MSU LIBRARIES “ RETURNING MATERIALS: Place in book drop to remove this checkout from your record. FINES wil] be charged if book is returned after the date stamped be10w. CHAIN STITCHES By Karen Marie Williams A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of English 1985 t/rw ABSTRACT CHAIN STITCHES By Karen Marie Williams The chain stitch is the most fundamental of the crochet stitches. Yet when a piece of work, perhaps an afghan, is laid aside, it is also the least discernible of the stitches. It is the first step you take in the making; it is what holds it all together in the end. Each of these poems represents one stitch. Together, they are a very small part of the tapestry of human existence. But the people and the encounters they portray are vital in its weaving, and have been vital in my existence. The emotions and experiences they depict are known to many of us, and I believe they are some of the roots that link us in humanity. To Leonore Hendryx, with love ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank Douglas Lawder, who directed my work on this thesis. His many brilliant insights have helped me gain a new perspective on both my poetry and poetry in general. It will, perhaps, be several years before the full effects of his influence can be seen in my poems. The more I write, the more I understand the importance of what he has taught me. Linda Wagner has provided me with many, many hours of guidance and support. It was her encouragement and instruction that opened the door to writing for me. For that, and for all the help she has given, pulling me through many rough times, I will be forever indebted. I am also very grateful to Diane Wakoski. Her critical acumen and her refusal to accept anything less than she felt I was capable of, have helped sharpen my skills and have unearthed new paths for me. For his unending patience, I offer appreciation to Howard Anderson. He has provided me with direction throughout my work on this degree. He has also helped me more clearly comprehend the role of the reader, and the responsibilities of the poet when she writes. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Survivors.................................................1 Mrs. T....................................................3 The Letters...............................................6 First Snow................................................8 Mrs. Willis...............................................9 Granddad.................................................11 Conquering Fear..........................................13 The Seer.............. ..... ..............................15 Oedipus..................................................18 Great Aunt Esther........................................19 Beaten...................................................21 Chain Stitches........ ............. . ........... .... ..... .23 Uncle. ....... ...... .................... ........ ........ ..26 Aftermath of an Argument.......... ...... . ...... ..........28 Parting..................................................29 First Born...............................................31 Funeral Home Feast.......................................33 Marionette...............................................35 Under Pretense of Infanticide............................37 Periscope................................................39 Clinging to Bannisters...................................42 Progress.................................................44 iv First Words.............................................46 But When We Know........................................48 Magical Healers.........................................50 Peppermint Sticks....... ....... ... ......... .............53 Remembering Megan.......................................56 To L.H..................................................57 In Memory...............................................59 Beginnings..............................................60 Hurry Home..............................................61 The Apple PoemOOIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOIOO0.0.00000000000000000062 Survivors You used to tease me. Waterlilies in the pond on our farm. You said they were so out of place. Something delicate, exquisite, quietly surviving our common lives. I think about the pond, its water. The many rains. The years of accumulation. And the lilies-- they survive like buoys, life preservers. Even after a heavy rain. It's been three years since you drowned. And eight months. I have never quite forgiven you. This morning, the lilies are misted with dew. They seem less clear, like I sometimes wish my memories were of you. Mrs. T You went to the same church every Sunday for the seven years I knew you, never missing one service. It was the church you grew up in. It was the church Andrew Borden attended until he was murdered with his wife on August 4th of 1892. They said his daughter did it, said Lizzie took a hatchet and hacked away, delivering ten blows to her father's body, nineteen to her stepmother's. And I'd never even heard of Lizzie Borden until I met you. You found my ignorance appalling and quickly straightened me out, sharing second-hand accounts of the trial, taking me to the Fall River Historical Socety where they had photographs and blood samples and the axhead, showing me the site of the murders and the home Lizzie lived in until her death and even the family graves. I was ten, then. Your name has been synonymous to me with Lizzie Borden's ever since, and you were the only person I've ever known who sincerely believed in her innocence, who agreed with the jury who freed her. It was not until five years had passed that you told me of your own parents' deaths just one week apart, just one month after your wedding. It was a marriage they had forbidden, despite your age of thirty. You walked out of the house in anger, after an argument, and never spoke to them again. And it was on that Sunday I understood why you attended that church with such regularity what kind of religion you practiced there why you claimed Lizzie Borden was innocent and why you clung to that conviction for life. The Letters We have set the distance between us now, perhaps finalized it, with these letters, mailed even the same day. Like two dragons we have sent them-— one Chinese, in celebration, and the other real, spitting flame. You write to me, saying our friendship is over. I write to you, asking if we can begin again. Now, the relationship is vague as clouds, and I am not wanting to relinquish you as friend. Two more letters? Will you answer what I send? Since you moved, things have become so unclear. I was angry with the distance. Are you angry with me for letting you go? Your words burn, like a glassmaker's flame. I want the glass whole, but cool, clear; I want to hold it, look through it, to see what we can find and renew. First Snow Flurries scar the sidewalk, color melting like the bad witch at water's touch. Soon, there will be nothing left. Flakes growing like tissue to mend some hideous sore. New skin, pure as a baby's, stretched on a frame of old bones. Whiteness struggling to smother the creaks. A human steps through, carving a wrinkle——not even earned. Mrs. Willis There was the time Mrs. Willis had attended old Mr. Bailey's funeral, and he sat upright in his coffin in the middle of the eulogy. This was back when embalming was still considered a "new" procedure, and the town undertaker was also the town furniture—maker. Mr. Bailey's rheumatism crippled him so badly that he walked all hunched over. They had to tie him down with ropes to flatten him out enough for a regular casket. But the ropes couldn't take the pressure, and half-way through the service, they broke. And it was also true that a childhood friend had died of the ague, had been placed in a large family tomb. Twelve years after her death, when they reopened the vault to place the child's mother there, they found a tiny skeleton 10 huddled next to the door -—eight feet from where her body had been laid. But, at ninety—three, eccentricity and claustrophobia were blamed for the demand in her will that an electronic buzzer be installed in her casket, her casket to be stored in an above—ground vault. The control, complete with lighted dial, would be placed between her hands -—the way some people hold flowers, or a Bible. ll Granddad White hair. Creviced face. Clothes disheveled. An overlay of flab at the belt, pulling at the last notch. He walked old. the flat ground——too steep. He came slowly toward me. Broad, yellow—tooth grin, and eyes-~ even the blue was faded. You. I had wondered why you had begun to treat me so young, so suddenly. You, who had been my best friend, with no time to listen now. You send out words, not seeming to care if they're found. Words, piling up between us. I'm sorry for my silence. I've always known you'd die, but I never thought you'd grow old. 12 l3 Conquering Fear I wish I could follow Faulkner's advice when he said we should recognize our fears and then forget them. Not the little apprehensions-- like dinner turning out right-- but the major fears that affect me and my life. When I was eleven, I lived next door to a ninety—seven—year—old woman, still living in the house she was born in. She was a cantankerous woman, and I was afraid of her. Mrs. Leland, I soon learned, was not afraid of anything. One night, a man broke into her house searching for her Social Security check. Mrs. Leland, asleep upstairs, was roused by his noise. She rose from bed, and hollered to her long-dead husband: 14 "Albert, get the gun. There's a man downstairs!" I want to be able to call to someone long dead, to some imaginary friend with a non-existent gun. The burglar, frightened, left. 15 The Seer In a row of dreary shops shadowed by green awnings, yours was the one that offered life. We came to you because of the because of the and because we as children bright garments you sold, windows of cheap jewelry which sparkled, liked the challenge of browsing under your stern eyes. You dressed as we thought a gypsy would, and we imagined you had special powers. When I was eleven, you had a booth at our church fair reading palms behind black curtains for a dollar. You seemed troubled when you took myhand, hesitated before saying I would not reach nineteen in this life. I was startled by your words and by the sincerity of your voice. I kept your prediction quiet-- 16 where it would haunt me—- thinking it foolish to be upset by an eccentric old woman. Perhaps it was just a cruel joke. Three years later, you were brought to a youth group meeting as speaker, told us of cases where you'd help the police locate bodies, of how they now came to you for help. You demonstrated your talents, telling one boy he repaired trucks and cars, telling a girl her parents had recently divorced, telling another her father's injury would heal. No matter what you said, you were right. And there was nothing I could do except wait. By the time I was eighteen, I had grown used to death. I had grown used to carrying its threat around with me. And I had created my own vision of death that left me nothing to fear but dying. 17 As that year drew to a close, I was torn between increasing anxiety and self-mockery that I had listened to you at all. And now, I can't help but wonder why you made that prediction. Has some fatal incident been foiled? Or were you simply helping a young girl to accept her own limitations so she could learn to live within them? 18 Oedipus The pin slips through —-no eye of a needle—— but easily, gently. Lids open, accepting. A violence well-intended. 19 Great Aunt Esther IhxeistflafltnflneremnfidiauIntindafihtuxeiSGMychfim&£. We used to visit you after church on Sundays at the Home for the Aged. You couldn't get around very well, and weren't able to attend the regular service. You had a Southern Baptist upbringing, and found religion in everything. Your one inconsistency, I had thought, was a checkerboard set up in your room. We used to ask if we could play. You said never on Sundays. We visited you on other days. You said never then, too. It was always dusted. The pieces perfectly lined up. It took me years to understand what you saw in that game, 20 that it was not the game you were protecting, but the people who might play it. You loved us too much to let us lose. 21 Beaten I could feel nothing except his open hands slamming against my face and his fists pounding into my body and I could hear only his shouting his swearing at me, pouring over me I could see a blur of this massive flesh encompassing me burying me I could taste the blood in my mouth I could say nothing I could only cry Then as the storm continued and I, blinded my hands found what they were searching for without my mind knowing what that was or my heart and I picked it up and he stopped and he fell 22 without meaning to either him or me and it was over and he was gone and I thought I was free But the people But the people didn't understand that he wouldn't stop that he wouldn't stop and that I didn't mean to hurt him but that something had to give. Was it supposed to have been me? 23 Chain Stitches I knew her, when a child, as the lady down the street who made the pretty coat hangers. She and my grandmother would spend hours together, crocheting beautiful covers in delicate pastels, always with tight yarns and thin needles, so they were soft and touchable. They didn't look like coat hangers at all. Six months ago, my grandmother was called to her friend's deathbed to hear something "no one else would understand." She told how she had twice performed abortions on herself during the Depression, 24 with seven children already and her husband out of work. ' she said. "No more hungry eyes,’ That night she died. When my grandmother came home, she was carrying bundles of her friend's hangers, hangers they had crocheted together on long, silent afternoons when I had wondered why they were so quiet, why they didn't talk. Then my grandmother led me to her own attic, pulled out boxes of all the coat hangers I had ever seen her make and more. She packed her friend's there, with her own, treating them more gently than old family photographs. That done, she pulled her friend's crochet needles from her apron pocket 25 and handed them to me. ' she said. "You need to know about crocheting,‘ "You're old enough now. Every woman should know how." 26 Uncle, I would stuff your mouth like a pig with an apple for roasting. It is too empty. Too many teeth frame the hollow. You lean back laughing laughing and never stop. Your mouth gapes, like an eye, trying to swallow me, me or anyone else within hearing. They tell me it's a tumor. You don't know what you're doing. But even after you're gone with your laughing, laughing... I'll still hear it. 27 28 Aftermath of an Argument With a puff of smoke from your cigarette, I try dissolving into air. Your cool manner betrays. The paper you so gently filled, carefully rolled, jiggles in your hand. Your eyes withdraw sitting solid, glazed. Words slip between us. I am paled by your voice. The cigarette leans on the table. I sense its quick, round burn. 29 Parting Your face goes blank as a still bell. Silence cushions the clapper-- it hangs mute as our tongues. Wordlessness resounds, tugs our eyes to the table between us. We do not see each other. It does not matter who first said goodbye, or why. It only matters that this will be our last meal together, that the closure of our time is cast with a dumb toll. With air still devoid of sound, 30 I watch your sigh. You push your chair back, consider the costs, leave to pay the bill. 31 First Born This pain should unify. I give myself to her. The child within me, gone. Two children, if you please, now one. The child I was, that wouldn't grow up, then her, new thing the doctor holds out. I play inspector. Do I want it to keep? It's a girl. Oh, I see. Two of each. Five of these. She'll do fine. Comes complete with a role I must try, a new name I shall wear all my life. My new life. 32 For a part of me 3 gone. Child. I can hold. This one I can touch. Yet she wanted out. Or did I want her out? Something's empty inside. 33 Funeral Home Feast Surely, death must become me. I was never so pretty alive. People gathered around, staring and talking, as if I were the turkey: a Thanksgiving feast, garnished with flowers. The dressing, my best. Tears, basting me in a rectangular pan. Lid open, I am exposed to critical eyes. Where are your forks and your knives? I have heard the grace said. Now why the delay? Is it my temperature that betrays? Neither hot nor cold. A skin difficult to brown. Yet try me. You see? I am all juice. And my meat, so tender. But the oven's still warm. You may cook me more. 34 Make me pure to eat. The heat, the heat. I am 22£_too big. You may cut me in half, if you choose, so I fit. I have lived for this feast. Do not bury me. 35 Marionette My mirror betrays. The reflection is light: white skin, moon face. There must be a candle inside, incandescing. My appearance, not real. I feel nothing: darkness, stuffing. A miner hollowed me out, chiseling, picking me barren. He dug to the skin before stopping, afraid I'd collapse, killing. Now I dance. A marionette, you or anyone can control, pulling strings. 36 Watch me respond. See my legs, how they flop? Limp arms bend. A hunched torso moves. You would think me alive. Do I fool? My show's free for the asking. 37 Under Pretense of Infanticide It is S a.m. and I have slept three hours in as many days. You came into this house four months ago like a miniature Trojan horse, hidden beneath white cotton and Pampers. Your cries have been scraping my ears like fingernails on a chalkboard, and I want to turn my fingernails back on you, across your jugular. Most would call me viscious, uncaring. But this impulse is as "natural" as motherhood. I know I betray all the madonna and child portraits American advertising ejaculates, but somehow they keep pictures of 38 colic and fatigue and single—parenthood in the reservoir—tip. It's not like I've done something wrong to you, or you're doing something wrong to me. This is as natural as beet-stained bibs and dirty diapers. This is part of having a child and growing up with one. So while I wear away my fuzzy bedroom shoes and the eggshell carpeting beneath your rocker, help me to remember: my mother did this for me, and the legacy must go on. But for now, just please let the crying stop. 39 Periscope The mirror catches a kind of reality and passes it down, within, to another mirror, then to eyes that feel. If there were no need to hide, would there be periscopes? I slip down down into myself and curl. A ball. A knot. A fist. There are no eyes in a fist. 40 I tighten, tighten. The world is above, beyond. And I want to see. I need, to survive, t0 see 0 Yet also, to survive, I cannot extend unroll reach out. The periscope, a kind of thumb, surfaces for me, because of me, with 41 a part of me. Safely, then, I can survey, and the fist begins opening. 42 Clinging to Bannisters In my grandparents' house, a vine crawls up the stairs, encompassing one by one the rails. My grandfather, retired barber, tells stories of his days behind the chair. Photographs abound on walls and tables. Frozen moments of childhood. You would think their grandchildren were still young. The most recent shot of me, at age twelve. My grandmother keeps newer pictures in a drawer. He will not look at them. I talk to my grandfather, feigning the innocence of the young 43 to please him. He will not accept I'm growing, have grown. He turns the television off after Welk to share more tales; clips my grandmother's vine so it cannot reach another rail. 44 Progress Great—Uncle Fritz was a man who did not believe in change simply for the sake of progress. He allowed electricity into his home because it was safer than kerosene and candles. He allowed a telephone because sometime his wife might need help and the closest neighbor was more than a mile. But indoor plumbing was for the lazy. Uncle Fritz considered it foolish to run water into a house where a spring ran fifty feet away; to hook up a toilet when the outhouse wasn't much farther than the spring. Besides, every year he dug a new outhouse and on the location of the old, planted pumpkins. And every year, Uncle Fritz grew the biggest pumpkins in the county. He laughed about the small ones he saw in town, and said 45 he guessed they were signs of progress. He once confided in me that his greatest disappointment in life was knowing that his sons would bury him in a bought coffin. His children were city-folks now and they didn't understand his ways. It was a tradition in Uncle Fritz's family that the sons always built their father's coffin. He recalled working on his own father's with his brothers, refusing to rush despite the July heat, carefully smoothing and fitting the pieces. He felt they were building something good from their sadness, worried his sons would carry their grief with them. I cringed at the funeral, his lanky, ninety—three-year-old body stretched in a polished grey casket with satin lining, a hard bed for a man who always slept on feathers. 46 First Words I watch the wheels turn, pushing my grandfather's wheelchair around the hospital grounds, trying to avoid stones and holes and bumps. I remember the tires on the wheelbarrow he rode me in when I was a child. Such a difference in size, the speed of the turn. My grandfather is trying to recover from a stroke, trying to overcome the paralysis which keeps him confined, quiet. He has always been a talkative man, telling stories and jokes. He has always been active, working in his barbershop, teaching Sunday school, tending garden and henhouse. He used to push me around 47 in the wheelbarrow, partly because I enjoyed the ride, partly because I was too little and slow to keep up with im. He would stop to point out flowers, trees, birds; would repeat their names until I had learned to say them, in the broken syllables of someone learning to talk. Now we go through the gardens and stop to examine the flowers, struggle with the sounds in the name "rose." 48 But When We Know... 'Tader,fixghmtmem:firtmqvhxwrnthmthqlmL" Last summer, my grandfather again told me of his arrival in a South Carolina town on a Saturday night some sixty years ago. He had come to accept his first position as barber. Leaving the train station, he heard shouts, saw lights, and followed them until he found a mob of twenty angry white men preparing to lynch a black man for the rape of a white woman. He knew he could not stop them, felt the power in their fervor, and turned to walk away when his eyes were caught by the black man's, terror—filled eyes that understood why there could be no help. "The look of a man who knows he's going to die, 49 knows why, and knows it doesn't make sense." My grandfather directed his feet away from there, but heard the snap of the rope as it pulled tight around the tree limb. Then he opened the Bible on his lap, showed me a drawing of Christ on the cross, of people gathered around his feet, wanting to help. I hate that my grandfather didn't stop that night. And I hate what not stopping has done to him. I hate knowing that I would have kept walking, too. SO Magical Healers My grandfather has become quite eccentric about moles—- in his yard, his garden. Spring and summer, he is obsessed with tracking them down, these creatures whose tunnels he regards as scars, marring ground that should appear perfect from his labor. His efforts are quite practical, and he stays updated on the latest poisons and traps. But the moles keep appearing, like bad memories, recurring nightmares, and my grandfather keeps plotting. I thought he'd forgotten that his own mother only killed them for a purpose, when she needed their magical healing powers; they were considered special because of their resemblance to the buried dead. 51 It was a mole's paw, strung around his neck, that cured his croup as a child. And when he burned for days with fever, she feared he was lost until she strangled a mole with her thumbs, and the fever broke. These remedies, recorded in her recipe book. Later pages held her thoughts of a son who went to war -—or so I'm told. Those pages missing, torn out by my grandfather when he returned from Europe. Those months: lost time about which he's never spoken, about which my grandmother's admonished me never to question, only saying something must have happened. Now I realize my grandfather is following his mother's tradition. Moles do have special healing powers 52 —-or he must wish they do-- as he struggles to keep them dead, where they cannot forever haunt him. 53 Peppermint Sticks He moved the barber pole from outside his shop to his basement door after the stroke, and continues to cut the hair of friends in the styles he learned at barber school sixty years ago. Like my grandfather, those men have been wearing their hair the same way those sixty years; the only alterations, attempts to cover thinning. He keeps a jar filled with peppermint sticks on the counter above his drawer of shears. They were his favorite candy as a child, and his customers love to suck on them and talk while waiting their turn. My grandfather is not a man of changes, and not 54 a man we can show change to. I still pound out his favorite hymns on the piano every time I visit, hymns his mother raised him with, hymns he still sings at the Presbyterian church every Sunday. He drives the same black Chevrolet, "Old Betsy," he's had for thirty years. He still calls his wife "Mother" although their youngest child is over forty. He's spent his life in a small mill town, hemmed in by the mountains of North Carolina. Now, his doctor has told him he can never go up, into the mountains and out of the town, for the increase in pressure would kill him. This came as safe news for a man who's never wanted to leave, 55 and this advice he follows, ignoring the doctor's prescribed diet which prohibits his sucking on peppermint sticks. 56 Remembering Megan My arms are light in their empty circle, though you never were heavy: a hug of intricacy and softness, maze of promises, and love-- love you returned, understanding? Now the air lies stagnant in your room without breath to stir it, and I still hear your cries at night, yet have no reason to get up. 57 To L. H. Is it better to talk about it, or do you try to forget-- as much as you can? If you can? I want to ask you, but hesitate. What does it feel like to know you only have a few months left to live? What do you need from me? We live in silence. We live day by day. Day by day towards... Is it death or dying that scares us? 58 What do you feel besides fear? --I make assumptions. Leave the dead, they always say. But what of the dying? What of love? 59 In Memory Slipping your picture off the wall, my fingers caress your face, trying to recall curves, textures, warmth. Instead, there is only the cold of the frame, the smooth hardness of glass. 6O Beginnings LINEHjfimRnofSumdmgkfifll Why is getting close always so hard? Hmmm? We seemed to do it in spite of ourselves. We tripped, yet fell in the right direction, landing on top of each other, literally. One of us had the decency to laugh. Then there was the fumbling and apologizing, when we weren't really sorry at all. (The kind of accident you hope keeps happening.) Next came the oh-how-do—I—meet-this-person—again dilemma. Well, I hadn't really read the book you were carrying. Yet. 61 Hurry Home I never knew how much I missed you until every person I saw with sandy hair was suddenly transformed into you, arriving home, early, for a surprise. I went to the shopping mall today. There were swarms of you there. I only missed you more as I noticed their walk different from yours, their hair parted neatly, hands that didn't hide in pockets, the many differences that made them not you-- things I don't even notice when you're here. Tonight, I lie alone, wondering for how many days strangers will mean so much to me. 62 The Apple Poem It's been two weeks since your move. The bag of apples you left in the refrigerator is starting to rot. I can't bring myself to throw them out. I know it doesn't mean I'm throwing away our relationship—— what we had. But the apples are a reminder of you and throwing them out, well, that takes me-- me alone. It's something I know I have to do. But, if you're not busy Tuesday night, the apples will still be there. 63 NW 178 6456 1293 03 “1' u “I I” " |.|| N“ "II. E“ u "I u u “I 3