Housewife

The following are 3 poems, all titled “Housewife.” The first is the original poem I wrote. The second and third are poems I created by translating the original poem to Afrikaans and Xhosa and back to English again, and then editing what I got. This is part of a larger project I am working on where I have my work translated to Xhosa and Afrikaans, and edit the results. It is a fascinating way to create new poetry, and the possibilities from these two languages are almost limitless. I sometimes like to play with other languages, like French or Hebrew or Italian or Farsi, but Xhosa and Afrikaans are my favorite. What do these poems say to you? If you’re a housewife, or your mother was, how do these poems speak to your experiences with housewifery?

Grateful skirts swirl in a breeze maybe meant for them.

Design is Holy,

is enamored of its Designer,

is a crossroads of means and ends.

A housewife manufactures sunshine in her laboratory,

the beakers from the store always having a sale,

her thesis supervised by green,

and critiqued by her children.

After 20 years who will know whether the

skirts were mended or replaced?

Just that they were infused with laughter

and smelled like mother in the living room

living with her eyes full.

 

Translated into Afrikaans and Xhosa, then back:

 

Skirts twirl in the grateful air
they were meant for.

Design and the Holy Spirit,

are enamored

of each other.

Is the intersection of the cross where it all begins?

The woman who produced the sun in her lab,

is studying all the ways you make happiness from the mundane.

Her thesis is green from watching her children.

After 20 years will you know that

the aprons can be repaired or replaced?

You will appreciate the humor.

She won’t.

 

 

skirts and gratitude for the atmosphere,

either of them.

Design and Holy Spirit,

make enamored designs,

are the ends on the cross.

The woman who makes the sun in her lab,

Her laboratory in Delaware furnished by a company

in Hong Kong.

Her thesis supervision is green.

So is the clock looking at her children’s energy,

their youth,

her youth.

After 20 years you will know that

the skirts can be repaired or replaced.

As you appreciate the humor in

And sort mothers by whether they baked cookies or used the microwave.

In her eyes you live fully,

live fully alone.

Weighty Matters

Lately I’m not totally happy with my weight. It isn’t that I want to be thin again. I don’t really. I’d rather eat what I want and be fluffy. I even like being fluffy. I think it suits me more than being skinny. I have disproportionately large breasts, so being skinny just makes me look a little weird in my opinion, like a snake that swallowed two watermelons. But I’d love to be about 20 pounds lighter. I’m definitely more than 20 pounds heavier than slim, but I’d like to lose 20 pounds. I was supremely happy with my weight at 175/180. I like plus size clothes, but I miss having the option to wear regular size clothes. I’m a size 18, so I’m one size too big to shop in regular departments. Gone are my days of shopping at Macy’s.

The problems are these: I like food, I’m on heavy psychiatric medication, I have hypothyroidism, and I cannot do my old favorite forms of exercise very much. I used to be really in to walking and for the past year or more I’ve been unable to really take a good long walk because of my problems with my foot – problems two foot surgeries have not fixed. Walking was my favorite form of exercise. I used to go on nightly one hour walks, with a little bit of running thrown in.

I need to find a new form of exercise. I’m thinking of swimming, but I don’t have a pool and it is time consuming to drive to the pool. Plus, the pool lap swimming hours don’t work with my schedule. I’d love a trampoline to jump on, but we are moving to military housing in January when we go to Colorado and I don’t think trampolines are allowed there – and it isn’t worth the money to buy one for just one summer and fall. And honestly, I’m not sure how much impact my foot can really take. My problem tends to be more with bending my foot than putting impact on it, but impact hurts too.

Then I think I could count calories again, but I don’t miss the days of my life where I counted calories. It was miserable. I don’t want food, or the lack of it, taking up that much space in my head. I don’t want to count everything I eat. Still, if I want to get back in to size 16s or 14s I need to eat less and move more.

Why does size matter? Why can’t they make the same clothes in all sizes? And why do I put this pressure on myself? Society tries to put pressure on me, but I don’t read fashion magazines anymore and I’m old enough to pay no mind to the tv, so I don’t know if that is where the pressure is coming from. My husband doesn’t put pressure on me and loves me the way I am.

Am I really unhappy with my weight or am I unhappy with something else? Sometimes unhappiness about other areas of myself manifests in unhappiness with my weight. Even when I was skinny I was miserable about my body because I was miserable about other things. So how do I separate my feelings about my body from my feelings about other things? How does one love their body the way it is and yet try to change it at the same time?

I can’t put pressure on myself to lose weight, or I’ll go too far. You’d never know it to see me now, but I used to have two eating disorders. I’m an obsessive person by nature. Calorie counting becomes the focus, vomiting becomes regular. I don’t ever want to go back to that. But why is it that sometimes I can love myself the way I am and other times I can’t? How do you lose weight without dieting? How can I enjoy life and enjoy the foods that I like while still making sure I don’t go up a dress size? And why am I not good at this balance? Being size 18 is not bad, but I’d like to be a 16 or a 14, and I don’t want to go up to a 20 as I get older.

How can I get happy with my weight again, either by losing weight or by loving myself as I am?

Burning Suburbia

 

Shades of slate and gun metal pursue me

in a way the other women wrapped in their profiles and friends

would understand more than they want to believe.

 

Our spirits dream while we say,

How much? That’s too much.

I have to have her there by 3.

We need to get away. It is never just us.

 

In the suburbs I drive over hillock after hillock

again and again,

for bread and milk,

my fingers searching beneath my skirt for something so dirty it is clean,

so corrupt as to be pure.

Church

Church of memoir

of discovery

of chants.

Cloistered in my name are ten lives

I did not live

in favor of a sublime 11th.

What is better than best?

What can joy can be discarded for ecstasy?

The taste of salt lines my mouth

when I look back.

 

 

translated to Xhosa, Afrikaans, and back

Church of Love

 

I find joy

while I lay cloistered in my ten lives.

Auroras swirl beyond my reach.

They will not live.

There is a reason I am so inordinately fond of 11.

What is better than a lot?

 

Why have I ignored peace?

 

It tasted of salt in my mouth.

Power lines guiding me back home.

 

 

Church of Love

Separate the gaiety from the joy.

Lonely in my ten lives,

they live,

it is as though they live without me.

How do I dispose of gaiety?

Of me?

Midwest

Fuzzy snowmen smell like turpentine.

Why all this wistful wind,

this heavy quiet,

these creative snowmen dancing in slow motion

to no music?

Not inaudible music,

or even illegible sound,

but nothing at all-

Machines with no factory.

This snow  covers a ghost city.

The children scattered and died.

Yes, I am freezing.

Would you like to dance?