Quiltings, an excerpt from an ongoing collaboration
by Lenore Weiss & Maw Shein Win
Fractious
Consider the word eighth with its infusion of h’s and four consonants. Any reader stumbling across its spelling would be instantly insulted by its clumsiness. A half of a cheesecake might suggest a birthday, even a quarter would be substantial served with coffee, but never offer an esteemed guest a mere eighth. Someone like Henry the VIII might hide behind the architectural dignity of a roman numeral, but few of us are kings. And certainly not myself, a professor of phonetics dedicated to the comity of exchange between all peoples, an ordinary sort of man, similar to Professor Higgins of My Fair Lady fame who believed in enunciation only to later learn how love falls into a different handbasket. My story continues…The rain in Spain appeared on an unequal playing field when the sky was tinged tangerine and air conditioners spewed evaporation from every overhead ledge, there with eyes aflame and juggling gel pens in the back of the classroom of a run-down community college, a continuing education student in striped socks and jeans of many holes and patches, she sat down to her desk, and in the midst of my lecture, propelled a rotten tomato between my blinkering eyes.
12/01
hidden in basket
drifts of snow conceal
blinking twins in blue
with silken black hair
sip milk through chapped lips
whimper in the dark
thick wraps in the chill
gift from a mother
Intermezzo
My orgasm is a fawn seeking refuge in the half-lit forest. Long ago, my mother disappeared as I dozed on my stomach in the long grass, nose tucked beneath my legs. She said to wait, hide here, she’d return. I listened and watched the milk moon appear for several windings in the sky. The darkness changed to light and I heard the wind and tree trunks lean and ache against each other, sun silking my skin as I followed a raccoon to the river’s edge. Water, and I drank, but raised my head each time I swallowed. The animal vanished. I smelled my mother’s scent in the lichen and on smooth stones surrounding a place near a smoldering fire. Hunters? I see an empty can. Was that the shadow of a cat along the slope near the manzanita? I wandered deeper, hidden, leaping swiftly, any sound could set me off in another direction. Deep into the redwood trees I burrowed, rubbing my hide against the furrows of their fibrous bark to comfort myself in the hollow of burned trunks. Until you found me, a strange man who coaxed me out, first with food, with your hand, and then with love.
12/08 cento
in the long grass shadow of a cat
near a smoldering fire dark changed to light
in the hollow of burned trunks refuge
in the lichen and on smooth stones sun
watched the milk moon appear tree trunks lean
smelled my mother’s scent silking my skin
animal vanished the river’s edge
heard the wind in the half-lit forest