Jeannie's First Curlby Jeanne René

Grace, Joey, Eugene, Tony, Tina, Vera, Jay

     “I’ll ride with you to Gracie’s rosary.”

intonation peculiar
voice muffled by layers of exhaustion

     “Sure, Ma, that’s fine.”

pause inflated by a sigh
suctioning of memory
raising her chest to a lifetime
releasing the inevitability
clarification of goodbye

succumbing to a dull embrace
     “Everybody’s gone.”
listen
inhalation
exhalation

accents of perplexity
     “Everybody's gone.”

talk . . . just talk
rounding corners of silences
so many heartbeats stolen

     “The envelope says Jeannie’s first curl.”

voice sits upon a quaver
she drifts
to the kitchen table

arms cradling her newborn



jeanne rené 4/05

~sheby Jeanne René

~she

floats
to the edge of the pool
with her own pomp and circumstance,
and we squint
even behind the darkest of sun shades

snickers skew tight lips,
potatoes chips held suspended over clam dip
crumble between our fingertips
and we shiver under the heat of our own dementia

with arduous sigh I follow
the slant of her smile
and the ageless bounce of bosoms,
the ornamented red of cheek
still the burn of her maidenhood

the dip of her toe into water,
the breezy dismissal of time under weightless chiffon
cast away with a giggle
and we twitter, but no one rushes in to save an old woman

perhaps, she is mercifully blind to the color of melancholy,
never touching the texture of wrinkle, the blemish of crease . . .
simply lost in an euphoria
too fragile to deny her bed fellows
age and heartache


Copywrite jeannerené 07.09

The Prizefighter's Gardenby Jeanne René

Papa had a voice, romantic and rich. A voice whose timber echoed the clamor of carts pulled by donkeys down uneven cobble stone streets and whose vibrato quivered like the bulging muscles of dusty day laborers. His song at the dinner table, given to only to daughters and son ... and to brown-eyed granddaughters ... was sometimes a field of wheat dancing on an easy breeze, and other times a hammer against steal rivets. He could have out-sung any Caruso of his day... or today's Pavarotti, but he never stepped out of the grandma's kitchen or wide-armed sofa. His audience wept just the same.


Papa was born in Sicily ... Palermo. Family was everything. He had been a boxer. He eventually became quite a successful business man with a plastering company ... and he loved his garden.

Under his arbor ~

Plump passionate
Fuchsia bells spill
Moss painted terracotta swaying
Pushed by butterflies
In heavy hands
He held my face to their flesh
To discover nature's miracles
The grace of the flower
The grace of the man
Here beat my heart along with time
Papa walked me round his garden
In stages of my bloom

In his arms ~
To the loquat’s
Dusty fruit
Breaking its amber meat
For my anxious fingers to my lips
Spitting seeds into the fish fountain
Strolling over the flagstones
From bud to blossom
Laughter lifts his heavy brows
To the buzz of monster bee
As I shelter in the warmth of his neck
Until he sets me down
With well picked mums

With his hand ~
Papa walks me round his garden
To the swoon of the gardenias white
A skip ahead and turn around
Twirling sour grass on the tip of my tongue
Every Sunday to the rose path
Near the window sill
Sauces stewing for the evening meal
Blend with beauties bittersweet
Papa hums the old man river
Of life
Of love
And in my hands four quarters fold
Behind my ear a sprig of thyme

By his side ~
Papa walks me round his garden
Slow in the evening
Sweet song of final days
Hushed in the beauty of the peony
Revealing secrets before it quickly fades
By the fish fountain as the wicker rocks
He whispers now in harmony with the breeze
Of every cut and bruise held in his glove
To say I’ve been
You will be
Time to listen
Under the shade of the cherry tree

~And
The stray leaf that falls against my cheek today
Perhaps his kiss


jeanne rené 4/04.........for Papa, my grandfather, who taught me the joy of gardening.

Above the Roar of the Inconsequenceby Jeanne René

I am
a child of concrete
of window vignettes unwanted, unavoidable.
Contact, communication with the human condition
that contaminates,
cements my visage into wrinkles of camaraderie,
cohesion of war and peace and dinner debates.

“I am, I am,” clanging my spoon
upon the bottom of my pot,
clamoring
above the roar of the inconsequence…

“I am!”

I am the warmth of streetlight,
its halo hovering above our saints and our demons.
I stop to rest, to slump
against thin walls vibrating with multiple heartbeats,
I soften … stoop under wags of cacophonous tongues,
and lonely testimonials liberated into the dark abyss.
I cry,
crying at the poetic laughter of derelict lovers,
and the coo of babies drifting with the dust of ventilation, I settle, recline.
I rise to the wink of flirtatious matriarchs leaning on sooty sills,
sashaying their hips in accompaniment to evening recitations
strummed upon the underbellies of complacent cicadas ….

    and I move
by way of masses on summer trails of blistering boulevard
asphalt lakes, ribbons amalgamate mortality
putty and plaster
sand and solder
fused      I am fused and I move

    never on a whisper,

in the presence of bobbing umbrellas
admiring the shine of petroleum prisms.
puddle jumping to catch the rush of sunset.
In the presence
of timepieces set upon analog hours,
traversed in measures of unbounded highway,
calculations of conferences
and the shade of high rise     I move

parade through our humanity, inhumanities, the pulse, the pulse, the pulse
pounded on the pavement.
And, I scream, “I am the child of byways, sown into the cement
flesh of the multitude
and the backward glance into the alley,
the augmented 5th suspended above the sidewalk,
the tail of the shooting star drawn behind the skyline

dissolving into the infinitesimal speck,
grain of sand, polished sediment pressed under my weight
into the generations.”
I bang my pot, hammer my silver spoon,
“I am mettle of metropolis,
the sweet seduction of city
stuck to the bottom of my shoes.”

I am

   I am the shadow falling between the jagged horizon ... I am.


jeannerene 4.22.12

... a kiss to end a dream on by Jeanne René

Raising his head
to the afternoon,
a touch
of life
smiled upon one more day,
I give with my embrace,
time
to see
my father sit
beside me.

My hands move
over
shoulder blades,
distended
plantive points,
angles of his disillusion
drawn taunt
over
waste and prostration,
jaundiced laughter,

and silence.
My hands move
hushed
along
bone
of my backbone,
massaging memories
to circulate lingering
recollections
too hard to bare
in the daylight.

The hour wanes
and there waits
my rocking chair.

Lie back
down
upon your pillow
my father's dreams
with a kiss,

and Satchmo's sweetness
whispering softly
in your ear.



Copywrite jeanne rené

Ahh, humanity! by Jeanne René

They’re bruised and bony
but …

I’m down on my knees today
to converge upon the living
who scuttle between the common garden stone
and shelter under forsaken rose petals,
Focusing my manufactured lens
on the honey bee zig-zag
or zooming in and out on the finer, more intricate subtitles
of scaly appendage or iridescent thorax,
I try to find the gleam, glint of fragile wings
capture it, post it, paste it
segments of sanity
membranes of memory to linger upon God’s finer points of creation.

I’m down on my knees today
looking for my prayers,
God’s finer course of dialogue
for I grow gray and cracked, as time shuffles haphazardly
between yesterday’s perception and today’s reality.
I need the camera, its shameless sight
to clarify my personal perspective.

Outside the camera my garden agonizes,
blundered, burdened.
The hydrangea withers, its flower-head bent.
Untethered the dahlia snaps.
Barren,
I cannot heal my children,
cannot exhale after inhaling.

… I covet the compound eye
lenses in triplicate times triplicate
mankind in mosaic medley 360 degrees composition
I beg,
let me hover with the house fly above brow and bed,
and squeal … antennae twitching enthusiastically “Ahhh, humanity!”

Today I cannot heal my children in portraits black and white.
I’m down on my knees
digging for daylight.


jeannerene 8/2010

Little Bro, Big Bro photo Jeanne René Watson

~ to say what is left unsaidby Jeanne René

~ to say what is left unsaid

I’ve rewritten many times
this poem of you.

A silly, sentimental essay
to note the crease of your knotted brow
dreaming away the morning light
sequestered minutes
before the masquerade of dawn evaporates
into a burst of reality

and the eye focuses,

“She stays,” the eye sighs.

Yes
      we are us,

little odds and ends,
the irksome nudge of toe,
the sometime abandoned curve of back to back.

A definition, theme
upon your touch so customary,
familiar as the revelry of mother bird
summer morn, summer night,
    you       like the sonnet
of her nestling's frenzy.
Poetry served with honey
and sipped ceremoniously,
it orients
my groggy advent to morning things,
and ways,
and all lineal litanies reemerging
in operative thought . . . your rhyme does.

I consider the composition
my sense
now open to the day,
uncivil sun invading our bedroom,
your arm heavy
sideways
slumber upon my stomach,
an occasional tug too dull

for any desire more than
              my refrain

“I am
the cradle of reassurance
the touch to vanquish the distinction,”
You are

      the nestling croons

                        the poem


copywrite jeanne rene 10.05

Upon Consideration of Hourglass and Spectrumby Jeanne René

~
I touch the reflection in my mirror,
trying to find the supple texture of my lips,
but stopped by my own fingertips.
Studying a false immortality,
unable to marry that which I see to that which I feel.
The eyes of this solitary figure
do not discern my rainbow pigmentation.
This delusive guise does not display the saturation
of youth and lover,
of mother and daughter,
of teacher.
Of time and every tear,
countless portraits and poses that I, clearly, still can see.
~

I find it best to walk away, leave my reflection
and harmonize with my humble mortality.
Simply to take my colors
and distribute them in kindness
along the remainder of the way.
So I consider;
What lasting word can I give my children
that they will draw upon in the depths of their misery?
Which passionate kiss
will forever be akin to ecstasy on the mouth of my lover?
With which words of gratitude do I bury my mother?
... which grape and grain be mine to feast in kinship
at the table of a stranger.
~

I will find . . . all that I am,
all that I have never ceased to be,
all that I have left behind, but always take along with me,
and bestow my gifts to precious time,
no trace of my reflection, except in memory.
~

copyright jeanne rene 8/04

Peppermints and Gernades in Front of Curtainphotos Jeanne René Watson

Purpose and the Prairie by Jeanne René