[Critique Group 2] Pieces for July 26th Meeting

[Abbie Taylor]

###1. Poetry from Valerie Moreno

Night Muse

You come
like cool, sweet wind,
in dreams vivid,
needing me.

I feel your torment,
cries to be heard,
I answer,
drawing you close

Somewhere beyond cold reason,
our spirits meet,
outside time,
healing each other.

###but. Fiction from Leonard Tuchyner

Merlyn the Magic Turtle

Merlyn is the one who does things turtles rarely ever do,
like sleeping in a tuba going um-pa-pa 
and hiring out as a hockey puck  --
hitching rides on pickup trucks   --
once or twice on a flying duck.

I met Merlyn while fishing alone in a homemade folboat. I happened to be in the middle of a South Florida coastal mangrove swamp.   I was going for mangrove snappers, but they weren’t interested.  However, the mosquitoes were interested in me. I’m not sure, but I think they were drawn to the repellent I sported for the occasion.

Strangely enough, I heard a small voice just outside my little craft. You might imagine that I was a bit startled. Looking for a logical explanation, I thought someone might have dropped a radio in the drink while passing by. In my mind, it was amazing that a radio could have survived in the salt water. Retrieving a waterproof radio would be my catch of the day.  Such a remarkable find certainly would be a great conversational piece. But no matter how carefully I searched, I could not spy a radio of any kind.  What I did see was a turtle about the size of my palm, right in the spot where a voice seemed to be coming from. At first I didn’t see anything unusual.  Then I realized that the little fellow had managed to get himself wedged into a tangle of mangrove roots.  His tiny clawed feet were frantically trying to swim out of the trap, though little progress was being made.  He stopped suddenly and lifted his pouty little head and seemed to be looking straight at me.

“What are you looking at?” he said impudently.

My eyes blinked and my jaw dropped.  I suppose my irises widened as well, but I was in no position to observe that.

“Come on, Buddy, give me a hand. Don’t just sit there and gawk like a stupid naked ape.”

“You …. You…..you’re talking,” I stammered.

“Okay, okay, I’m talk. . . talk talking. Now will you please lean over and pull me out of this mess!”

I wondered how I managed to fall asleep, because I knew I must be dreaming. I thought I might as well pick up the talking turtle. After all, nothing in a dream can really hurt me. Can it? Nevertheless, I carefully reached over the side of my kayak-type boat and wriggled the brash fellow out of the mangrove clutches.

“Hey! Hey!” I said, “get me loose, not make me a passenger. I can’t climb out of this thing, you know.”

“This is a dream, right?” I asked.

“More like a nightmare for me. That has never happened before. If I didn’t get free before the tide came in, I’d have been trapped underwater and drowned. Do you know how embarrassing it is for a turtle to drown? Now let me out easily.”

Slowly, curiosity was overcoming my shock. Dream or not, I wanted to take advantage of the situation. It is not often that a human gets to talk to a turtle, at least not one that talks back. Of course I couldn’t be sure about that.  It is only that I’d never heard of it before.

“I’ll let you go in time, Little Guy. But first I want to have a little conversation.”

“I knew it! I knew it! I told myself to keep my mouth shut. I would have found a way out eventually, and my mother always told me not to talk to strangers. Especially not the crazy human type.”

“Or maybe you would have been swallowed by a snake first. There are lots of them around these parts. I see them all the time.”

  “So what did you want to talk about?”

“First of all, what’s your name; if you have a name, that is?”

“Of course I have a name. Do you think turtles don’t deserve names? What are you, some kind of bipedal supremacist or something?”

“How dare you suggest that?!” I protested. “You don’t know a thing about me.”
I could feel the blood boiling in my gut. At the audacity of this swimming yurt.

“Oh don’t get all twisted in a sailor’s knot. It’s just that I never met a human who was not a bipedal supremacist. Maybe you’re an exception. Okay, can we just try to get along?”

I tried to read his body language to judge whether he was in earnest, but it turns out I’m not very adept at reading turtle body language.

“My name’s Merlyn,” he said, with a note of reconciliation.

“Merlyn! What kind of a name is that for a turtle? Did your mama give you that name?”

‘Not really. After she laid her eggs, she got up and crawled away. Turtle mothers are like that, mostly.”

“Well then, how did you get your name?” 

Merlyn had been resting in my hand up to that point. When I asked the last question, he began to squirm a little. “Do you mind if I get up to eye level with you? My neck is getting tired looking up. I’m getting a stiff neck”

“The only place that could be would be on my shoulder. Aren’t you afraid you might fall off?” I asked.

“Not really. I’ve got strong digging claws, and you’d be surprised how long I can hold on to things. The shirt you’re wearing has plenty of fiber I can get a grip on.”

One of my hands was still clutching a fishing rod, while the other was serving as a sundeck for a talking turtle. Plus, I had an itchy nose that screamed for scratching. So I raised the turtle hand to my opposite shoulder, allowing him to scramble off. Then I had a satisfying scratch. OOOH, life was good.

“So how did you get your name?” I asked again.

Merlyn’s head lost its feisty perkiness and drooped flaccidly to my shoulder. His eyes seemed to cloud over, his head and limbs slid slowly into his shell. He seemed to be literally withdrawing his connection with me. I was swept with a wave of queasy anxiety. 

“Are you okay?” I beseeched.

Still, there was no response, and I began to question my sanity. Did I just hallucinate a discussion with a nervy talking turtle?  Did I rub against a hallucinogenic plant? My head began to spin with my doubts about my touch with reality. I picked the turtle off my shoulder and shook him a little bit, the way I might shake a human who had suddenly fallen asleep in the middle of a conversation.

“Okay, I’ll put you back in the water. I hope you’re okay. I hope I’m okay.”

Before I could follow through on my statement, his head slowly slid out of his shell, and he spoke, “Sorry. Your question made me remember some things from my past. Some of it’s very sad, and I needed a moment to myself.”

“Thank god you’re okay.  You had me going there for a while.”

“Like I said, I’m sorry.” His old in-your-face demeanor was returning, but he seemed a little less pugnacious.

###3. Poetry from Abbie Taylor

I know it's a little early, but I'm sending this poem to Magnets and Ladders for its fall/winter issue. It was inspired by the song, Breath of Heaven, which I'm including a link to a video of below. 
***

FORSAKEN VIRGIN

She stands, alone, cold, weiry. 
No one believes the Word of the Lord as spoken to her. 
Why was she chosen to bear this Holy Child? 
Must she do this alone? 
Will Heaven help her?

***

  httpsccmddyoutube.com/watch"v_kLbleh_475FKJWQ

###4. Poetry from Brad Corallo

When Love is Finally Poisoned
© By Brad Corallo
Word count 158

Always appearing in impossible, wondrous aspects;
that I no more might resist
than a junkie’s craving vein,
could resist the needle.
I call upon the Gods: "great  architects of creation, release me from my Calypso, my Siduri, let me be free." 
Like the former she plied the shuttle and like the latter she isolated me with her irresistible gifts.
In a special place where I finally began shaping  timber for the vessel of my odyssey; Birds of prey tore my  flesh at the leaving.
Fare well my heart, you will not accompany me on my appointed voyage.
Alone I go, without a map , without belief
seeking my singular fortune. 
Aided by the wise counsel of blind women.
I walked on water. 
I trod the path of white hot embers.
Ultimately born up by the air.

Who among us could have ever imagined, such an arriving?

##5. Poetry from Alice Massa

Wallpaper Dreams

267-word poem by Alice Jane-Marie Massa

Between Clinton,  Indiana's Mulberry Cafe
and the Rockville Packing Company building
was the Smith-Alsop Paint Store,
where,
when my dad was buying paint and/or brushes,
I thumbed through twenty-by-twenty-four-inch books
of wallpaper samples 
in floral and geometric designs,
textured in various ways
to initiate 
interior design dreams.

[Stanza 2]

Five decades later,
I, once again
in the midst of wallpaper dreams,
wonder if I should wallpaper
one wall, one room,
or the small bathroom
with the poems
of my retirement years.

[Stanza 3]

Surely, online, I should
be able to find
a "design-your-own-wallpaper" company
to whom I can send my poems.
Then, the company will send me
rolls of my poetry
so that someone with a straight-line concept
can decoratively paper my walls--
well, the walls of my small, mid-level bathroom
where house guests will be face-to-face
with my pasted poems--
flush against left margin, 
sprinkled with coordinating art.
Guest readers will see
that these poems mirror my life:
as the house guests peer into the bathroom mirror,
more reflections of poetic creations
rush into view--
an usual  way to read the poems on the back wall.

[Stanza 4]

Have I gone too far
with these wallpaper dreams?
You think the better placement
of my poems
is in a traditional book?

[Stanza 5]

Later, Leader Dog Willow recommends
photos of herself
for the design-your-own-wallpaper company.
Well, I do already have
towels with a Black-Lab motif.

[Stanza 6]

We will creatively compromise:
two walls of poetry
and two walls of Willow,
who will transfer better in mirror image.

[Stanza 7]

Celebrating 68 years,
I happily and artistically
surmise an overview
of my dream-fresh life
in wallpapered
paws and poetry.

July 19, 2018, Thursday

Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author http://abbiescorner.wordpress.com
http://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com
abbietaylor945 at gmail.com
Order my new memoir at http://www.abbiejohnsontaylor.com/memoir.htm