Letters from India

As a poet, I often go through seasons of silence, where I write very little and enjoy just being instead of always trying to cross that border between you and I with words. This, I suppose, has been like that...but different. I've been living and studying in India for almost three months now, and mostly I just haven't had time to write, which means no time to edit, which means I'm not ready to show my work. However, what I do have to offer are my letters home, which speak of this experience and will explain much of the work to come. For now, let me trade my silence for these hasty little bites of India.


9/15 . First Namaste...

Namaste, friends! I'm now in Bodhgaya, living at the Burmese Vihar, which is a Buddhist monastery with guesthouse. There's no easy way to explain what India or the monastery are like. I barely remember the last time I was in the States, though it was not that long ago, because everything here is so radically different. As we flew into Delhi, we looked out the window and saw the mountains of Afghanistan--a breathtaking landscape that just reached out at us, even as we were thousands of feet in the air. I think that's when I had some idea how confrontational India would be. Everything here is in your face: the land, the smells, the poverty, the heat, the power-outages, the tasty food, the overwhelming beauty of the clothes and temples and people. And yet, it is a relationship you learn to love. You wear the same dirty clothes for three days in the dust, yet still are amazed how rich and beautiful these traditional outfits look. You light a candle when the power goes out, get used to the heat and lack of air conditioning, and learn how to walk down the street among the cows and young men trying to "guide" you. You wake up at 4:30 in the morning to the rooster and the Islamic call to prayer, but then you see how fresh the morning is, and you go to meditation in silence, looking forward to the places in your mind you might go today. I love it here. I feel so called and blessed to be here.

And not only is India wonderful, but this group I am with makes everything deeper and more enjoyable. I have never been in a room with so many people who want to talk about God and in such different ways. We have grown close in a very short amount of time, and especially my roommate and I have developed a friendship I hope will last after the program. I am very excited about what the next few months with bring.

Even in these few weeks, we have done so much. I've begun classes, which are going fine, and meditation, which I love. I expected it to be quite difficult, since I had never tried it before, but found that I was actually fairly natural at it. I suppose I have spent a lot of time cultivating a spiritual place in my mind, where God and I can talk, so it's easy for me to go there and be calm there. Too, I have seen many beautiful places and done some pretty crazy things. Notably, I have shaved my head. I know, I know...crazy hippie Liz. But I really just wanted to let go of what I didn't need anymore. And I really didn't need my hair. I feel just as beautiful, if not more confident without it. And it's much easier to deal with in this weather, too. But mostly, the act was symbolic, something I'd been wanting to do for a while, just to prove to myself that I could. And I'm quite proud of myself.

Too, I met an elephant in the riverbed the other day, which was pretty neat. And I've been visiting Sikh temples and Buddhist temples and will get to see a Hindu festival this Friday. It's all beautiful and fascinating. But more on that in future updates.

For now, I have to get back to homework. We keep a very tight schedule here, so don't be concerned if these emails are few and far between. Thanks for your patience...in advance.

So much love to you all. Your prayers and well-wishes are always with me.

Liz


9/28 . Fevers and friends in robes...

Things have been a little up and down lately in India. This weekend, several of us caught the "seasonal fever," which basically means we got the flu. And if you know how much the flu stinks when you're in America, imagine having it when it's 95 degrees outside, you have no air conditioning, the electricity is out (i.e. no fan), and all you have are poorly-lit Asian-style toilets. It's not very pleasant. However, after sleeping 20 hours a day for a few days, I'm feeling almost back to normal. So just pray that I stay healthy, especially as I have a big paper due in a few days.

On the bright side, some really cool things have been happening here. We experienced our first Hindu festival last week, which was crazy but very fun. Basically, the Hindus believe that one of the gods comes to visit for a day or two to bless things, so everyone parties and eats a lot of these little butter cake balls. This particular god was the patron of tools and mechanical stuff, so all the rickshaws (taxis) and cars were covered in flowers and the parked ones had incense burning on the engine (which seemed a little unsafe, but hey it's India). The best part, though, is how everyone is very friendly and basically wants to feed you as much blessed food as they can. Even walking down the street, we got pulled into several shops for food and picture-taking.

Also this week, the students in this program had the opportunity to be ordained as a novice monk or nun, so several of my friends shaved their heads, wore the robes, and generally lived a monastic life for a week. It was really interesting to see them ease into that life, which can be pretty austere and difficult. Everyone seemed to handle it well, though it was difficult to have so many boundaries with my male friends, who were supposed to keep their distance with women. Also, because those of us who didn't ordain became "laypeople" in this experiment, we were expected to treat them as higher than us, which would be normal for Buddhist society. This was hard for a lot of people, but I actually found that I liked serving my friends that way. And it was a very concrete way of learning how actual Buddhist societies function, which is what we're supposed to be studying here. It's different from what we're used to, but very stretching for the Western mind.

This coming weekend will be a 4-day break for us, and many of us are traveling to Varanasi for a few days. Varanasi is a city on the Ganges river, where people come to burn their dead and bathe in the sacred waters. There are many Hindu temples there, which we hope to visit, and supposedly there is a Pizza Hut too! After weeks of rice and dahl, you have no idea how good that sounds.

As for daily life, things remain ever new and exciting and challenging. We're getting very used to the food and clothes, sights and smells of Bodh Gaya, but things still come up and knock the air out of my lungs sometimes. Like this morning, as we were practicing walking meditation, you could see the sun rising over the river all red and orange with silhouetted palm trees. And I admit, I cheated in my meditation, because it was too glorious not to watch. And another night I lay on the roof with my friend, watching the stars, feeling the electricity go on and off in the building below. Often it's cloudy at night, but when the stars and the moon do come out, it's a whole new sky. These are the moments I remember that God is ever in this place, even when I get discouraged about the little things, and he is rising up all sorts of new and good things in me. And I am very grateful for that.

Thank you all for prayers, notes, and support. I'm sending you all a lot of "metta," which is the Buddhist term for the unconditional loving-kindness we are trying to cultivate here.

Love,
Liz


10/7 . From the holy river...

Hello dear friends/family!

Thank you once again for your emails of encouragement and tidbits from home. Also, thanks for your concern about my health. I'm completely recovered now, and am back to eating more momos (Tibetan dumplings) than anyone should legally be allowed to consume.

On the note of wonderful food, I got my pizza in Varanasi! It was...strange...but delicious nonetheless. Tomato sauce isn't really available in India, so it was more just naan (Indian flatbread) with ketchup and cheese on it. But this is surprisingly good, unless you're dead set on American pizza, in which case it is quite disappointing. But if I've learned one thing here, it's to stay open and accept things as they come. Otherwise, India would be a very frustrating place, instead of a frustrating but really really beautiful and exciting place.

But back to Varanasi. After living in a strict Buddhist and academic environment for a month, Varanasi was exactly the break we all needed. The city is breathtaking, with an almost Venetian feel, as its roads open right up into the Ganges. And my oh my, that river is so beautiful. It's actually one of the dirtiest rivers in the world, with a terrible rate of sewage and decaying bodies...but you really wouldn't know it to look at it. Plus, the fact that thousands of Hindus are constantly bathing in it makes you forget it's a bad idea to touch it. Don't worry, I put a floating candle in it, but there was no contact. I wasn't keen on getting some funky disease. Anyway, the whole riverbank is lined with ghats, which are basically docks that are entirely stairs down into the water. Here, the people come to bathe in the sacred water, and brahmin priests perform aarti, which is a ceremony in which fire and incense are offered to the Hindu deities. Everything is very alive and colorful there, and I loved just sitting and watching it all happen. It's really hard to explain, but just imagine the Ganges in the evening with hundreds of bathers and floating candles, then add the scent of sandalwood incense, then some Hindu music blaring over loudspeakers, and finally one priest at the center of it all, dressed in the oldest style of Indian clothing, carefully lifting a plate of fire in a hypnotic rhythmn with the music. It's something like that.

Also in Varanasi, my friends and I took a rowboat ride out on the Ganges at sunrise. This was my favorite part by far. The sun rises so fast here, so one minute you're out with the moon, then the big red sun just takes over the sky. Beautiful. And you can see so much from the river: monkeys, temples, the Hindu ascetics and sadus (holy men) performing rituals, beautiful European architecture, ridiculous advertisements. We also saw the burning ghat, which cremates over 200 Hindus a day, so it's constantly burning. When we got there, all you could see were stacks and stacks of firewood (usually sandalwood, which covers up the bad smell). Then, you walk up to the roof of a building and can see the cremation grounds, which seems strange by American standards, but is actually a very public thing in India. We saw a body wrapped in white linen put on a pyre and lit. The Hindus believe that burning their dead by the Ganges releases their souls from their bodies and allows them to go straight to Moksha (kind of like heaven, or more accurately, the release from the cycle of rebirth). If anyone cries, the soul will be stuck on earth, kind of like a ghost. So it's mostly men who watch the burning, and then a bunch of Western tourists. It was a little weird to be there, but altogether I'm glad I got to see it. Hinduism is really interesting, and I'm hoping to learn more about it while I'm here.

Varanasi was also a great place to go shopping and generally act like a tourist, since there are a lot more Westerners there. Often we would spend hours eating these big wonderful breakfasts and drinking tons of chai, then would amble out into the "gullies" or small alleys near the river to shop and generally soak up the life of the city. I bought some new clothes, since I only have four outfits here (we are all dirty and no one cares anymore), and lots of fun gifts to bring back. It was hard to leave the city (especially since our train back was at 5 am), but hopefully I'll get to go back one day.

Back in Bodh Gaya, we have begun working on our independent study projects, during which we will all go out to different places in India for three weeks and write a 20-30 page paper on some aspect of Buddhism. I'm planning on doing my project on Tibetan poetry, and will most likely be traveling to Dharamsala, which is in the mountains in the northwest and the home of the Dalai Lama. Currently, I'm trying to track down a Tibetan poet-in-exhile, but I haven't made that contact for sure yet. We'll see how things go. Either way, I've been digging into the contemporary poetry of the exhiles, and it's very interesting, so I'm pleased with my topic.

Also new is that we're beginning Zen meditation with a Japanese sensei from Australia. He's quite a character, and Zen is a little confusing at times, but also calming and elegantly ritualized. In the evenings, we walk to a Japanese temple to sit Zen for an hour, and I like that a lot, even though a ton of Indians come out to watch us and take pictures. It's funny, I guess, to watch a bunch of white kids try to be Zen. And we think it's funny to watch them watch us, so everyone wins.

Everything here is busy but good. We don't sleep enough trying to get everything done, but I still somehow find time to pray on the roof in the mornings, write poetry, and have the best best conversations with these amazing people. Altogether, I remain incredibly blessed and well. It's stormed the past few days, which has cooled down the weather so that sleeping is more pleasant and the afternoons more tolerable. I'm looking forward to snow in the mountains during my independent project, but for now I will take this Indian "fall" with gratitude.

I hope you all are well. I neglected to mention about the Indian train we took to Varanasi: It was open-air, which was kind of like being inside a pair of lungs, but in a good way, because all the wonderful countryside air rushes into the compartments, kind of like driving with the windows down on a country road. And there's really just no way not to feel alive and happy with that going on. So I hope you all are well and happy in that way, with all of life's blessings fresh on your face.

So much love,

Liz

10/18 . Places of love...

Life in India is as wild and busy as ever. Festival season is picking up, and just yesterday we had Durga Puja, which was a lot of fun. In Hinduism, Durga is a warrior goddess, created by the other gods to slay a buffalo-headed monster. So this festival is basically a celebration of the triumph of good over evil, and everyone gets dressed up and comes into town to pay respects to Durga, whose image is set up in tents around town (which you can find by the really really loud Indian music blaring from them). Also, this festival blends with a celebration of the Ramayana story, which is a classic Indian epic about the capture of Sita and her rescue by Ram (the ultimate ruler-god). In the Ramayana, Ram defeats the evil Ravana from Sri Lanka to save Sita, so to celebrate, Indians build huge statues of Ravana and blow them up. Yes, that's right, there are explosions. It sounded a lot like the 4th of July around here, except big nasty warriors were collapsing in the process. Ironically, we were trying to sit Zen at the Japanese temple while this was going on. Needless to say, that was not my best meditation session.

Anyway, what I really loved about the festival was that all the mothers came out that day. Usually you only see women if they are traveling somewhere or begging on the streets. It's rare to see whole families together, but on the holiday it's very much a family atmosphere, with vendors selling toys and carnivalesque balloons and sweets. I really loved seeing the women act in that universal "motherly" way, clutching their childrens' hands and making their babies laugh. One of the hens at the monastery hatched chicks the other day, and all day you can watch the fuzzy little ones follow her around, looking for seeds and stretching their tiny wings. Indian families are a little like that, all clustered around the mama, looking for food and trying not to get lost on the crowded streets. And though I had my wonderful friends with me, I have to admit I wanted a mommy there with me too. There's just nothing quite like one.

In other news, we climbed a mountain last weekend, which was amazing. First, we walked an hour through the countryside villages, which included wading through the river and being greeted by a million little village kids. Then we got to the mountain and trekked up, which felt so good after weeks of sitting and studying most of the day. At the top, we got to go in this amazing cave that had a stunning Buddha statue inside, and we lit some incense and received blessings from the brahmins there. Then, we strung some Tibetan prayer flags (these beautiful multi-colored flags with prayers written on them) between two high peaks, and climbed around on the rocks, which made my inner eight-year-old boy very happy. If being in town made us forget how naturally beautiful India is, we certainly remembered it as we looked down from the top at all the distant mountains and rice fields, palm trees and rivers. It was quite a sight.

Later that evening, we students had a talent show at the local restaurant, and I got to read a few poems, which was fun. Also, so many people from my group have incredible musical gifts, but there isn't any music allowed in the monastery, as monks aren't supposed to engage in entertainment. So it was amazing to hear everyone sing and play, especially those who did original songs. I still can't believe I'm with these people some days, as everyone seems to be so talented, intelligent, and just downright interesting. And even as we all get tired and loaded down with work, the group dynamic has remained surprisingly strong and supportive, for which I am very grateful.

As much as things have been exciting and good around here, I have to admit that at this point in the program, I'm getting very tired and a little burnt-out on studying just Buddhism. We're having to do a lot of work on our independent study projects, along with another round of papers and exams for the end of our Zen session (next is Tibetan-style meditation), so there's rarely a moment to spare. And getting up at 4:30 am is getting harder and harder as the days grow shorter and the mornings darker. So do pray for my perseverance and that I will be refreshed for the second half of my time here. I think working with poetry again will really help, as will going to a new place next month in Dharamsala. Too, this weekend is a long weekend (yay!), and my roommate Britt and I are already planning to do some fun shopping and sightseeing in the area. So things are well, and looking up, just a little stressful right at the moment.

I hope you all are well and enjoying where life takes you. I was having chai with some shopkeepers the other day, who reminded me not only how hospitable Indians are, but also what is special about this place. "Bodh Gaya is a place of love. Here is the tree of love," Nailash said, referring to the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha gained enlightenment. And it's true. No matter how frustrated I get here, I am always reminded how much I am growing and learning how to love in this crazy little Indian town. And really, I can't ask for more than that.

May you all find yourselves in places of love.

Liz

10/30 . Taking the "I" out...

Well, there's certainly been a lot to write home about lately. These past couple weeks have been packed with changes and challenges, ups and downs. I'm doing well, but definitely tired out.

First off, there was Zen. I haven't written much about our actual meditation practice, because it's hard to explain, especially when you haven't practiced it yourself. Zen meditation, to summarize, is highly aesthetic, ritualized, and confusing. There's lots of bowing and very careful posture and hand placement, but as far as what your mind is supposed to be doing, Zen will only give you some vague and contradictory advice like "Take the 'I' out" or "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" I found it incredibly frustrating, and would often leave a little early to sit on the roof and defiantly sing or pray. However, by the third week (we do each style of meditation for three weeks, then switch) I realized how much my negative reaction to Zen signaled how much I needed to practice Zen. Those meditation sessions were like sandpaper against my sense of control and ego, and while I really didn't enjoy it, I came to see how beneficial it was to me and made a sort-of peace with it.

One of the things I hated most about Zen was the tradition of students asking to be hit by the teacher. Now, our teacher was a very kind Japanese man, who would not normally inflict pain on any being. However, because it's tradition, he told us he would smack us with his wooden stick if we asked for it during meditation (by doing a particular hand gesture). And so many people did, and it sounded awful. I hated sitting there listening to my friends get hit, and even though I knew they were asking for it and many liked it, it still sounded so violent. And though I never ever thought I would want to be hit, India has a way of changing your mind. The last evening of Zen, I was taking a rickshaw with my friend Taylor to the Japanese temple, where we would have our final session. As we approached one of the busier intersections, we saw a group of men swarming the street, which is usually not a good sign in India. And then we saw: a man lay in the street with his head smashed against the pavement and blood pooling around his head. He'd been thrown from a motorcycle, and as there are no helmets or emergency services in Bodh Gaya, all anyone could do was watch him bleed to death on the street. It was awful, how no one touched him, even as he showed small signs of life. And Taylor and I just walked around and got back in our rickshaw, as if walking past roadkill. There was nothing else we could do, but it felt so inhumane. And as I sat in meditation, with the man's face and the bloody street replaying over and over in my mind, the only thing I wanted was to be hit, to be shocked out of my own ability to breathe. So I did it. And it hurt. And I had a red block-shaped welt on my skin for a few days, which faded and peeled off long before I came to any peace about what happened on the street. I heard later that the man was carried to the clinic and confirmed dead.

So that was the low point. But things did go up from there, as India has a way of being surprising in many excellent ways too. I decided to visit the local church this past weekend with my friend John, and, though it was hard to know what to expect, I am so glad I did. It was all in Hindi, but so incredibly familiar that it hardly mattered. We prayed and sang, prayed and sang, testified and sang, and prayed some more. There was a little girl sitting next to me, and we clapped together to the beautiful and very Indian songs. Later, I gave her a few of the bangles from my wrist, and she smiled huge at the too-big bracelets on her little arm. The people really made the place special, and I loved being around so many women as they smiled and sang and laughed in a safe, relaxed atmosphere. It was so refreshing to be around so much joy, even in a tiny room packed with Indians with whom I could only half-communicate. So much love and sincerity was present, and that was all that mattered. As the preacher said, in a manner almost comically akin to Southern-Baptist, "Hallelujah! Dunyavad Jesu!" (Thank you Jesus!).

Too, we've recently switched to Tibetan-style meditation, which I love! We had a pretty famous Rinpoche come to teach us, and he was so wonderful. Now, this man has supposedly been reincarnated seven times as a Buddhist master, and he's definitely wiser than your average Joe, but he was also incredibly funny and gracious. We only had a week with him, so it was jam-packed with lectures and ceremonies, but even so, his humor and compassion carried us through it. I feel like I learned so much about wisdom and compassion from him, and I decided to take part in the "refuge" ceremony, during which you link yourself with that particular teacher and commit to live a life striving not to harm other beings. I really wanted to recognize Buddhism and the Rinpoche's influence on my life, even as I didn't want to become a Buddhist (which Rinpoche says is okay, because Jesus is a great teacher too), so I felt really good about this particular ceremony, which was very basic but beautiful. Rinpoche cut a little piece of my hair (which is getting longer), blessed me, and gave me a Dharma name, which is Choying Thaye or "Limitless Basic Space." I really like it, because it reminds me that I don't have to put borders around myself, by my own fears or concepts of who I am and what I can do. There is an essence that is limitless, and there is nothing stopping me from having access to that except me. Then, Rinpoche mixed rice and flowers and threw them at us, like newlyweds. It was so funny, because he was really getting into it and we were all laughing hysterically at what a little kid he could be sometimes. The whole thing was like a big celebration of life and how good humans can be when they choose compassion over selfishness. I just loved it, and I've been picking rice out of my hair for days.

Well, that's probably enough for now, and I have to get back to the monastery for lunch. Tonight we're having a Halloween party, and I'm dressing up as Twiggy, since I got this sweet 60's-style dress in Varanasi. I'm really excited, and ready to DANCE!

More updates to come... Thank you all for your continued letters, emails, prayer, and support! Love you all!

Love,
Liz


11/19 . From the Himalayas...

Namaste everyone! Or I should say, "Tashi Delek!" which is the greeting of choice here in Dharamsala, where the population is predominantly Tibetan refugees.

So, of course, the biggest news is that I am now in Dharamsala, India, which is an entirely different world from Bodh Gaya. Before, I was staying in the poorest and most "backward" state in India, in a small dusty town in a rice farming plain. Now, I am living in the Himalayas, in a small-ish but quite Westernized city that is full of Tibetans and dharma bums (Western hippies seeking the ancient wisdom of the Tibetan Buddhists). Bodh Gaya was hot and loud and smelly, but here the air is chilly and fresh and the mountains are so quiet you'd think someone turned India on mute. I love it. I loved Bodh Gaya as my semi-home, but I have to tell you, it's great to be comfortable again. I'm staying at this gorgeous villa on a mountainside with five of my friends from the monastery, and we really got the hookup as far as living space. Our apartment is a little away from the main town, and actually right next door to the Dalai Lama's house. Yes, that's right: the Dalai Lama is my neighbor. I don't think he's home right now, but come the end of November, he definitely will be. And our area is certainly fit for the leader of a nation. Not only do we have a beautiful home with kitchenettes and a great common space, but our front porch overlooks a picturesque valley, with misty mountains and soaring hawks in the distance. I can't stop taking pictures of the sunsets here. And still, there is no capturing them. You'll have to come for yourself.

As for school, things are going great. I finished up my anthropology and meditation classes back in Bodh Gaya, and now I have 100% of my time to dedicate to Tibetan poetry. I picked up a bunch of books at a local shop here, and I have been absolutely devouring them. Too, I have interviews with three different poets in the works, which is wonderful and exciting and nerve-racking. Not only are these guys really wonderful writers, but they are hardcore activists for the Tibetan independence movement. Even reading their poems, you can feel a great fighting spirit within them, and also a deep deep sadness over all they have lost. I sometimes worry I'll be in over my head, a privileged white American trying to make sense of these exile-written lines. But the Tibetans have been so kind, so open.

I guess I should explain briefly the Tibetan situation, which is complicated and something I have a very cursory knowledge of. Basically, Tibet was an independent nation until the 1950s, and was secluded from Western influence, so it was still using a feudal system of government and had an intricate system of Buddhist spiritual leaders (who would be reincarnated and lead again and again). Then, China gradually invaded and decided to "fix" Tibet, because they were "backwards." In this process, they violated all basic human rights of the Tibetans, took their land and systematically annihilated the culture. Many monastics and spiritual leaders were executed, and anyone who resisted was tortured or killed. So many people fled, including the Dalai Lama, who is both the main political and spiritual leader of the nation, and the rest still live under extreme oppression and assimilation into Chinese communist culture. So most of the Tibetans in Dharamsala were either born during the mass-exodus from Tibet, or have been born in India and never seen Tibet. But there is this great hope still floating around here that they'll be able to go "home," wherever that might be.

And my project, more specifically, is looking at how these exile poems are keeping Tibetan Buddhist culture alive, while still being incredibly modern and actually quite challenging to the old ways. It's fascinating, and such a different style of poetry than I'm used to. But I'm learning a lot, and learning fast. It's been so good.

This morning I got up with the sunrise and prayed and meditated and ate some real cereal (hard to come by in Bodh Gaya), and I just couldn't believe how blessed I've been to be on this journey. Really, a small-town girl from Illinois should not be reading Tibetan poetry on a mountainside in India, watching the best sunrise from a sweet villa as beautiful Tibetan women walk the prayer path below, reciting the sacred "Om Mane Padme Hum" under their breaths. It's mind-blowing how I ended up here. I don't think I could ever be grateful enough. To have this space to challenge my ego and my sense of the world has been incredible. Thank you all so much for your support along the way.

So much love...
Liz


More to come. Plus poems, if I get my act together...

Jonah Series, in full

Jonah, Swallowed

When I was a prophet, I wanted to be a sailor. When I was a sailor, I was sick on the rails all the time. Heaving out at the sea, I thought about the tightrope walker from the circus back home, how she glided into the void with her arms outstretched. I wanted to say it was like that, that running away from God was something graceful and calculated. No one ever tells you how much the wire shakes.

God bullied up the water, sent a storm to drag me back. Too seasick to stand, I tied myself upright to the mast, dug my fingernails into the wood. John tore me off, said, You ain’t no sail, said, You gonna sink us all with those sins, boy. My boots were heavy with rain. I could have emptied them, but the men came fast and threw me over the rails. I thought I could find the wire and stick the landing, but there was nothing to hold onto. My hands hit the water, and everything went cold. When I sank under the ship, I could see her giant eye.

My whale, she saved me, like a good wife. She made me part of her body. She hides me under her skin, while he waits out there, hungry.

Jonah, Day 6

For days, Jonah has been talking to himself. Not much else to do inside a whale. He looks like a high school boy nerving up to ask some girl out, pacing the belly, wiping his palms against his thighs. He replays the same scene over and over, how he took her hand and called her by her real name—Lily, not Hattie the Highwire Girl. But she didn’t call him Jonah. Prophet boy, she said. Don’t touch me, prophet boy. Turns out tightrope walking is a one-man act. No room for two in the air.

Jonah had thought God was guiding him to Lily, that her sequin-studded hair and steady legs were his reward for all his prophet wanderings. When she turned away, he cut down her rope and tied it round his wrists and ankles. See this, God? I won’t move ‘til you make her love me. But then the lions got loose and Jonah changed his mind.

Now, he paces the whale, sloshing his boots through the half-digested krill. He can hear the whale’s heart beating loud and slow above him. He knows there are worse places he could be, that God could have struck him on the spot. But that heart, it won’t let him sleep.

Jonah, Day 17

Decided to start decorating. There isn’t much you can do with ribs. God can make a woman out of them, but I’m not like him. There will be no woman. There will only be ribs. Maybe a disco ball. Something to put all these scales to use. Something to reflect the scant light. I just need something to do with my hands. Give me a helm, and I’ll steer. Give me a surgical saw, and I’ll cut out the heart. I’ll make this place a home. A woman would say it needs window treatments. She’d say, You aren’t a decorator just because some whale swallowed you whole and you’re lonely and bored. A home needs window treatments. But there is no woman.

Jonah the Prophet

When God said, Go to Nineveh, I could hear the whale in his voice. I was at the circus, watching the trapeze artist who was to fall that night. God loves the circus freaks, and I guess I did too, until that girl tied her rope around my lungs, hung me thirty feet up and walked over my back. How could he keep asking me to save them after that? Place a cushion here. Speak over his broken rib. Healed, they would stand up with their eyes wide and shiny, like they’d seen the face of Almighty. I hate this part. Falling makes for a better show.

Nineveh was one bad circus. God should have collapsed that tent, caged the people in with the lions. But I knew he wouldn’t do it. I’d prophesy over them, and they would turn back to God, and everyone would eat popcorn and peanuts and nobody would have to be the sad clown that scares all the kids.

God didn’t want to send this whale either. He wanted me to get over my anger, be his little prophet boy again. But when I heard it, the possibility of being swallowed, of hiding from him and his ridiculous plans, I ran straight for the sea.

Jonah’s Whale

She wasn’t hungry when she swallowed him. It was more like the instinct humans have to touch a stingray’s soft body, except she wanted him inside her. She glides slowly through the water, imitating a submarine, those metal whales she’s seen near land, the ones with the men inside. She wants to make a space for him, doesn’t want to jostle him around, the poor wild thing. She can feel his claws growing longer inside her and hear the raw anchovies he bites into. She doesn’t bite, she filters. Only civilized creatures have baleens, she thinks. This man has a row of violence in his mouth. When he’s not chewing the fish, he’s chewing his own flesh: lips, bits of skin around the fingernails. She half-expects him to eat his arm off one of these days, out of boredom, or perhaps out of sadness. She’s seen a lot of limbs lost at sea. Sometimes a tentacle torn from a squid, sometimes a leg bitten off from a sailor. The difference is that a squid has three hearts to make up for the loss, and a man has only one, left somewhere on land.

Jonah, Day 24

Sometimes the whale opens her mouth and strange objects come inside. Yesterday, a red high-heeled shoe. Jonah pretended it was a telephone, pressing his ear to the insole. He prank-called God. Is your refrigerator running? Better send the angels to catch it! He felt like a teenager again, and it was exhilarating and sad. He thought that if God really were a Father he’d be playing catch with him in the backyard right now. He tried playing catch with the shoe, but the heel kept coming down in his palm and it hurt and it’s stupid to play catch by yourself anyway. Jonah sat down in a pile of krill and sulked. He thought about the millions of fathers on land playing catch with their sons and about trees and dirt and all the things that don’t smell like fish. He tried calling God again. He dialed 911, because it was an emergency this time, but nobody answered. Nobody answered the first time either.

Jonah, Day 33

Jonah expects to die today. He’s been keeping track of the days by the light through the blowhole and thirty-three sounds awful to him. He doesn’t know about Jesus yet, but he can feel that thirty-three is a dying number. The whale has been acting strange, too. Her calls are lower and longer than usual, like she’s mourning. He can feel that she’s slowing down. He thinks maybe she’s been separated from her family. He thinks, Isn’t it just like life? A woman eats a man and loses her family and they both go off to die together at the bottom of the sea. Jonah’s become a cynic about love. He’s had too much time to think about Lily, her glittered neck and rope-worn feet. He wonders if he imagined her, if he was lonely enough to do something like that. Not that it matters anymore. Now it’s just him and his whale, and he can’t even talk to her. Sometimes he sings to her, but he isn’t sure she can hear him. And besides, no one wants to listen to their dinner howling away inside them. Jonah lies down to sleep, listening to the thump-thump-thump of her heart. It used to keep him up, that beating, but now it’s like a lullaby, sinking him to sleep.

Jonah dreams that her heart stops beating in the night. He crawls through her ribs to start it up, pummeling his fists against the muscles until she comes back to him. He wakes up in a panic but the beat is still there. He puts his hand to his chest and feels his own heart pumping in rhythm with hers.

White Earth Poems

This June, I traveled to the White Earth Native American Reservation in Minnesota with my mom and a group of fantastic individuals to serve at the Hope Day Camp there. We got to see first hand some of the continuing injustices on the reservation, and better yet got to hug on and spend quality time with some kids who needed some extra love. The following are some of the poems I wrote while on the reservation.

White Earth Girls {we hold tight the haunted}

Fawn monkeys onto my back,

legs plastered to my ribs, her silver fillings

peeking through her grin, too many

for her seven years. This week

I've chewed on too many hard stories

of mothers methed-out, jailed, gone—

nonspecific death sentences for little girls,

and yet I watch these small faces uncloud

as they slide down to be caught

in my mother's endless arms,

their bandanas wild with forgetfulness.

And we hold on to this, knowing

how hard won it is for even the smallest

of the people who were burdened

with remembering

the americas before they were given

a name, before mother earth was

strung out on capitalism

and lost her will to raise us.

* * *

Jocelyn {hearts captive, we catch her gusto}

The little girl who hums herself

happy birthday knows what it is

to have a choir inside,

and her feet too know the instinct

to gallop instead of jump, that wild

horse marking, fire-bellied

and wide-eyed. She places her hand

in the cement imprint of a Native child

and tells me it's heavy, as if she's already

holding up part of this sky, this vast

air that blends right into the lakes

and presses upon us with Minnesota thickness.

This little girl, who can barely take on the stairs,

rushes to the trees, the roots, and the wood-

chipped earth, as if to ask, What's to be feared

when there is so much still to be touched?

* * *

Owls {the darkness preys over us}

The hush wings the Anishinaabe call them who sing their names

toward death from the trees and fly them Northbound to the Creator ashes

to ashes dirt to deer deer to sons and they take their daughters

from the mention of owls fearing the death omen the amen people

speak like mice over the land and outside the center where we teach

about a God who is not white and hears tobacco prayers the same

as anything said on our knees J's face is cut like a dreamcatcher

web tangled with blood and cheek muscle we didn't mean to bring

the inside to the skin it's just the spirits somehow angered it's just

the threats turned knife the owls landing where the may

the people holding their blood in their hands trying to keep alive

when there are so many talons to fear in the night.

* * *

Itasca {where all things must go south}

Walk across the stones of the Mississippi,

take off your shoes, roll up your pant legs.

We're in deep now, too soaked

in the Native tongue to forget the houses

boarded up for warmth in the winter, or

the girl dragged into the woods and raped,

or the child who smiled wide

when she got a new teddy bear because

her father's grave had been bare too long.

Take, this is our water now, hard as it may be

to hold in the reservoirs of our chests

and carry home without spilling.

Take and drink the river, dance

the rapids, and let it carry you home.

No one is getting out blind.

Mother

When my mother was younger, she had long brown hair and could list on two hands the number of boys she had kissed. When she got to her ring finger, she took it as a sign it was time to marry. My father was not so careful in his counting, and decided later he needed to add some more. What he didn’t know is that there is no counting backwards in love. His hands kept moving forward, fingers ticking off, a poor excuse for a wave goodbye. My mother took my hand and my sister’s hand. She took our hands in her hands, and she showed us how to make birds of them.

Once, my mother boiled water over an open flame to feed us. The spaghetti tasted of campfire, but my sister and I cleaned our bowls, love hunger rising in our bellies. We have never been without dinner, though there were days I could only chew apples on the driveway, throwing the cores down the road like they were some kind of charm against anyone else taking off.

In my dreams, my mother is a prophetess in the woods, foretelling a forest fire. She teaches the oaks how to grow legs and follow the deer to the clearing. Her eyes are that of an owl: large and brown and forward facing. But when my father left us, she didn’t see it coming, like a tornado with no funnel cloud, no weather channel warning. My mother told me about the tornadoes that tore over our home when I was a child, how they sounded like trains on the roof. In the morning, the lawn was littered with shingles and glass. But my mother, she has always been good with a hammer and nails. She patched our roof right up.

Laying of Hands

The boy she loves has been praying over cars since he was eight years old, palm on the dashboard, willing life into the transmission. She thinks about him after the crash, how, when they were together, he prayed over the red Volvo dead on the country road and it started. She loved the way he said Jesus, full of twang and honey. She wanted to plant him in her yard like a sugar maple, so he could give her sweetness when she needed it, but the thing about a car-praying boy is that his feet love the road.

Now, stranded on the street, she wants him to uncrumple the SUV, fill in the crater on the passenger door right behind where she was sitting when the truck plowed in. She wants him to touch her collarbones again, gently salving the bruises. This is the only way she knows how to heal. She puts one hand over her heart, the other on the hood of the Ford. Arms like jumper cables as she whispers Jesus.

Reconstruction

In the fourth grade, she knows what it is to be a body. Gloveless, she sifts mouse bones from an owl pellet. The assignment is to build a whole skeleton out of what has been swallowed and regurgitated, cocooned in its own tangled fur. She pulls out the ribs one-by-one with a pair of tweezers, trying to make a cage of them. She imagines the mouse’s heart howling when the owl hooked her, the sound overpowered by the heartbeat inside the larger bones. She imagines the acid breaking down the mouse’s skin, her heart pumping blood out of the wounds, that blood becoming lost blood, becoming the blood of the dead. She imagines the owl choking her body back up, the violent yawn of her skull resurfacing after he digested her meat. She imagines the pelleted mouse abandoned on the forest floor, heart left in the owl’s stomach. When she arranges the bones on the construction paper, she draws a red fist between the ribs.

Substitution

She’s never seen a sawhorse used for anything other than a balance beam. Summer of ’96 and the U.S. women’s gymnastics team takes home the gold. She watches every second, tumbling around the TV while her mother stirs Rice-A-Roni on the stovetop. She takes up her own version of the sport. In the garage, she cartwheels off the sawhorse her father left behind when he moved out. She headstands against the walls, uses tree limbs for uneven bars. Other girls learn somersaults at the gymnastics center, their fathers reading newspapers in the hallway, waiting to pick them up. These girls have hand guards and leotards and special chalk. The fatherless girl stays home, stretching around her mother’s ankles. She has learned how to dig out a splinter with a hot needle. She has learned how to tighten the screws when the wood shakes under her.

John Wayne

My father’s name was John Wayne. Like the Western star. Except he had no boots, no spurs. Nothing to kick up the dust. I’d like to tell you that he shot men off their horses in the backyard, that he came inside with his gun still smoking, a stoic hero. I’d like to tell you that we lived in a place where there were horses. A man could show his shine on that street, I’d say. A man could have a wilderness in his heart, and it wouldn’t destroy him.

If I were to tell you that my father, John Wayne, killed himself one night under the Midwestern stars, I could tell you it was a downright shoot ‘em up. That he took guns in both his hands and pulled the triggers like life and country depended on it.

The truth is that he killed himself in a garage, the cars running like chained-up horses. And as he wandered past the rakes, drunk on carbon monoxide, he couldn’t even see the leaves caught in their teeth, or how near he was to the doors—the one leading out into the cornfields, the other into the house where pizza was still sitting on the counter but his girls were gone back to their mother. He collapsed on the welcome mat, his neck swelling against everything he’d tracked in.

Baptism

The sisters baptized their hamster in the sink. The smaller one cupped him in her hands, and her sister dotted his forehead with water three times, then crossed him. Sometimes, the younger sister would shake his water bottle over him until three drops came out, just to make sure. She taped Bible verses to his cage, facing inward. She sang him the songs she learned from Sunday school about Noah and Moses. She wondered if there were hamsters on the ark, or in the pockets of the Hebrews as they marched through the parted Red Sea. She planned to save her hamster by floating him in a wicker basket if the river ever flooded their house.

She found him dead, stiff in his bedding. Her mother placed his body in a check box, and they buried him in the backyard beneath the pine tree. The younger sister lay with her ear to the dirt, listening for his soul rising up. Her sister called her in when it started to rain, but she ran to the river instead, watching it rise and rise.

Sailors Without Water

She hears that Midwestern men make the best sailors, because the sea’s horizon that drives their comrades to gnaw at the railing is just another field to them. When she imagines her father captaining a ship, she sees him in blue jeans, the deck piled with dirt, his crew picking at their fingernails the way men do when they’re waiting for the harvest. He’s never seen the ocean, has never been farther than Indiana. The only boots he has are for trekking over the soil. She cleans the mud from their soles with cornhusks, proud of the battered but clean results. She knows nothing of shoeshine.

In the afternoons she walks through the cornfields, looking for the golf balls her father hits far into the stalks. He never goes in after the corn grows shoulder-high, remembering the time he got lost and had to sleep in the dirt, but she loves the feeling of being swept up in the green. She picks ears of corn and brings them back to the house, piling them in the backyard. Her father yells at her when the raccoons come to eat them, tells her those goddamn pirates will bring disease to the house and steal everything that shines. After that, she stops picking up the golf balls, or throws them farther into the endless fields along with the half-eaten corn. She fills her pockets with pennies and scatters them like seeds, until the ground glistens like water.

Her father doesn’t want to buy new golf balls, and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he starts hurtling his clubs into the field. After the clubs are gone, he throws the patio furniture, parts from the grill, wood from her old playhouse. He runs to the edge of the field, stopping at the first ear like it’s an electric fence. He crumples to the ground, swearing and clinging to the stalks like jail bars. She watches silently, then slips into her littered field. A few rows in, she finds a dead raccoon with its head bashed in. She buries it, along with the clubs and the grill, imagining she’s returning an albacore to the sea and saving the desperate sailor from his own cannons.

Basic Definitions for Living on This Land

Tornado

When a ship is lost on land, it will make its own wind to get home.

Cornfield

In Kindergarten we taught our bodies how to get in lines. I lost count of the sunburns, but those bodies learned how to be dry. We harvested our hearts for their water, so the other would not be so thirsty. Now, we bow low to the earth. Dirt fills the gaps inside us.

River

This is no way to leave, she said. All the sticks inside me already went that way, he said. Here, take my sticks, she said, breaking off a rib and dropping it inside him. She watched it drift toward Louisiana and disappear. She broke off another, and he didn’t have the heart to stop her.

Fence

Because I cannot separate my horses from yours. Because they whinny over the wire.

Flash Fiction!

First, some information: flash fiction is kind of like a hybrid between fiction and poetry (mine definitely leaning more towards the prose poem genre). Basically, it's just a really really short story. And I'm in a flash fiction class now, so that's what I'll be posting. You dig? I sure hope so.

Here's a sample of what's to come, from a series I wrote on Jonah...

Jonah, Swallowed

When I was a prophet, I wanted to be a sailor. When I was a sailor, I was sick on the rails all the time. I planned to marry a tightrope walker so she could keep balance for both of us. But the storm came first, and I tied myself upright against the mast. John tore me off, said you ain’t no sail, said you gonna sink us all. My boots were heavy with rain. I could have emptied them, but the men came so fast and they grabbed me so fast and they threw me over the rails. I thought, find the wire, stick the landing, don’t just fall, don’t just break against the water. My hands hit first, and everything went cold. When I sank under the ship, I could see her giant eye.

She saved me, like a good wife. She made me part of her body. It’s like being inside my mother again, except I don’t remember the last time I was there, so maybe it’s not. I’d like it to be. I’d like to be born again, do the whole thing over. Next time I’ll marry the girl and stay on land. Next time I won’t even learn the word for boat. God will have to flood the earth before I step in his water.

Jonah, Day 17

Decorating is the hard part. There isn’t much you can do with ribs. God can make a woman out of them, but I’m not like him. There will be no woman. There will only be ribs. Maybe a disco ball. Something to put all these scales to use. Something to reflect the scant light. I just need something to do with my hands. Give me a helm, and I’ll steer. Give me a surgical saw, and I’ll cut out the heart. I’ll make this place a home. A woman would say it needs window treatments. She’d say, you aren’t a decorator just because some whale swallowed you whole and you’re lonely and bored. A home needs window treatments. But there is no woman.

Jonah, Day 24

Sometimes the whale opens her mouth and strange objects come inside. Yesterday, a red high-heeled shoe. Jonah pretended it was a telephone. He prank-called God. Is your refrigerator running? Better send the angels to catch it! He felt like a teenager again, and it was exhilarating and sad. He thought that if God really were a Father he’d be playing catch with him in the backyard right now. He tried playing catch with the shoe, but the heel kept coming down in his palm and it hurt and it’s stupid to play catch by yourself anyway. Jonah sat down in a pile of krill and sulked. He thought about the millions of fathers on land playing catch with their sons and about trees and dirt and all the things that don’t smell like fish. He tried calling God again. He dialed 911, because it was an emergency this time, but nobody answered. Nobody answered the first time either.

Jonah, Day 33

Jonah expects to die today. He’s been keeping track of the days and thirty-three sounds awful to him. He doesn’t know about Jesus yet, but he can feel that thirty-three is a dying number. The whale has been acting strange, too. Her calls are lower and longer than usual, like she’s mourning, and he can feel that she’s slowing down. He thinks she’s lost her family. He thinks, Isn’t it just like life? A woman eats a man and loses her family and they both go off to die together at the bottom of the sea. Jonah’s become a bit of cynic about love. He’s had too much time to think about the women he never had. The tightrope walker, the girl who sold oranges near the dock, his childhood sweetheart. He never kissed any of them, and it’s too bad, really, because now he’s dying and they’ll never know how bad he wanted them. Jonah lies down to sleep, because he’d rather dream about the girls than look at the insides of his whale anymore. He wakes up with a piece of whaleflesh in his mouth. He’d being dreaming about eating his way out.

Homeland

The next 7 poems are a series I've been writing this whole term. I posted them backwards so you can read them top to bottom, starting with Springfield, ending in Galesburg.

I've entitled my portfolio Homeland this term, because when it comes down to it, these poems are just trying to find a way home. Sometimes they're retracing my steps, sometimes they're acting as a temporary shelter, sometimes they're just lost and calling out.

In the end, "here" can mean both a place and a gift, as in, Here, take this. And "there" too: There, there, it's going to be okay. These poems try to remember that. Whether you are here or there, all is not lost. There can be gifts, there can be comfort. Home could be just around the corner.

Springfield

Some days I think I know Abraham Lincoln

better than I knew my own father, and you too

have grown up with your dad halfway

across the planet, but Lincoln

just around the corner, his home

wide open for visitors,

so when I sit across from you

at that Thai place and you ask about him

for the first time, I don't know

which facts to spout off: my history

or the story of this city. You've just written

a musical where the heroine is fatherless,

and though I don't know this, I slip

into her skin and tell you everything

I can remember: his leather jacket,

the blues he listened to while he

choked on carbon monoxide,

the long time after when I wouldn't

take off his watch. This

is the point where you fall

in love with me. I fall

when you say you'd use the word

shit in a Good Friday sermon,

if you ever gave one. And again,

when we run to the cornfield

during the January storm,

and you brush the wet hair from my forehead

before leaning in. And again when I

snake my hands from your shoulders

to your chest, mapping out the way

to get inside you.

You, in Kosovo

When you leave for Pristina

I have visions of the Sharr Mountains,

their orange grasses shivering

against your legs and fingertips,

but the fields are green in your pictures

and you never get that far south.

There, you meet Altin, whose Allah

sounds so much like your God,

and you walk through monastery ruins,

relics from the war like all the pictures

of people still missing

lined up on the fences.

There, you open all the windows

in your parents' rented home

hoping for a dusty breeze, something

to lift this heavy summer,

and since you cannot call you write

to me, Here, a boy becomes a man

at fifteen when he gets his first gun, and there,

you at nineteen, still learning how

to reconcile your voice

with the consonants of Albanian,

to speak across the water

to the woman you love. There is so much

darkness, not meaning just the blackouts

or the bombed-out buildings,

but something in your own

American hands.

You, in Hawaii

Sometimes you taste wild, like that summer

in Michigan when you were all lake and forest

and sweat, and I would have done anything

to crawl inside your sleeping bag. I imagine

you're like that now, except with a little more soot

under your fingernails from digging trenches

in the volcanic rock. You tell me about

feeding the pigs with the leftovers, how

sometimes it's ham and you're sorry.

One boot slips off, then the other.

You wind up the telephone wire and lasso me

closer and closer, into an armchair

and the way you would read aloud

in the park near my house, and my hand

on your chest, and the tree you would press

into my back when you kissed me.

Weeks later, you'll watch the pigs' necks

being sliced open, and tell me how it feels

to break the spine, and like the cowboy

you always wanted to be, you'll go hitchhiking

across the island to clear your head.

You, in New York City

I want something loud enough

you can hear it in the shower, like a gunshot.

But you're living so close to Harlem,

I'm not sure you would even blink.

You tell me about feeding the homeless,

sitting with them on the streets.

I change the subject to art history,

because the one time I worked at a soup kitchen

my ex-con coworker called me a snowflake,

said, with an ass like that you better have a boyfriend,

and all I could do was try not to sneeze from the pepper

all the drunk men shook in their soup.

I've visited New York four times with my mother,

but never lived there. We ate at a gospel church

turned into a pizza joint, balcony still echoing,

and went to see Vermeer at the Met, his girl

with her pearl earring. I tell you all about it,

but you never go. You prefer eating soup

and sleeping on the floor in the apartment you share

with a girl from Colorado you admit to liking

and two Fins, three Koreans, and an Egyptian.

Your English disintegrates the longer you stay.

I pace the kitchen floor when we speak

on the phone, plucking at the cabinet doors

while you figure out where you're going

next. The day you skin your knees

on the sidewalk, you tell me

you're coming back to the Midwest

I'd never give up for good,

back to the cornfields we know.