Window and Wall

for Mayor Steve Benjamin’s State of the City address, 30 Jan 2018

“Cities have awakened….”
Harlan Kelsey and Irvin Guild, The Improvement of Columbia, South Carolina (1905)

It took nine months of work.

Painting the wall, he carved out a tunnel, hung the sun in front of us.

Nine white overhead lights lead us through the tunnel to the other side.

We did not deem it desirable, at this time, said Kelsey & Guild in 1905, to place too much emphasis upon detail, because, in doing so, the main objects sought might easily be lost sight of.

The details of the mural trick the eye, the real stone merging with the fake, the real metal barriers beside the painted traffic signs.

The things that seem to block the way are the things that make you see.

The real windows on the wall look fake, become part of the painting: the vision of what’s beyond is the point.

Cities have awakened, wrote Kelsey and Guild, to the urgent need for a systematic plan for [the] future.

In 1976, People magazine called the image “a brilliant orange sunset.” The State newspaper later called it “a descending sun.”

A comprehensive plan for development, said Kelsey & Guild, should consider well the tendencies of growth, and the physical features that … govern such growth.

Two white arrows show both lanes going forward, no one is headed back.

It is not clear, really, if the sun is rising or setting.

My first few weeks in Columbia, a friend drove me over to see it, early evening, the moment the tunnel seems most real, as if you could drive into it.

The sun is the same size as a yellow traffic sign that warns of a right turn ahead, the road curving away and out of sight. Forty years ago, he warned us of a hard swerve to the right, something we couldn’t yet see.

It is quite possible, Kelsey & Guild admitted, that this report will be more useful in its suggestions that in the plan outlined.

Blue Sky told People magazine, I wanted to reach through that wall, touch something larger than life.

Rumor is a kid once drove right into the mural.

The South Carolina Encyclopedia reminds us that Kelsey and Guild’s proposals were too ambitious to receive serious consideration, but they set a precedent for comprehensive planning.

The things that block the way must be
the things that help you see.

The wall was a way out.

The windows are dark,
the sun is shining in front of us.

 

The Sound of a Needle on Vinyl

written for the launch of Amplify, a Cultural Plan for the Columbia Area

with thanks to the many friends who responded to my question on Facebook about their first experiences of arts and culture, many of which appear in the poem

 

I give you the macramé owl, the one with broken pinecones for eyes.

I give you the candy dish on the coffee table, its hard nuggets of sugar and color stuck together.

I give you the turkey made from a drawing of your hand.

I give you those big picture books with cracked spines that your mother read to you, the way her voice changed to shape the story.

And then there’s your dad, putting on the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street, turning it up and dancing around. Not gracefully, a little unhinged, but with a lot of passion.

I give you that first concert—was it Michael Jackson? You memorized the names of all five Jacksons, memorized the songs. You were jealous of your cousin’s pierced ear, that dangling glove earring. You slept with his albums under your bed in hopes that you would dream of him and his tiger. You were eight.

Can you see the little girl in pigtails, dancing in the dining room till dinnertime?

Or the little boy obsessed with mime?

I give you that moment someone explained to you that when someone dies onstage it’s make-believe.

I give you that moment you fell asleep during the musical, or during church, and then when you woke up during the last song, you thought you had woken up in heaven.

What was the first song that made you cry?

Do you remember the first time you smelled a darkroom?

I give you the bright plaster tropical fish swimming across Aunt Betty’s bathroom, fish not found in nature, but found in Aunt Betty’s bathroom.

I give you the bronze and copper statues of deer in your grandfather’s office, the way they felt in your hand when you played with them. You were not supposed to play with them. The doe with a relief image of a fawn on her stomach.

I give you the stiletto heels you mother spray-painted gold and placed elves inside, your favorite Christmas decoration.

I give you the carnival glass cup your grandmother drank her coffee from, iridescent, you thought it beautiful, and the demitasse spoon she used to stir in the Pet Milk.

Who was the child in that framed portrait at the back of Granny Lola’s house? Was the child dead? They used to do that. I give you that dark, hand-carved frame.

I give you the old man at your grandma’s church who taught you to sing with shaped notes. It was serious business. It was like a foreign language.

I give you the women’s syncopated clapping, the shuffling of feet, the bending and rising of bodies with the lyrics of the song.

I give you that moment you picked out your mom among the other women, sure you heard her voice alone.

I give you Mrs. Slavin’s weekly music class, the five-line chalk holder she used to draw a musical staff on the board, the way it would sometimes squeal, then she’d write in the notes. You loved her weekly visits and the songs she taught you. You still remember “Hava Nagilah.”

I give you Leontyne Price and some guy singing on PBS when you were flipping through the channels. It was Samson and Delilah. You didn’t understand what they were saying, but you were, for that moment, in another world.

I give you Bugs Bunny and The Rabbit of Seville.

I give you that place under the piano where you’d sit while your aunt played.

I give you the first time you saw deaf people waving their hands in applause. It was after a dance performance. Their silence and motion was as beautiful as the dance.

Do you remember the May Day celebration at Earlewood Park, decades ago, your dress made of crepe paper—it was the prettiest dress in the world—crepe paper like the streamers, weaving in and out, plaiting the pole.

I give you your mother laying out the pattern for a dress on the dining table and cutting out the fabric pieces.

I give you Spirograph, Etch-a-Sketch, string art, Light Bright, Play-doh, and that little plastic handmade potholder loom.

I give you your grandmother’s quilt, made of old clothes, tablecloths, sheets, anything. They were not traditional patterns. They were beautiful. They kept you warm.

I give you the oriental rug in the floor of your family’s military housing. It mesmerized you. You could ride the elephants all day.

I give you the black and white prints of classical architecture—Ionic, Doric, acanthus leaves—hanging in the cramped rooms of a tract home.

Your aunts would tell stories in the living room, and your uncles would tell stories outside under the oak trees. When did you realize these were two very different sets of stories?

I give you your uncle’s swanky Eames chair.

I give you the tacky ashtray of an exotic topless woman that your dad and his buddy passed back and forth every Christmas. The lei of flowers was perfectly placed, her figure perfectly balanced to rock back and forth. It was the 1950s. You grew up to be a feminist.

I give you the drum solo in In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly. You listened to it with your dad in the car. It’s the reason you took drum lessons.

I give you your mother singing, her clear powerful soprano, until chemotherapy and radiation took her voice away.

I give you the organ in the corner no one ever played.

Your father brought it home from the war, that little Swiss-made wooden music box. Your mother used to wind it up and place it on her pillow when you lay down for a nap. When your father died, your mother gave it to you.

When was it you realized you were tone-deaf and started to sing only in the car or in your head? I want you to sing again.

I give you Aunt Mary’s sound system, the red velvet panels and wood carvings, and the sound of Billie Holiday.

I give you Billie Holiday’s voice and the crackling sound of a needle on vinyl.

I give you the crackling sound of a needle on vinyl.

[Note: A shorter version of this poem was read aloud at the Amplify Launch Event on January 29, 2018]

Poems on the COMET 2018

CALL FOR POEMS

Theme: Two Cities

In fall 2015, poems appeared on Columbia’s buses, telling the stories of the city. In spring 2017, we saw poems about rivers posted on city buses and on movie screens during the Indie Grits Waterlines film festival. This year, we’re looking for poems about how we experience the city, what separates us and what unites us.

We’re thinking about the Indie Grits theme for 2018: “Two Cities.” We all live in the same city, but we work and live in the city in different ways. We experience the city in different ways—its landscapes and streets, its neighborhoods, its social and political spaces.

  • What are the frontiers of your city? What spaces define your experience?
  • What social events, what networks, what communities are your city?
  • How do race or socioeconomic factors define your experiences and interactions within our shared city? What spaces are accessible? How has your world been shaped by gentrification, accessibility (including access to the arts), housing displacement or development? by sidewalks and libraries and green spaces? By churches and community centers? By railroad tracks and speed bumps and traffic lights and bus stops?
  • How do we make our city more open, more inclusive, more welcoming? How do we have difficult conversations? How do we break down barriers, make things more accessible, express and experience empathy?

Because this year’s Indie Grits Labs are focused North Main, we are especially interested in poems by writers from North Main neighborhoods or poems about Main and North Main.

Requirements:

Poems should be 10 lines or fewer & should address the theme. Submit your poems to poetlaureate@onecolumbiasc.com by Feb 15, 2018, for consideration.

A New Year

— for Coralee

Bert’s outside taking down the strings
of lights, this winter sun bright enough
for a new day, new year. Colleen sent
a thick heart made of seeds—we’ll hang it
in a tree today for birds, for the winter
that persists despite the sun. Last night’s
fireworks were gorgeous, though Barry ran back
and forth with his torch to relight them—
the way, sometimes, we have to do for
our little resolutions, for our glorious
dreams, for our tired hearts, when it’s
dark, when it’s still so cold.