Coffeeshop Writer's Group / Poem: In the Sitting Room

photo by Jake McHugh
Carly Brown, Mary Ellen Sykes, Nadia Lande, Ruth Deming, Beatriz Moisset, Donna Krause. Not shown: Linda Barrett, Kym Cohen and Mary Brucker.

Great group today. We added a newcomer from Glenside, PA, who often drives to Weinrich's to work on her memoirs with the help of doughnuts, chocolate croissants, and shtrudel.

I'll tell you what's really rewarding: we give feedback and the writers really appreciate it.

We're working on our first poetry mag. I found the graphic designer thru a newcomer at New Directions.

But it was really kismet that brought everyone together today at Weinrich's. One of our members is going thru one of those immobilizing breakups and our members really comforted her, esp. Carly who 'brought her in from the cold.' Carly read an essay The Rest of Our Lives about a projected year-long cross-country trip w/ hubby Charlie of 43 years.

We met young Jake McHugh, who attends Archbishop Wood in Warminster, and asked him to take a photo of us with his big black Nikon. He said he'd mail it to me by the end of the day.

He did!

Let the photos speak for themselves.

That's me. Peggela's gonna come over and give me a dye job so my hair won't be orange anymore. We don't wanna scare the surgical team on April 1.

Nadia Lande. I found this natural poet in our Monday nite Poetry Class at Cheltenham Adult Evening School taught by the one and only Bill Kulik. He contributed a few to Icing.

Ah, here's our Carly Brown. We'll miss her when she leaves for farflung points in the good ole USA.

I liked this shot of a pensive Beatriz Moisset. Her nature essay today was about growing up in Argentina.

Donna Krause read a moving poem about her conversion to Catholicism. She was raised a Lutheran and brought up her kids as Lutheran but always wanted to become Catholic. So last year she took lessons and fulfilled her dream.

Linda Barrett left before we took our group shot. Darn! She wrote one of her dandy poems, this time about....Ireland.

Never noticed this icebox in the coffeeshop before. Owned by one of Stephen Weinrich's great-aunts, it's over 100 yrs old.

Tea set for sale at Weinrich's. "I'm a little tea pot short and stout, here is my handle, here is my spout."

Now this you'll have to click on a couple times to magnify it. Louise Gluck is a famous poet no one has ever heard of. Born in 1943 of Hungarian Jewish parents, she was raised in NYC and is the Pultizer-Prize-winning author of numerous books. This is a draft of one of her poems w/ changes scribbed in the margins and her signature in the lower right.

Nadia read the completed poem while we read the original draft to see what she'd changed.

Stephen Weinrich made copies of this wonderful document for us. Everyone got a copy. Then he left to go on a bike ride.

I wonder if my friend Iris knows Gluck's poetry. I hadn't read her but certainly will.


IN THE SITTING ROOM


This was my father’s favorite room

The loveseats especially where

Mom and I sit contemplating

What’s left of the other

She brings out her letters and photos

No one cares

Her and dad, his arm ‘round her waist

high heels shining on the warm Cleveland grass

‘before we were married’ she says

His daily love letters typewritten on

Marine stationery, I wanted to hear her say

Her love for him was unstoppable, even beyond the

Grave, but feelings are submerged in this family

Though when mine popped out accidentally I was

Sent to the ward

The shiny black and whites pass between us

Ah, here I am, that famous one of me at three

Scrubbing the front porch, a nipple showing in a

Careless pose,

In another I am bottomless

That’s the one my father carried in his wallet

I‘ve never complained

Never told anybody

Though some nights I cringed under my blankets

And of course have never forgiven them

Mom passes me the menu they served at Camp Lejeune

The day I was born 65 years ago

Christmas 1945:

How near it sounds, how hallowed

bouillon of beef – hearts of celery –

Roast young Maryland turkey - giblet gravy –

hot mince pie -

It’s like they’re serving it today

in the other room

the long-departed who

Served their country with rifles and warm -water canteens

not far away on another table is baby Ruth

Beet-red and good enough to eat when she first comes sliding

down the chute

Roast young Carolinian Ruthie

They loved her right away and here are the pictures to prove it

Mom hands me a batch of black and whites with

curly-cue edges

her massive 88-year-old jowls proud as

A Golden Retriever’s – and quiver not –

Young Ruthie is on her belly, smiling for the camera at Higbee’s

Are those dad’s eyes?

And soft eyebrows waiting to be noticed?

Our sacred exchange of death-bed sanctities

Is witnessed by no one but the ghosts of

Our lives

too easily assembling underground

I gather up the party favors from a

life well spent

And study her wrinkled cheeks as she must be studying mine

seated on the couches my father loved

and take the photos home

the burden now mine.