Five Poems
Joan Noëldechen 👄 TALKING JIVE Outside my door there are women sure of themselves that they can do better than myself. Maybe they can. I am the one putting my health on the line as I step through biohazards. My father was rich, but with your words you take it all for yourselves. Who do you think you are? Do you really believe you can defeat me? I’ve lived this all before. What makes you think you won’t be swatted down as may flies in the heaps of dung you live in you chocolate covered, no talent white bitch. I know you cheat. I know you lie with your white ass cracker pigs, cooing for justice. How dare you walk through my projects pretending you are a great humanitarian… I have a degree, bitch. I can articulate. You want to hang me, make me silent like my ancestors. We won’t die. We keep rising up, not taking shit. I am not the N word. I am not Ebola. We die every day, but you can’t make us go away. You may steal everything we have; you may play ISIS, but we’ll play clay and you’ll rue the day you stuck your fingers into my pie. FATIMA’S FEAST Ask Fatima, if you don’t believe. Will you get in a dispute or reprieve? Climb up the hill, just like Jack and Jill. Two children died. One became a nun. Holy Mother, why kill the Pope with a gun? The Russians are praying. We are still at war. I don’t know how to pray any more. JOAN OF ARC Dreams of Joan going through the fire remind me I am on the right path, ignoring the world and listening to my inner voice. Are you schizophrenic like Zelda Fitzgerald or Opal Whitely? Come back to the tea party in Rhinebeck. Don’t burn up, dear. Don’t die in London during tea. It’s so common. Mark Twain heard the voices in Connecticut. Oh, no. 13 years worth he wrote about Joan’s history…no wonder he came and left with Haley’s comet. Ingrid Bergman became pregnant after playing Joan. She took her armor off. We can be sure of that. Bernadette, don’t play with Heavenly fire or matches. Come now. General Patton thought he was Hannibal and a Napoleonic warrior. Jesus told us it wouldn’t be easy. Jesus. Jesus. I am innocent. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. OCTOBER’S MENTOR Tom, you still haunt me in death the way Ben haunted you in life. I stood behind the yellow tape after the arsonist in the pick up burned Miss Julia’s boarding house; I set angels by your grave when I lived at the Carolina. I’ve walked through the streets in Rhinebeck and dined in the Beekman Arms where you were soused as you spoke loudly about politics. I’ve ridden the rails from Rhinecliff station. I have lived where you lived and walked where you’ve walked. I’ve written poems and prose about you. I’ve stood in the Fulton Fish Market with the wind whipping into my face. I have stood in the greenery of Chapel Hill and Gettysburg. When I sit down to write you are with me. Is this how Aline felt as she worked? Wilma Dykeman believed I possessed the same intensity; my eyes were your eyes, she said. Lord, have mercy. I loved staring at your cup. I desperately wanted to touch a pencil, but I set off the alarm instead. CZARINA Alone on the pedestal she mourns for five children who will never recover from their torture and terror. We wait in our little room to be executed by the men who pretend to care for us. All the while they plan our deaths.
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