POEM: Miso Soup (4)
Posted 24 February, 2010 in Audio Poems, Family, Japan, My poems, Poetry, Travel
Listen to this poem by pressing the play button above.
Miso Soup
(for Jennifer)
the only thing better than the taste of the sushi
is the lingering aftertaste
mixed with miso shiru and warm ocha
a sensation so rich
it’s almost another meal in itself
I always order one extra piece of unagi
and remember walking into Meiji Jingu
holding your hand
you gave me a book on Zen –
I was into that then –
and I gave you an atlas of our world
so we could choose the next destination
we sat in the kaitenzushi-ya in Shibuya
and watched the endless parade
of plates, daring us
in Nikko, we took a photo in an unexpected
tram car that was right there on the sidewalk
then climbed up all those stairs
to see the sanzaru
there were many little tremors and
the one big one
that had us scurrying for the doorjamb
just as the shaking stopped
and yes, there were cherry blossoms –
there always are –
right outside our bedroom window
and the cleaning man came by each week
and always seemed surprised to see us
we gave him our maple tree
(and you gave me its cousin years later)
I savor these moments and roll them around
on my tongue, heavy with the dusky taste
of shoyu and the tang of vinegar in the rice
POEM: I am not an Indian (0)
Posted 18 February, 2010 in Audio Poems, Family, My poems, Poetry, Politics & Activism
Listen to this poem by pressing the play button above.
A Blackfoot woman
I am not an Indian
My great-great-great-great grandmother
was a full-blooded Blackfoot Indian.
People say full-blooded not because
they have any proof,
but because it sounds wild, native.
If you do the math, that makes me
1.5% Blackfoot, and not very wild at all.
Say what you will about Ward Churchill;
he was right that all our accomplishments
as a country, all our technology, all our freedom,
all our music and poetry and art and dance and theater,
is being created on land that we stole from people
whose names we don’t even remember.
In college, my roommate’s best friend
paid less for his tuition because he was
above some arbitrary threshold
of Native American ancestry.
Not full-blooded, but bloody enough.
He was generously allowed
to learn quote-history-unquote
in a government building on the very land
his ancestors occupied before they became
little more than discount coupons for the state.
Another branch of my family has lived
in New England since 1638.
We never owned slaves, you’ll hear them
attest proudly, and it appears to be true.
Less lauded is my some-number-of-greats
uncle John Flanders, who served
with distinction in the army of Gen. John Sullivan,
helping to rid upstate New York of the Iroquois.
Sullivan’s troops burned and shot and hung and scattered
the people of many nations, including the Cayuga.
The army destroyed their town of Coreorgonel, and in its place was
established Ithaca, now a haven for higher education and
an oasis for studiers of organic farming and
Native American spirituality.
Living at Coreorgonel were the remnants of the Tutelo people,
who’d been forced from their homes
on the border of West Virginia and Kentucky,
and who were taken in by the Cayugas. It has been
112 years since any human being spoke the Tutelo language.
Sitting on a stage at the Tokyo Film Festival, director Chris Eyre
(of the Cheyenne-Arapaho, remember them?)
was asked by a member of the audience whether he preferred
to be called “Indian” or “Native American.”
“We have so many other problems to deal with
that we don’t have much time to worry about
what we’re called,” he said.
POEM: Entrances & Exits (0)
Posted 17 February, 2010 in Audio Poems, Family, My poems, Poetry
Listen to this poem by pressing the play button above.
Entrances & Exits
Jason Lee Borders entered the world
on a late-summer afternoon in 1973,
sharing his father’s middle and last names
and containing a small flaw in his DNA
that he also shared with his father,
who, unlike Jason Lee Borders,
wasn’t strong enough to resist the genetic revolver.
Instead, he held it to his temple and pulled the trigger,
and a wash of alcohol broke through the levy
and swept the borders away.
Before the little boy drowned,
his mother crept through the window
and ran with him into the night,
gene still intact, waiting.
Jason Lee Gustavson entered the world
in a courtroom in 1979
after the requisite paperwork had been filed;
a new identity, a new life,
another in a long string
of relocations and reorientations.
By this time, even at his tender age,
he’d made one of the few choices
to which he’d remain true,
deciding early on
to leave his father’s revolver tucked in its padded box
in an unlocked drawer of the old oak dresser.
As it turned out, though,
his father wasn’t the only parent with a gift,
and generations of overflowing bathtubs
in the brains of his maternal ancestors
were slowly leaking through his own skull,
surrounding his spongy gray being
with a dark fluid that obscured light and memory.
Jason David Crane entered the world
at a kitchen table with his grandparents
in 1994 after a late-night session of salsa music.
They’d gone through all the family names
when his grandfather suggested the family
for whom an aunt had washed the laundry.
As a gesture to the father
whose name he was leaving behind,
Lee became David
and he became a man.
Jason-Lee-David-Borders-Gustavson-Crane
entered the world and left the world and
entered the world and left the world and
entered the world. His bathtub overflowed
and he sank beneath the water,
one hand clutching the smooth porcelain side.
POEM: Tomorrow the wedding (4)
Posted 10 February, 2010 in Family, My poems, Poetry
I wrote this in Oakland, CA, in October 2008 while getting ready for my sister-in-law’s wedding.
Oakland photo (c) Jason Crane
Tomorrow the Wedding
for Amy & Michele
Tomorrow the wedding
today hauling cans of soda,
bottles of beer.
Phone: the Italian groom
carrying a bouquet of balloons
back to the apartment.
Meanwhile…
eastern family, recently landed,
descended from the pure blue.
Our temporary hilltop home,
where we sit silently
on the sun-warmed porch,
looking out over Oakland
at the glittering bay beyond.
POEM: Sixty-Seven Unopened Videocasettes (0)
Posted 3 February, 2010 in Family, My poems, Poetry
A poem about seeing my biological father and grandmother for the first time in 30 years.
Sixty-Seven Unopened Videocassettes
Thirty years and fifty percent of my DNA
have brought me to a double-wide with a steep driveway,
tucked away in an enclave of trailers not far from the iron banks of the Ohio River.
She asks me to call her “nanna” because all the children do.
He’s missing most of his teeth – waiting for a new set of dentures.
I have no hook on which to hang this porch conversation,
this three-decade history lesson and game of tag.
So we talk about tobacco farming, long-haul trucking,
and spying on the Russians from within a cigar tube deep beneath the Mediterranean.
I learn about great-uncles and great-aunts and an extra uncle,
only to learn that money and land and other tragedies have driven wedges into this family, too.
I want to walk into the dining room like Antwone Fisher,
but the table is given over to Charlie Brown and Linus –
Christmas decorations awaiting transfer to their holiday destination.
There are sixty-seven unopened Star Trek videocassettes,
a bathroom crammed with history books,
lighters from the Navy,
a robe almost like the one I wear,
and an old shaving cup with a worn brush.
No matter what happens, I’ve erased the most terrible vision –
awaiting the end with the moisture of regret dampening my cheeks.
“The next time you come, darlin’, we’ll have chicken and dumplings.”
POEM: Long Haul (0)
Posted 25 January, 2010 in Family, My poems, Poetry
Photo from the David Faust Collection
Long Haul
(for my father and his father)
it wasn’t easy keeping all those wheels on the road
another late-night diner and a nap in the cab
hauling one of the damned things was hard enough
it took a man to pull two
it wasn’t easy to raise seven of them
the boy was first and then six – six! – girls
you’d think we would have stopped trying
to make him a brother
and since he was a solitary boy even then,
he would put on his suit and walk down to the little church
that was happy to have an usher
an extra boy to pass the hat for what little there was
he wrecked the car, I made him replace it with college money
I wasn’t teaching him a lesson about responsibility
I was trying to hang on to my boy
the one who’d always had his eye on the horizon
and then later, when he was home from the service
we’d go down under the church to drink at the Legion hall
thick smoke in the air, cheap beer on tap
looking down the barrel of a one-stoplight life
it took a man – and I knew it – to leave
to drive and keep driving until he’d built a better life
to be more than I was and to do it with dignity
and I never told him, but I was proud
(Thanks to David Faust for letting me use a photo from his collection of St. Johnsbury trucks. That’s the company for which my grandfather drove.)
POEM: Memorex Hummingbird (2)
Posted 18 January, 2010 in Family, My poems, Poetry
Hummingbird photo by Derek Scott.
Memorex Hummingbird
by Jason Crane
Memorex hummingbird hovers above the nectar cup;
animatronic woodpecker hunts for scuttling food.
Nature or Disney ride? Who can say?
Disconnected as we are from snow falling off branches.
I hold the binoculars steady and point out the Blue Jay
as it pecks the last leaf on the winter elm,
and through those lenses peek the unspoiled eyes of my son.
He shouts, “I see it!” and is rooted to the spot,
A sapling full of the coursing energy of the yet-to-come.
People for whom I’m thankful (an incomplete list) (0)
Posted 25 November, 2009 in Family, Random Musings
A small sampling of people for whom I’m thankful. Not complete and in no particular order, but worth writing. I may add to it, too.
Jennifer: 14+ years of putting up with me. I don’t know how she does it. Or, for that matter, why.
Bernie & John: It’s incredible to be unconditionally loved by your kids. Plus, they’re fun to wrestle with.
Mom, Dad and Gretchen: What haven’t we been through? Actually, skip that question, because I’m finding out that this year there are quite a few new and unpleasant answers. They’re always there, though, and that’s amazing.
Linda, Todd & Sarah, Tammy, Dick, Denise & John, Lynne & Mike & Jack & Grace, Jill, Jimmy & Karen: Couldn’t ask for a better family.
Carol, Amy & Michele, Sandy & Carol Jr. & Autumn, Dorothy & Ethan, Kit & Sue, et al: Couldn’t ask for a better second family.
Bernard & Dorothy Flanders: My debt to them can never be repaid.
Jeff & Leeann & Jake: They know how to be friends, which is a hell of a lot rarer than you might think. And one of these days, Jeff and I will have a very successful show together. Probably a strip-tease show.
Kevin & Jen & Momo: My oldest friend (and his wife, who would probably be disturbed to learn that she’s my second- or third-oldest friend). Uncompromisingly honest and loving people with a real cute kid.
Josh & Jen: Smart, funny and wonderful. Josh is always expanding my world, which is just about the highest compliment I can pay.
Team RocBike: You couldn’t ask for a better gang to ride with, blog with, and be positively influenced by.
The musicians, promoters and record labels who’ve made The Jazz Session possible: What can I say? “Beyond my wildest expectations”? Yeah, that about covers it.
Chuck & Bobby D: Never were two guys more accepting of my crazed need to wave at everybody. Plus, they pick good tunes.
Jo & James: Even kinder than they are talented. And they’re supremely talented.
Sue & Jenny & Katie-Kate & Elinor: Love ‘em, love ‘em, love ‘em. (And miss ‘em, too!)
Tom & Susan: Beautiful people who made Raymond Street just barely tolerable.
Satoru: Pops up when I least expect it, and is always welcome when he does. One of those people you know will be there when you need him.
Otto: He understands and inspires.
The members of the Rotary Club of Albany: Nice people doing nice things, as Harry Shearer would say. Except in this case, it’s true.
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