First Day Out 2012
07 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
by arlenecorwin in 2012, circling round nature, small stories book, swedish book Tags: nature, spring, writing
First Day Out
Just in case I get a thought,
I’ve brought
My pen and laptop
Paper.
The old-fashioned way.
Feb. twelve. Light
Brighter over treetop and
I hear a saw afar; a farmer
Somewhere
Making preparation.
He wants light or wood.
And/or – that’s good.
Country dwellers – they’re so clever.
I sit.
Rooftop snow has almost hit me,
Missing by an inch.
Melt, melt…
This
Is story-telling:
Poest-ory-telling.
Trivial,
But worth a word.
Another thud.
What luck!
I’m tucked under an eave
Exposed to ultra-violet
I need.
Light’s back and lengthening;
Apple cake inside is baking.
We will gain an hour next month.
Still, temperature demands
Two pairs of tights, leg warmers,
T-shirt, sweater, vest, coat, hat.
That’s that.
My first day out.
First Day Out 2.12.2012
Small Stories Book; Swedish Book; Circling Round Nature;
Arlene Corwin
Thinking About Harriet Balter
03 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
by arlenecorwin in 2012, birth death & in between II, small stories book
Thinking About Harriet Balter
Harriet died when I was thirteen.
She was thirteen too. Or twelve.
Harriet popped in every day.
Everyday.
She talked too much, had dimples, curly hair,
And she was chubby.
(I haven’t heard ‘chubby’ since those years.
Is anyone ‘chubby’ anymore?)
One day as she chatted gaily.
“I heard the doctor tell my mom –
I was in the other room –
That I have Bright’s Disease.
I’m going to die…” No one home
Believed her.
In her sing-song, quasi-boastful way she giggled.
Neither she nor I believed she’d die –
A concept so remote.
She died.
She’d heard it right.
What kind of doctor says that shite
In hearing distance of a child?
White-dressed in open casket.
I peered in and went away,
Not absorbing that my friend’d
Really ended,
Where was I?
Detached, unformed, unsympathetic, green -
Sixty-four years late H comes to mind.
I cannot find
The proper words
It’s taken decades to redress -
Amend a sorry! Really, really sorry!
To a friend.
Thinking About Harriet Balter 2.2.2012
Birth, Death & In Between II; Small Stories Book;
Arlene Corwin
A Small Irony 2011
02 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
by arlenecorwin in 2011, our times our culture, small stories book
A Small Irony
Not an –ist: social-, capital-, activist.
I watch:
The chains,
The links,
The arrows.
A friend now in his thirties,
Diagnosed with ADD
Before there was an ADD
And other things misunderstood,
With pension since he came of age,
Has never labored mind or body.
He does not like to work.
They never diagnosed his character:
(they do not think in terms like this)
He gets his check, which pays for goods,
The necessary and the non-,
An apartment and his food,
A fifty-two inch television,
Cell phones by the dozen.
Housed, amused,
All first run movies at cut-rate…
And he buys and longs for…
Longs for, buys…
Here’s the thing:
Every penny in goes out.
Way in debt,
(Yes, he can borrow)
He’s a channel, tube and conduit.
If he doesn’t pay his taxes,
Still he’s paying taxes.
Coinage going round in circles.
He complains he hasn’t got enough.
It’s rough!
A Small Irony 11.2.2011
Small Stories Book; Our Times, Our Culture;
Arlene Corwin
Married Couple 2011
11 May 2011 Leave a Comment
by arlenecorwin in 2011, love relationships; circling round eros, small stories book
Married Couple
Big house.
Great parties.
But in real life,
When he approaches
She backs off,
Back down…away.
Is he too amorous,
She cold?
Is it a simple chemistry
That doesn’t hold?
Great cook, great boss, great energy
And yet
The secret
Behind union
Eludes both of them,
And those who watch.
Married Couple 5.11.2011
Love Relationships; Small Stories;
Arlene Corwin
Karma and Rufus 2010
07 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment
by arlenecorwin in 2010, I Is Always You is We, small stories book, special people special occasions
Karma and Rufus
Have you thought it through,
Or is that instinct guiding you?
I’m talking about karma.
Birth until this day. Are we decreed
A destiny?
And do we have it coming?
Rufus makes love to a bowling ball.
He’s hardly any brain at all,
The ball his girlfriend and his hole.
Did he do wrong ‘fore he was born?
I ‘ve deserved each failed-at song,
Am grateful for the rest – am blessed,
Have sensed the good side of calamity,
The backside of the coin.
But I’ve a brain,
Something to blame, and I can change.
Our witless fellow is unarmed.
Is this thing karma?
This can ramify until it’s green,
Subdivision after sub…
Karma is invisible. But mean?
It can’t be. One life grasped and seen
Must lead to something good.
It should,
If there is justice -
(Or it’s just to fill papyruses).
I must think Rufus
Has a future.
© Karma & Rufus 6.26.2010 I Is Always We Is You; Small Stories Book; Special People, Special Occasions; Arlene Corwin
A Little Story Of Self Knowledge 2007
21 Jul 2010 Leave a Comment
by arlenecorwin in 2007, pure nakedness, small stories book, Uncategorized
I sensed I behind the eye.
I knew there was an I Observing
What went on before me.
With my getting bigger,
Came the lessening of IBehind the eye,
The witness more and more
Ignored.
Even then, I sometimes felt my eye
Through intuition,
But let dying happen;
Traced the loss as if there were
An I that knew
That one must go
Through stages,
Without choosing where and which.
Where was free will?
And where control?
And to what end?
To understand my fellow man,
My fellow beings and myself,
Loving all, becoming one
With star and sun?
As long as thought remains,
It tells me that the play is still in action –
Not yet done.
Arlene Corwin
Other People’s Stories 2010
15 Apr 2010 Leave a Comment
by arlenecorwin in 2010, our times our culture, small stories book
Other People’s Stories The radio is fatal. I sit in bed, a glass of coffee, home-baked cake, Listening to tale on tale – two lives that suck me in: A Swedish man, his vacant past; Memories that cast new shadows: Polish…rescue… child… ghetto, Only now remembering the sewer Only now finding his mother, Only now – two thousand ten. Then What must have been A scheduled error Half an hour of the latest Nobel winner’s story: Postwar Germans born Rumanians – a booty Justified by Russian victors. Distanced, cold, dispassionate. Vomit, corpses, hunger, shit. Is there a stronger than horrific? Side by side, two programs As I sip my coffee, pick at cake, Mindlessly licking my fork, Sick-cieties playing at games That woo a doomsday closing in.
© Other People’s Stories 3.22.2010 Our Times, Our Culture; Small Stories Book; Arlene Corwin
Remembering Childhoods 2010 version 2
09 Apr 2010 Leave a Comment
by arlenecorwin in 2010, small stories book
Remembering Childhoods
She talked her childhood to death:
Going ‘round the neighborhood
To beg for food;
Pawning daddy’s suit anew
(for the whole damned street to view)
Hiding from the landlord’s knock;
Telling grocer Ralph “next week’.
Memories of a cleaning, scrubbing,
Kindly, loving, almost saintly mama
Dead too soon. Papa cool, (left with one son
And daughters six) She’d cry,
Re-living without knowing why.
Before a phrase was out,
Family knew each salt-tear word,
Memorized, internalized – each shade
Embroidered in her weave,
Good and bad embedded, sutured
In (or is it ‘to’) its future.
I myself get quickly bored:
Telling, hearing, listening
To my stories from my mouth about my youth.
My, my, my, my…
Why would I
Repeat and echo
When the need no longer feeds?
And you?
©Remembering Childhoods 2.24.2010 Small Stories Book; Arlene Corwin
Remembering Childhoods 2010
09 Apr 2010 Leave a Comment
by arlenecorwin in 2010, small stories book
Remembering Childhoods
She talked her childhood to death:
Going ‘round the neighborhood
To beg for food;
Pawning daddy’s suit anew;
Hiding from the landlord’s knock;
Telling grocer Ralph “next week’.
Mama gone at thirty-nine
Memories of cleaning, scrubbing, kindly,
Loving, saintly mama.
Papa cool-ish, strict,
With son and daughters six.
She’d talk and cry
Re-re-re-living without knowing why.
Family knew each teary word,
Memorized, internalized each shade
Embroidered in her childhood weave,
Good and bad
Embedded, sutured in its future.
I myself get quickly bored experimenting:
Telling, hearing listening to
The stories of my youth:
The need no longer feeds a thing.
You?
©Remembering Childhoods 2.24.2010 Small Stories Book; Arlene Corwin
Comforting Oneself 2010
06 Apr 2010 Leave a Comment
by arlenecorwin in 2010, birth death & in between, small stories book, swedish book
Comforting Oneself
A dear young doe lay dead beside the road.
Driving cowboy style on motorcycle
Fifty, sixty miles an hour, the day before:
Our neighbor’s son.
I asked the son if he had hit it.
He denied it.
I lost words: had to accept it.
Coincidence improbable,
The path a long way from the world
With scarce a vehicle on road,
We’d heard him burn his tires
Just before the fawn was spotted
Feeling-less and unattended.
Odds that it was someone else?
The gods of bookies know it is infinity
To one.
We may never know who did it,
Never meet the culprit. Hear “I’m sorry”.
But it’s down for all to see – out there for eternity,
And that’s a comfort.
Pretty still in stiffening,
We buried the poor thing,
© Comforting Oneself 3.16.2010 Birth, Death & In Between; Small Stories Book; Swedish Book; Arlene Corwin
