Episode 42: Love Shack

This week features three poems by two authors: “Gala Dali Speaks Broken French” and “What Can Happen to Women and Men” by Wendy Cannella and “Nightmare” by Jana-Lee Germaine.  Wendy Cannella once fronted a rock band in Boston, back when everyone fronted a rock band in Boston… This week’s episode of Slush Pile features three poems by two authors: “Gala Dali Speaks Broken French” and “What Can Happen to Women and Men” by Wendy Cannella and “Nightmare” by Jana-Lee Germaine.  Wendy Canella Wendy Cannella once fronted a rock band in Boston, back when everyone fronted a rock band in Boston. She is an avid supporter of the local arts and leads writing workshops, runs a reading series or two, serves on the board of the Portsmouth Poet Laureate Project, and generally embarrasses her children by volunteering in the classroom on Poem in Your Pocket Day (what, didn’t your mom ever hide poems in your jean jacket?). You can find her work in various places including Fogged Clarity, Houseguest, Mid-American Review, Salamander, and Solstice. She continues to play the same few guitar chords, sing off-key, and speak many languages brokenly.   Jana-Lee Germaine Jana-Lee Germaine recently moved from Massachusetts to a small village in the English countryside where she lives in the old post office, homeschools her 4 children, and has thoroughly embraced the idea of beans for breakfast.  She is an avid runner and cyclist (will it ever stop raining?) and has recently taken up weightlifting, despite the fact that her mother thinks it will make her look weird. Her favorite holiday is the 4th of July (not celebrated in the UK, for obvious reasons). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Potomac Review and Naugatuck River Review. Share you thoughts about this episode on Facebook and Twitter using #donorcycle     Present at the Editorial Table: Kathleen Volk Miller Tim Fitts Marion Wrenn Sharee DeVose Jason Schneiderman   Engineering Producer: Amber Ferreira ----------------------------      Wendy Cannella Gala Dali Speaks Broken French Of the spinning wheels—trés vite and straight   from the States of the United to Montréal City. Of the heavy   traffic—bumper to bumper—and us, look at us, full to the brim, a clown car   of activists, caravan of aerialists,   and suddenly I pull my black hat down lower over my forehead, telling each of you   which lines are yours to sing, wanting it all so badly   to lead into the poem— turning   up Footloose, snapping back the door handles to escape like Smurfs   into the congested highway —and this takes us nowhere, egotism of drawing attention, egotism of dwelling on   those swaying hips—between stopped cars—   but this is it, this is where we dance the good   little dancing, I mean some excellent shaking—will you make it meaningful in the end? Will you   make out with me? For the moment will you hold the wheel—I’m taking my sweater off and the stars seem so agitated up there   trembling in their deep space and that is just the sort of dramatic gesture we’ve come to expect   from the stars and one after another our sweaters are cast off.  The traffic starting to move again, the drivers left   with the unsettling ache of knowing they have teeth inside their tender mouths—strangeness of the body, and of living—through them the breath of words. I think. Je pense. I believe.   Je crois. I feel. Je sens. The neck and the shoulders. Le visage. I never thought   I had power to hurt anybody. I can barely make sense. But why else would I coerce the entire universe   into bowing before my imagination, bestowing a corny nickname on each of us. You’re Mama and I’m La Bamba—let’s cover   the world with our America, yeah let’s take it   with us to the Jazz Festival—where all of us—my Papa, my Painter, my Smurfette—my friends all of us my friends made wreaths   of our foolishness and I made a nice wreath I wear it around my face   all night, the prayer for you to touch me. Symphatique, symphatique. This is nice. It feels good.   You want to hear something else, something sophisticated   in French but I’m far too young to know what it is you want. I know only one phrase.   It tells us when the music moves you will hold my hand and eat from my hand—it tells me the whole bright blue   night is a crown. So here is my stupid, unstoppable tongue. If you misunderstand, you misunderstand.   Wendy Cannella What Can Happen to Women and Men                                            Honey honey the call is for war                                            And it’s wild wild wild wild                                         —Patti Smith “Ask the Angels” I never met an angel I didn’t like.   The one who knits hats for newborns,   the one humming delusions to the broken world,   forlorn angels pacing the room,   pulling out their own wings,   feather by feather,   stone angels crumbling beneath   the pure arch of love,   even the worst angel there ever was,   I liked him especially, with his motorcycle   and stolen jewelry, his murderous thugs.   I rode with him down the fiery path,   never asking for more   than the opposite of what we had,   the good reasons, and the master plan—   which he failed to fully envision.   Once, he gave me Patti Smith   and Lou Reed as examples   of what can happen to women and men   who believe deeply in upheaval—   transcendence, a new form.   He made me think I even liked   the idea of betrayal, and for awhile   I sang those kind of songs.   Jana-Lee Germaine Nightmare My son wakes to creaks and thumps like boots on his bedroom floor. They are here for him, they’ve found his room, the demon with the hedge clippers who stands against the wall, or the man with the muddy shovel waiting to tangle him in sheets and bury him, still breathing, out in the yard. Night moves around his room, grinning. What he fears is pain he cannot handle – us, dead in the other room – and hands, not those attached to wrists, but the kind that fingercreep along the floor. He kicks the covers back, brushes past the thumbs, the clippers, the raised shovel, he’s down the hall to our bedroom, where we are still alive. When he says, crawling between us, I needed to know you were OK, I kiss his head, and the dark sits like a stone on my tongue. What can I say to him tonight? These things are real, but not here. My own dreamer sits sniggering on my shoulders, elbows digging into my skull.