Listen Here
Page 44
“Comb and brush until it flows like silken threads,” sighs Miss Jen, nodding against the wicker chair. “Like silken threads.”
She is asleep, dreaming under my hands, swept away on the old grey flood of her hair. An old Rapunzel, with no more flax to spin into gold, no prince to climb again upon her stair, no tower, and no witch of darkness.
In the corner, Paw Paw yawns over his Bible, tracing out each line under a rough old finger, each word flowing under his thick black nail, the flimsy pages pressed under a palm horny with calluses. He dozes, like Grandmother, but swept away on a different flood, just as old and perhaps more turbulent.
Once, when I was still quite young, still in loose ginghams and wearing long yellow braids, back before my brother was really a person, I sat in my grandfather's Sunday School. Cedar Grove had only a one-room, white, wooden, Methodist Church and there were dark heavy curtains, like burlap, strung on rails to divide off the classes. The screech of those curtains rings skittering along the rail would always put my teeth on edge and make the skin of my neck prickle. I sat beside Miss Jen, feeling her bosom blossom and sink under the Sunday voile, the straw buds of her bonnet trembling like tiny yellow cornucopias around the pale flush of her brow. It was quite warm and the windows were open, letting in every fly, wasp, and bumblebee from each mile of thick country garden and crop land that lay spread out like a fan around the church.
I was nervous for Paw Paw. I'd never heard him speak in front of folks before, and he seemed awfully out of place to me, standing up there small and stiff in his black vest, the clump of white hairs that sprouted from a mole on his chin quivering like thistles in dew, and his eyes watering. He took up the Bible and began, something from Psalms.
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered….
Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous, for praise is comely to the upright. Praise the Lord with harp: sing unto him with the psaltery and an instrument of ten strings.
He was one of those people who gave deep Biblical emphasis to any words that were printed in italics. He could not have known that the Jacobean translators simply could not render every word of God into the King's English. Paw Paw was unlettered, but not illiterate. He never got beyond the fifth grade in formal schooling. There just wasn't any for him. And the lessons of the land had to be learned first. Before the letters of the alphabet, a man must know seedtime and harvest, the phases of the moon, and how to cure hog meat that would keep through winter. And the mysteries of numbers were to be found in penny nails or bushel baskets, in acres and bales and how much hard cash was tied up in the middle of a greasy handkerchief.
I should have trusted him more that Sunday. His voice was strong and his eye firm. King David himself could have done no better than Paw Paw at Cedar Grove. But maybe I was only a child, and very impressionable, like warm wax.
SEVENTH GRADES
from Friends and Assassins (1993)
We spread in the grass and slit clover
with a thumbnail, slid one stem
through another, hinged like long lovers,
locked death mates, sucking
the tight white knots
of dead persistent flowers.
We said we'd have it all,
bridesmaids, babies, hot abundant nectars
the magazines promised like Aretha
singing off our mother's radios,
chainchain—chain!
chainchain—
chain! Chain of fooooools!
That was our flowering period,
unlucky three-leafed,
each one an unwed
troublesome weed
of a girl
growing April through October,
chaining clover, easy as cattle
in good pasture.
BREADSTUFF
from Hard Evidence (1990)
I've had enough of making bread go around,
slapping it, pat-a-caking me to death. But.
Nowhere do I find me so painstakingly
real and rising, leavening each hour
but in this salt, yeast, and cool unblanched flour.
Over the dough bowl, my loony face sifts,
takes shape and lifts. My thumbs search
the elements and my fist blends
the taste of a real presence.
I'd like to waste it, starve people,
go to bed and sleep a year. But.
The oven heats up right
and I wait wait wait.
Crumbs and little bones, sweet dark-curling peels
pile my table, seal the plates. I set out more,
pour cups, catch fish, rob bees to fill up
hungrier, hungrier brothers, nursing all these
on my one lovely body. Never enough.
I make myself go around. Starting over,
I measure and stir, punch the blind stuff
to make it grow. Somebody's tears fall in,
teasing the helpless dough.
Stop it, brothers.
I've got life up to the elbow.
JANICE TOWNLEY MOORE
(April 29, 1939–)
Poet Janice Townley Moore has lived in Hayesville, in the western North Carolina mountains, and in north Georgia, where she has taught classes in writing and literature at Young Harris College since 1963. She says, “No matter what the subject, the mountains sometimes slip into my poems. The seasons and moods of this region, along with the native wildlife, have definitely given my poems a sense of place.”
She earned her B.A. from LaGrange College in 1961 and her M.A. from Auburn University in 1963. She studied further at Emory University, Georgia State University, University of Virginia, and North Georgia College. From 1985 to 1997, she served as poetry editor for Georgia Journal and in 1996 co-edited Like a Summer Peach: Sunbright Poems and Old Southern Recipes.
Her work has appeared in a variety of anthologies and literary journals including The Georgia Review, Southern Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple, The Bedford Introduction to Literature, and Old Wounds, New Words.
OTHER SOURCES TO EXPLORE
PRIMARY
Edited book: Like a Summer Peach: Sunbright Poems & Old Southern Recipes (1996). Poetry: Windows Filled with Gifts (unpublished collection).
SECONDARY
Michael J. Bugeja, “Keep Your Senses Alive in Writing,” Poet's Market (1994).
ALL THOSE NIGHTS
from Southern Humanities Review (1982)
What was he looking for
my Father, with his flashlight,
padding up and down the hall,
opening the cellar door
to shine the beam
down the long stairs?
I never heard the noise
that roused him from his bed.
I remember only the sudden light
on the bedroom wall,
how it swept across my face
and my brother's, for love.
Even now in the dark house
I awaken to his flare,
when the moon escapes
from behind a cloud,
breaking against the ceiling.
UNDER THE EARTH
from Southern Humanities Review (1985)
Where the road slices
through Needle Gorge
animals of stone
root out of the cliff
Their snouts, heads, shoulders
bulge from red clay
as if to catch the scent of
ancient water
Eons piled upon eons
this is the only place
where the mountain lion
will lie with the lamb
Stacked together,
the buffalo, wild boar,
oxen, the goat
with its grassy beard—
Did they all stop
before they reached
the saving water of the river,
caught in their final b
reath?
THE WAY BACK
from Negative Capability (1984)
The mountains are barren
in the season
you would have been born,
their useless bellies push
against Christmas sky.
It is the month of children
like those on the doctor's
bulletin board
in the room where he put me,
the one time I lay
in that room,
his affirmation
attached to my
long night of losing.
A difficult way to daylight
it seems. I find it months later,
kneading dough for a seasonal bread,
the first I have ever made,
awaiting its rise in the oven.
MARIJO MOORE
(August 24, 1952–)
Poet and fiction writer Marijo Moore is of eastern Cherokee, Irish, and Dutch ancestry. She grew up in western Tennessee and says about her childhood, “I grew up in an alcoholic home with a white stepfather who did not like the idea that I had Indian blood. Reading was my only escape as I grew older, and of course, this fueled my love of writing.” Her first poem was published when she was sixteen. Her goal as a writer, she explains, is to “make use of all I have survived to give strength and hope to others.”
She attended Tennessee State University in Nashville and earned the equivalent of a B.A. in Literature from Lancashire Polytechnic in Preston, England, in 1987.
A self-employed writer, she lives in Candler, North Carolina, where she has formed rENEGADE pLANETS pUBLISHING, a company committed to publishing the writing of Native Americans. She encourages other American Indians to write because, she says, “it is time we begin writing our own literature so that we will not be stereotyped to death.”
She was nominated Writer of the Year in Poetry by Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers (1997) and was named North Carolina Distinguished Woman of the Year (1998) by the Department of Administration, Council for Women, in Raleigh, North Carolina. She has served on the board of the North Carolina Writers’ Network, on the Speaker's Bureau and on the board of the North Carolina Humanities Council, and as the project director for the 1997 North Carolina Native American Literary Heritage Conference. In 2000, Native Peoples magazine named her as one of the top five American Indian writers of the new century.
Her work has appeared in such publications as Indian Artist, Indigenous Woman, Native Women in the Arts, Voices From Home: An Anthology of North Carolina Prose, and National Geographic. She has edited a collection of writings by North Carolina American Indians, Feeding the Ancient Fires (1999). She is also editor of Genocide of the Mind: A Collection of Essays by Urban Indians (2003).
OTHER SOURCES TO EXPLORE
PRIMARY
Fiction: Red Woman with Backward Eyes and Other Stories (2001). Poetry: Desert Quarter (2000), Spirit Voices of Bones (1997), Tree Quarter (1997), Crow Quarter (1996). Fiction and poetry: Returning to the Homeland—Cherokee Poetry and Short Stories (1995).
SECONDARY
Jennifer Hicks, “Profile: MariJo Moore, Survive and Follow Your Heart,” http://www.minorities-jb.com/native/marijo9.html
STORY IS A WOMAN
from Spirit Voices of Bones (1997)
Story is a
woman. Not
long, not short. A
woman with body of
carved petroglyph
tongue of red memories
eyes of dark insight
ears of drummed
legends
hair of ageless ceremony falling onto
her skirt of history woven, tradition colored, many
gathered. Stranded myth beads float over her
breasts like crows float over timeless time.
Scavenging
connecting words
old and new
told and retold
sung and shouted
whispered and chanted
reflecting mirrors in front
scraping medicines from behind.
Listen children!
Story is a woman.
Not long, not short.
A woman. Respect her.
SOLIDARITY IN THE NIGHT
from Spirit Voices of Bones (1997)
This was the night
all the people sang together.
This was the night
all the people dreamed together.
This was the night
all the people danced together.
This was the night
all the people prayed together.
This was the night
all the people began to heal.
AHLAWE USV’ TSIGESVGI
from Spirit Voices of Bones (1997)
Usv’ tsigesvgi
nigata yvwi duninogisv.
Usv’ tsigesvgi
nigata yvwi anasgitskvgi.
Usv’ tsigesvgi
nigata yvwi analskvgi.
Usv’ tsigesvgi
nigata yvwi anadadolistihvgi.
Usv’ tsigesvgi
nigata yvwi anadaleni unidiwisga.
Eastern Cherokee translation
“Solidarity in the Night”
RUMORS
from Red Woman with Backward Eyes and Other Stories (2001)
It was rumored that Addy May Birdsong would sneak into your house, touch your forehead with her fingers while you were sleeping, and change the course of your dreams. I had heard this rumor for the first time when I was about thirteen. Lydia Rattler, who sat next to me in Home Room, told me this because she had heard that Addy May was related to me.
“So what?” I had said back to her. “Everybody's related to everybody here.” I had never liked Lydia much because she had ugly teeth that stuck way out and because she wanted to gossip all the time like an old woman. But she sat next to me that whole school year and I learned to endure her gossip, if not her buck teeth.
When I had asked my mama about the rumor, she said that lots of things were said about Addy May because she was different than most.
“What do you mean, different?” I asked in total sincerity. It seemed to me that almost every adult I knew back then had some sort of strangeness about them—mostly caused from alcohol, or from running out of it.
“Well,” my mama had said thoughtfully as she scratched her chin the way she often did when she was trying to explain something in terms that she thought I might understand, “Cousin Addy May just has a way of stirring people up. She looks all the way into their souls with those black-pitted eyes of hers and it makes people wonder if she knows what they've been up to.” I had to agree with the part about the black-pitted eyes. They reminded me of a tunnel a train had just gone through.
“But you don't pay any mind to what you hear about her. She's your cousin and she's had a hard life, harder than most on this reservation, and so she deserves to be a little stranger than most if she wants.”
I forgot about my “stranger than most” Cousin Addy May and all the rumors about her until one night it was so hot I was having trouble sleeping and decided to crawl out the bedroom window to get some fresh air. I was careful not to wake my younger twin sisters. Course I loved them with all my heart, but they could be quite bothersome when I wanted some time alone.
The night air was so cool and refreshing I pulled my braids on top of my head and let it touch the back of my neck. It made me feel really good, so I decided to take a walk down the road that led up the mountain to our house. The two other families who lived on the road were at least two miles away, so I felt like I had the road all to myself. I had walked for about ten minutes, staring up at the stars and the full moon, feeling proud that I was so brave to be out by myself that late at night, when I saw Addy May standing there in the middle of the road with the moon shining down on her head like a flashlight. Her hair was long and loose, not braided as usual, and I remember thinking that it looked like a thic
k, black waterfall flowing down her skinny back. I was totally shocked to see someone standing there in the middle of the night and grateful that she hadn't heard me coming down the road.
She had her back to me, so I stepped into the darkness of the brush beside the road so I could watch her. She was wearing a long cotton skirt that was probably dark blue but looked purple in the moonlight, and a shawl of many colors was draped loosely around her thin shoulders. I watched quietly as she swayed her body back and forth, waving both hands above her head. The more I watched her, the faster my heart beat. And when she started singing, I felt like it would bust right out of my chest. Her voice was beautiful, high pitched and full of rich guttural tones. Over and over she sang her song, swaying there in the moonlight. I could hear her words distinctly:
“First I was woman
then I was mother
now I am woman again.”
Mesmerized by her presence and her voice, I had no idea what her song was about, but I knew the words came from way down deep inside her. From the same place my moon time had begun flowing several months back when mama had told me that I had become a woman. Addy May's words came from the connecting source to the earth that every woman has inside her, and my stomach burned way down deep in that spot as I listened.
I must have stood there in the brush for at least half an hour, watching her, listening to her singing, and feeling my heart trying to jump up into my throat. Then something happened that I never would have believed if someone else had told me about it. There were two female spirits come down from the sky and stood right next to Addy May's swaying body. One was real old and the other a young girl just a little older than me. With quick, jerky movements, they began to dance around Addy May, looking kind of like the white curling smoke that dances around a red hot fire, and chanting in Cherokee. I couldn't understand all of what they were saying because I don't speak my native language proper, but I heard a few words I could recognize and realized the gist of their song had to do with sorrow and grief.