Keening in Writing ~ Proposal ~ Nonsense
Writeen & Narrated by Clarinda Harriss
Maryland
Keening in Writing
Write aieeeee, but that sounds like fake Spanish.
Write aaaaagh, but that sounds like fake pirate lingo.
Write aaaaaah, but that spells a moment’s satisfaction.
O King James and all your learned men, didn’t it distress you
that the sound of A as in cat, howled till the throat bleeds,
cannot be spelled in your grandiloquent English?
As for Oh and No, they groan Inhale and Exhale.
My scream’s the breath
the medics forced into your blue mouth.
Proposal
I told Father Boyce I wanted to go Roman
and confessed the calling was my love
for a man who was not Jesus, was not God.
I asked if my motive was impure. He laughed.
You haven’t thought about the millions who
convert in order to get married, isn’t that so?
I’d never looked at it that way, although
the man lies buried beside my own stone
in my family’s plot. Yes, I hope our ghosts
can marry. The reasons our flesh could not
will hardly matter to our ashes. I hope the man
will approve. The dead one, not Father Boyce.
I’ll ask him, though he may not have a choice.
Nonsense
Mairzy doats and dozy doats and
liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too
Wouldn’t you?
I dredged it up from my ‘40s kidhood.
My schoolmarm mother explained I could
understand it if I said it out loud a one
syllable at a time. It was sort of a lesson
in phonics. “It should be ‘wooden shoe’ in-
stead of “Wouldn’t you,” I pointed out.
She was so impressed she shouted
“She’s four and already a genius” to my dad
who was shaving in our Victorian
bathroom. He grinned a lathered grin..
A day later I reported that a kid would not
eat ivy. Ever. “It tastes so bitter I bet
it’s poison.” “So you tried it out, right?”
So much for how smart my little brat-
ness was.
Sixty-some years later my four-
year old dog likes me to sing to her
as we walk. Mairzy Doats is her favorite.
Ever since last Easter, cruellest April, it
has meant We’re walking by the lawn
where we found our best-beloved Man
sprawled dead of a burst heart. Face down
in risen grass. Mairzy doats to Wooden
shoe, that song’s deepest meaning’s
Just keep walking. Just keep singing.