In Florida among the Steuben
glass
and twenty feathered fans: their blades inlaid
with gold and amethyst; there hangs all light
and snow a late Monet: no lilies here.
A simple black figure appears, recedes,
appears, recedes depending where the viewer stands.
In Florida amid the sawtoothed grass
and nervous lesser terns: their legs of jade-
thin straw, their eyes of coal; there stands all night
through dawn the great heron the fishes fear.
A simple blue figure appears, recedes,
appears recedes depending where the tide expands.
© 1997 copyright
Nola Garrett.
Self Portrait Collage
By Nola Garrett
Standing close
to others who know how to smile,
I am the short woman
up front wishing I had larger teeth.
If form followed function, my left ear
would be blurred, my breasts bared
wires. My dress is loose and green.
The sun is in my eyes. In 3rd grade
I am the skinny girl in pigtails
pointing at the camera. In my first wedding
pictures I look at him. I am distracted.
In my second marriage portrait I
watch the flowers. In the snapshot
of my holding my baby, I am the good
teacher bent to him. At that moment
I am beautiful--I hardly show
Some albums are invisible like telephones
ringing in the dark. Too often
I have not known it was the last
photograph. These Spring Hill evenings
am I still the adolescent girl who studied
my self in a certian light? my father saw
this receding chin as his vain mother's,
my blotched skin he claimed as his wife's.
My mother's eyes look back at me.
Her eyelids sag. I diet, take long walks,
dye my hair--because sometimes
she laughed, shook her head
like a horse, went on.
© 1997 copyright
Nola Garrett.
James in Third
By Nola Garrett
The alcoholic, who felt
only happy or sad, moved
to Hernando County when he saw it was shaped
like a 5-speed transmission. Somehow,
he found a job, married, made a son. Tattoos and all,
he was baptized in the Weeki Wachee River.
He's made foreman and come for counseling;
he's angry, afraid, doubts,
wonders what will become of him.
James has heard the mocking bird's sweet
insistence the day's not done.
© 1997 copyright
Nola Garrett
Landscape with Six Plastic
Flamingos
By Nola Garrett
This crisis, like childbirth,
is of my own choosing
made one passionate Saturday morning six
days and nine months ago when words
alone were useless. My searching for
relief from the self's dictionary with another
has come to this nexus--a pink sensina--
though mid-labor it seems the sestina
like a pick-up football team has done the choosing.
Will they throw me the ball? Am I just another
skinny neighbor kid chosen because six
against five are not enough for
a game? My team calls me Snake Lips, words
that hurt becuse they're true. My words
slither around in the dream that is sestina,
a sort of pink story I make for
the man who landscapes with plastic flamingos, choosing
not art, he says, but what he likes. Six
consitutes a flamingo quarum--another
small scantling for maintaining another
sort of peace. His flamingos and my words
could be anywhere curving out in six
directions, void and cold--the mind's sestina
a chaos. It's the glory of choosing, choosing
anything, that frees and shapes us for
our lorn, fetherless flight. I look for
sea shell words--here's one, here's another:
fix, coral, rampion,charismatic, tame, wing--choosing
some for shape, some for sound. These words
toss, jostle, ping, loop, unravel until sestina
pinks them, and they are integrated--six
flamingos browsing, no longer at sixes
and sevens, knees bent the wrong way for
humans though just right for a sestina
about the mind's plastic shore: another
landscape of blood, salt and words
that fancies pink, artifical birds choosing
flight--another sestina for six words' choosing.
© 1997 copyright
Nola Garrett
About the poet. . .
Nola Garrett served
as an English professor
at Edinboro University
from 1965-96 teaching poetry and creative writing, and from 1991-96
she directed, Second Tuesday, the Mercyhurst College Community Poetry
Workshop. Her poems and reviews have been published in journals
such as Christian Century, Flyway, Formalist, Poet Lore and Georgia
Review; and in anthologies: Odd Angles of Heaven (Harold Shaw),
Christmas 1995 (Augusburg Fortress) and The Muse Strikes Back (Story
Line Press).
During 1995 Garrett received a residency at Yaddo and is currently
nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her manuscript, The Pastor's
Wife Considers Pinball, is in search of a publisher. Nola lives
with a persistant frog and her husband Ronald Garrett, the pastor
of Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Spring Hill, Florida. Between poems
she gardens, teaches Elderhostel for Eckerd College, plays pinball
and drives a fast red car.
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