(PROSE POEMS)
A. M. THOMPSON
A. M. THOMPSON
GRETA, GARDENING
She stands with a broad stance in faded jeans and a plain grey tee, reaching just above her head with a yellow bow saw. The broad Greek sun slants in from the west, and I try not to notice how it highlights her breasts. Strong and compact as a teen, although she is well into her 60s. I guess that’s what spending a lifetime restoring an old stone house by hand will do for you.
She presses away at the work of pruning, as women do. Not with the surge and conquest of broad muscle, but slowly, persistently. She supports the far end of one limb with her left hand and saws with her right: a soft, redundant hiss of blade against wood and wood against blade, until the branch at last releases and gives way. She settles it onto the scrubby ground.
Leaning back, one hand on her sacrum, Greta scans the olive leaves. It is her favorite tree, left too long unattended. She squints and frowns and slightly cocks her head. She is absorbed. In search of another fruitless limb to prune.
She presses away at the work of pruning, as women do. Not with the surge and conquest of broad muscle, but slowly, persistently. She supports the far end of one limb with her left hand and saws with her right: a soft, redundant hiss of blade against wood and wood against blade, until the branch at last releases and gives way. She settles it onto the scrubby ground.
Leaning back, one hand on her sacrum, Greta scans the olive leaves. It is her favorite tree, left too long unattended. She squints and frowns and slightly cocks her head. She is absorbed. In search of another fruitless limb to prune.
HOUSE OF SPIRITS
We are in the midst of an hour-long “write” inside Greta’s stone-and-timber cottage. Though in fact it is more of a chapel than a home. After so much devotion. Over a dozen summers restoring what she had found. Whether missing or broken, forgotten or outworn. Little more than a trowel and a hammer. Human hands.
The fibers surrounding my low spine start to seize. Pushing up from the kitchen table, I stretch my arms overhead and cross the plank floor softly. I try not to distract the others. One writer is perched on an antique chair, her long hair curtaining her profile. Narrow fingers tick-tack-ticking on a laptop.
I clutch my spiral notebook in one hand and with the other grip the rungs of a wooden ladder. Climb up to a small loft tucked under the eaves. At the top, a spare cot is wrapped in a patchwork quilt. Book to breast like a holy medal, I touch the quilt and lower myself down. The bed emits a slow wheeze as the rusted springs stretch.
At my elbow, set deeply in the stone, a diminutive arched window. A top-hinged screen filters in the straw-scented light. At my feet, a bookshelf painted cobalt blue bears a ziggurat of sun hats. The shelves hold a jumble of decaying paperbacks. Report to Greco, The House of Spirits, A Lesson Before Dying…
A headland wind spurls and huffs across the roof tiles. It shifts the tarpaper in rasping, intermittent gusts. The rafters periodically crackle, shudder, pause. And then resume.
“When I am here for the summer, sometimes it sounds like that for days,” Greta told us earlier. Raising her chin, she watched the crackling overhead. “After a while, it makes me ill. I just have to leave.”
At first I am puzzled, but then I understand. The wind in the rafters has the rhythmic lament of riggings on a mast.
A rosemary sachet rests, exactly centered, on the quilt. I pick it up, sit down, then lie back on the cot. Being horizontal is a pure relief for my cinching back. I hold the sachet to my face and close my eyes. I inhale slowly, thoroughly. It is a tonic odor: bracing, keen. Sharp enough to scour a glutted heart. Or nearly so.
I replace the sachet. Turn to my side. Extract a pen from a pocket and open up the journal. Flip through fingered pages for a fresh sheet. And then get down to work.
The fibers surrounding my low spine start to seize. Pushing up from the kitchen table, I stretch my arms overhead and cross the plank floor softly. I try not to distract the others. One writer is perched on an antique chair, her long hair curtaining her profile. Narrow fingers tick-tack-ticking on a laptop.
I clutch my spiral notebook in one hand and with the other grip the rungs of a wooden ladder. Climb up to a small loft tucked under the eaves. At the top, a spare cot is wrapped in a patchwork quilt. Book to breast like a holy medal, I touch the quilt and lower myself down. The bed emits a slow wheeze as the rusted springs stretch.
At my elbow, set deeply in the stone, a diminutive arched window. A top-hinged screen filters in the straw-scented light. At my feet, a bookshelf painted cobalt blue bears a ziggurat of sun hats. The shelves hold a jumble of decaying paperbacks. Report to Greco, The House of Spirits, A Lesson Before Dying…
A headland wind spurls and huffs across the roof tiles. It shifts the tarpaper in rasping, intermittent gusts. The rafters periodically crackle, shudder, pause. And then resume.
“When I am here for the summer, sometimes it sounds like that for days,” Greta told us earlier. Raising her chin, she watched the crackling overhead. “After a while, it makes me ill. I just have to leave.”
At first I am puzzled, but then I understand. The wind in the rafters has the rhythmic lament of riggings on a mast.
A rosemary sachet rests, exactly centered, on the quilt. I pick it up, sit down, then lie back on the cot. Being horizontal is a pure relief for my cinching back. I hold the sachet to my face and close my eyes. I inhale slowly, thoroughly. It is a tonic odor: bracing, keen. Sharp enough to scour a glutted heart. Or nearly so.
I replace the sachet. Turn to my side. Extract a pen from a pocket and open up the journal. Flip through fingered pages for a fresh sheet. And then get down to work.
CROSS TOWN, BY TRAIN
CROSS TOWN, BY TRAIN
I am riding home from the hair salon. It’s nearly an hour by train, but the trip is worth it. No one cuts hair like our daughter’s best friend’s father, Jamal.
Twenty-four years, six jobs, an American wife, and three children ago, Jamal emigrated from Morocco with exactly five U.S. dollars and approximately five English phrases (hello, please, thank you, coffee, and buzz off).
After wrestling leaf blowers and clearing egg-smeared plates, he bought his first set of barber shears—and discovered he had a gift. Today, Jamal is the top-selling hair stylist at the Metamorphosis Salon in northwest DC. It’s the kind of place with crystal decanters for the rat-tail combs.
A new style was way overdue. I hadn’t cut my hair for years. Well, actually, not that long. Only since I last saw Greta.
At first, growing my hair was something atavistic, primal. A rite of mourning after coming home from Greece. Like tearing my shirt or rubbing ashes on my skin. Then it was more like trying to grip a kite string in a tempest. If I could just hold on for long enough, she might come back. My world would impossibly recalibrate itself. Into a place where love is ownerless and nameless. Never hurts.
Over time, as the lasting lack of her sank in, so did the truth. I had been growing my hair to prove something. My own femininity. As if looking more conventionally girlish could restore me to some sense of who I am. As if growing Rapunzel’s locks could help me from escape from my solitude. As if you can ever recover your innocence, once it’s gone.
The subway slows down, lurches. Stops. We are single-tracking. Again. My newly shorn head is reflected in the window. Nearly a hundred bucks poorer—and it’s clear no hairstyle can offset my flaccid neck and heavy eyes. Jamal has made me look marginally prettier, but no younger.
I turn my back on the glass, and imagine getting home. Where, by something not at all like but in actual fact a miracle, a man of improbable love is waiting for me. He knows about me. All of me. Even so, he lights the candles. Pours the wine.
If this train ever moves again, I will get home. I will open the front door, which still needs repainting. He will meet me on the landing. We will kiss once, and then again with our eyes closed. He will nestle his chin into my shorter, graying curls. And he will tell me what he has told me all these years.
That he loves my hair. Whatever way I wear it.
Twenty-four years, six jobs, an American wife, and three children ago, Jamal emigrated from Morocco with exactly five U.S. dollars and approximately five English phrases (hello, please, thank you, coffee, and buzz off).
After wrestling leaf blowers and clearing egg-smeared plates, he bought his first set of barber shears—and discovered he had a gift. Today, Jamal is the top-selling hair stylist at the Metamorphosis Salon in northwest DC. It’s the kind of place with crystal decanters for the rat-tail combs.
A new style was way overdue. I hadn’t cut my hair for years. Well, actually, not that long. Only since I last saw Greta.
At first, growing my hair was something atavistic, primal. A rite of mourning after coming home from Greece. Like tearing my shirt or rubbing ashes on my skin. Then it was more like trying to grip a kite string in a tempest. If I could just hold on for long enough, she might come back. My world would impossibly recalibrate itself. Into a place where love is ownerless and nameless. Never hurts.
Over time, as the lasting lack of her sank in, so did the truth. I had been growing my hair to prove something. My own femininity. As if looking more conventionally girlish could restore me to some sense of who I am. As if growing Rapunzel’s locks could help me from escape from my solitude. As if you can ever recover your innocence, once it’s gone.
The subway slows down, lurches. Stops. We are single-tracking. Again. My newly shorn head is reflected in the window. Nearly a hundred bucks poorer—and it’s clear no hairstyle can offset my flaccid neck and heavy eyes. Jamal has made me look marginally prettier, but no younger.
I turn my back on the glass, and imagine getting home. Where, by something not at all like but in actual fact a miracle, a man of improbable love is waiting for me. He knows about me. All of me. Even so, he lights the candles. Pours the wine.
If this train ever moves again, I will get home. I will open the front door, which still needs repainting. He will meet me on the landing. We will kiss once, and then again with our eyes closed. He will nestle his chin into my shorter, graying curls. And he will tell me what he has told me all these years.
That he loves my hair. Whatever way I wear it.
A.M. Thompson‘s poetry is published in Europe (Acumen, The Journal, Vine Leaves, and others) and the U.S. (Ardor, Flyover Country Review, Tulane Review, and others). Thompson has creative nonfiction in KYSO Flash and Leopard Seal; short fiction in Best New Writing 2014; and video remixes online.