Author Archive
my body has become a compatriot of mine
I am slim from love of it and cinnamon rolls
body and mind ache in ways known only to us
ache for past places and dead people
but are soothed by tiny leaves caught in the gutter
and a dog’s breath on our pant leg
my compatriot’s full on coupling
with my mind makes me marvel
at our conjoined responses
until we aren’t sure if the mind
stubs itself on sharp corners
and the body ponders ideas
or if it matters
as memory enters body and mind
both remember the joy of falling
the sorrow of endings
this day we have a new love
we allow the risk of the fall again
ignore old pains past languages
press our skin against another
with fresh words never heard before
Mary Strong Jackson
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Just as her book, The Never-Ending Poem by the Poets of Everything, brings the freshest of approaches to a body of work, From Other Tongues is equally original and delightful. Mary Jackson’s language and imagination invite me into a mind well-traveled and I am an unabashed admirer. I want to thank her for writing such a book, it will be coming on and off my shelf with frequency.
Joan Logghe
Santa Fe Poet Laureate Emerita
Mary Strong Jackson’s From Other Tongues is a book of poetry that makes us reconsider the most commonplace words, by making us more aware of the concepts we can’t easily express because their nuances are not easily rendered in the English language. It’s a book for word-lovers, and philosophers who have pondered how to say, or approximate the unsayable.
Darryl Lorenzo Wellington
— poet and Writing Fellow at the Center for Community Change
Jackson writes poems that illuminate words seemingly untranslatable into English. In poems that are sometimes spare and yet enlightening, she plays with the idea that language may unite us human beings. In her poems, words and meaning are fluid and moving. They will make you wonder; they will make you smile.
Karla Huston, Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2017-18, author of A Theory of Lipstick, Main Street Rag Publications.
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give me your huddled masses, tired and poor,
from under bridges, in soup kitchens,
in shelters, sleeping in cars,
give me the billionaires building
their excess like Easter Island chiefs
big, bigger, biggest
America the beautiful
I have a dream
68 year old veteran shot in his home
by police “I’m OK. I didn’t call you. Please leave me alone”
audio recorded by his medical alert gadget
police called him nigger before they killed him
Bobby Kennedy visited Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota
his plane landed in my town closest airport to the rez
I touched his elbow over the chain link fence
Roger Mudd helped my cousin to her feet when the fence fell
Mom said dirt soft as powder
felt good under bare feet coming up between toes
congress knew of the man-made dust bowl
the deaths
but acted only after the black day
when dust blew across states
darkened the windows of the capital
as Hugh Bennett gave his plea
for the people from the plains 24
at school we crouched, hid, feared the Russians
mom said their leaders lie to their people
Mom was 11 when Guthrie strummed his machine that kills fascists
singing “This Land was Made for You and Me”
we sang it at the Assumption Academy
and sang “how many times must a white dove sail
before she can rest in the sand
yes’n how many times must the cannon balls fly
before they’re forever banned”?
just wanted a buzz bike like everyone else
Gulf of Tonkin-lie to invade Vietnam
flag-covered caskets on every night’s news
Weapons of Mass Destruction-lie to invade Iraq
no caskets on any news
Karla Faye Baker accepts Jesus into her heart
like George Bush who made June 10th “Jesus Day” in Texas
where he put Karla to death
so as to give equal rights to women
a child waves to the soldier in Iraq
a text comes across from his Dad
“Patty has five new puppies”
the soldier smiles 25
tips his combat helmet over his face
sobs
ring around the rosy, pocket full of posy
ashes to ashes we all fall down
Charlie Rose interviewed Steven Pinker
whose research says the world is less violent
masses of violent voyeurs
watch 24 hour news-entertainment
and elect Donald Trump
Mary Strong Jackson
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(1)
will it be the dream that dies
a dream so old it’s become the hardness of the bones
letting go leaves a spot a space
of heart-sized vast expanse opened with goodbyes
so the next dreamer
of hummingbirds that cradle into an open spot
flash their necks at dawn
beat their wings in tranquil turbulence
can breathe ideas into bone
it’s about love not lack of
(2)
sunlit swallows catch drops of water tossed
into the air by a churning river
a river that gathers and carries
gives and takes
this is about light not lack of
something has to live
paint from the last painter’s brush
rhymes from another poet’s tongue
dreams from another dreamer’s life
from mountain snow
melting in sunlight
giving water to a river that gathers and carries
gathers what becomes
the hardness in the bone
carries dreams that won’t die
Mary Strong Jackson
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we drive under a dreamer’s sky
the whitest of clouds plumped
and placed in a precise hue of prairie blue
in what might be entry into a sweet town
where men in overalls stand with hands
in pockets talk of rain and when the wheat
will be ready to cut
instead it’s Whiteclay, Nebraska
the 2nd of the month
checks have come in
bodies are strewn like discarded bottles
of beer broken leaking some face down on the street
some braced in doorways
“they’d get it somewhere and if they had to walk further
there’d be more dead on the roads”
say the wealthy sellers of beer in Whiteclay
population 14
2 miles from the dry reservation
4 establishments sell beer just 4 just beer
3 to 4 million cans a year
10 to 13,000 a day
sold to the 28,000 Native Americans
from Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota
skinny little Angie Kills-in-Water wakes
to meet my eyes in the rear-view mirror
“Wanna stop for a coke?”
“No” I say
“Scared?”
“No. We can stop”
“Never mind” she says
sorrow seems to steam from the streets
rising like heat
my vision feels wavy the way mirages
appear on oiled country roads in July
what country is this?
Angie leans over the seat to whisper
“I’m almost home!”
miles away from the white house
white fenced foster home
of cut lawns and leashed dogs
back to cars that take 4 Hail Mary’s to start
where sunlight wind and snow comes in around
door frames and windows
where Auntie Sue will gather all their blankets
and coats to wrap the two grandpas
and two children and herself
not just a popcorn cozy warm
but so they will not freeze
so they will not die
and be dead like Angie’s father
hit by a car on his way home from Whiteclay
Angie’s one memory of mother is her yellow death skin
or Auntie Sue’s babies 1 and 2 and 3
dead like other cousins in car wrecks
or her sister who hanged herself after the 3rd rape
from white men who come to the rez
to get away with it
Auntie Sue brings me
inside her dirt-floored house
bare wood walls one page from a coloring book
hangs near the door
the child beside her withered in some way
holding her returning cousin’s arm
as if never to let go
two old men watch a small TV
there are no rooms
just quilts covering places to sleep
and two hard-backed chairs
I sit in one and explain paperwork
to Auntie Sue who wants to speak aloud
the names of those gone
to tell the agony of a family tree
made of dead branches
Sue says, “it’s the funerals all those funerals
made me give up beer long ago”
gracious Auntie Sue sees me to the door
does she know her life expectancy is 52
outside under that perfect hue of prairie blue
we say goodbye I step into my car
a 2002 Honda Accord
seats with no holes
the engine starts on first try
my sleek black traveling mug
fits in the cup holder
I’ll drive to my small stucco house
where my two dogs wait in a big grassy yard
with cactus wildflowers
and garden tomatoes
I can’t shake the feel and stink
of wealth from my skin or gut
an exit out of my country
into my country
how can I have so much
Mary Strong Jackson
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gather phonographs
they will be small compared to skies and oceans
but small things survive
place the needle down on Muddy Waters
and make whole bodies move like a big river
play Lucinda Williams on the sun dropping side
the Boss or Pavarotti on the north will wake bones
Mills Brothers so old dead folks can roll
in their graves with a smile
lie on your stomach
listen to the snaps of expectation
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Feeding the Twins
for Alex and Mya
their bodies barely longer than a good-sized fish
sit in high chairs where their fat feet
flutter below while plump palms
pat their trays to the tune
of “Caterpillar, Caterpillar, tickle, tickle on my arm”
I pinch a piece of buttery pumpernickel toast
top it with a tiny bit of egg poke it in their open mouths
baby birds in high chairs
their mouths and my buttered fingers meet
with a sense of each other the way my grandmother’s
wrinkled cheek felt against my lips
their mouth-sounds ignite ancient instincts
to feed small ones to feed each other
with our fingers to know the shape of another’s lips
the inside of another’s mouth
no matter if a mother walked on all fours
no matter if the first lovers ate off flat stones
at some moment they offered
nuts or marrow placed into the other’s mouth
with fingers slick on soft lips
Mary Strong Jackson
July 28, 2016
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