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.

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buy this book at Rose Metal Press.

I suffer from an incredibly common disease. It is the nature of young adults to think that this condition is singular to our age group, but I’m getting old enough now to see that it is more or less universal.

My name is Carlie, and I’m a wantaholic.

There are so many things that I have that I will never need I would trade them all–and the things I do need too–to know I am wanted. I sometimes wonder if that’s what drives the human race to religion. There it is, this idea of the most powerful person in the world. He is bigger than Angelina Jolie. He is bigger than Oprah. He wants you. I sometimes wonder if this is why I am a Christian. There is this sense of belonging. We are all wanted as long as we want it back.

Christians do not always seem to feel this way. Oh those people, we say. Those people are not Christians. Those people do blank. Those people vote for XYZ. Those people are not who God planned them to be. I watch these Christians, and I cannot help but be one of them. I say, it is damn disrespectful for you to think anything was not in God’s plan. You are not who he planned you to be.

Sometimes I want to shake myself and make myself love them, and most times I succeed. Most times. Sometimes I want to shake them and say want me.

I’ve downloaded a variety of music, but my major motivation at the time was Adam Lambert…

He’s the big topic of conversation these days, so I thought I’d single myself out as a fan.  He seems to be the guy you either love or hate, as far as I’ve been able to gather anyway.  I can certainly see how people wouldn’t like him.  His voice is something of an acquired taste–like beer–but his vocal control, range, and entertainment value are undeniable.  I personally think his voice is rad, and have downloaded most of his songs.  He’s pretty poppy at this point, and I don’t usually go for that kind of thing, but it is American Idol after all, which is a pop star competition (I’m informing you that American Idol is a pop star competition in case you’ve been living under a rock on Mars for the past decade…).  I’m hoping his album will be more interesting.

But I do have to admit, I love his “Mad World” and “Ring of Fire” renditions, which are pretty much his most depopified offerings (yes, I made up a word).  “Mad World” is a dramatic rehashing of the Gary Jules version, and it’s really a beautifully depressing song.  Ring of Fire is basically nothing like the original, taking the form of a pseudo-middle-eastern pop song.  Super creative arrangement, which Lambert received some negative criticism for, both on and off the show.  However, it’s turned out to be one of the most popular Adam Lambert downloads on iTunes.  The public has spoken, and apparently it disagrees with Simon.  And The Soup.

In music not related to Adam Lambert, I’ve downloaded some random songs from A Perfect Circle, Rage Against the Machine, Switchfoot, Puscifer, and Jimmy Eat World.  I only have six or seven bucks left.  What a shame.

There’s just one thing, though: my daughter is gay.

She was raised in a Christian home by two married heterosexual parents who were far from perfect, but who loved her, tried hard, and had good intentions. She was tucked in, read to, tickled, prayed with, prayed over, and taken to church. When she came out to me, she told me that she was gay before she knew what the term meant. Her natural attraction was to people of her own gender, and had been since before she was any kind of crazy — boy-crazy, girl-crazy, whatever.

She tells me that her same-gender orientation is part of who she is, not a choice, and I believe her without reservation. I have an inkling of what this has cost her and how difficult it has made her life. I don’t think she would want to stick with it if it was something she was merely choosing.

What do I want for my daughter? I want what every parent wants: I want her to be happy and love her life; I want her to find someone who loves her and wants to share everything with her. Who that person will be is something only she can know. I could no more choose that person’s gender than I could choose their name. And why would I even want to?

My mom taught me to stand up for what’s right. Mom’s gone now, but that part of her is strong in me, and I have tried to pass it on to my kids. They do a good job of it, even when — especially when — they are standing up to me. So I can’t be anything but proud of her as I watch the grace and determination she brings to dealing with the world’s reaction to this part of her, even as she is tackling so many other big changes in her life.

For some people, the gay rights issue is about whiners who want special treatment for an unpopular and unpleasant hobby. It may be that simple to you, but my life, my love, and my daughter have taught me differently. So when you talk about “gays” as if they were all one thing, and all wrong, please choose your words carefully and speak with respect. Because this is my daughter you are talking about, and I will take it personally.

Wow...

It could always be worse…