Canada Goose: Andrea Antico:
Photo 2 reminded me of birds, imaginary birds. Whenever I think of birds, the omnipresent Canada goose comes to mind. I mind them terribly and wish they were imaginary fowl. Hence,
What’s the Use of a Canada Goose?
Oh, Jeez, No, please.
No more geese, Jeez!
You squawk. We talk
You poop. We scoop.
We toil. You soil.
Take heed. Don’t breed.
You bite. We’ll fight.
Pollute? We’ll shoot.
Pretty bird? Shi–y bird.
You preen? We clean.
Slimy poo. Grimy, too!
Plants spoiled. Grass soiled.
Killjoy. Kill koi!
Bird flu? It’s true.
Loud bleep! No sleep!
Feds decree? We’ll see.
You smell. You yell.
More geese? No, please.
We’ll get disease. Jeez!
Our grounds! Out of bounds!
We’re the best. You’re the pest.
Pesky birds. Messy turds!
You return? We’ll learn
To cook your goose.
Pate? Hooray!
A leg! An egg!
Divine with wine.
Goose stewed. Goose chewed.
What a treat! Foul meat!
From pond, goose begone!
From lawn, goose begone.
From now on, goose begone.
We fear next year.
Go away. We’ll stay.
See you later, agitator!
Fly away. TODAY!
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander!
Anywhere but Denver, you birds may wander!
What the Brain Can Manage: Anonymous: note: in some cases these prompts were offered to non-members. This is a response.
Holocaust Remembrance Day was January 27th, the day Russians liberated Auschwitz in 1945. Such days are honored by sharing stories. Here’s mine.
Shortly after my husband and I returned from a 1984 trip to Europe, we visited his mom. At a quiet moment in the afternoon, sitting alone with her on the couch, I said, “You know, Esther, we saw Dachau,” a concentration camp in Germany.
She took my hand with a smile, “It wasn’t like that.” Esther’s never been to Dachau. She didn’t know what we’d seen there or what kind of memorial it had become, but she knew it wasn’t what she had experienced.
Our brain, with all its natural paths and folds, stores the facts and feelings of a lifetime, with much available for recall. Some data ends in twisted paths, blocked or forgotten. The enormity of The Holocaust can be impossible to wrap into your mind, even 70 years later. But my mother-in-law’s memories are blunt and clear, unadorned by artistic embellishment. She shares, though there must be some twisted paths.
At 14, the Nazis moved Esther’s family into the Lodz Ghetto (Poland) where she was put to work knitting caps for German soldiers and delivering mail. When the ghetto was liquidated, she survived Auschwitz and ended up in Terezin (now in the Czech Republic). There she met her future husband. The Russians liberated them.
When Esther arrived in Auschwitz, she was parted from her mother, her few possessions taken, head shaved, bathed, and only a dress and shoes offered from a huge pile. She and her sister-in-law, Margot, found themselves in a sort of large barn. When they asked to go to the bathroom, the guards hit them, but walking out into the yard, Esther saw a line of women on one side and asked what was happening. “They say they have work for some of us.” She grabbed Margot and sneaked into the line.
The women were transported to Heinichen, a work camp with a munitions factory. When the supervisor came out to look at his “volunteers,” he shook his head and dismissed the shuffling group in anger. “These are crazy people, not workers” he yelled at the guards.
One of the prisoners, a well-spoken woman with fluent German, got his attention. “No, we are good workers, Sir. We only look like this because the guards were making fun of us. They took our own clothes and gave us back these mismatched things.” Tall people had been given short skirts, short people shirts that were sizes too big. Colors didn’t match. Shaved heads. They looked ridiculous.
The woman convinced the supervisor that all of them could work, not give any trouble, learn to run machines, be good workers. He relented. Esther and Margot never returned to Auschwitz.
As winter arrived, the supervisor observed his prisoners walking from their barracks to the factory in thin, cotton clothing. “Where are their coats?” he demanded of the guards. “They’ll be sick and useless. Get them coats now!” The guards requested “surplus” coats from Auschwitz.
I’ve told Esther that this part of her story reminds me of “Schindler’s List.” “Nah,” she says, “I didn’t like that movie.” Though movies help others learn and understand, she feels her experiences aren’t someone else’s movie. In the paths of her mind, “It wasn’t like that.”
David Silberklang, historian at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, says there are probably only a few dozen survivors left who can tell us their stories. “To have someone who was old enough to remember clearly at the time and is still alive and well enough to tell us the whole story today– we are really …in the last few years …where we can benefit from their memory and their insight.” (AP News Release, January 25, 2015)
At 88, my mother-in-law has become a more private person, so her name is changed here and mine not given.
Did you know it’s illegal in France to deny the Holocaust? –What about free speech? Still, I smile at the resolve of the French in making such a law. Merci.
Virginia Small: Birth of an Idea:
Whenever I put my pen to paper the entire omniverse explodes into existence.
It swirls, dances, spirals and sings inside my head, creating thousands of new multi-directional synapses in the time span of a single heartbeat. It vortexes; expanding in all directions at once: and my hand freezes.
Time stops.
It’s too much to write all at once. Every idea ever conceived, every variation of every scenario of every circumstance cannot be contained in one space. The 8 ½ x 11 paper having only two usable dimensions cannot hold the idea.
I think about breaking the idea into segments but as it is a confluent interstitial net, it cannot be cut into segments, lest all the dimensions unravel. And how does one explain a segment of a net? A segment of a net is useless and nonsensical to everyone except the mad. I cannot find a suitable place to snip this cosmic fractal.
How do I squeeze all dark matter, all aether, and all of space and time into the edges of an edgeless expanding cosmos of ideas flowing from me onto one or two limited and passive pages?
Jesus, Krishna, Oshun, Martin Luther King, Michael Jackson, and Snoopy, all do the happy dance thinking they are going to be the one I write about. I must disappoint them all. I have not learned how to incorporate the planets, ants, black holes, dew drops on leaves and the countless creatures that live in them onto my still, blank page.
My pen hovers 15/16ths of an inch above the paper, trying to fit it all in. trying to explain God in 16 lines, so my poem will not be rejected by the local literary publication. How do I explain the universe within a five day deadline?
I suppose I could just write “GOD” or “EVERYTHING” or “ALL.” But who would understand that? We like complete sentences. But isn’t “ALL” a complete sentence?
So I sit with my dull scissors otherwise known as a pen and paper, and decide where to snip the cosmic net of ideas.
I stall, agonize, get another cup of tea and another spoon of peanut butter. I sit again and begin to cull without mercy. That way I will be able to at least, write about something.