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Sharon Doubiago
USA
Credit : Andrena Zawinski
Sharon Doubiago is the author of three book-length poems,
Hard
Country (reissue West End Press, 1999), South America Mi Hija
(University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992) which was twice nominated
for the National Book Award, and The Husband Arcane: The Arcane of O
(Gorda Plate Press, 1996). Her collected poems, Psyche Drives
the Coast, (Empty Bowl Press, 1990) won the Oregon Book Award,
and Body and Soul (Cedar Hill Publications, 2000) was a
finalist for the PEN West 2001 Book Award for Poetry. Her latest
collection of poetry is Greatest Hits, 1976-2003, published by
Pudding House Publications. In addition to two collections of
stories, The Book of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes (Graywolf Press,
1988), and El Nińo (Lost Roads Press, 1989), Doubiago’s work has
appeared in numerous anthologies, newspapers, and periodicals.
Recently, her personal essay about September 11, as well as a
selection from her childhood memoir, appeared in the Santa Monica
Review. She has received the Gloria Steinem Woman Writer Award,
Tom Robbins' Journalist of the Year Award, and three Pushcart
Prizes for poetry and fiction. She recently completed “Love on
the Streets, Selected and New Poems,"
For two decades
she has been writing “Son”, a memoir about the mother-son
relationship, for which she has received two Oregon Institute of
Literary Arts Fellowships. |
Primitive
Every Sunday the women of my family rose
and moved over to the men of my family,
knelt down and untied
the boots. Pulled the socks they’d knitted and darned
from the thick white ankles, from
the calloused, corned heels, from the long arches, from
the hairy white toes. Washed and oiled
feet. In the white church
built by the men, on Beech Hill, on Preston Ridge
in Lynchburg Tennessee
Phoebe and Fannie and Lora Rae and Nancy
pored themselves
onto Love.
I like to think they weren’t prostrating themselves
to snakes, but writhing with, rising
the same, speaking to
tongue in tongue. Like to hear
in that singing that singing still
unto feet. That hissing too, Mary
Magdeline. That tongue onto. Like to hear
my great grandpa sigh Jesus, remembering his mother sigh
long before he wrecked himself with The War.
Like to see his most hated boy, my grandpa Avon
still on the women’s side
watching his pa allow his ma
to remove his shoes
and out the window his shoeless brother
of the newly liberated ones
exiled now to the ditches,
suddenly daring to show his dark face
in the holy morning sun,
and his sister too of his father’s feet
I gratefully turn my own self upon
onto unto into until only
our human oil, corns and callouses,
the unknown miles Oedipus walked,
our fish journey through the turbulent wombs, snakes
and tongues, O millions back
from which we expel. Ever onward
soldiers. Thy kingdom come. This
Living Flesh
we dance we dance
Shine
There’s a floating bridge
I used to sleep under
across the Sound, mouth of the Strait
a narrow strip of left-over trashy beach
on the Res
The sun never shown in Shine
the mornings I woke there. Possibly,
the sun never shines in Shine.
But always I slept well, back of my car
or van, always felt safe in Shine
even when the floating bridge blew down.
And ever since shining
in the dark and to the deep
down there
Exodus
(January 2001, “The True Millenium”)
I came upon a sea lion
in the middle of Highway 1, gigantic hairy blond head
thrown behind her shoulders, heaving herself east
to the Santa Lucias.
I couldn’t believe my eyes
so just went around her,
continued north
to another. And then
another
to a pull-off on the ocean side.
Hundreds of humans ---
binoculars, cameras, recorders ---
running from their vehicles
to see, sure enough, as I came around that curve
hundreds of sea lions leaving the sea, paraplegic giants
struggling up the beach, the bluffs, pushing
across the highway as in wheel chairs, and a few, now I see,
already half way up, prehistoric gold slugs
dwarfing the mountain. I couldn’t
stop for either, such strange species.
But now I sleep in a stranger’s house
on the mountain top. All night their barking
above Ocean’s pounding roar.
Do I know
where I am going?
© All Copyright, Susan Doubiago.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By
Permission.
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