Eat Here, Get Gas

This poem was part of Visual Inverse, an ekphrastic collaboration between the Plymouth Center for the Arts and Poetry the Art of Words. The piece of art which inspired it is also called "Eat Here, Get Gas", and is a multimedia collage created by Becky Haletky. 

Please click here to visit Becky's website: http://www.artbecko.com/

 

Eat Here, Get Gas

Crushed stone crunches under rubber tires, signal bell rings
once, then again, as a pair of overalls, ‘Billy’ stitched
on the chest patch, asks, “Fill it? Check the oil?”
“How’s the coffee?” I nod toward the door.
“Strong enough to defend itself,” grin drier than gravel.
 
Inside, air thick with sweet maple syrup, sizzling pork fat,
and coffee — nutty and bitter and welcoming coffee.
Already filling a mug for me before the door has closed behind me,
hair the color and shape of an Egyptian pyramid balanced precariously,
she’s shouting into the kitchen, “Crack a pair, keep ‘em sunny,
hash and toast, don’t burn it,” her voice holds everything
that’s ever been worthwhile, the inside of the world in her eyes.
 
Her patch to match Billy’s, “Grace,” fits her as well as her dress
once did, before life filled her and damn near killed her, as it does.
I settle on a stool, cracked plastic over too-thin cushion,
“Let me have some pancakes and bacon.”
Grace hollers to the chef, “I need a stack, three
strips on the side. And tell Horace that Ford needs
an oil change when he finishes washing those dishes.”
 
It could be thirty miles outside of Bangor or
deep in Appalachia, a swamp west of Tallahassee or
a mile high on the road out of Denver,
the only difference the roundness of the vowels,
the temperature of the morning air.
‘Eat Here, Get Gas,’ a joke as old as beans,
as true as biscuits and gravy, as honest as Billy and Grace.
A stop here refuels more than your car.
Never pass up a chance to be filled.

No Threat

 

Verse 1, in which I walk ‘cross town after dinner

at my favorite tavern, toward an evening

of fellowship with like-minded creators

on a sunlit early evening in July,

full of nothing but a sense of peaceful well-being.

 

Verse 2, in which I enter the public walkway,

stroll past the smallest park I’ve ever seen

(only a few benches, a dog-shit-bag dispenser

and a trash barrel), and spy a young woman

at the other end of the path, walking toward me.

 

Verse 3, in which she becomes aware of me,

slightly changes course, moves to the far edge

of the pathway, forces me to realize that,

despite my sense of myself as unthreatening,

she sees some darker potential.

 

Verse 4, in which we each make every effort

to avoid eye contact, me out of a desire

to give no cause for concern, no reason for fear;

she, I presume, to give me no excuse to speak to her,

to intrude on her space, her peace, her safety.

 

Verse 5, in which I would wish to draw some

profound conclusion, but realize the women

among us know all too well the truth here

revealed, a truth the men among us could

never understand, much less explain.

Her Skin Rearranges the Light

 

Her Skin Rearranges the Light
 
What more could I wish
than to adore and be adored by
such as the one who calls me “baby”
as she breathes in my ear;
 
She who bathes in moon-rays
while her skin rearranges the light,
and she anoints me
with the holy oil of her reflection.
 
No more could I hope for
than her emeraldine gaze,
and to remain forever in her grace
is far more than I deserve.

One Dream Is Not Enough

 Our first meeting was like a dream,
A perfect but impossible encounter
Beneath fluorescent lights
 
But one dream is not enough
For an entire lifetime, and so
I’ve dreamed of nothing else ever since
 
Asleep I dream of days spent together,
Of laughter and music and the smells
Of a welcoming kitchen
 
Awake I dream of sleeping in your arms
And the sweetness of your kiss
And hiding in your tangled hair
 
Before, my life was only cold reality,
But now it is a warm and loving dream
From which I know I’ll never wake.

Review: Story & Bone, by Deborah Leipziger, Lily Poetry Review Books

Story & Bone, by Deborah Leipziger, from Lily Poetry Review Books

 

In her newest collection of poems (Story & Bone, Lily Poetry Review Books, 2022), Deborah Leipziger explores all the ways in which she intersects with her world, and thus helps us all understand the ways in which we intersect with our own. She reveals herself as daughter, mother, lover, friend; as baker, gardener, poet; as Brazilian, American, Jew; but most of all as human.

            Skillfully reusing phrases and images from one poem to the next, so that one page seems to echo the ones before, Leipziger reminds us of the rhythms and patterns in every life. The most notable example of this is when she speaks of her family’s story of ancestors concealing valuables as they escaped from tyranny: in one poem, “gems into the hems”; in another “gems sewn in hems”; in a third: “gems faceted by stone hidden in garments”. She then calls the very story into question: “Or is it legend / I sing the fiction and non-fiction”. 

            Or again with multiple references to her own dangerous birth:  “I celebrate my survival / from the umbilical cord / wrapped around my neck”; and then, “the umbilical cord coiled around my neck”. She then multiplies the echo through the umbilical connection between herself and her twin daughters…and further by drawing the comparison between her own blue complexion at birth and the color of the walls in the room where she gives birth. Echoes upon echoes.

            There is an almost breathtaking sense of intimacy in this work, a fearless willingness to share herself with the reader, body and soul, as in:

 

            “I celebrate my nimbus of curls

            nipples   neck   navel”

 

            “I open myself and claim my

            openness

            I transform and sing

            my Evolution”

 

            “I enter with offerings –

            Pomegranates and honey dates,

            All that I will be is here.

            Entering.”

 

There is an earth-mother-like quality in the way she shows us a day of making lemonade with her daughters (Lemonade), or compares the act of picking apples in an orchard to that of motherhood itself (Apple Orchard), or when she provides the most spiritual and open-hearted recipe I’ve ever seen anywhere (How to Make a Challah).

            Every page seems to glimmer with its own light, but for me the most sublimely luminescent moment comes in How to Help a Friend Mourn, which opens “For this you will need lemons” and then explains: 

            “Maybe you won’t have time to grow a lemon tree

but you have planned for this moment,

this is why you’ve grown a lemon tree.”

  

As in her earlier work, there are many floral images here, and when she puts the phrase “A half truth / to say I painted flowers” into Georgia O’Keefe’s mouth it’s clear she’s speaking of her own poetry as well. Sometimes a calyx or a spadix are more than the parts of a flower.

All artists strive to make their audience feel something. Leipziger succeeds triumphantly. You will feel her warmth and her wisdom; her strength and her vulnerability; her love of life and her deep understanding of both its pain and its beauty. This is a truly lovely book.