The Heroines Among Us
Follow along with Larry D. Giles as he explores women from his book, Father Tree Water! They are a wonderful addition to your Saturday dose of artistry!
Amma
I may have thought God was strange
when she climbed up—
the hammer jiggling
from the wet belt
she stole from her brother—
he had no nerve for heights
forever twiddled in a box.
She straddled eaves—
dangled
like one peel of a banana
hoped for though not yet eaten.
It was almost dark, a bird
had also left its wing. She cussed it down—
then pounded like the devil
for the nerve of rain—
that old man drowning
in a corner brown jar.
Hungry at the table,
I imagined air solid and soulful around her blue T-shirt.
Hearing that stunted nail,
I swear down below
a muscle grew from a hole
in my pocket—
rose from
the dull
wet ground
to the dry,
beautiful
heavens.
Girl with a Match
(after Alicia Keys)
This girl
pretty in pigtails
and afraid of matches,
who sucks her thumb
and rocks pink dolls in cradles,
bakes black mud pies
in little white stoves
along the shaded edge
of the field,
on the porch
scowls at kites,
dips just one toe in the river—
the one
I thought for years
was just my sister—
like a sun-struck pilot
today jumped
over the house
and then set
the woods
on fire.
The Woman Down
I would imagine the sink
to pull her down,
down with the ceiling
and leftover spaghetti,
my brothers and sisters
to peer in after shock,
waiting for her to spew out.
Down beneath the heavy day
of hamburger grease
and scabbed paint,
down with the bent forks
and gray-water spoons,
sucked like the head
of a chalk-soaked mop
from my wooden fingers,
scraping against powder-wet
porcelain and fear.
Till I thought for once
she would not pull back.
For once, she would not
wring out the darkness
and rank, rank dust,
though plastered there
above the lonely depths—
I could still hear Otis crooning,
still feel Martin’s moaning,
“We shall certainly overcome,”
my ghost-white siblings
wrestling in the wreckage
and crying for their daddy
to bring home
the wrench.
I thought for sure
she would be demolished,
completely choked
by that vacuous murkiness
the night he called
for the very last time,
she then twisted into a knot
of noodled flesh
so tight it would burst
into a thousand fibers.
But that night, too,
she was a plunger,
a great liquid voice
sticking to the walls
of that hideous hole in hell,
and each night she was
a plumber and a carpenter,
above all, the in-tact mother
who pushed up from drains,
looked out from sinks
and handed us tomorrow’s spoons
and saucers and plates,
that, though old and cracked,
still managed to glimmer,
beneath dim, dusty florescent
tubes and a squashed, yellow
ceiling that, like the sink,
somehow imagined it could keep
the woman down.
Poet:
RiverCountyNews.Com
Larry D. Giles
Born in Richmond, Virginia, Larry D. Giles grew up on a farm just outside of Battery, a small rural community several miles from the Rappahannock River. Educated at Livingstone College, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the University of Virginia, the writer has taught English and writing at his high school alma mater in Essex County and for the city of Richmond. While at Richmond, he received teacher of the year, the prestigious REB Award for Teaching Excellence, and an educational leadership fellowship. A Luard Morse nominee, he is co-author of Journey Home, with playwright Jacqui Singleton, a work produced in Richmond theatre. Larry has been published in The River City Poets Anthology 2019, Better than Starbucks Magazine, The Bhubaneswar Review, and in other media. Available at http//www.lulu.com/spotlight/LDGiles2020 and released in 2019, Father Tree Water: Collected Poems and Photographs of the Rappahannock Mind Body Spirit is the writer’s first published collection of poetry.
Larry’s poetry and creative nonfiction often center on family, rural Virginia life along the Rappahannock, and personal resilience and strength, with sometimes mystical multicultural interweavings. His poems often ring with personal conviction and revelation, his prose nostalgic reverence, pathos and beauty. Nominated twice by Better than Starbucks Magazine for Best of the Net for his Hoover Boys series, Larry currently resides in Richmond where he continues to write, paint, enjoy photography, and lead several online history and community education archives.
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