A Poem to Read

Resurrection

by Nora B. Peevy

When the dark blooms wither on the vine,
I yank them from my gut and claim them as mine.

Black petals weeping red,
I wear my new thorny wreath,
though it pierces my forehead.

Clad in a gown of maiden white,
down the winding path to the river I walk at midnight.

I lay my body down on a bed of sweet lavender and rosemary,
one herb to banish and one herb to heal,
and let the tiny Tree Men, all bundles of sticks and leaves,
twist fairy knots in my hair as beside me they kneel.

I watch the pixies dance like thistle down under the moon's embrace.
And for a moment, I breathe in perfect grace.

In Memory of My Brother, Greg, R.I.P.

October is a bittersweet month for me. I love everything about fall; the scent of crisp leaves crumbling beneath my boots, the way the sunlight seems weaker in the morning, pumpkin pie, and Halloween. I love it all, but I also associate a family tragedy with this month too, a painful memory -- my brother, Greg, being admitted to the veteran's hospital downtown.

Greg was my half-brother from my father's first marriage and about eighteen years older than I was. I didn't know him well. My brother struggled with an addiction to alcohol. While enlisted in The U.S. Navy, he learned he actually was allergic to alcohol, which made him an angry, violent drunk. Medically discharged decades ago, he went on S.S.I. and sometimes was homeless. Sometimes he lived in an apartment or rented a hotel room, but he never stayed in one place long. My parents tried repeatedly to get him help to no avail.

I was 22 years of age in October of 1998 when we learned my brother, Greg, was seriously ill with the new strain of tuberculosis resistant to antibiotic treatment; he'd gotten it from someone at the bar that he often shared bottles with. Greg holed himself up in his hotel room, continuing to drink heavily. He thought it was just a cold. My other half-brother tried to get him to see a doctor, but Greg, true to his nature, believed he was invincible and would beat this thing on his own. He continued drinking, having friends from the local dive bar deliver bottles of alcohol to his room, which he did not leave. By the time he realized he was very ill, it was too late.

My brother had to be placed in restraints at the hospital, so he would not pull out his breathing tube. He was so strong and the D.T.s were so bad, that the doctors decided to medically induce a coma to give his body a chance to fight the infection, but it was in vain. Greg woke up the only time my family and I visited him, confused and in a panic, trying to speak around his breathing tube. He looked like a caged, wild animal. My father rushed us from the room because Greg's heart monitor started bleeping frantically. I never got to say goodbye. That is the last memory I have of my brother. He died on Friday the 13th, November 1998. My father was 68 at the time; he has never fully recovered from having to bury his son. A parent is not meant to outlive their children.

I thought about Greg a lot last night, as the end of October nears. I couldn't sleep. This morning, I want to share one of the poems I wrote about my experience. 

All Hallow's Eve

for my my father

Death stares back at him from a bloodstained phlemgy ventilator

and his eyes are like two slick oil pools

amidst the hiss of the oxygen machine

that pumps life into his tuberculosis ridden body.

He is a wild caged animal riddled with piss-stinking fear,

trapped by I.V. lines, oxygen lines, heart monitors,

and chest tubes to keep his lung from collapsing,

and outside children dressed as ghosts, goblins, and witches

are trick or treating on this dreary All Hallow's Eve.

He claws at the sterile white hospital sheets,

grasping for his father's hand to pull him back into humanity,

tears dripping from the corners of his eyes

like sugar water dripping through clear tubes into his shrunken veins.

I tell him that when he is better we will play cribbage together,

and meanwhile my father is on the phone talking to his ex-wife,

and making funeral arrangements,

teetering on the brink of indecision --

"should he be resusticated," the doctors ask him again and again

each day as his son slips further away from the living.

"Should he be cremated or buried," my father asks my mother.

My father decides on cremation.

They are arranging for his funeral while he is still with us,

and my father is trying not to cry, to be a man, to be the head of the family

the way all good little boys from the depression era

were taught by their mothers,

but he can't wind up so many loose ends into

a neat ball of string and brown paper wrapping.

He can't bind up all the memories of his son

and toss them into the trash to be recycled.

He can't forget December 27, 1954,

the day his son was born

in a renovated castle in San Juan,

or 1974 when his son graduated high school

and enlisted in the navy to conquer the world,

and so many holidays spent with the family.

He can't help but ask why he hasn't said it earlier,

why he hasn't said, "I love you, son."



Night Thinking

Night Thinking

by Nora B. Peevy

Up there in the Appalachian Mountains you see things are they truly are. Once you leave the mountain people the memory of their stories slowly vanishes as summer turns to fall and fall to winter. Blank spots develop like air bubbles on a photo negative, and unless you struggle every day to remember these people and their stories they will pass by you like fog on a fall night. I am as susceptible to this virus of forgetfulness as the others that traveled with me up the narrow and winding mountain roads. Remembering is not a conscious act, but an unconscious act like our breathing. We know that we must breathe to live, but we don't concentrate on it physically. Our bodies inhale and exhale sending oxygen through our blood vessels to our heart simultaneously while our mind wanders to mundane thoughts of the dry-cleaning we need to send out on Wednesday and the appointment we need to keep on Friday with the dentist. Sometimes I find myself trying hard in quiet moments, when I cannot sleep and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the room beside me invites thoughts of my childhood, to remember the mountain people's stories, how someday Ted's mountains across the way would be given to his little boy and then someday to his little boy's child and so on, so that the mountains would always be in his family's blood. And someday he would be buried on the smallest mountain far over to the left, he said. His father and his father's father were all buried in the small family graveyard marked with white wooden crosses. I looked at where Ted pointed across the horizon to the misty mountains purple in the afternoon sunlight, and I remember saying to myself, Nora, you must remember the mountain people and their homeland, the way the mountains cradle you in their bosom, the way they rise like giant humpback whales in the morning sunlight swirled in oceans of mist, and when you walk to the edge of the holler in the afternoon you can look down on the city spread out before you like tiny dollhouses.


I wrote this poem as part of my portfolio for entrance into the Creative Writing Masters program at UWM-Milwaukee in the late 90s. As I mentioned before in another post, I originally intended to focus on poetry, but found I loved fiction writing more.

Throughout high school and college, I volunteered with a group called The Appalachian Service Project. I traveled to Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky to repair homes for people in the mountains. It is one of the greatest experiences of my life and I learned so much about the culture of the Appalachian people and about myself. Those experiences made me the person I am today and I'd like to thank the people of the Appalachian Mountains and the other volunteers for giving me such a wonderful opportunity and teaching me so much. I am forever humbled by the experience.

While The Appalachian Service Project is a mission funded by the Methodist Church, the group  accepted my nonreligious friends and me as we were. I had the privilege of serving both as a youth volunteer and then as a youth leader.

If you enjoyed this entry, you might like to check out some other bloggers participating in The Weekend Creation Blog Hop, a hop supporting all forms of creativity.

As always, happy writing and happy reading to all!

It's My Birthday... and a Poem to Share

It's my birthday today and I resurrected some pictures from my past to share with you. Hope you enjoy! You'll have to excuse the dorky glasses; it was the 80s. Hehehe...

I also have a poem to share. I've never been one to take a subject literally. In college we were given the word "baby" and asked to write a poem. I wrote about a romantic relationship and a guy who called her "baby". Today, I am sharing a poem about cake, but not a birthday cake. This is from my graduate portfolio that got me into the Creative Writing Graduate program at UWM-Milwaukee in the late 90s. I've since changed direction and write more fiction than poetry now. If you like this entry, you might check out The Weekend Creation Blog Hop going on now.

Cake Walk

his heart has been rusted shut and she has been

trying to pry it open for fourteen years

with her words pushing against the rusty hinges

but he has never budged not even a chink

to let her in and share his bold blue thoughts

she thought that marriage would be

fresh and crisp like laundry off her mother's clothesline

and when she wrapped herself in its breezy shroud

she would be safe and comforted

but like a fine cake she has served him well

always presenting their marriage to family

friends and co-workers as a sweet confectionery

swirl of grand rosettes and she has never told them

that it is cold and lonely to share a bed with a stranger

and that she wants to smash his old rusted heart

and scatter the tiny paper-thin flakes

they would float like ash from a fire

and she wouldn't enter his chambers

even if his stubborn door magically opened

because his hinges would always

creak out reminders of the past

As always, happy writing and happy reading to all!