Dorn

JOURNAL

Galactomerge

Ten minutes to write a scene of great happiness 
Ten minutes to write a scene of sorrow, anger, despair 
Thirty-five minutes to merge them and make peace


A SCENE OF HAPPINESS 
Perhaps it begins with a sound

Tick tick tick ticktickticktick-bounce-ticktick-tick
Rice landing from east, north, south, west 
He is right behind you
Your him 
Right behind you
That southern James Dean
Tearing up all kinds of shit south of the Mason Dixon
Jumped the tracks and reeled you in
You are squinting, head up in that fancy hat 
Your beautiful face 
Shining
The two of you 
Pelted with the rice that later fell from your coat
When he removed it in the place 
I would eat onion rings some 35 years later
You, shining


A SCENE OF SORROW, ANGER, DESPAIR
Begin with a color if you’d like

Yellowed 
Those papers you had 
Yellowed to Strom Thurmond 
(Your daddy said one time that he shoulda killed that bastard when he had the chance.)
Yellowed to what’s her name Representative
Your third appeal to be found disabled 
Widow’s disability something or other
Yellowed papers carefully tucked away
I am the keeper of all the things and memories now
And I’m struck blind 
Howling at your ghost 
That was finally deemed yellowed by too many years of records of
Shock treatments 
Pills 
Deep purple despair 
They finally believed you
Found you profoundly disabled and eligible for those benefits 
Because you lost and lost and lost
It was 1990 
How did I not know


GALACTOMERGE

Yesterday I touched your wedding dress 
Yellowed 
Stiff
Brittle
You were hardly bigger than a cardinal 
The one who is you and visits me now in the spring 
I sat on the floor 
Fingering through layers of satin 
And lace that broke in my hands 
I had a surprise ceremony 
Quietly snipped every yellowed thread
That held a button or a bead
Dropped them into a tiny box 
Tick tick tick-bounce-tick
They will turn into something else later
Or maybe they just did

You had a life 
I have found it seven thousand times 
In your pocketbook
The kitchen drawer 
Those bibles still holding notes that you made and left
(Did you know I would find them?)
The glove box of your car 
The towels that were more than the shelves could handle
(Because if one towel was good, 97 would be almost enough)
The room under the house where you kept a ladder and hoe
The cup by your chair holding the pens you stopped trying to use
The hangers now stripped of your clothes 

I needed to see that photo
The one I found yesterday 
You were so happy 
For a moment I did not know your face 
And those papers I found yesterday 
And the journal kept by your sitters making note of each day and each each each time
You took two of those
Or one of those along with two of the other 
Often only an hour and some change apart
No wonder you slurred through the phone 
Me, on the other end, trying to run with concrete feet
It was 2017
How did I not know

I think I can set you free
Now that I have seen that 1957 face
The one in the photo
It’s what I needed to begin prying my fingers 
From the wall of the tunnel
Those yellowed papers at one dark end 
That radiant photo face at the bright other

I howl one last time into the dark end
It howls back in ripples ripples ripples r i p p l e s
The faint touch of the last on my back
As I turn to face the bright end
Your radiant face far, far away

I will get there

This is what I know.

WritingJane DornJane Dorn, Dorn, writing, mom, dad, galactomerge
On the way to Walgreens

Photo © Jane Dorn

This road, this sky, these errands kept me going while my mother was dying. Just a two-lane road off the highway, it was the route I took to pick up the medications that hospice ordered for her. For the last two months of her life, I would stop the car, get out, take a photo with my phone each time the sky said HOPE.

PhotographyJane Dorn#janedorn, #dorn, summer2017, #mymotherwasdying
Lost Tadpoles
At first, I thought my mom had likely taken this photo. On second glance, it appears to have been taken from the height of a tadpole-baptizing girl or her slightly older, taller brother.

At first, I thought my mom had likely taken this photo. On second glance, it appears to have been taken from the height of a tadpole-baptizing girl or her slightly older, taller brother.

I saw Lynda Carter once,

(before she was Wonder Woman)
riding in the lead car
a convertible
in the Dothan, Alabama
Peanut Parade.

Dothan was full
of Christians and tadpoles.

I tried to make Believers
of my creek-caught critters,
saying to every damn one
I baptize you
in the name of The Father
The Son
and The Holy Spirit.
Amen.
as i caught and moved them
(cupped in a creek-water-wrinkled paw)
from one Cool-Whip bowl of muddy water
to another.

But back to Lynda Carter
and how she rolled through that town
of lost tadpoles,
their small muddy evangelist
watching
just sure
for one moment
that she was

somewhere.

—Dorn

 
Jane DornJane Dorn, Writing
To the five of them. The five of you.

EVER  
by Meghan O'Rourke

Even now I can’t grasp “nothing” or “never.”
They’re unholdable, unglobable, no map to nothing.
Never? Never ever again to see you?
An error, I aver. You’re never nothing,
because nothing’s not a thing.
I know death is absolute, forever,
the guillotine-gutting-never to which we never say goodbye.
But even as I think “forever” it goes “ever”
and “ever” and “ever.” Ever after.
I’m a thing that keeps on thinking. So I never see you
is not a thing or think my mouth can ever. Aver:
You’re not “nothing.” But neither are you something.
Will I ever really get never?
You’re gone. Nothing, never—ever.

WritingJane Dornmeghan o'rourke, jane dorn, family, RIP