WEBVTT

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I think I'll read a
poem from my first book

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having to do with my mother
because I'm going to be ending

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on a poem about my father.

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So this goes back
to adolescence,

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the time I said I'd like to
write about occasionally.

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And it also has this theme of
imagination like the last poem.

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Because I grew up in this
place with no movie theaters

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and restaurants,
it was pretty dull.

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And I guess I read a lot
of books for that reason.

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And my mother used to tell
stories about her childhood.

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This poem begins with one of
her stories about her childhood.

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And then it switches in part
2 to my own adolescence.

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And it's really about the inner
life and fantasy and the world

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of the imagination as refuge.

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From our Mary-- our
Mary, Mary was my mother.

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From Our Mary To Me.

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As a child, Mary Callahan
admired storybook orphans.

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Anne of Green Gables,
Uncle Frank's Mary

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transported from dingy asylums
to wide hearted strangers,

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from skimpy wincey dresses
to puff sleeved splendors,

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from boiled turnips
to chocolate sweeties.

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And noticing that all orphans
had blue-black hair and eyes

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and skin white as
lace, she pictured them

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as consumptive Spaniards
flaunting veils, roses, fans,

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Valentino's profile, and somehow
confused their juicy lives

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with Mary Daneher's, a rich
girl whose carbonado hair,

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peaked complexion, yellow
pink orchid and blue smock

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dresses with hand-stitched
collars, lisle stockings

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and especially patterned
banded tanned suede high shoes

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and maid escort to St. Patrick's
School seemed orphanesque

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and prevented our Mary from
venturing near, much less

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daring a till death true blue
kindred spirit-ship the way

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girls did in books.

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At night, our Mary read tales
that made her blood jump,

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gazed through isinglass
at the coal fire,

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and considered her own
adventures: how she'd

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crawled into the bull's pasture,
lost her drawers on the Green

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Island Bridge, kicked
them in the river,

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tap danced at the recital, sat
inside a freight car talking

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to a tramp till
it began to move,

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nearly taking her to
Avonlea or Kalamazoo.

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Part 2.

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Mary Callahan, her daughter,
and her daughter's friend

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are talking about love and
wealth, and Mary Daneher.

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Our Mary says, I'd like
to see her now to see

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if she has any smocking on her.

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The girls are memorizing every
recipe in this month's McCall's

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because they haven't
eaten in three days,

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because they want to look
thin in their minis and hip

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slingers.

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They are starving in hopes of
having a yogic vision: a lost

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Beatle, say, drives up
in a psychedelic Rolls

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and proposes
whimsical English sex.

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They are thumping their
feet to imaginary drums

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and thinking if John Lennon
loved them they'd be skinny.

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Though for that to
happen, they'd have to be.

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Hopeless, they are hopeless.

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I see their faces
pinched with wishing

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and see them settling
for the life they fight

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or a worse life they
haven't bothered to imagine.

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From here, I don't know
whether to love or fear them.

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I'd never find my way back
to that fanatic state:

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upper New York Troy
Michigan Dead End Avenue 67.

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My mother saying,
cheer up, girls,

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and swishing her house
dress in a mad can-can,

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her legs brazenly in the
air, her exit a "so there!"

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flip of skirt, cape work
defiant as a toreador's, leaving

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me weak with laughter.

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The anemic daughter,
stranger to her

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than any waif or ne'er do
well sat next to on a train,

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leaving me neither her
optimism nor charm,

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only imagination kicking like
a worm in a jumping bean.

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