97 Orchard Street - A Vision

Courtesy of Wiki-Commons

Judge Judy's ringing in my ears dealing American justice to someone from this city through a hotel room television and then we’re walking down Madison to the Lower East Side. Don’t know anything about this museum but my friend would have us see it, part of Americana, so we walk and I find myself thinking about Dublin—the capital of my word roots. Dublin’s more like London than New York, and yet these Manhattan streets have known Irish running away from that particular end of the world. I know what the end of the world is -- growing up on the high, high plains in the center of a brown town called yellow texas-- yearning for this town, this city, the city, my city, my heart’s city. And we walk and I smell love, repel curses, float past parades of victors and losers, glimpse hats sailing around little churches tucked amongst brownstones; we turn down Delancey and we’re there.


Waiting outside with a group of people who look exactly like and nothing like us-- all from somewhere else, California, Mississippi, Georgia, Canada maybe; waiting to get in an old building with a little doorway. Only guided tours and so we follow someone talking. My mind is sliding in and out of the movie The Godfather. Wasn’t it here or a couple of streets over where they shot it? Vendor calls sing in my mind, horse-drawn carts fill up the street crowding out shiny cars parked so tight, I can’t see how they’ll be able to pull out into the street. The hallway is dark. I hear the story of the lights and no lights and bars and saloon fights, the falls to the death hallway, the no lights hallway, the dark on the way to the outhouse hallway, generations down the stairs by day and night, filled with the smells of food outside, food cooking inside, the laughs, the drinks, the drunks, we’re still in the hallway and I reel to the thought of no running water here, the inside and outside here, and I love it and fear it and shake with terror and excitement but it’s all strange, nothing ever quite like it here but it’s America and I know it here and I don’t know it here. Not a world of emptiness, but a crush of people, a crush of America and I always had a crush on it, and the crush is blooming again into a real love, a true love, an historical love, a place that is other in the middle of what made this place my love, my home, my dream of America.


My grandmother, her grandmother, Granny Donnell –their images from life, from cracked photos flit through my mind as I try to place them in this hallway leading to an apartment, a “flat”, up a flight, a flight to a story of ice men bringing relief, coal and wood men delivering heat, and all familiar strangers speaking different languages. Cultures merge in the dark and all I really hear is the tutored  news reader voice telling about certain residents known to live here among hundreds, did she say thousands, over the years. I’m at the back in the first little room with a tiny kitchen. I am hearing a jillion voices and the story is strange. It seems it belonged to a model, or a seamstress. I’m not sure I am keeping up. My inner voice is speaking in counterpoint to the guide. Then she tells us about the fire. I’m listening now. The fire—the Shirtwaist Triangle Factory fire of 1911. This girl may have died in the fire. They had to jump to their deaths or be burned alive. She was very beautiful. A model for the clothes, she also did detail work –finishing for the dresses made there. In the next room, a little factory itself with a sewing machine set by a window. This was one of the industrial workrooms for the garment district. And I’m seeing a big blond man in a tank type undershirt sitting by a window, ironing, and sewing, cutting and sewing, until it’s night --when he eats, sleeps and rises by dawn to begin again to get out the dry goods.  I’m feeling smothered, and at the same time exhilarated when at last we enter the apartment on the top floor and then somewhere between déjà vu and my third eye, the movie really begins.

Orchard Street - New York Archives

I hear no one talking now. The voice tells us things, of course but I’m in it (not hearing it)-- living it. I see her. I see her first and last. I see her of many ages. I see her young, I see her middle aged, I see her old.  I see the kitchen table and it says everything. Life is food, food the source, food the culture, food her gift, food her history.  Food brought to this table, food sorted on this table, food served on this table on the dishes and suddenly I see the dishes – two sets. Kosher, this tiny kitchen is kosher and I know it. I don’t see anything that says who they are; yet I know who they are. The husband here and not here, he’s a mirage wavering between the kitchen table and the bedroom with the huge bedstead and the short (really short) bed. He’s bearded, he’s frail, he’s coughing, and coughing. She sits and mourns him here and moves on after shiva.


There are children. Three or four, yes eventually five boys and the one girl– they’re all over the place. Crouched on the floor, the ever so clean floor, the scrubbed floor and studying, reading, writing, by candles, they’re reading and writing, and praying and I hear them. One sings, is singing Lithuanian folk songs; music rises up through the floor boards as the heat must have risen up to the top through the hole that ran from basement to roof as a way of ventilating the building. The movie runs forward and backward. The children walk in and out at all different ages. The one sweet little bed separating the kitchen from the living area; it, facing windows that looked into other people’s windows. That was the girl’s bed. Later a boarder shares it with her. It is so narrow and yet the family needed one of the factory girl’s rent to pay expenses.  Boys grow to men and sleep sitting up on a sofa, their feet on straight chairs from the table, but like boys everywhere, they roll up in balls, kick their brothers, tickle and tackle until shushed by their mother and bossed by their tiny sister from the Jenny Lind spindle bed.


I’m mesmerized. People are leaving. I’m seeing history flowing through the windows. I feel this one space in the city change. It’s 2002, and the time has flung our planet through the universe during my life, and I’m feeling the miles traveled in this three room world of a family who lived here from 1907 to 1942. I hear the history, it rings the building, the sounds of skyscrapers rising, tenements falling, neighborhoods changing, friends moving. The mah jong game goes on. Her best friend from China from a few blocks over stays until the twenties. Then she moves to Boston with her sons who had Harvard scholarships. The boys so smart, all the boys so smart, so studious, so disciplined. That’s the only way to get ahead in America – plan, save, study. And the women are sitting at THE table and reciting cures, and telling maladies, the saving gossip of how to secure, how to protect, how to stay alive, how to survive solitude, misery, poverty; the festivals, the overlay of religion, of medicine, of ethics and I breathe it and it’s fine air—the air of freedom, the freedom of faith, of speech, of congregation, of enterprise in the city that welcomes all who yearn for it in a neighborhood in sight of that beacon to our shores, Lady Liberty herself.


© Gay Reiser Cannon * 2012 * All Rights Reserved


Posted for Poetics on dVersePoets Pub hosted 5/24/12 by Victoria C. Slotto
More information regarding The Tenement Museum here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_East_Side_Tenement_Museum

The Girl With The Frog Umbrella

The Girl with the Frog Umbrella
© Daniel Mackie
Source of Inspiration for this Poem

Sunny day outside.
She colors sitting on stairs,
gray crayon hides sun.
Her father left with suitcase;
mother cries bedroom to clouds.

Sad girl looks at sky;
tears leak sadness down her cheeks.
Sorrow calls the storm;
thunder shakes and rumbles house;
sorrow slides down silver walls.

Rain comes, splats music;
willows filter pain by drops.
Freshness clears her eyes
dancing blossoms entreat her;
she answers by waving back.

Wearing blue raincoat,
chrysanthemum galoshes,
and green umbrella,
she hastens to greet the rain--
splashing through mirrored puddles.

The park sings water.
ringing leaves and blossoms fall
on her umbrella.
By the pond she sees some boys;
she can't determine their play.

Approaching the pond,
light and rain fall green as grass.
Waters shimmer waves;
the boys have shiny black sticks
to attack a large green frog.

"Stop! Don't hurt the frog!"
The boys turn to look at her,
"We can cook his legs."
"No!" she cried "you can't hurt him
See him, he's a king of frogs!"

At this, the frog leaped
onto the back of a swan
gliding out of reach.
The boys screamed mean empty names.
She ran away. They chased her.

Across the bridge, she fled,
where a family waited
for the rain to end.
The boys reached the bridge, then turned;
the swan sailed under and turned right.

The girl watched its course
then sprinted back to meet it.
The black swan halted.
It ambled up the bank; then
the frog jumped onto her boot.

"Pick me up," he said
"Put me on your umbrella."
She obliged the frog
who transformed the umbrella!
Its colors began to change.

Fields of green filled
with sky, clouds. Flowers, reeds,
surrounded her head;
a year of seasons circled--
the frog became one with it.

She started walking.
The frog umbrella asked her,
"Tell me your wish, friend?"
"My wish is for your safety,
and my dad comes home again."

"I am safe, my friend,
you have given me the world.
Karma gives back too;
when you drop this umbrella,
you'll find your reward at home."

The umbrella turned
into a lake on that spot.
Once a vacant lot,
now it burst with green frogs' croaks,
vibrant calls from lotus land.

"Goodbye frog," she called.
She turned her eyes toward home.
She knew long before
she began to run,  faster --
her dad was waiting for her.

Inspired by the beautiful watercolor illustration by Daniel Mackie
which can be found here:
http://thecreativefinder.com/portfolio-image.php?username=danielmackie&id=4077&filename=frog-umbrella.jpg&title=Watercolour%20illustration,%20The%20girl%20with%20the%20frog%20umbrella.

A Tale of Friendship told in a Tanka Series

© Gay Reiser Cannon * 4.20.2012 * All Rights Reserved

GINGERBREAD TOWN

Once upon a time there was a place called Gingerbread Town. People lived there a long, long time ago before things were as they are now. It was a time when it only snowed on the mountains and it only rained on the oceans and the fields were watered by brooks and streams and there weren’t any storms and there wasn’t any sickness and nearly everyone had fun doing the things that made them happy.

That was especially true in Gingerbread Town. When visitors came, they always mentioned to each other how sweet the town was. They said, “This is a really sweet town.” The people who lived there loved it, especially the children. They ate whatever they wanted and played with the toys their parents gave them.

Jared, R.J., and Michael were children who lived in Gingerbread Town. They were friends who loved their toys and we know just how much boys love their favorite toys. They took really good care of them because they wanted them to last for a long time. Some of their toys had belonged to older brothers and sisters, why some even belonged to their own parents kept since they were children themselves. All those children really loved toys.

There were many other boys and girls in the town for them to play with. They had playgrounds made of pretzels and candy and giant marshmallows to jump on. There were rows of these marshmallows from their houses all the way to school so they could spring and jump to school instead of walking.

One day a man with a very tall hat came to town. His name was Mr. Twister. He wore a black frock coat and he seemed very mean. The children never saw anyone who looked so unhappy! He certainly wasn’t happy when he came into Gingerbread Town and he frowned at the beautiful Lemon Drop Clock in the Gingerbread Tower.

He carried a bent metal stick and when he pointed it at the children, the earth shook and strange light and dark gray puffs called clouds covered the sun and filled the sky. All the people came out of their houses to see what was shaking the peacefulness of Gingerbread Town and all the children stopped playing by the chocolate stream in Jellybean Park.

Mr. Twister told the people there was too much fun in Gingerbread Town. He told the children they had to bring him their toys, all their toys.

The parents exclaimed, “No, Mr. Twister, not the toys. They love them so!”

“Yes, all of them,” he demanded, “or I will make it RAIN! Rain, do you know what that

means? Water will pour from the sky and this village will melt.

The people in Gingerbread Town had never seen it rain. They lived in gingerbread houses and had gingerbread stores. The roofs were made of cookies and were covered with sugar icing. All the streets were paved with licorice.

“Why pouring water from the sky would ruin us!” the grown-ups said. People went back to their homes and the children grew very afraid. What would become of their town if it rained.

One mother stayed behind and asked Mr. Twister what he would do with the toys, but he wouldn’t say. He just raised his stick and the rumbling began.

Jared and R.J. bounced on the marshmallows to the school where older children were learning what older children needed to learn.

“Help!” they cried, “Help! Help!” A man in a big black hat and coat wants to take our toys or he will melt the town. What can we do? “Help! Help! What can we do?”

The students came out with their teachers and soon their parents came along to tell them what had happened. They quit having fun. Their parents would have to give away all their toys. They apologized to the children. The students went back to class but now they were very unhappy.

Michael stayed at home. He was the youngest boy at the playground. He had seen Mr. Twister scare everyone. When they came in from outside, his mother closed the door and put her finger to her mouth,

“Shhh...” she said, “I have a plan.”

Michael loved his Mom, but he didn’t know she could do magic. He was about to learn about her special skills. She went to the bedroom and took a multicolored scarf from a secret box made of rock candy and hard strawberry taffy.

“This scarf can make some things disappear,” she told Michael. It can’t make them go away, it just makes them invisible. I know it would be nice to cover that mean man with the scarf and make him go away, but it doesn’t work that way.”

“Go tell your friends, Jared and R.J. and the others to tell all the children to get their very favorite toys and bring them to our house. Have them come through the back door so that Mr. Twister won’t see.”

Michael followed the sugarplum path to the giant marshmallows that led to the school. He told the children his mother’s plan. The teachers decided it was time for the students to go home.

Jared and R.J. went to Michael’s house. His mother asked them to try to talk to the man. They went out to the street and began talking to Mr. Twister. “Why aren’t you happy in Gingerbread Town?” they asked him.

“I’m not happy anywhere. I don’t want anyone else to be happy either.

“Show me your crooked silver stick” R.J. said to the big black-coated man. “Show me how it works.”

“It’s working now,” he screamed and the sky became as dark as the man’s strange coat.

 “Are you sure they will be safe here?” the children asked Michael's mother.

She assured them that they would and she helped them bring the toys through to her bedroom. Soon every child in town had brought her their toys, the ones they felt so close to, the ones they couldn’t bear to be without.

“Mom,” Michael asked her when they were stacked in the bedroom, “how can the scarf work when there are so many toys? It can’t cover them all.”

His mother winked at him. “Oh, yes it can! It’s a magical scarf.”

She closed her eyes and began to sing of birds and sunshine and flowers in bloom. In a minute the scarf had begun to dance across the toys and as each was touched it faded from sight. She continued to sing of candy and streams and kittens and happy boys and girls. When Michael looked around the room, not a toy could be seen.

“Where have they gone?” he asked.

“They’re still here,” his mother told him. “They’re just out of sight until we need them again. Go tell Jared and R.J. that it’s time all the children brought the remaining toys to Mr. Twister.”

Soon they had gathered the toys to bring to Mr. Twister. They came back to the town center and laid them at his feet. The sky was falling. Water and sugar and bits of the roofs were dripping by the time the last ragged little doll was placed in front of the tall dark stranger.

“What!” thundered Mr. Twister. “Is this all of the toys? This isn’t enough. This town is known for having the best and the most toys, and I want them now! I will have to search your homes.”

He headed for Michael’s house. Michael became afraid.

It began to rain harder. Jared and R.J. had thought they were very brave. They wanted to save Gingerbread Town. They had given all their unnecessary toys to the man who was making it rain, but now he wanted more.

R.J. cried out, “You go ahead, Mr. Twister, but they are all here.”

The whole town was in the square. They all nodded their heads. No one said anything as Mr. Twister walked up to the door.

Michael looked at his mom. He whispered, “Will he see them?”

“No he wont.” She reassured him.

He was still worried. Michael thought and thought about how unhappy Mr. Twister was. He tried to think what made him happiest and he remembered his good luck charm. A crystal prism that dazzled him everyday and which delighted everyone who saw it.

“Mr. Twister, Mr. Twister, come with me,” he shouted to the scowling man. “I have something to give you.”

“What is it?” He turned and frowned at the little boy.

Michael took him to his room. He got it from his chest and ran back outside onto the sticky licorice street. Mr. Twister followed him outdoors. Then, in sight of everyone, Michael reached up and gave the man a brilliant cut crystal.

“What is this? What can I do with this?” Mr. Twister held up the beautiful prism.

“When you hold it in the sunlight, it makes colors dance all over the world.” Michael told him.

“I don’t see any colors,” he said.

All of Gingerbread Town was quiet except for the drops falling to the ground. Everyone was so sad.

“You see, it needs sunshine.” Michael explained. The rain has to stop before it will work. It’s my favorite thing and you may have it.”

“Hmm. I can stop the rain, but it better do what you say,” Mr. Twister said. He laid down the stick and shortly the clouds left and the sun began to shine again.

Mr. Twister held the crystal to the light and colors danced along the lanes and across the houses. “

“What a wonderful toy!” he cried and for the first time he smiled a big sunny smile. “This is better than all the rest. I will take this piece of sunshine with me and give you back your toys and your Gingerbread Town.”

The people watched as the sun dried out their houses and hardened the licorice streets. They waved goodbye to the man who had wanted to take all their toys away. But now he had left with only the crystal and the toys were still there.

Over the next few hours the children came to Michael’s house to retrieve their favorites now visible in the room where they had disappeared.

“It’s good to have our town back, Mom”. Michael said.

“Yes it is and thank you,” she said hugging him.

Michael went out to play with all the other children. It was good to be with his friends in Gingerbread Town.

(c) Gay Reiser Cannon * All Rights Reserved

A Visit to OutPost Texas

A Tale of OutPost Texas by beachanny

I been thinkin' lately 'bout this l'il town I used to go to, right there on the edge of the Panhandle, jus' a l'il ol piss ant size town but they had some characters there, I'm tellin' you, that even bigger Texas towns couldn't match.

First, this was where my mama's great aunt Eva (her name was Eva but fer some reason they called her Evvy and I was told to call her Aunt Evvy) lived. When I first remember her, she had a husband..a long, tall drink of water he was, and his name was Taylor Attaway. We was told to call him Uncle Tate. My mama had whispered to me in the backseat of my grandparents' car on the way there, that Aunt Evvy wasn't my Aunt at all, but my grandmother's cousin who'd been raised with her and when she's only sixteen she'd run off with this gambler (that'd be my Uncle Tate). Aunt Evvy was the daughter of a circuit rider who was always referred to as Uncle George.

Now Uncle George was big as all hell and half of Texas and was bound to carry the WORD 'round the state at revivals, cometomeetin camps, which gave the little towns an excuse to leave the barrooms, the fields, and cotton gins and come out to hear some real barrel thumpin'. Now what sent Uncle George to the worm farm, I ain't real sure, but he died for sure before his time.

I was real fascinated with Uncle Tate but not much with Aunt Evvy. He played card tricks with me sittin' on his bony knee. The first thing he liked to show everybody was that he could cross his legs and both feet would sit flat on the floor. He would pull nickels out of our ears (that was when the cousins came too) and he'd tell stories about the cowboys he gambled with when he hired out as an extra hand and drove cattle up to Kansas. I knew about Kansas on account of I had been borned in Kansas City and I knew it was a class town.

Later my grandfather said Uncle Tate had been a real hellraiser. He'd go out on gamblin' streaks and win a huge chunk of dough and then he'd buy Aunt Evvy big presents and fancy jewelry; but then he'd hock it (you know, at a pawn shop) and then she'd go lookin for somethin' and it'd be gone and also he would drink back then (I'm guessin a lot) so's anyway sometime before I was born probly and long before Billy Joe got sent to jail for somethin they never told me about, Aunt Evvy put down her tiny foot and said she'd be leavin' if he didn't give up the drink. He never totally gave up the gamblin' though and I reckon' that was right 'cause later she mooned around and talked about him like he was a hero.

I don't remember when poor ole' Uncle Tate died but I know I didn't go to the funeral, I'd 'a remembered that, but die he did, and she took to her bed. I didn't know why and thinkin' back on it now I can't see why she did. She bought herself a load of bed jackets. I cain't even remember havin' seen them in stores but they's frilly little things with ruffles and bows and stuff and she wore one over a gown or robe or something.

Someone had moved her bed to the dining room of her tiny ol' house and there she sat in her bed jacket with the covers pulled up to her waist,and proceeded to entertain guests. I can't even remember eatin' there. I think for dinner we had to go down to the town cafe. I'll tell y'all 'bout that place later. I had occasion to go there a few times by myself.

It was pretty borin' going to see her in later years so I sneaked out her house to see what little town life was like. The lady next door was always tendin' flowers in her yard. She was large and when she bent over her butt looked like two hams in a tow sack. Swear to God, her name was Fanny Pillow. All y'all will think I'm stretchin' the truth, but I ain't, still she was nice, bless her peapickin' heart. Lord, that woman could bake. She brought out cookies and cake and a pitcher of iced sweet tea and we had us a tea party right there in front of God and everybody on her front porch.

'Course it was always hotter 'n hades everytime we's there, seems like and often some Panhandle rain (that's a dust storm for y'all who don't know) blowin' napkins and such around but I had a high old time over at Fanny Pillows. Wasn't long, though, before I went meandering down the street. I mean this town weren't even as big as my portion of paradise in Amarillo so you could see the whole thing in 'bout half an hour. So next...
.........................
This here is only the first installment of this story...there's more characters to meet. Stay tuned for LillyLu, she was loose as ashes and as they said 'round there, yea, she was just natcherly horizontal.

Billy Wills, the pool hall shark, he was so lucky that he was ridin' a gravy train with biscuit wheels.

Big Al, the banker, who was all spread out like a cold supper and as full of wind as a corn-eating horse.

Dan Devonish - he was the mayor and also meaner than a skilletful of rattlesnakes but he was oilier than the oil from 'em too.

And other colorful folks in upcoming episodes.

Thanks y'all for stoppin' by the porch today; now go have yerself a heap of fun!

Posted for Poetics at dVersePoets today to illustrate idiom.  Well this here's my idiom! And to hear me read it
in my very own voice, click on the player at the top.