This week's Poet of the People is Glenda Bailey-Mershon. I have known Glenda for only a year or two after she moved back to her home state. She is gifted poet and prose writer and gives back to the literary community with kindness and a wealth of expertise.
IN THE PHOTOGRAPH SHE LIFTS HER HANDS
unpinning long hair. Chestnut, I knew only because relatives said her hair and my sister's were the same.
In sepia, her gesture asks to be admired. And who could not admire the luminous eyes of youth, the sensuous mouth, the heavy hair about to fall?
Yet her eyes say she is puzzled, unfamiliar with the procedure. Innocent as a fawn in sudden light.
What I remember is her stiff hands spinning, yarn spilling from pointed fingers, her sharp tongue calling down our rising spirits.
And yet the photograph . . .
Youthful beauty surprised by life.
Grandmother?
A “GYPSY” (ROMA!) POET WALKS INTO A COFFEESHOP
The audience gapes. What’s this woman doing,
singing when she should be droning poetry?
I warble about having rhythm. No one knows
that’s Manouche swing. It’s what they asked
when I booked: Tell what inspires you.
Everything’s a song, I say, letting loose again, whether dirge or dance or ballad beat.
I snap fingers, swish my skirt.
The woman at the first coffeeshop table
has stopped knitting, pokes her husband
who looks up from his golf score, sees
I am about to show them how once
I skatted a whole poem because I wanted
to say, we Roma are here, most of us
are mixed, some got Africa in our bones,
Spain in our step, French lilac scent
beneath our nails and under our skin.
Farther away, the pulse of Rajasthan.
And if I really want to confound, I’ll say
we married Persian tanbur and chang,
Turkish oud, Greek lyres and Parisian
accordions, then swung it all on a reed with dancing keys, but I know
I only need say Django, and they will sit up. Guitars are what Americans fancy. Now
I have to bring them down to hear enjambed
lines, marching stanzas. Somehow they get it, smile, clap their hands to the rhythm when asked. Yet when I finish and take my turn for the proffered drink at the bar, people stare and point their chins, say “Gypsy.” That’s all they need to know.
I sashay my way out of the shop, smile.
They will be pulsing in their beds tonight.
AN INCANTATION FOR MY GRANDMOTHERS
Corn mother
Earth heavy
Great Raw Woman
What you must have been in childbed!
Birthing with the force of two hundred hurricanes, crouching low, arching high, pushing out
squalling life and catching it in two fiery, rough hands.
Rocking, rocking, face like the moon over ravaged land.
Each day, I see you,
rivulets of water running out of your body across scorched fields,
over red clay front yards singing orange zinnias.
Your daughters, we are feathers tossed by angry winds,
falling lightly
half a continent away.
Quiet strangers riding fierce city rails,
stepping unseen through snow-hushed streets,
dancing to rain drumming on roofs,
greeting the sun in glowing glass.
Watching the moon rise in canyons of steel,
we find your image in junkyard windows,
in our own eyes, mirrored
under fluorescent lights.
We quick-step down long alleys,
flame incense in silent rooms,
fathom the earth beneath asphalt and brick,
recognize its rhythms beneath the thrum of cars.
Even city towers gleam with your life.
Skyscrapers spark starlight in the eyes of the Ancient Ones.
Lesson
Daughter, this is your womb. She put her warm hand on the child's belly and drew the outline of a cave.
Out of this cavity you will draw that which is most precious to you.
Into this space
you will draw that which is mysterious, unknowable. She drew a line from the womb to the heart.
This is the straightest of lines.
Do you understand?
BACK WHEN I WAS JUICY
Back when I was juicy I pried the lid off morning, knifed from my bed, onto cold floor boards, scattered pennies enough for coffee in the café, or a luscious scrum of chocolat on a cold Sartre afternoon.
Virgin among molded tomes, I, willing wand of destiny, jumped to conclusions about infinity while frat guys in the booth behind bet on the constants of integration.
Down the long green moments I strode, confident, to and from class, shouldering book bags, tippling volumes from overhead shelves, palming change like bribes for fortunes, assured of redemption in the hands of destiny.
Every Saturday, I rambled bookstore to bookstore among other explorers, seeking keys to unlock furtive encounters behind mothers’ cast-off lace curtains.
Jampot oozing thick syrup seeds, I melted into one after another armored knight. Later, we read each other tales we could not fathom back when I was juicy.
UNORTHODOX RHYME
Preachers tease us with heaven’s riches Make us choose: wives or whores Warn us, we’re too big for our britches
Then forbid abortion, divorce
Warn us we're too big for our britches
Want us to scratch all their itches
Then forbid abortion, divorce
Good men writhe with remorse
Want us to scratch all their itches
Scratch our own, they call us witches Good men writhe with remorse
Veils conceal life’s source
Scratch our own, they call us witches Force us to choose: wives or whores
Veils conceal life’s source Camels pass by your riches.
NOTE: This poem is dedicated to the South Carolina Legislature, who apparently think their religious beliefs should control all women’s health care.
BIO:
Glenda Mariah Bailey-Mershon is an American poet, essayist, novelist, cultural historian, and human rights activist. Born in Upstate South Carolina to a family with roots in the Southern Appalachians, she has explored in poetry and fiction her European, Native American, and Romani heritage. Her published works include the novel, Eve's Garden, a family saga of three generations of Romani-American women; the full-length poetry collection, Weaver’s Knot, an exploration of millworker communities ; Bird Talk: Poems; saconige/blue smoke: Poems from the Southern Appalachians, which plumbs the ties between European and Cherokee cultures in the mountains; A History of the American Women's Movement: A Study Guide, and four volumes as editor of the Jane's Stories anthologies by women writers, including Jane's Stories IV: Bridges and Borders, which includes work by women in conflicts around the world.
Glenda has been a finalist in Our Stories fiction contest; featured author at the Illinois Book Fair, the Other Words conference; and the St. Augustine PoetFest. For the 2024 Associated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) national conference, she chaired a panel entitled “Toward a Romani Women’s Canon.”
She is a former bookstore and small press owner, and has taught women's studies, writing, anthropology, and political science. She is the originator of the Jane's Stories anthologies and Jane’s Stories Press Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that offers the Clara Johnson Prize in Women’s Literature. As a tutor, she helps young people achieve their GED degrees and learn strong conversation skills in English.
