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