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    She Becomes Time
    She Becomes Time
    She Becomes Time
    Ebook139 pages54 minutes

    She Becomes Time

    By Margaret Randall

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    About this ebook

    Margaret Randall's new collection, She Becomes Time, continues her legacy of poetry that combines the intimate with the global, history with feeling, memory with the world we touch and see, showing--always in surprising ways--how these impact and intersect each other. The book begins with a group of poems about her childhood, in which the poet reveals secrets and asks unexpected questions. It ends with breathtaking series about Mexico and Cuba, countries the poet knows well and which she takes on without any idealization.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWings Press
    Release dateMay 1, 2016
    ISBN9781609405106
    She Becomes Time
    Author

    Margaret Randall

    Writer and social activist Margaret Randall is the author of more than eighty published books, including To Change the World: My Years in Cuba (2009) and, most recently, As If the Empty Chair / Como si la silla vaca (a bilingual book of poetry) and First Laugh (essays). She lives in Albuquerque.

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      Book preview

      She Becomes Time - Margaret Randall

      heat.

      First Family

      To question everything. To remember what it has been forbidden even to mention. […] To look afresh at and then describe for ourselves, the frescoes of the Ice Age, the nudes of ‘high art,’ the Minoan seals and figurines, the moon landscape embossed with the booted print of a male foot, the microscopic virus, the scarred and tortured body of the planet Earth.

      —Adrienne Rich²

      One Memory Less Among the Weeds

      If older sister had lived more than hours,

      a lifetime or other circumstance,

      I wouldn’t have a second-hand name

      I cherish as my own.

      If Grandpa hadn’t taken what wasn’t his

      with Grandma looking on,

      if salty and sweet hadn’t come

      to the party with intent to confuse.

      If the young Italian lover had closed

      the bathroom door, an image

      more relevant than Ivory soap,

      one memory less among the weeds.

      What if blue and green had always

      danced with one another,

      red and orange burst into flame

      on the walls of a child’s room.

      I cannot say if reading that passage at eight

      about the concentration camp, then slamming

      shut the book and furtively opening it again

      was childhood curiosity or awe.

      War was always huge, unknown and battering,

      Bundles for Britain followed by marching

      endlessly from there to here.

      I carried placards, then thirty extra pounds.

      If I hauled words in my firstborn’s diaper bag

      or reinvented them

      everywhere I stayed

      more than a few exploratory months,

      it was a complication born of poetry and war,

      following a broken arrow

      to weather, language,

      and humor disguised as rice and beans.

      In Vietnam I found broken clamshells

      on a pontoon moving across a river

      where bridges and bombs took turns

      and I wore USA: trembling question mark.

      I kept on moving, collecting teachers

      and battlegrounds,

      more children with open eyes,

      their fathers hovering.

      And then I stopped, embraced by the one

      I was meant to find who was meant

      to find me. I tell her these stories

      night by night in a single breath.

      Being their Daughter

      It was the question without an answer.

      Sometimes her silence

      was gunmetal gray,

      sometimes rimmed in orchid pink.

      He didn’t know and didn’t want to know.

      Like most couples, they had their problems.

      Being their daughter

      didn’t provide a clue.

      DNA isn’t part of this story.

      Each year I ask

      in the voice of a younger me

      and reap an answer of rainbows.

      People always told me I had big bones

      like him. My resemblance to her

      stared back in every mirror.

      They’re both gone now,

      leaving me a story winding down,

      repeating echoes

      and resignation

      transparent as morning sky.

      Where I Live and Die

      I am in the picture frame but look

      as if I want out.

      The relative behind the shutter

      must have urged

      come on now smile,

      may have displayed impatience

      at my lack of interest, refusal

      to take my place in his tableaux.

      Almost eight decades have passed.

      The image is faded, edges frayed

      beyond their pinked irregularity

      defining that home album era.

      I cannot remember what lay beyond

      the picture plane,

      what truth or action

      social formality stole.

      What I do know is what I longed for then

      without knowing its name

      I have grabbed with both hands

      and pulled onto this map

      where I live and die

      along with all those

      who invited me

      inside looking in.

      Like a Bull in a China Shop

      I rise, astonished by air beneath my floating limbs,

      buoyant dance of a body my father once said

      was like a bull in a china shop: grade school

      ballet recital yearning for grace.

      Grace would never be my strong suite but

      here I am skimming the top bookshelf

      where poetry flashes before my eyes, pulling

      my feet way up and in to avoid stubbed toes.

      The platform chair rocks back and forth,

      no one settled on its curved seat,

      not even a ghost hiding its presence

      to watch this carefree dance.

      Faster and faster I race beneath a ceiling

      threatening sudden stop, untouched,

      propelled by some magical force:

      three parts helium, one part abhorrence of war.

      Pied Piper of love and logic, I sound the first

      totally on-key melody of my life

      and beckon the world to follow,

      peace so much easier than this sad default.

      Mother and the Mac Truck

      Mother sat erect, her hands firmly

      grasping ten and two

      and always drove

      a good twenty miles slower

      than the speed limit,

      which is why in my dream

      I was surprised

      she was speeding

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