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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781602232563 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Alaska Press |
| Publication date: | 03/15/2015 |
| Series: | The Alaska Literary Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 63 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
I follow in the Dust She Raises
By Linda Martin
UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2015 University of Alaska PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60223-256-3
CHAPTER 1
running through shadows
visiting the cemetery in plains, montana
From here the rocky ridge marking the farm
slants downriver like a pasture gate standing open.
Cheatgrass and knapweed tangle the graveyard edge.
Grazing mule deer flick long ears in my direction.
In the town below, prosperity has come and gone:
granary turned to gift shop, sawmill shut down.
At my feet, the names of brother, father, mother —
three granite stories I read again and again.
mythology
The day my father died, tamarack flared school-bus yellow
on the dark hills. Frozen clods in the plowed field pushed
hard against my shoes. The grownups spoke of heaven.
Not gone, I heard them say, just traveling someplace far away.
I carry his absence the way he carried his Homelite chainsaw,
leaning away from its weight for balance. Somewhere he sails
the South Pacific, wraps himself in tapa cloth, rides like a gaucho
over the pampas. Mama feeds the legend with her stories.
Living lonely in Manhattan, I dream him into life.
He shows up on East Fiftieth, numinous and tan, blue shirt
rough to the touch, smelling of tobacco. I wake bereft.
He has turned up his jacket collar, put on his hat and left.
a sumptuous destitution
Nothing but mourning dove and willow tree,
mountains throwing shadow.
Rope taps on a graveyard flagpole —
loud in granite silence.
Colors weave through dark wool,
chainsaw oil spills on dusty canvas.
Drumming grouse, bugling elk, coyote song.
Beneath each tamarack, a golden needlepoint.
In winter clouds, a sudden flare like burnished wings.
Snowshoe hare keeps still as root under the spruce.
Strong current on an outgoing tide pulls me far from shore,
as the sun sets and a full moon rises.
Each loss a sweeping away, and then,
like a tidal change, a lavish fullness.
Death, an end to the world, the world going on.
believers
1.
Mama visits women made plain by faith.
Hair in buns, no color, no fun,
wedding bands their sole adornment.
Holier-than-thou
she calls them, straightening
her proud shoulders, smoothing
her purple Guatemalan skirt.
At Eastertime my little brother
crouches in a low kitchen cupboard,
producing egg after sugary egg
like a magic chicken. He is as surprised
as I am. Our parents and their friends
weep with laughter, some playful
presence embracing us all.
2.
Mama talks to the priest
about the soul of our oldest brother,
sixteen years old when a hunter shot him.
No baptism, no heaven, so Mama
breaks ties with Rome, her heart wounded,
her mind open to any hopeful doctrine.
When buttercups finally bloom,
shining yellow next to the barn,
religion and doubt melt like snowbanks.
I hunt dime-sized flowers as if color
were a child's proof of resurrection.
Each blossom makes Mama clap her hands.
running through shadows
1.
June 1952. On your mark. We're hands and feet in warm dust, barefoot so he can check our tracks for that straight stride he preaches. No pigeon-toes. No toeing out. Get set. We imitate track stars, crouching, eyes straight ahead, small eager coils ready to run. Go. We're off, Chic and I, arms and legs pumping, racing between alfalfa fields to the fence line, a hard right and uphill to the pole gate. We touch the poles, whirl back toward our coach, our timekeeper, our laughing father. Meadowlarks sing.
2.
October 1945. Our parents call him Twinks, because he twinkles. I see him in black and white. A lock of dark hair falls over his forehead as he stands arm in arm with his two best friends. He holds the state high school record for the mile run. In a forest near our farm a hunter with buck fever mistakes him for a deer. Our parents give Chic our brother's name, just as it reads on the tombstone.
3.
April 1929. The crash is coming. He takes his mark with two hundred others in New York City. Will Rogers fires the starting gun. Our father runs to Los Angeles, seventy-eight days away, where our mother waits with our sister and the brother we never knew. Newsmen name the race Bunion Derby, follow our father across the country telling of rain and mud, sun and dust, preposterous effort. He finishes in the money, prize never paid.
dancing with mama
Mama sways on tiptoe with a long-handled saw
to prune the forest, bends from the waist
to pick huckleberries,
waltzes a rattlesnake dead with a hoe.
A wave of her apron sends the bull to the pen.
Like Martha Graham dancing Lamentation
costumed in a dishtowel mask,
Mama stirs fungicide into the wheat seed.
High kicks as she cleans the house.
We call the cows at milking time,
the pasture gate a ballet barre.
I learn first position, plié.
Mama swears in motion — damnation.
Stamps foot, hands on hips.
Hell's bells. Turns on her heel.
I follow in the dust she raises.
a visit from aunt rosie
Mama's sister Rosie stands child-sized.
Her voice sounds raspy and sweet.
When she plays with my brother and me
the farm doesn't feel so lonesome.
Mama takes us aside. Dear ones, she says.
We help Rosie duck through fences. She knows
new games, laughs at our grade-school jokes.
Rosie sits on a backless bench Mama built for her,
wears dresses Mama sews to cover her hump of spine.
When someone looks different —
We're proud to take Aunt Rosie to town,
but people stare and stare.
We should all be kind enough not to notice.
logger song
I know you are a logger
and not just a common bum ...
— from a song my father sang
Rich pitch of pine, sweet tobacco.
Hidden grouse drumming.
Buck walks the length of a log.
His saw croons and rumbles, branches fall.
Sun slants on sumac and Oregon grape.
Through the woods a tenor voice calls
TIMBER! A hesitation, green wood cracks,
a long airy fall, a long solid whomp.
Then Charlie hollers:
Let's put on the feed bag.
Black tin boxes, peanut butter,
deviled ham, oranges.
Toothless Niemi files the chain on his Homelite.
Buck plays "Clementine" on harmonica.
Resting on forest duff, they pass the thermos,
hum a song about coffee stirred with a thumb.
widowmaker
Dad builds a canny camp trailer
out of plywood and tarpaper,
prow-fronted like a boat.
In the bow, a woodstove,
storage for his chainsaw.
He puts his bed on hinges, nails
leather loops for kitchen tools,
then hauls his wheeled house
to logging jobs in the woods.
Back home, Mama keeps
cows milked, pasture gates closed.
Sometimes she warns me — Don't
marry a man who works away.
Our Holstein bloats on alfalfa,
Mama meets a bobcat in the chicken coop,
the pump loses its prime. Some afternoons I sit
on the riverbank with Mama, learning to worry.
On a job up the Lochsa River
Dad works alone and late,
bucking logs pushed over
by a D-6 dozer.
He revs his Homelite
one last time,
cuts through a leaning hemlock,
close to the butt of the tree.
a young child
— after G. M. H.
All my thoughts are fresh.
Buttercups, imagined friends,
fresh raspberries with fresh cream.
I cry for storybook horses,
Tornado Boy lost and hungry.
Of real grief I have
a brother's name on granite,
my mother's tears, her affinity
for weeping willow and mourning dove.
When my father dies, I'm in a story.
I weep without knowing why,
take the role of orphan girl
playing a fanciful sorrow.
Fakery spreads its secret blight
over my wan, wounded heart.
pearly everlasting
Mama grieves among the pines
with a Swede saw and a pruner,
grooming her far-field woodland,
making glades for buttercups,
stacking brush for burning.
She dresses clean and bright,
making an effort. Won't let
herself go, the way a widow might.
Sometimes she sings Irish love songs,
or stands still and remembers.
Mama walks home along the river,
planning tamale pie for dinner.
From the forest she carries immortalis —
tiny, white papery flowers that will last
when she takes them to the graves.
history lesson
watching mama's figure
Ample, Mama called her bosom,
and it was. Soft like bread, and warm.
When she called the cows and they lumbered
across the pasture, udders swaying
heavily beneath them,
Mama wrapped both arms
across her troublesome breasts,
danced high kicks to stir her blood.
Shoulders back, she'd tell me,
correcting her posture as she spoke.
Proud and voluptuous as royalty
we strolled through fields of wheat and alfalfa.
You're pretty, a friend of my father said,
but you can't hold a candle to your mother.
He had one eye on Mama's figure,
the other on a widow's farmland.
older sister
When I sport a short haircut,
I think of my sister, Ruth.
Never let your ears show,
she told me once, pulling
my thick braids back.
A raving beauty with stern ideas,
Ruthie collected marriage proposals
as if they were dance corsages.
Her posture was even straighter
than Mama's. My birth
embarrassed her. She thought
Mama was getting fat.
Ruthie and Mama discussed things
that weren't for me to hear.
During family visits I sat
at the low table with Ruthie's children,
eavesdropping like mad on womanly
conversation. My ears were good for that.
uppity
When the Angus bull lifts his big black head
and bellows into the night, Mama describes
San Francisco foghorns.
Coyotes howl from cliffs across the river
as she teaches me to walk with a book on my head,
studying perfect posture.
Tractor dust, crankcase oil, cow manure,
bath water heated on the woodstove.
Mama sews my ruffled dresses, brushes my hair
one hundred strokes. I get chilblains from wearing
patent leather Mary Janes.
The clerks at the Mercantile
know we're country. I see them judging
Mama's efforts, her high heels,
her good tweed. She's out of fashion.
I begin to want the right accessories,
the store-bought confidence of a city girl.
I leave the farm. Professors teach me
to abhor innocence, mistrust nature,
rise above weather.
I wear education like a velvet cape,
swirling knowledge around my country self,
until I'm better than Mama. She applauds
my arrogance. Like poor posture,
too much humility cripples a woman.
refusing a man
Rick stands on the library steps
wearing his ROTC dress uniform.
The olive-green jacket nips in at his waist,
creased trousers break perfectly over
the lowest laces of his polished boots.
Under the military hat with its stiff short bill,
his pained expression has authority.
History falls over us. I'm in love
with the Renaissance; he has a foot
in Vietnam. With one last look
he judges my future, lacking him.
I feel like a guilty child
but I'm twenty-one, as old as he.
Clutching books to my chest,
confused, I turn away — free.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from I follow in the Dust She Raises by Linda Martin. Copyright © 2015 University of Alaska Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
I. Running through ShadowsVisiting the Cemetery in Plains, Minnesota
Mythology
A Sumptuous Destitution
Believers
Running through Shadows
Dancing with Mama
A Visit from Aunt Rosie
Logger Song
Widowmaker
A Young Child
Pearly Everlasting
II. History Lesson
Watching Mama’s Figure
Older Sister
Uppity
Refusing a Man
Moonwalking, 1969
Losing a Man
City Girl
History Lesson
Pigeons in Montpelier
Anonymous
Mama Calls Herself Weary
Mama’s Will
The Vanished
III. After Years
At Home Now in Homer
After Years of Searching
Artifacts
Once Upon a Time
Building a Boat
Boy, Still Visible
Without Fame
Shopping for Satisfaction
True Minds
Marriage Vow
Migrations
Proof of Joy
IV. Contemplating Autumn
Anniversary
Premonition
The System
September Clouds
Ordinary Dangers
Acting My Age
Slow Day at the Glass Shop
Harboring a Mean Streak
Moose Seasons
Snowed In
Tourist
When I Brought You Home to Mama
Coupled
Contemplating Autumn
Acknowledgements