On Honeyboy Edwards

On Honeyboy Edwards

Washing dishes is blues music so Pandora brings me
Charley Patton’s “Bo Weevil” beamed down and a shiver
of recognition goes up my spine a shiver of collapsed
time to 1998 when I shivered in another cold wind
off Lake Michigan head tucked into pea coat to visit some
Chicago Southside apartment down some little dim
stairwell into the elderly bluesman’s bedroom dragging
kitchen chairs across green checkered linoleum
around the bed while he picked up a red guitar
and became Honeyboy with a smile when I asked him
to play “Pony Blues” he picked his way through weeds
of memory picked his way to call up Charley Patton for me
raised Charley Patton from the Delta cotton fields for me
picked and slid a bottleneck over the strings and raised the dead for me
And if he sees me now he’s saying  with a laugh
“Little girl why you cryin’ in your kitchen
for the voices of the dead?”
Why am I crying for the voices of the dead
raised now and caught in ones and zeroes
in a web I can’t see

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1^st draft
16 April 2018
Sometimes new work up and smacks you in the face. And sometimes your husband has to tell you to go sit and write it down. And you do.

I was pretty lucky to have met Honeyboy, even luckier to have been invited into his home, luckier still to have a personal request–“Pony Blues“–played for me. A song he learned from Charley Patton himself. Especially when as we were leaving my companions looked at me and said “We’ve been trying to get him to play that for us for years, and you just walked in and smiled and asked nicely and he just did it. For you.”

I never really consciously traded on being pretty, but looking back on it I think a pretty girl asked him nicely and he said OK. Simple. And flattering, all these years later, to think of it while washing dishes and staring out the window when Charley Patton comes on.

 

 

 

A Body Map of My Life, Part 1

A BODY MAP OF MY LIFE
-after Bridget Booher
[Part I]

[YOU WERE HERE]
1.
LOCATION: Brain (1) (1983)
CAUSE: Fall from back of galloping Welsh pony while wearing regulation helmet
DIAGNOSIS: Concussion; #1 of at least 5
TREATMENT: Sit on forest-green Springsteel couch and stare at ceiling; no TV; pony is fine
FOLLOWUP: None; wear helmet (most of the time)

2.
LOCATION: Right thigh, 6” above knee (1985)
CAUSE: Hayknife driven deep while opening a 50lb sack of oats
DIAGNOSIS: Hole in favorite acid-washed jeans; shallowish wound that bleeds well on favorite acid-washed jeans
TREATMENT: Bactine and Band-Aid; stupid-looking iron-on patch for jeans because my mom won’t buy me another pair
FOLLOWUP: Jeans have to be turned into cutoffs when patch fails; yes, they are still called cutoffs in 1985.

3.
LOCATION: Shoulders (1985+)
CAUSE: Genetic defect
DIAGNOSIS: Back acne. Huge angry painful red pustules that I cannot resist breaking, resulting in angry red scars
TREATMENT: Tetracycline, which does not work because I forget to take it an hour before or two hours after I eat, and also increases sun sensitivity and I ride my horse an hour a day in an outdoor arena and I cannot bring myself to wear long sleeves in the heat
FOLLOWUP: Hate my dad for passing on his acne prone genes. Wear a t-shirt when in public pool to hide scars; most have faded 30 years later and most people stare at my boobs anyway

4.
LOCATION: Right knee (1990)
CAUSE: Tripped over friend Dave (or Daryl?)’s metal bedframe on first day of classes sophomore year of college
DIAGNOSIS: Staph infection (#1). Gross.
TREATMENT: Visit to campus clinic for antibiotic (penicillin allergy); panicked call from clinic nurse to not take the Keflex because it’s counter-indicated for penicillin allergy–there is a chance I could die of anaphylaxis; two weeks of sulfa drugs and no pool for lifeguard class and no drinking and itching like mad as it heals
FOLLOWUP: 4” scar persists 25 years later

5.
LOCATION: Heart (Paris) (1992)
CAUSE: Boy loves “someone else”
DIAGNOSIS: Broken. Duh.
TREATMENT: After considering stepping in front of a black Mercedes Benz cab speeding along the Boulevard St. Germain, instead consume large amounts of cheap French wine in company of one good guy friend who doesn’t judge or say things like “there are other fish in the sea” (like I will ever want to go fishing again anyway)
FOLLOWUP: Boy marries “someone else” (blonde, blue-eyed, calm) and lives a quiet life in Xenia, Ohio; sporadic trials of one-night stands do nothing and one long-term relationship collapses under the weight of the boy’s ghost though it’s also true that boyfriend wanted a cheerleader type instead of former philosophy major and current Master’s candidate working part-time in a Waldenbooks but that is another story

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It’s that time of year again: National Poetry Writing Month–a poem a day for the 30 days of National Poetry Month .

Some days I use the prompts, some days I share stuff I am (re)working on, and some days I sit down and bang something out. I tried it last year while teaching my creative writing course, and I enjoyed it. Having a goal gave me the ability to grant time for myself, for my own work. Like many professors, I am often loathe to take because it means that a host of other stuff from my “real” job gets pushed off. But for 30 days, I can do this for myself.

Today’s post is from a work I started after reading Fran Wilde’s blog post “A Map Year” .

Like Fran, I have always loved maps. One of my favorite memories of Paris is of a tiny shop I stumbled over in an alley in the Latin Quarter –marine maps, city maps, old maps, new maps. Maps on the wall, maps in drawers. I couldn’t afford any of them, but the smell of all that paper still lingers in my memory. Paris occupies a lot of space in my memory map.

I purchased You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, by Katharine Harmon, which contains Bridget Booher’s poem. More work will come out of this, and I look forward to exploring. Interior spelunking.

Thanks for reading.