ADVENT DAY FIFTEEN: Pattie McCarthy

Pattie McCarthy’s new book is called Quiet Book & is due out in Jamuary from Apogee Press.

DAY THREE * PATTIE McCARTHY * ELIZABETH BISHOP *

PATTIE McCARTHY READS THE END OF MARCH by ELIZABETH BISHOP

ELIZABETH BISHOP  (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was an American poet and short-story writer. Flores Raras, a movie about Bishop's life focusing on her period in Brazil was released in 2013.














PATTIE McCARTHY READS HER OWN POEM,  'The Description & Natural History of the Coasts of North America'

Pattie McCarthy is the author of six books of poems & the mother of three children. The Description & Natural History of the Coasts of North America was written in August 2013, when she was in residency with her husband, Kevin Varrone, & their family, at the Elizabeth Bishop House in Great Village, Nova Scotia.

Creche

Pattie McCarthy is the author of Table Alphabetical of Hard Words(2010), Verso (2004), and bk of (h)rs (2002), all from Apogee Press. She is also the author of L&O (2011), from Little Red Leave e-editions. Her work has appeared recently in 20012, Elective Affinities, Lana Turner, and elsewhere. She is a 2011 Pew Fellow in the arts; teaches literature and writing at Temple University; and lives just outside Philadelphia with her husband, Kevin Varrone, their three children, her mother, and their Great Dane.

[Click post title for audio.]

December 24th: Poem 'Plosion

 

MY SWAGGER

  Mary Biddinger 

More like a gun than an anchor, a revolver,

the loop they played to make it sound like a diner

in the studio, the entire neighborhood, one guy’s shirt

causing chaos around the corner, debasing the sky

of its antique linens, the kind that bragged how many

once inched across then reconsidered, rolled over

the way that I don’t allow you, so flip the light off

in the birdhouse before mathematics destroy us,

pluck our rivets, and you say there’s this place on my

neck, it’s a tragedy, and the neck is not yours but

mine, not that we have territories, that’s artificial,

unsexy, and when they talk about us it’s mostly me

talking back, and so what, because I once crossed

a river that would’ve kept me forever, and I declined.

                                   one takes one’s place     in a pose

                                                   Aby Kaupang

another has vacated     one is

birthed     by lending forms

to the forces of one’s birth

one’s birth is form      filled in & died in

every beginning then requires a smudging

a giving off of the pelt      near the seem

a new glass      for the squinting of the eye

 Nothingness      wrapped us in cord      new skins & gave

a place for ritual     a body crossable      a border crossed    

{we are afraid too     of finding

astonishment unsurpassable

like joy—total and totally new}

Toss the Famous Person Cards Into the Fireplace

   Becca Klaver

the family

reenacts

its one

sublime &

one terrible

memory

they have

always

refused

the right

words for

things

hot-poke

each other

for lilting

TV voices

for trying

to fade out

into a

real world

decked in

any frock

that 

belongs

Montage Our Way through Winter

    Krystal Languell

I'll use my get out of jail free card

and my good credit. A stranger

called me a whore in the subway

I saw a rat I got lonely I bought shoes

and ate ice cream I drank all the coffee

so I made more and I slept it all off.

I didn't talk to you all day. If we

montage our way through winter,

I can wear my Little House on

the Prairie boots while we pretend

we do real work like chopping wood

or boiling pails of water, and I'll lift

my skirt to step over a puddle just

for the ceremony. There will be

moody string music, no voice-over; 

the audience will see my hair go a little gray.

Would you like to be a power couple?

Come spring, we could arrive in any new town

and between your neckties and my rhetoric,

we could run a successful mayoral campaign.

Lullaby

Dana Teen Lomax

The directive as

I remember it
was to yell epithets
at a tree
and stand back
to watch the results
keeping an eye on
limbs & leaves
the surrounding grasses
any change in light
to take in a reaction
            projections, reactivity           
            so many wars diverted

[mary is pregnant when]

  Pattie McCarthy

mary is pregnant when  the mayflower 

leaves leiden  mary gives 

birth to a stillborn son  only ten months 

after burying  an unnamed child 

   mary gives 

birth to a stillborn son  while still at anchor 

in plymouth harbor friday   22 december 

1620   mary already 

has two daughters named mary & remember 

mary dies that first winter  (her husband later 

marries mary's    daughter fear)       her daughter 

 mary  dies at 83      the last surviving 

mayflower passenger 

mary  a child   four         the product 

an adulterous relationship  is placed 

under the care of  mary  mother of love & wrestling & 

fear & patience   mary 

(a child)              dies   that first winter 

mary whose father died  in provincetown 

harbor  becomes an orphan that 

first winter  mary an orphan of fourteen 

pressure to marry  six eligible 

men for every  woman & girl   after 

   that first winter 

the only other      mary on board dies 

soon after her husband  died 

Christmas in Norway

     Sarah Sarai

Nora the door-slammer
knows every ridge of
Torvald's thumb.A regular Sacajawea
is she, tracking
her way from out under. 

Ahead a few steps, a thoroughly nice woman,
thoroughly my age
calls watch outs for cars
and slush. Thank you, Sacajawea.
She laughs.  How many years
since I heard Sacajawea,
Lewis and Clark, Torvald.
I'm not well-researched.

I'm lazy.

What I know for sure is old.
Ibsen wrote a great scene.
I have a decent hold on
western culture against
much of which

I'd like to slam a door.

Little's known of
Sacajawea's life after Lewis and
Clark opened up the west,
so rich in natural assets.

Golem
  Jessica Smith