A holiday gift for poetry-lovers?
Help support the work of
The Red Letters
Announcing
Red Letter Editions #1
“hello stranger”
A poetry broadside by Fred Marchant
to benefit the Red Letter Project
We’ve just published a letterpress broadside of Fred’s wonderful poem
“hello stranger”
It’s a heartfelt invitation to the reader and an invocation of the soul.
Funds raised will support the continuing outreach of this project as well as
honorariums for poets performing at the annual Red Letter LIVE! readings
The broadside: 9.5”X18” on 118# Flurry white 100% cotton cover stock
Signed by the poet, in a limited edition of 50
A copy will be available for contributions of $30.00 or more
(please add $5.00 for flat packaging and postage)
Checks can be made out to Steven Ratiner and mailed to:
33 Bellington Street, Arlington, MA 02476
or paid via Paypal (enso33@yahoo.com)
The Red Letters
In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.
To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.
––Steven Ratiner
Red Letter Poem #185
Fever
My son believes messages are conveyed.
Sitting up in bed, middle of the night,
he wants me to tell him what it says,
to read the words on the framed poster
that hangs on the bedroom wall, the airplane
with the lips logo painted on the side:
Rolling Stones American Tour 1972.
In his delirium he has seen too much:
“A cow hooked up to a device. A bad guy
did it. And there was an orange, one that
just kept getting bigger and bigger.”
He gets some relief at last, remembering
a dream of a soccer game. “You don’t
have to bring the ball,” he says happily.
Talking through his hat, the expression
my mother used for conversations held
under fever’s tightening grip. She said it, too,
about bragging, or anyone making promises,
when they couldn’t follow through.
Again and again, I am called to save him.
I put my head down on his chest,
lift up when I hear his little heart
beating strong and true, see how it makes
the white sheet gently rise and fall.
His hair is soaked from sweating it out
in visions of a world all mixed up. To anyone
with ears and the strength to save him
from what had seemed so real, he yelled,
“Help! See it! It looks like The Joker.”
I put on the light and the shadow dispersed.
It was only the lampshade askew on the porcelain
night light, the beautiful pea green boat carrying
the odd couple adrift at sea. Their light’s the light
of the moon, so Dance by the light of the moon.
––Mary Bonina
Worse than any suffering that may befall us: the suffering of those we love. Or so it’s been in my experience. And this is acutely felt when we are, for the most part, helpless to alleviate that pain––when the only medicine we can offer is our presence, a healing touch, the love we try to radiate from our bodies like sunlight. So it is in Mary Bonina’s memory poem depicting her young son trying to cope with a spiked fever and the flood of attendant fears that come from being small and unmoored in the all-too-large world. I love how Mary enables us to be of two minds within the narrative: quickly, I find myself in parental mode, worrying about the boy whose body aches and whose mind is awash with terrifying images. But somehow the more potent and surprising experience is how easily I found myself able to re-inhabit my six-year-old self, a time when most of us viewed our parents as omnipotent beings in charge of making the universe safe and comprehensible. But, of course, the child is incapable of seeing the reality of that equally-fearful adult––which suddenly catapults me back into my parental role, shaken by the knowledge of my own frailty.
Did you like how Mary uses her colloquial tone to make the narrative feel intimate, close? And how those hints of old and new pop culture make the setting wholly believable? (It’s quite a leap, though, from “If I don’t get some shelter/ ooh yeah, I’m gonna fade away” back to “Buffalo gals, won’t you come out tonight.”) In the poem, we start to feel as if we were a member of the family––and perhaps that is precisely what poetry, in all its manifestations, attempts to achieve: we are indeed familial, even those strangers who too often pass by unnoticed. Language helps grant us membership in this mortal household. And so, for a few minutes, this is our little boy as well––just as we are that very child in the sweat-soaked bed, desperate for someone’s comforting lips on our forehead. Exiting the poem, might our world-view be colored (ever so slightly) by that tenderness?
Mary has authored two poetry collections and a memoir (all from Cervena Barva press), and has a forthcoming chapbook entitled Lunch in Chinatown. Her poem “Drift”, a winner of UrbanArts "Boston Contemporary Authors" prize, was engraved on a granite monolith outside Boston’s Green Street Station of the MBTA Orange Line. She’s been honored with a number of fellowships including seven from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts where she has been a fellow since 2002. Her poems, appearing in numerous journals and anthologies, are savored for their emotional clarity. Today’s piece begins: “My son believes messages are conveyed”––and, after passing through these fevered stanzas, I believe it as well: from childhood dreams, from the rooms we share, from the family we love, and from resonant poems such as this.
Red Letters 3.0
* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:
steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com
* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:
https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices
and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
http://dougholder.blogspot.com
* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on Twitter
@StevenRatiner
