Three Poems by J.A. Karpinska

 

WHERE DOES IT HURT, EXACTLY?

The writing-guide points out:

            Emotions don't happen in Nowhereland,
                        they must be grounded in location

So, I think of Guatamala; Haiti; valleys; caves and condominiums;
back-rooms, basements; places I've never been to, or even seen

add my reproductive system; cerebellum; thyroid; pineal gland;
gum-bed; aorta; arterial system, and then, suddenly, memories

re-play as vivid scenes: conflicts and upsets, looped reels spooling out ~
in endless flickered distress, strobe-effect, slo-mo mistakes; scores of old

scars; cutting remarks scratched on record decks, top volume sound-tracks
of indecent brawls; Cry Baby Wah-Wah kicking in as my gut sinks down

inside a ringside, bucket-seat, as lush velvet curtains openly sag
from decades of neglect, gathering more dust as paint begins

to dissolve in long, sliding runnels of tears pooling at my feet, sinking
into the ground, then crashing through the floor – down and down

through the ceiling of whatever was beneath, until there's no more
beneath to be had, by anyone - until I am 'grounded', by sleight

of imagination in an art deco cinema in Amsterdam, still in the dark
having watched Orlando, based on the novel by Virginia Woolf, and

what comes of being told: do not fade, do not wither, do not grow old
play out in technicolour, filling the big screen, filling the in-between

with no choice of ice-cream to be had - just the ticket of what has been.

 

MAKE BELIEVE

I listened ~

resting my head on the desk at school, as stories were told
of The Family at One End Street, I so wished I was part of;
envied, too, The Swiss Family Robinson, who, although
stranded on a desert island made Home out of nothing,
and turned 'disaster' into 'adventure' - all pulling together.

I read ~

Little Women; What Katy Did; What Katy Did Next - each
with loving families, and all the support needed to overcome
hardship, whilst the nearest I got to meeting my own need
came secondhand: page by page, or serialised.

I watched ~

Little House on the Prairie; and The Waltons religiously,
wanting that kind of life for myself. Back then, growing up,
t.v. shows didn't feature single-parent families; bigotry was
entertainment, but dysfunction didn't make for good sitcoms.

I learned ~

what I wanted and how I lived couldn't have been more different.
All I yearned for, found only in stories: read, heard, or watched,
that happened to other other people, other girls, real or fictional,
unless, I followed their lead and learned I, too, could make believe. 

 

NATURE AND NURTURE (the apple doesn't fall far from the tree)

When you were six, you turned a sycamore leaf
into the face of a fox, adding red berry eyes;

drew round that craggy shape to name new islands
amid oceans of coloured paper.

A child, absorbed, in the pose of a child; a devotee
on her knees in the act of honouring creation.

Your imagination manifested creatures, and patterns;
a string of leaf-bunting – as a whirlwind rising up -

transported from carpet to be fixed to light fittings, clinging
to curtains until the room dripped autumn.

                        *                      *                      *

Now your own daughter, the self-same age, finds
stories and beauty in buds and petals; cares

more for elves and pixies than screens and pixels. Transfixed,
by aerial feats performed by long-distance weavers,

industrious spiders, walking tight-ropes of invisible thread,
to catch flies unaware, in their silver mandalas.

She, too, takes pleasure walking in woods, foraging ink
from oak tree galls and inkcap fungus; drawing

beetle-scrawls with seagull-quills gathered from blustery walks
down to the coast; painting pebble paper-weights. And so,

each generation, at home with Mother Nature, passes
the baton of play - in a relay that nurtures