(poem from Robeson Street) – Fanny Howe

Pushing children in plaid & silver prams

us mothers were dumpy,

                                           hunched in the damp

and our redlipped infants

   sucked on their strange fingers

      eyes stung by the gunny-strong

           grass on the hills

I wanted to sit near sweet water, not salt

in the fuzz of extreme weather,

           but we’re not here to

Like women who love the Lord on hills

what for what for,  we cawed outside

   as in bare trees, too plain to see

***

I have spent the past few weeks smitten and humbled by the work of Fanny Howe.  This poem holds much of what I find fascinating in her work.

There is the touch of William Carlos Williams in the phrasing of the line “us mothers were dumpy” – some of that American language he prized so much.

Then there’s her way with the line, as in “but we’re not here to” – the way the phrasing cuts off the sentence at just the point where it has its meaning complete as well as visually plays out the concept of “we’re not here”.

In this poem about disappearance of sense of self, those last two lines swallow the people in the poem and turn them into birds – all of it done in careful phrasing.  I turn the last two lines here over and over in my head to watch the meanings gleam and hold.

***

birds, yo.

***

Happy gleaming!

J