Her dark wounded face was everywhere. During my years as a Catholic schoolgirl in the 1950s, statues and pictures of saints on “holy cards” were standard in church, school, and homes but of all these holy people, one stood above and apart. In the community of Polish immigrants in Amsterdam, New York, the scarred face of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa was most beloved, because she alone represented our people’s struggle for nationhood.
The Black Madonna painting is said to have been brought to Czestochowa, Poland, by a Hungarian prince, who entrusted her to a group of monks. The monks built a monastery where she still resides, and like many other Black Madonnas throughout the world, she performs the occasional miracle.
The black-robed nuns who were our teachers said her skin was black from years of exposure to candle smoke.… ...continue reading
She had been scrubbing for hours, the skin on her hands raw and red from pushing the brush back and forth. The stain however, wasn’t going anywhere. Elizabeth had no idea where it had come from, she prided herself on keeping a clean house and was quick to remove anything deemed ‘dirty’. Spillages were cleaned before they could touch the surface they hurtled towards, and spiders actively stayed away from the house – not wanting to end up as eight legs twitching on a tissue. Although she didn’t have many visitors, she maintained that it was always good to be prepared, not wanting to be caught short with an unclean or messy house.
Which is why Elizabeth had been horrified to find the small black penny-sized spot on her red kitchen floor tiles that morning.… ...continue reading
Clad in homespun in summer or her husband’s thick red and black plaid shirt in winter, two hours before dusk each day she crosses from cottage to tower. Joined by the dog they slowly ascend the spiral staircase pausing on landings to honor arthritic joints.
Entering the lantern room she checks the kerosene supply, trims the wick, then polishes lenses and each window as if they were fine crystal. On foggy days she turns on the diaphone, audible companion to the light lest its beacon prove inadequate in the haze.… ...continue reading
My sister didn’t come home from college for Thanksgiving. It was going to be just my mother and me, a dreary prospect. She invited her friend Dottie and Dottie’s son, a college freshman, to make a foursome for Thanksgiving dinner.
As they approached our house, Dottie bearing a bottle of wine and packaged dinner rolls, her son carrying a pumpkin pie, Mom nudged me and said, “Isn’t he a cutie?” Tall, red-headed, walking with a swagger. His clean-cut wholesomeness held not the slightest appeal to me. I shrugged.
The moms dominated dinner conversation, discussing mutual friends, their jobs, plans for Christmas. Occasionally, one lobbed a comment our way.
“Tell Donna about the classes you’re taking,” Dottie instructed her son.… ...continue reading
He put his hand over mine and it looked so old. “No one will even want them,” I said,
“They’re dated”. He said that wasn’t the point and walked over to the white dresser by your bed.
“Let’s start with her shirts,” he said, and I said that your shirts were in the tall dresser by the window. He put a shaky hand on your bed for support, and I could hear his knees creak as he stood. The last time we were in your room together he could have carried your dresser over his shoulder.
“The top drawer?” He asked.
“No,” I said, “the third down.”
He opened the drawer and pulled out a neat pile of tiny shirts that were so colorful. When he took the shirts out of your drawer, the room changed.… ...continue reading
Feelings don’t last. That’s what a therapist once told me. They disappear he said. I agreed with him until yesterday when old feelings resurfaced for the first time in ten years. I was in the Cat and Cage drinking with Mark Dunne. We were catching up on old school days. Alison, his wife, came in about two hours after we arrived and she was excited. She had photographs of a friend’s hen night and was passing them to Mark and me.
I didn’t take much notice of the photographs until I took a second glance at one of them. There stood the girl who was to get married, whose name escapes me and Greta O‘Rourke. I finished my pint and asked Mark and Alison what they wanted to drink.… ...continue reading
Joy Ride by Ron Slate (Carnegie Mellon University Press)
A poet of ideas and emotions, Ron Slate comes as close as anyone to the phrase in Roethe’s villanelle, “The Waking,” “we think by feeling.” While his poems embody ideas and convey feelings, they evoke experiences, they are experiences. They are about boats, gulls, travels to Istanbul, to Brazil, to France. They are about family, friends, and acquaintances, doubt, certainty, grief, joy, imagination, baseball, jazz, and drums, also, airports, hospitals, a neighborhood bar, and a joy ride in a black and white (patrol car) with two women. There’s an investment of self and an absence of ego. They evoke solitude and life with others, experiences borne out of passed down stories, memories, and images embedded in thoughts. … ...continue reading
