Day in the Park


Hecksher Park tulips

Met my friend Stefanie and her kids for pizza and a few hours in Hecksher Park today. It was a truly gorgeous afternoon, blue skies and temps in the mid sixties. The park is an oasis of tulips, and in fact next week will be hosting a tulip festival. Stef had some poetry books with her she had just bought at the Book Revue, and we leafed through them and talked poetry and manuscript publishing on a bench in the sun while the kids took turns burying each other in a sandbox. Out of the blue a woman approached me and said, "Mary Jane?" I didn't recognize her at first, but it it turned out to be my old assistant editor at Beauty Fashion magazine, Andrea. She has two kids now too and lives with her husband in nearby Woodbury. I hadn't seen her in about 12 years. Oddly, I had had a Beauty Fashion nightmare last night which I had been discussing with Johanna just before leaving for the park. Life is very strange. Beauty Fashion was a hideous place to work and I have a recurring nightmare that I am back in the office, and don't know how it is I have come to work there again. Usually I am responsible in the dream for several publications and there is nothing stored in my computer in the way of articles. Doom in the form of the psycho publisher is just around the corner from my cubicle. Johanna has similar nightmares.


The Tulip Bed


The May sun--whom
all things imitate--
that glues small leaves to
the wooden trees
shone from the sky
through blue gauze clouds
upon the ground.
Under the leafy trees
where the suburban streets
lay crossed,
with houses on each corner,
tangled shadows had begun
to join
the roadway and the lawns.
With excellent precision
the tulip bed
inside the iron fence
upreared its gaudy
yellow, white and red,
rimmed round with grass,
reposedly.

William Carlos Williams

What is Necessary?

Bleary Saturday morning. Got up way too early on Jack's deflated blow up mattress. Kids fell asleep on pull-out couch so I bunked down in Jack's room with Maureen Dowd's "Are Men Necessary?" Most of the men she is writing about don't seem to be (necessary), and I was just getting down to the degenerative genetic state of the Y chromosome when I fell asleep. I woke up on the floor, underscoring how vital finding real beds for the children has become. Jack is growing up into a man who through his kindness, humor and intellect, will always be important to the world around him. The word "necessary" is interesting. How many of us are "necessary"? People die, disappear, move on, and the world still turns. A new person steps into the gap the old person left behind in all aspects of life. We're all temporary. So this morning it seems to me that nobody is really necessary. Objects, however, like beds that stay beds all night long, are. And so is the money to buy them. Children's father has agreed to pay child support this week out of his off-the-books salary. This is most likely not going to happen, but if it does maybe I'll bed shop this weekend.

After Us
by Connie Wanek

I don't know if we're in the beginning
or in the final stage.
-- Tomas Tranströmer

Rain is falling through the roof.
And all that prospered under the sun,
the books that opened in the morning
and closed at night, and all day
turned their pages to the light;

the sketches of boats and strong forearms
and clever faces, and of fields
and barns, and of a bowl of eggs,
and lying across the piano
the silver stick of a flute; everything

invented and imagined,
everything whispered and sung,
all silenced by cold rain.

The sky is the color of gravestones.
The rain tastes like salt, and rises
in the streets like a ruinous tide.
We spoke of millions, of billions of years.
We talked and talked.

Then a drop of rain fell
into the sound hole of the guitar, another
onto the unmade bed. And after us,
the rain will cease or it will go on falling,
even upon itself.

Just back from Madeline the therapist,who had some good suggestions re: Katie. My first impulse was to find a female therapist for Kate. Madeline pointed out that Kate would probably benefit from a good male therapist, the classic stand in for the men gone missing from her life. Madeline being the guardian angel that she is had some names for me.
Before Madeline, I had to go back to work for a 6:30 pm "Family Style Spagehtti Dinner" night which was supposed to impress upon us the need for the preschoolers to eat family style (i.e. pass the food around and help set the table). Why an extra hour and a half of my time was necessary to get across an idea that could have been communicated in two sentences is beyond me. The rah-rah team spirit thing that the place tries to promulgate is just bizzare in light of the long hours and miniscule pay the staff receives. We actually had to make a circle and be pasta pots and softening spagehtti. Thank you god I was not chosen to be the pasta. Much catty sniping and backstabbing going on at the event. I just kept my mouth shut and counted the minutes till I could get out of there.
Am working on two different poems right now, one about how people mourn and deliberately don't mourn, and another that uses "abandon" in several different ways.It feels good to be working again. I am going to zone out in front of the TV...kids are with their dad and I am queen of the remote this evening.


On the Beach at Night
by Walt Whitman


1

On the beach, at night,
Stands a child, with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading, 5
Lower, sullen and fast, athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends, large and calm, the lord-star Jupiter;
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate brothers, the Pleiades. 10

2

From the beach, the child, holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower, victorious, soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.

Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears;
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky—shall devour the stars only in apparition:
Jupiter shall emerge—be patient—watch again another night—the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal—all those stars, both silvery and golden, shall shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again—they endure;
The vast immortal suns, and the long-enduring pensive moons, shall again shine.

3

Then, dearest child, mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding, I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter,
Longer than sun, or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant brothers, the Pleiades.

Ghosts

Bad night with Kate and I am at my wits end. Think all this acting out and anger may have something to do with the fiancee disappearing from our lives. Her eyes are so damn sad.
Talking yesterday with my co-worker Bridget about ghosts and supernatural events. Seems she has been seeing and hearing things since she was a child. She is in her mid twenties and has always been terrified of the "people" following her around. Told her about Jack, who in second grade wrote "I am thankful for my psychic ability" on his Thanksgiving school project. I saw it on the wall of his classroom on Parent's Night. Bridget has never tried telling the spirits bothering her to get lost. I suggested she give it a try as it has worked for both myself and Jack before. She told me since she has moved in with her fiancee, things have quieted down. She thinks this is because he is such a devout non-believer in all things paranormal. She sees him as a shield.
Five minutes to kiddie wake-up call. Gotta get more coffee. Came across this poem recently from New York School poet John Ashbery and really like it. See what you think....

Meaningful Love
by John Ashbery


What the bad news was
became apparent too late
for us to do anything good about it.

I was offered no urgent dreaming,
didn't need a name or anything.
Everything was taken care of.

In the medium-size city of my awareness
voles are building colossi.
The blue room is over there.

He put out no feelers.
The day was all as one to him.
Some days he never leaves his room
and those are the best days,
by far.

There were morose gardens farther down the slope,
anthills that looked like they belonged there.
The sausages were undercooked,
the wine too cold, the bread molten.
Who said to bring sweaters?
The climate's not that dependable.

The Atlantic crawled slowly to the left
pinning a message on the unbound golden hair of sleeping maidens,
a ruse for next time,

where fire and water are rampant in the streets,
the gate closed—no visitors today
or any evident heartbeat.

I got rid of the book of fairy tales,
pawned my old car, bought a ticket to the funhouse,
found myself back here at six o'clock,
pondering "possible side effects."

There was no harm in loving then,
no certain good either. But love was loving servants
or bosses. No straight road issuing from it.
Leaves around the door are penciled losses.
Twenty years to fix it.
Asters bloom one way or another.

Just watched American Idol and dissected results with my friend Lia. My heart belongs to Taylor, although Lia and I spent many minutes oohing and ahhing over Chris and his yummy performance. After seeing American Dreamz I feel a little embarrassed to admit I watch Idol, just another American caught up in the hype and faux drama. But hell, I LOVE the show and watch every week, whatever that makes me.
Jack's results back from NYSMA and he did really well. Extraordinarily proud of him. Today he walked his sister to the babysitters after school, first time they walked home alone. Jack was quietly proud of himself, and Kate outraged she had to walk ten minutes. Burst through the sitter's door gasping, "Water! Water!" Indignant diva baby has also become raging, miserable psycho baby as of late. Outbursts are getting crazier and crazier. I think its time to find her somebody to talk to. It's as if she were 13 or 14 years old (instead of 8.) Am also taking her for a physical to see if we're dealing with early hormone release. Had to do math homework with her tonight and frankly, I'd rather eat broken glass.
It's late and I have to get them into bed. Expecting howling and begging from Kate. I have loved that child desperately from the moment I laid eyes on her, and have written several poems inspired by the determination and boldness of her spirit. Perhaps I have created a monster. I will probably post Kate poems here at some point. Feel more like posting something from Ruth Stone tonight:

The Ways of Daughters

My daughters are getting on.
They're in over their hips,
over their stretch marks.
Their debts are rising
and their faces are serious.

There are no great barns
or riding horses.
Only one of them has a washing machine.
Their old cars break
and are never fixed.

So what is this substance
that floods over them,
into which they wade
as if going out
to meet the Phoenicians?

And they have no nets
for those shifty looking sailors.
But when I look again,
my daughters are alone in their kitchens.
Each child sweats in its junior bed.

And my girls are painting their fingernails.
They are rubbing lotions
on their impatient hands. This year
they are staining their hands and feet with henna.
They lie in the sun with henna packs on their hair.

from Painted Bride Quarterly
Copyright © 2000 by Ruth Stone.

The Post that Got Away

Wrote an entire post earlier this evening on the difficulties of motherhood and writing, with links and quotes and poems. Took me an hour, and stopped just before posting to deal with my son who was crying that he was depressed because he had nothing to do. Turns out he had math homework to do, but that is another story. Got back to post, clicked enter, and unable to process note popped up because two minutes before I hit enter, blog spot went down for repairs. Hours worth of writing lost, and I am too fed up and tired now to redo it (laudry, dishes, homework redoing, etc. etc. finally done and I'm done now too). It really was an excellent post. Look up Beth Anne Fennelly for one poet's take on writing and mothering. Fennelly is admirably subdued on the topic "I used to write poetry but the baby ate my brain." In Plath's "Stopped Dead," there's a line that comes back to me again and again, "There's always a bloody baby in the air." Poem by me below. Night, all.

NIGHT DRIVE

I want to get into the car
And drive on and on in the dark
Making for Santa Fe or New Orleans,
Anywhere but this house, this cape of claims
With its goose down, gimme’s and get me nows.
I am not Rapunzel. I’ve no wish
To be climbed like Everest
And then obligated to provide
A cool drink, a warm bath
To the usurpers of my solitude.

In the car there is only the steering wheel,
The gas and the brake
To operate at will.
I have been alone, but not alone enough.
The children will have to go elsewhere
For mother care, and adequate feedings.
I will live on roadside apple pie and night air.
I will grow like Night Shade;
Shed my size and tower
Into the open sky with stars.
I will steal a convertible
And live lush on the lam.
Mother will always be somebody else:
The woman just in the corner
Of my sped up vision,
Shushing a backseat of brats
In a different lane;
A woman who bears
No resemblance to me.

Water, Prayer and the Northern State

Ride back from Brooklyn in the teeming rain today. Maneuvered the Jackie Robinson like a nascar pro, and then came the Northern State. Lots of flooding with me going slow and praying to god so as to prevent hydroplaning, skidding, and loss of brakes. It seems the only time I pray lately is when I'm on the Northern State. It's a simple prayer really, "Please god, don't let me die now." This is funny, as at other times there is this prayer going on in the back of my head that roughly translates to "kill me now." I have had conversations with the powers that be, in my saner moments, to completely ignore any requests from me for instant death.
Got home and found approx. 4 inches of water in my basement, with empty laundry baskets floating and Audrey the cat piteously meowing because her food, water, and litter were unreachable unless she chose to swim to them. Calls to landlord have gone unreturned and as there is nothing else I can (or will) do about the flood I am writing and having a snack (although my body still seems to revolt everytime I put food in it). Figure it will be a long time before flood waters reach the first floor.

Water

by Philip Larkin

If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

Brooklyn Saturday Night

Going out tonight with my sister and her friend Annie to a bar in Fort Greene. My sister Weezer jr. is an artist and so is Annie. Should be good to get dressed up, drink some gin and tonics and rejoin the living in a nighttime setting. New hair cut, new dress, new attitude! Funny how that works for women, if your hair looks great and you've got on a killer dress you feel transformed. Extremely glad to see the ass end of last week, and may I never wrap myself up in groundless heartsick gloom again.
Hope it stops raining as I have to take the Jackie Robinson Parkway, which is narrow and scary, with close cement walls I'm always afraid I'm going to skid into (lousy tires). Weezer Jr. lives in Bed Stuy, a weird neighborhood that is a mix of projects, Hassidim, hispanics, yuppies and artists. Her husband, Troy June, is an artist too, but he is visiting his family in Illinois (and my kids are with their father) so its girls' night out. Sometimes it is very good to be alive. Virus seems to be lingering a bit, and Weezer Jr. the fatalist has been ordering me to take a pregnancy test. If I am pregnant (which I'm not), then god has got a very peculiar sense of humor. And he's definately a man.

American Dreamz

Took my shaky stomach to the local movies tonight instead of NYC. Saw "American Dreamz" because I thought something funny would do me good....plus anything with thinly veiled "W" bashing is excellent entertainment as far as I'm concerned. It was so thinly veiled I wondered how the producers got away with it...I go to an anti-Bush bake sale and worry I'm going to disappear into Guantanamo. The previews before what turned out to be a great satire (it had Hugh Grant in it, how bad could it be?) included a 9/11 movie promo. They are currently finding "remains" and bone fragments in the Deutsch Bank adjacent to the WTC site and I have been wondering all week if any part of my friend Joyce is in there. So, damn promo made me cry when I specifically sat down for a feel good experience. Below is a poem I wrote after going down into the site on September 11, 2002:

First Anniversary

The wind whipped the names away.
Echoes in the canyon
And dust in my hair and eyes.
The grit of the dead is on my skin
And in my clothes.
We follow the concrete ramp
So white with sun glare
You don’t want to look down,
Although up is worse.
The mayor is saying something
And everyone is wearing leis.
Glass tinkles and breaks
Again and again
Beneath the black shroud
On the Deutsch Bank.
In the hole there is a box
To throw roses into.
Someone is holding a portrait over their head
Someone else is zombie walking
The place’s perimeter.
I pick up concrete
And put it in my pocket.
Later in a bar I pull it out
And picture your stilettos on the floor
It was blown from.
I think I have been breathing in dead people.
I hope I have been breathing in you.

M.J. Tenerelli

Here We go Again

Feeling decidedly funky this morning....think this may be stomach virus round two. Had nightmares about ex-fiancee all night. Must crawl into shower and put on stupid uniform. Here is pertinent poem by Sylvia Plath:


Mad Girl's Love Song

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

Freedom!

It is Thursday, after work, and this means luxurious freedom as the kids are with their father overnight. It is 79 degrees here at close to 5:00 pm, like summer, and I am hoping to get out for a margarita with one of my pals later on tonight... Someplace overlooking Centerport Harbor, with me dressed in something other than the Burger King clone Kiddie Acadamie uniform I am forced to wear to work everyday.

A blog should have pictures, so see photos of my daughter, my son and myself to begin with. Jack and Kate's pictures were taken by Peter Kenny, and the one of me by my good friend, trade writer and fantastic novelist Johanna Omelia. That's me on the left in dungeon photo.


A couple of years back my friend Miriam, an extraordinary poet who runs the poetry webzine roguescholars.com, had a backyard patio party for poets at her East Village home on an evening much like this one. I had a conversation with fellow rogue poet Magdalena Alagna's goth, tattooed and farm boy sweet husband about zombie movies, met fellow mommy poet (and now very good friend)Stefanie Lipsey for the first time, and spent the night drunkenly talking poetry with some of the best poets performing in New York City (check out Frank Simone, Big Mike, Jackie Sheeler, Meagan Brothers, Bob Hart, Camillo DeMaria and just about everyone else on poetz.com.) I guess I'm missing the scene as I haven't been in to read at Jackie's venue, The Pink Pony at the Cornelia Street Cafe, in at least a year. Am determined to return "home" tomorrow night though with some good new poems and the anticipation of hearing some excellent stuff too. I'll probably read this:

On Board

Cast off cross
You sink clean down now
To the sandy bottom
Of the Atlantic divide.
Fishes and filaments
Are calling you home,
A purpose,
A purpose!
You rot and redeem.
I sail the surface
Of what I’ve imagined,
Turning the wheel north, then east,
Using stars and a silver compass.
I am posture perfect
In a bare-backed cocktail dress
With sequins.


MJ Tenerelli

Tea

This morning, a cup of hot tea after a nasty stomach virus feels like a blessing. Watched my daughter sleep this morning (Kate, who is 8) and noticed how perfect her little eyebrows are and that her skin lit up with six a.m. light makes her look like a Renoir. More blessings. And wait, a third to report! Yesterday my son Jack (age 10) sang in front of the New York State Music Association. Brave, beautiful boy. His music teacher talked to me about his pure, lovely voice, perfect diction, and bright future as a singer if that's what he wants. Afterward, the children's father and I called a detente (oh the stories there) and we all had a celebratory cake and ice cream together in honor of Jack. To be continued later as I have to get ready for work and get Little Miss Renoir into the shower (transforming her into Little Miss Shrieking She-Demon).

Who Knew It Could Be So Easy?

How cool is this, your own blog in a matter of minutes? I am still working out what goes where here, and I think there's a profile section somewhere, but just the same I'll do some introduction. I'm MJ and this is a blog that will have much to do with poetry; mine, the work of fine poets I know and "famous" poets I love (hence the title of this blog.) It will also have to do with my day to day, although I will refrain from detailing what I ate for dinner (unless it was something fabulous undoubtedly cooked by someone else) or how I need to color my hair.
I'm a single mother of two, a freelance writer and currently a preschool teacher. I recently broke up with my fiancee, a Brit from Brighton who is mending his oh so broken heart by dating one month after ending our year long love affair (he would tell you this was all my fault and he would be wrong.) While the new honey underscores how right our ending really was, there's still an element of "ouch" reading about my replacement. But life goes on and so will this blog. Below is a poem I recently had published in a new UK magazine called "Parameter"

Tale of Two Sisters

My past is not getting on a bus.
She is not digging a hole to China.
She is not a red balloon
Disappearing inside of a minute
In the sky over a zoo.

My past will not put on
Traditional pilgrim dress.
She will not creep around
On her belly under cover of night
Or be bricked over like the north door
Of an old Sussex church.

If you are climbing a teetering tower
To fetch one of us, then you fetch two
Because the girl in the window
Won’t be parted
From her pug ugly sister;
Not for strong arms,
Not for love or money,
Not for the world.


I have begun work on a manuscript that I plan to send to a real publisher, get some real recognition, and some stellar feature gigs. I do have a chapbook, put out by a nice guy who ran it out at a Kinko's in New Jersey, so I'm not certain it counts as a real book. As features dates come up I will post them here for anybody who is interested in coming (mostly in the NYC area).

I'll end this post with a poem I love by Mary Oliver:

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shoutingtheir bad advice-though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles."Mend my life!"each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen branches and stones.
but little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do
determined to save
the only life you could save

from Dreamwork in: New and Selected Poems. Beacon Press, Boston, 1992