of her
crying I’ve been waiting for you

while the dog rushed her out, barked her up
the tree where she swayed, hissing
and as we climbed to rescue her she fell and

fell, caught by a love that would last
through every other fall
off ledge and ridge and wall, and still is

here past the end of the dog and the father
and the big brother, watching out.


Fishing With My Father

He always took me with him out in the boat
on those long northern summer nights
and I loved it, not the sitting for hours
under all the many moons and showy red lights,
but the going—the creak of oars in the locks
like entering an attic of silence
where no one could reach us,
water beads lined up on the edge of the oar
like a string of pearls before they dripped back
into the liquid mirror that held us all.  I realize now
how many poems I thought up but never noted
in those hours while we stared the bobber down
praying for a catch. I used to play games to pass the time,
for it was not the fishing that pleased me
but being with my father
in his joy. If I blinked my eyes thirty-nine times,
on the fortieth a muskie would strike, that fish
my father’s dream he took to heaven I think.
When I held his arm at his passing,
clung to his hand like no fish ever had,
he let go and I slipped off, like that. 
If I blink thirty-nine times, on the fortieth
maybe I’ll catch a glimpse of him.

At the Kuwait Marketplace With Haifa

We walk down the aisle of stalls
reeking of strange fragrances, spices
that burn inside my nose,
my eyes spinning with colors and words I cannot understand,
the language a series of blocks and angles fallen
on their backs, the sound like a flock of crows.
I ask the woman who has sent for me
how to say this or that—the incense
she has bought for me, for instance.
I try bakhoor—No, she says,
the “kh” has to fall to the back of the throat
where you cough—
where words stick together, I think
even in your own language when you’re not sure
what to say.  Bakhoor, I try again, as if clearing
phlegm. Better, she says, then  buys the incense burner
lined with metal, a chalice with a stem of gold,
and the coal to ignite the incense
when I am home to remember her.
She buys me saffron in a bottle with its red filaments
that will turn rice yellow, so yellow you become
like the sun, eating it.  Easier to let sounds
fall to the back of the throat. She keeps opening
her heart, telling me about her grandfather
who dove for pearls with only a pincher on his nose,
no fins or tanks and died young of an embolism.
This was before oil was discovered,
before their wealth that allows them to buy
whatever they want.  She hands me a red and black
bag woven with the Kuwaiti zig zags, a shirt
with shiny discs for my daughter, tiny socks
for my new granddaughter. I tell her no more gifts,
please, I have not come for gifts. She buys me
tea and candles. There in the marketplace
I put my foot down in front of the full moon.
“Whatever you want,” she says, then tells me her mother
has been dead just a year, a loving mother she still cries for,
who gave her everything. “You have eyes like her,”
she says, drawing me to a last shop. We ease down
a dark alleyway into a room lined with bolts of fabric.
She speaks quickly to an old woman in this language
 that leaves me feeling like an intruder, then slips
a black lace abat over my black wool blazer.
 “Like my mother wore for dress up,”
she beams. Though foreigners are not allowed
to wear the robe or veil, we bow to each other,
sounds stuck  in the back of my throat.

About Perie Longo

Perie Longo has published three books of poetry: Milking the Earth (John Daniel, 1986) and The Privacy of Wind (John Daniel, 1997). Her most recent book is With Nothing behind but Sky: a journey through grief (Artamo Press, 2006). Her work has appeared in The Prairie Schooner, The Brown Literary Review, Studia Mystica, California State Poetry Quarterly, The Lucid Stone, Rattle, Solo, and Into the Teeth of the Wind, among other journals. Her poem “Fishing With My Father” was the title poem in a literary anthology of the same title published in 2005. In 2002 she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She wrote the dedication poem, carved in stone, for the Douglas Family Preserve in Santa Barbara
 
For twenty-one years she has led the poetry workshops for the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and leads the annual three day Santa Barbara Summer Poetry Workshop. She teaches with  the California-Poets-in-the-Schools program, and privately. She is also a psychotherapist who enjoys using poetry for the healing process. Recently she was featured on the Charles Osgood Radio Files speaking on this subject. In November of 2005 she traveled to Kuwait to speak to the University about using poetry as a healing modality. Her poems were translated into Arabic for a reading she gave at the Kuwaiti Writers Association.

www.perielongo.com

Santa Barbara Summer Poetry Workshop July 28-30, 2007 at Westmont College