Joan E. Bauer
 |
| |
Joan E. Bauer grew up in Los Angeles, and for some years taught English and journalism in public and independent schools. Her poetry has appeared in Lens Cap, The New People, The Northridge Review, Voices in Italian Americana, yawp, and is forthcoming in Janus Head and Main Street Rag. In 2001, she was a featured reader at the South Side Poetry Smorgasbord.
Camera Obscura: Image of
Houses
Across the Street in Our Living Room
Imagine this room, its emptiness.
A child’s black rocking chair,
still and silent, an altar in a holy shrine.
Blanched walls transfused with light.
And from the ceiling, like a shadowy veil,
house and pine tree suspended.
A photographer’s trick?
Or has the world up-turned itself,
a Dali-like circus, in which anything can happen?
What child once rocked here, back and forth?
Is she now ancient, frail, and muted,
or still a girl-child, boisterous,
braids flying in the wind?
And what will that chair become
if she returns?
Will it grow smaller day by day,
or will this room become museum-piece,
relic of abandoned past.
I blink my eyes, remember my own room,
my feet on its hardwood floor.
Some days, I try to gauge its sturdiness
with curling toes. As though one could
squirrel away the certainties.
And who will come to dust the silver-edged photos
when I am gone,
to witness the play of light and shadow
on shifting liquid walls?
Light and shadow. Always light and shadow.
Across the Street in Our Living Room
Imagine this room, its emptiness.
A child’s black rocking chair,
still and silent, an altar in a holy shrine.
Blanched walls transfused with light.
And from the ceiling, like a shadowy veil,
house and pine tree suspended.
A photographer’s trick?
Or has the world up-turned itself,
a Dali-like circus, in which anything can happen?
What child once rocked here, back and forth?
Is she now ancient, frail, and muted,
or still a girl-child, boisterous,
braids flying in the wind?
And what will that chair become
if she returns?
Will it grow smaller day by day,
or will this room become museum-piece,
relic of abandoned past.
I blink my eyes, remember my own room,
my feet on its hardwood floor.
Some days, I try to gauge its sturdiness
with curling toes. As though one could
squirrel away the certainties.
And who will come to dust the silver-edged photos
when I am gone,
to witness the play of light and shadow
on shifting liquid walls?
Light and shadow. Always light and shadow.
appeared in Lens Cap, Silver Eye Center for Photography.
Hanoi, 1996
The airport, a strife-worn shell, all round encroached by green.
Flood fields of rice, water buffalo, an unforgiving sky.
I was alone, but for those guards. Coarse uniforms, red
stars. Soldiers or police? I did not ask. Young boys
approached to sell their thin-paged books. “You are
Chinese?” (My Cherokee eyes miscast me everywhere)
“In school, we study English every day!” Dusty bus ride
to the City of Lakes. Shift-streams of jeeps, old bikes,
tri-shaws. A huge and smiling Ho, with dove and child.
Red banners skittering high. By late-day light, I criss-
crossed bustling streets that brimmed with brass-caged birds,
hand-painted screens. Aged to ochre, the French facades.
In Hoan Kiem, I found a glistening lake. Yellow blossoms
framed the view: A crimson bridge, legs like lanky cranes.
At dusk, I watched pagodas melt to grey. Two frail, white-
bearded men, silent on a bench. “Not one angry glance,”
I whispered to the sky. “They won, so now they like you,”
sky replied. “The sin of pride, was yours, don’t you agree?”
By night, the city swelled with steaming pots. A street-side
feast of pho, with clams and eel. An ancient grandmere
shook her head and smiled, “You have no children?
Sad! So sad!” Sidewalk smoke floated past the flowers.
I saw four generations gathered. I knew past banners,
smiles, facades, lay hovels built of tin, cheap wood.
Despair. Soldiers’ twisted limbs. Blind with sacrifice,
they’d survived. A hundred years of conflict.
They’d prevailed. A culture that endures.
Beneath the lotus-moon, I saw it there.
God save us always from the innocent and the good.
— Graham Greene, The Quiet American
The airport, a strife-worn shell, all round encroached by green.
Flood fields of rice, water buffalo, an unforgiving sky.
I was alone, but for those guards. Coarse uniforms, red
stars. Soldiers or police? I did not ask. Young boys
approached to sell their thin-paged books. “You are
Chinese?” (My Cherokee eyes miscast me everywhere)
“In school, we study English every day!” Dusty bus ride
to the City of Lakes. Shift-streams of jeeps, old bikes,
tri-shaws. A huge and smiling Ho, with dove and child.
Red banners skittering high. By late-day light, I criss-
crossed bustling streets that brimmed with brass-caged birds,
hand-painted screens. Aged to ochre, the French facades.
In Hoan Kiem, I found a glistening lake. Yellow blossoms
framed the view: A crimson bridge, legs like lanky cranes.
At dusk, I watched pagodas melt to grey. Two frail, white-
bearded men, silent on a bench. “Not one angry glance,”
I whispered to the sky. “They won, so now they like you,”
sky replied. “The sin of pride, was yours, don’t you agree?”
By night, the city swelled with steaming pots. A street-side
feast of pho, with clams and eel. An ancient grandmere
shook her head and smiled, “You have no children?
Sad! So sad!” Sidewalk smoke floated past the flowers.
I saw four generations gathered. I knew past banners,
smiles, facades, lay hovels built of tin, cheap wood.
Despair. Soldiers’ twisted limbs. Blind with sacrifice,
they’d survived. A hundred years of conflict.
They’d prevailed. A culture that endures.
Beneath the lotus-moon, I saw it there.
appeared in The Northridge Review.
Red Maples
We were foolish with hope
in a sprawling farmhouse, along a winding road.
In fall, red maples flamed through the window.
We called them our Cassandras,
wondered at their powers.
When the grey scrub trees blighted-
I cried. We had to cut them down.
What moved me? Something. Their simplicity.
Crazy tears. As when I worried what
our street name Wither-ow might portend.
In winter, a fire raged through the farmhouse.
Smoke-blind, flailing, until the flames
drove us out. No tears-
I remember standing, my feet soaked
in crushed red leaves.
We built a bigger farmhouse with grand
and stately windows. It was then
they found your cancer, unrelenting.
Wither-rose. I left behind a silent house,
our tall Cassandras, bleeding skyward.
We were foolish with hope
in a sprawling farmhouse, along a winding road.
In fall, red maples flamed through the window.
We called them our Cassandras,
wondered at their powers.
When the grey scrub trees blighted-
I cried. We had to cut them down.
What moved me? Something. Their simplicity.
Crazy tears. As when I worried what
our street name Wither-ow might portend.
In winter, a fire raged through the farmhouse.
Smoke-blind, flailing, until the flames
drove us out. No tears-
I remember standing, my feet soaked
in crushed red leaves.
We built a bigger farmhouse with grand
and stately windows. It was then
they found your cancer, unrelenting.
Wither-rose. I left behind a silent house,
our tall Cassandras, bleeding skyward.