Tinderbox Lawn

Prose poems by Carol Guess, Rosemetal Press, 2008

Tinderbox Lawn lives in the hugeness of small moments, the hazards of love, and the fierceness of the mundane. It is the place you find yourself when you step past secrecy into façade, displaying photos of your brother instead of admitting your love. A place where sex and chores blur – where it’s a given that your body is commodity, but getting paid for it is punishable by death and dumping in the river.

Tinderbox Lawn’s fast pace and slight limp may trick you into reading it quickly, but is really a book that wants to be read slowly, carefully, aloud, and again – and it’s worth your time to comply. Carol Guess is skilled with sound, and her narrator’s voice is exact, imagistic, and insightful. The mood of fear and apprehension surrounding the Green River killings is the backdrop for some of her most beautiful and frightening images. “The girls are swimming. See their bright hair” follows a description of strippers’ clothing scattered like tinsel across Seattle.

Spread across Washington State, with touchstones in Seattle, Bellingham, and the south Sound grounds Gary Ridgeway prowled, Tinderbox Lawn is a statement of desire and of danger. We are invited to feel the fear that seems constant to the narrator, who says, as if reassuring herself, “Supermarkets aren’t dangerous; back alleys are dangerous.” But later the crying sex-cam neighbor brews tea with “mint so sharp it cuts teacups to shards.” And everything is about to catch on fire, and the Burlington Northern may kill you, and even the death of the refrigerator deserves mourning.

Late in the book, one section reads simply: “I may be a liar, but it’s my version of the story you’ll remember.” Through the narrator, Guess touches on a truth of individual experience – the subjectivity and selectivity of memory, so universal in its tiny intimacies. When “Freed from the constraint of narrative” she writes “You’re using your fists to solve everyday problems. I mean—your breasts to suggest sexual tension. You’re out of control. I mean—out of paper” you know that it’s all true – or perhaps that the truth doesn’t matter.

The violence of love. The shape of the state. The fragment is the whole and the echo is the statement and the memory of water is the same as being wet.

I don’t want to write a review of this book; I want to write poems about this book. Think blackberries and train tracks, think blood shed by accident and on purpose. The places you want to leave but can’t. This book is a space to live inside, a place to recognize, like being reminded of a dream.

*

buy this book at Rose Metal Press.

My nice little harvest turned out to be eight pounds, not four. I started eating the berries as fast as I could. I don’t bake, actually, and I don’t even have a muffin recipe to turn to. What was I thinking? That, and dinner time was quick approaching. Here, boyfriend, I thought. Have some blueberries for dinner after a hard day at work.

I’d picked a head of lacey green leaf lettuce from the garden earlier in the day, and glanced around the kitchen for inspiration. A bag of almonds for snacking on at work, a chunk of wild caught smoked salmon, and ooh, a gold beet from the farmer’s market. Hmm, sounds like a night for fancy salad!

blueberry vinaigrette

• 1/2 cup of blueberries
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 1 drizzle (precise!) honey
• 1 splash lemon juice

Blend well and let sit.

honey-cumin toasted almonds

• generous handful almonds, chopped roughly
• approximately 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 drizzle (a teaspoon or so) of honey
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

Melt butter in frying pan or skillet on medium heat. If butter browns, it will be too hot when you add the honey!

Saute almonds, stirring until evenly covered in buttery goodness. Drizzle honey as evenly as possible over almonds, stirring quickly. Add cumin, stirring constantly, and turn off heat. Stir every minute or so until the pan is cool, and then let almonds cool. BE PATIENT. Hot honey will hurt your mouth. It will not be worth it! I promise.

salad

• lots of lettuce. half a head? a whole head? whatever you can eat, really.
• one medium sized beet
• about 1/2 cup smoked salmon
• toasted almonds
• blueberry vinaigrette

Wash, shred, and pat dry lettuce.

Scrub beet (peel if desired — I don’t bother, especially with smallish spring beets) and chop into thin, bite size pieces.

Chop or shred salmon, watching out for bones.

prettiest thing you'll eat all day

Assemble all ingredients, sprinkling almonds and a generous helping of dressing over the top. Enjoy with crackers and a nice white wine.

*

ambulances carry dead people. funeral processions look like motorcycle gangs. imprisonment follows raising the flag of the independence movement, so Bob Marley, and Che Guevara walk around on t-shirts and posters, strange surrogates for freedom. police vans carry groceries for extra cash, while garbage trucks are cheap transport.

*

high over the Baliem valley, the mountain streams are sand. below, fish live in the garbage ditches and no, don’t drink the tap water. we bathe in the river with other children; they laugh at us in a language we do not understand. they bring soap to the water’s edge. later we shower in secret at home.

notes:

• wherever possible, ingredients are organic and local. they are a little more expensive that way (very little, really, during farmer’s market season!), but taste oh-so-much better.
• 99% of measurements are approximate — but we rarely make things that are hurt by eyeballing.

on to the foods!

nettle pesto, asparagus, and ravioli

it was my day off, and I promised to make something yummy for dinner. it’s one of my favorite things, when I have the time, to have something delicious ready (or close to it) when Simon gets home from work. we love cooking together, but I work until close to eleven five nights a week — so it’s especially fun to share good food with him at the end of the day.

I’m crazy about nettles right now — yeah, the stuff you snagged yourself on when you were a kid. cooked, even briefly, nettles lose their sting and are high in iron and tons of vitamins, as well as helpful with seasonal allergies. you can steam or sautee them as you would any green, or pour boiling water on them for a nice spring tea (local honey boosts the anti-allergy factor).

I ended up spending the bulk of the day working on my novel and visiting with a friend. I started this pesto about a half hour before he got home, but it was still ready in time. it takes a tiny bit of prep, but it tastes way fancier than it is and is always popular.

the pesto

this is my basic pesto, plus nettles. they add a nice subtlety and lots of nutrition without making it taste un-pesto-ey or otherwise weird.

(let me remind you: nothing is measured, but you can’t go too far wrong with pesto. it will always taste amazing.)

also, you’ll have leftovers. I’m planning on doing a pesto sauce for pizza later this week.

• equal parts basil and fresh, young stinging nettle (a medium-large  bunch of each) *use gloves when handling raw nettles!*
• 2 tablespoons pine nuts
• a handful of grated parmesan
• garlic (*to your liking* – I use 4-5 cloves and I use ‘em raw, but I like the heat they give, as well as the immune-boosting properties. 1-2 cloves raw or roasted would be more appropriate for milder tastes.)
• extra virgin olive oil (to your liking — I use a couple tablespoons, but you can increase it for a richer sauce or decrease it for a lower fat sauce. some would add butter here, but I like to keep it simple.)

pluck the nettle leaves from the stock, rinse, and drop into a pot of boiling water for a few seconds, until they turn bright green.

chop all ingredients finely (or throw them in a food processor!) and blend well.

ta da! amazing pesto. people will think you are a skilled chef, and also adventurous. and it only took like five minutes. (ok, a little more if you don’t have a food processor.)

(food processor tangent: later editions will follow on homemade salsa and hummus, and how great it is that you never have to buy those things again if you have a food processor and, seriously, five minutes to make something awesome that people will request again and again.)

the meal

drop several handfuls of pasta (product placement! Rising Moon Organics makes amazing ravioli and tortellini — we used the feta, hazelnut, and butternut squash flavor tonight: so good.) into boiling water and cook until done.

break or chop off the ends of about half a pound of asparagus, rinse, and chop into bite-size pieces. sautee in a drizzle of olive oil and a splash of red wine until tender.

add cooked pasta to the pan with asparagus, and spoon delicious pesto over it all. stir until everything is covered in wonderful bright green beauty.

garnish with a little more parmesan, pine nuts, and black pepper.

dinner is served!

*

When I’m not here I’m taking the hill with her, wearing her red beads, she in my green scarf. I am a visiting artist, she an ethanol scientist. We fool men who want to fuck us. Thinking more in love with her than you when we fight across the table. You leave angry and I’m glad to be left with her, necklace cool on my burned neck.

When I’m not here I’m taking the hill with her, sidewalks dirty with weak snow staying longer than its worth. Saying songs about summer are really about winter. Saying things we thought were poetry. Saying the places I float between, the folding place of sheets and sanity.

When I’m not here I’m taking the hill with her, following her legs through the arboretum. She is strong, talking while we climb, and I count through my breath to keep it even. Sometimes I think our bodies match, sometimes I see her small. Sometimes I see her Amazon: more than muscle, more than man. We take the hill. We take the mountain home with us.

An instance of repeating

when the world is only beginning

Strong coffee in the evening and a walk through the bookshelf of a stranger. He is too young for his grey hair, and he has been to Prague, and this Kundera, he’s Czech, isn’t he? We have already dreamed aloud together, and every step taken on common ground must surely bring us closer. I take the book home with me: heavy, even in its unbearable, unbeatable lightness.

Despite or because of the globe’s spinning, I am through the novel in moments like repeated prayer, like the movement of air into and out from lungs. I copy down carefully a single metaphor can give birth to love and leave it in the book for him to find when I return it.

In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera says: If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.

The grey hairs spread into a stripe of silver over the next year and a half. We understand this to be my doing. We fall, like leaves or pieces of paper, into place more easily and beautifully than I could have wished or planned.

But leaves lose their grip on trees in the wind, and actually, life is never what you plan. Sometimes things fall together, and sometimes they fall apart.

dissolution

1 : the act or process of dissolving : as a : separation into component parts b (1) : DECAY, DISINTEGRATION (2) : DEATH c : termination or destruction by breaking down, disrupting, or dispersing <the dissolution of the republic> d : the dissolving of an assembly or organization e : LIQUEFACTION

when it is getting warm

With the writer in those first days: he is attentive and well-read and distracting, with dark hair free of grey. He asks me to recommend a book, which I take as a challenge. I don’t give him Kundera – he’s already read it, which pleases me. I give him my favorite Joan Didion novel, telling him the magic is in her use of repetition. For his benefit I have underlined I’m driving Sunset and I’m staying in the left lane because I can see the New Havana Ballroom and I’m going to turn left at the New Havana Ballroom. I have also written yes at the end of chapter fifty-two. He returns the book two days later.

I say I’m impressed you read it so fast.

He says I’m impressed with your taste.

At home I look between the pages for a bookmark, a note, a clue – but of course there’s none. It doesn’t really matter, though. I have already decided that I will be leaving someone behind.

liquefaction

You are free to do whatever you want, I tell the man with grey hairs.

You are too, he says. My eyes, closed. The evening light.

OK, I say.

OK, he says.

repetition

1 a : the act or an instance of repeating or being repeated b : a motion or exercise (as a push-up) that is repeated and usually counted

when the leaves are new

With a tall man in the woods; he says he’s just picked up something Czech – starts with a K, he thinks. It’s a good one, I tell him. He says hm, smiles. He, too, has a few grey hairs. We understand them to be my doing, but we don’t really understand each other.

His grey hairs start multiplying like buds on trees, and I try not to over-explain my fascination and alarm. Life is not a cycle; it is a series of events. The repetition means something different every single time.

Kundera says: In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

We will walk into summer together, but not out of it.

disintegration

The tall man reads the Joan Didion. He is eager to talk about it in the sun, saying “I’ve never read anything like this before” while I think about the night before, moving furniture with the writer, each of us saying it is time for a change and hoping this is a metaphor for something else, and it is: this is a metaphor and the earth was turning very quickly last night, all night, and today.

When I get quiet in the car later the tall man says I can tell you have something to say, but if you don’t want to talk about it I guess that’s fine.

Yes, but I need to, I say.

He waits for me to finish the words: “and I’m going to give this a chance.”

OK, he says.

We each look at our own hands on our own knees, in the car, not touching.

decay

I don’t have any sense of intimacy with you I tell the writer, when it is already too late.

That’s kind of part of my personality, he says. I think about how he would move away from me in the night.

I just don’t see why two people who don’t make each other that happy should stay together any longer, I say.

OK, he says.

Later we shake hands. Well that was very adult, he says.

When he leaves I call the man with grey hair. Things are already shifting. Summer is ending and the world seems to be turning right-side-up again, without our asking or effort.

But actually, life is never what you plan. Sometimes things fall together, and sometimes they fall apart. And sometimes when they could fall apart they don’t, instead – sometimes instead they hold together because you have at your disposal some very strong glue and a very strong wish to try, let’s try this again, let’s give this thing another chance and see what happens.

when it is getting cold again

Kundera says: Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.

I feel like we should still be so happy, I tell the man with grey hairs over pancakes and applesauce.

I’m happy, he says. Aren’t you?

I’m fine, I say.

He is looking at me, so I look out the window. The bank says it’s fifty-three degrees.

I hope this isn’t like last time, he says.

I tell him I will absolutely not make any promises either way about that and think about how there are no easy answers and about how the world will only grow colder again in the coming months and about Joan Didion and how she wrote I have this problem with as it was.

when the leaves have fallen

Going through my shelves, offering new books to the tall man, who I am trying to make a friend. “This is what she’ll do to you,” I warn him, reading aloud from Carole Maso: I was hoping to tame my terror with sex or language. He says mm, nods. I tell him that the repetition means something different every single time. He nods and I can never tell how much he knows. I think to myself: he could have learned, he could have learned. But I know that I, too, have trouble with as it was.

The repetition means something different, every single time. Life is not a cycle; it is a series of events.

lightness

Sometimes things fall apart. Sometimes they also fall back together, like how the leaves always end up back on the trees. Give it time: it will get warm again; we will live again. Making choices and keeping secrets and fighting or falling in to the occasional (constant) trickle of memory every time I close my eyes. Saying we don’t need to tell anyone about this, saying he doesn’t need to hear about this. Sometimes good writers make confusing lovers, and sometimes tall men organize their kitchens in impossible ways. But sometimes arms are just like you remember, and sometimes they are better. Sometimes a man with grey hair loves you when you leave and come back, and leave and come back again. Sometimes I think: I am not changing. I have not changed. I still sit quiet in the kitchen, watching the Fahrenheit move between 32 and 33 degrees, imagining puddles thawing and seizing up again, and again. Sometimes you can see right through me and sometimes (I recognize) the sighs go too deep to see to the bottom. Sometimes you think that perhaps finally everything is just as it was, but this is never the truth.

I. Rabbit

The first memory: yellow carpet of my bedroom in the duplex where we lived when I was five. I am sitting on the floor; I am wearing a short dress. There is something involving a dresser drawer and the wrapping paper (from a years-ago baby shower) lining the bottom of it, and there are carpet lines on my bare legs, and there is this necklace – the flatly glinting rabbit and the cheap, indelicate silver chain.

II. Magpie

I see a bird spread out in wings, slightly blurred – I think he’s flying. Lines of motion all around him, I’m sure of it. But coming into vision as the light shifts I see his still, glassy eyes: the magpie, brilliantly black and white, is dead and stuffed.

III. I remember

Joni Mitchell wrote: I remember that time you told me, you said “love is touching souls” – well surely you touched mine, ‘cause part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time.

IV. The magpie and I remember

Magpie. That word, like the smile written into the reach of his shiny oiled wings, takes me back in a breath. Like the scent of sagebrush or sycamores or the breath of hot dust when it rains suddenly, falling fast, and the water rolls off the hard dirt and winds up in the gutters, creating tiny, flooding rivers. Like the peeling beef jerky texture of the bark and the shade, silvergreyed green, of the small, furry leaves of the Russian olive trees. Like the bright hot sky and those birds swooping in for something that catches the light.

I remember that time you told me magpies pick through garbage and filth in their search for something shiny, something beautiful.

I remember that time the blonde woman at the park said magpies were disgusting, but I always liked them; I always liked those scavengers. I had recently learned the word carrion, and thought that it was also a certain kind of beautiful.

V. The magpie remembers something shiny

Sometime later, in another town, digging through boxes, I find the necklace again. The details of losing and finding are lost by now, but somehow the necklace survives the garages of several houses and surfaces again with familiarity and recognition. My memory is only of the rabbit in my hand and the impression of significance. Chain is replaced by ribbon and ribbon by chain and the series links and breaks the years; the rabbit stays close to me from now on.

VI. Remembering the scavengers

I remember that time you told me you had found something interesting in the car. I cringed as it came back: the dark sky and those boys and the early Beatles and the parking lot and the ten hubcaps I collected, stashed in the trunk of your Nissan, and forgot about.

I remember that time you said “you’re such a little scavenger.”

VII. The rabbit and I remember the magpies

I remember that time I was wearing that necklace on that ribbon and those earrings I bought for the way the sun sparkled them when I turned my head. I remember when he got in the car (this was around the start of the collaborative magpie afternoons) and looked at me, a pleased or proud smile to one side.

I remember that time he said “fuck, you’re hip today,” and thinking back to the person I was at that time, I’m sure I replied “I know.”

VIII. Magpie, in loving memory

The lines of life of that dead magpie in flight bring to mind the beating of a heart in a hollow place. How we may sigh for the sake of beauty without a sense of emotion, without a memory of warmth or the sea or of blossoms when they are being born. That bird is dead, but I’m reading forward motion, or suggestion, or implication, in those tire-track power-line clothes-line stripes.

IX. Remembering the scavengers II

I remember that time I brought home the bicycle wheel. You had just cleaned the walls in the hallway. I came home late and you got up to say hello and found the wheel (brown and rusty and greasy, half-cleaned) leaning against the clean beige wall.

I remember that time you said “get this dirty piece of garbage out of my house.”

X. The rabbit and I remember who we are, were, want, wanted

I remember that spring, running out the door and tumbling down the stairs in skips and leaps, always almost late for the bus, always tying on the ribbon necklace in the rain. I’d been bringing home all kinds of things and I remember how you sighed and said “oh, Yoko” when I wrote or pasted or labeled Yes on things, looking for some rock star to wander into the installation that made up my life, climb the ladder and fall, fall, fall for me in some kind of double fantasy. Around the dinner table dad asked if I’d become Catholic when he wasn’t looking, saying the necklace looked like the medallion of some saint. Saint Anthony? Saint Peter?

I remember that time, how you looked at the rabbit and suggested “Saint Peter Cottontail.” Images of pastel colored, cardboard bound children’s books flashed around the room and we all exploded with enchantment.

I remember that time, reading a draft of this, how you told me “it came from chocolate. It was on a box of chocolate.”