Jeanne
Lohmann
In this poem of voices a parent
recounts a family story to an unnamed
child. Metaphorically, the story appears to be a ghost story,
but actually, it reveals "skeletons in the family closet"--
things less than flattering that a parent may want to pass along to
future generations. Thus Jeanne Lohmann takes a form with which
Frost worked to a new level of directness.
ACROSS THE JORDAN
Now
you’re calling up the family ghosts
and
making stories, I’d like to help you
get
it right, set the record straight.
You
have the photograph you’re in,
that
one year’s harvest, six grandchildren
on
my lap, a bumper crop for the squire
one
neighbor called it, and I was proud.
No,
don’t interrupt or try to stop me, you can’t
know
how I need to say these things, remember
a
Sunday dinner after church, you threw a chicken bone
across
the table, and I slapped you. Not hard, I thought,
but
you were three, and your folks mad as all get out.
One
of many collisions. Mother
set a fine table
and
I couldn’t stand for spoiling things.
I
think she never minded bad the way I did.
A
wicked temper, yes, I had it, a good grip on the strap
and
buggy-whip. Caused pain I wish I hadn’t.
If I could
I’d
do it different, find other ways to bring the boys
to
heel. I never wanted them
to go, break Minnie’s heart
the
way they did, Elmer first, then Georgie
dying
of consumption. So far away, so young.
Russell,
the last to leave. I made too many rules
too
hard to keep and hated their defiance,
said
hurtful words I couldn’t take back.
Mother
never liked the way I raged about our girls,
their
choice of husbands. I thought they needed
better
men. With backbone, prospects.
Our
marriage certificate said Man is the head of the woman,
and
I was that. Said Let the husband love the wife
and
God knows I did. Said Woman is the glory of the man
as
Minnie was mine. Orphans, we married young
and
had the farm to keep, livestock and orchard,
the
dairy route that big gray Charlie knew by heart.
He’d
stop before I even pulled the reins.
I
needed all the help I could get, and Minnie
pitched
in with everything she had. Worked the corn
and
tobacco fields with babies on the way, and after.
Made
do and mended, washboarded all our clothes
with
strong Fels Naptha soap, sewed suits and dresses,
comforts,
quilts. Chased chickens round the yard,
caught
and killed them on the chopping block.
Made
pillows from the feathers. Made time
to
plant her flowers, sweet peas, four-o-clocks.
Read
to us at night, hers the only voice
I
cared to listen to.
She fed the eight of us
like kings, put up those Mason jars
and
filled the basement shelves: bread–and–butter pickles,
green
beans, tomatoes, peaches, jam. Churned
butter
for
the bread I watched her knead and fold, flour
up
her arms to the elbows, her apron dusty and her hair.
Baked
high white angel cakes, cookies, every kind
of
pie, cherry my favorite, fruit from our orchard trees.
She
fed the hired hands and threshing crews, tramps
coming
in off the freight cars. I
didn’t like her feeding them
but
couldn’t stop her, thinking of our boys on the road
wherever
they were, and hoping some woman
would
be quick with a handout if they were hungry.
But
I never wanted anyone afraid of me, and wish
the
children could have seen me other times,
at
day’s end on my knees asking God I didn’t know
for
what I didn’t know, all I didn’t know to ask,
or
how to change.
What
you have to tell you’ll tell the only way you can,
leave
out the pith and juice of things,
make
up some partial half-remembered myth
the
way most families do.
But
then there’s this: be
sure to say
sometimes
I stumbled in the fields
and
couldn’t see the furrow
for
weariness and worry,
rage,
my tears.
Jeanne
Lohmann's new
collection of poems is THE LIGHT OF INVISIBLE BODIES, published in
October by John Daniel & Co. Other books from the press are:
FLYING HORSES and GRANITE UNDER WATER (poetry, and a prose journal,
GATHERING A LIFE. A chapbook, THREAD THAT SINGS IN MY HANDS,
won the 2003 Pudding House Looking Glass Award, and will appear in 2004.
Lohmann's work can be found
in literary journals, and in anthologies. She grew up in Ohio; has a BA
from Ohio State and an MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State
University.
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