April 5, 2015

Jackleen Holton

THE POETRY LESSON

for Steve Kowit, June 30, 1938 – April 2, 2015

Steal a line from a great poem
because the best poets don’t pay
Homage—that word like the godly He,
spelled with a capital H—they take
as if the whole world was their smorgasbord.
Yes, that’s what it felt like on that day we hiked
in the Cuyamacas, and all of nature
seemed to be slyly winking
as it sent us bluebird after bluebird, wild
turkey, deer, and that wounded lizard
we found on the path, the one you gently
moved aside with a stick as you swore
to the squeamish among us that its torn-off tail
would regenerate itself in a week. Our group
was mostly poetry students, and you, winking back,
as if you had summoned the gods, arranged
for a lesson so perfect it would be impossible not to write
a poem. So this is mine, the one I’m trying to shape
from your teachings, the day after learning you’ve gone,
your books spread out over my cluttered desk.
That’s another one of your tricks: include in your poem
a reference to the writing of it, like a camera
pulling back to reveal the soundstage, gaffers,
boom mikes and floodlights. After the hike,
a few of us drove to a small lake where your friend Jack
set up a telescope, and we waited to catch
a glimpse of the fledgling eaglet
whose parents had forged a temporary
nest in the brambles. Here’s what I remember:
my stomach rumbling as we took turns gazing
into the eyepiece. I wasn’t thinking of eaglets,
but Julian apple pie. I was going to have mine à la mode
with Dutch crumble crust. (Notice how I’ve used
assonance and consonance, the mimicking sounds
of brambles/rumbling/crumble/crust?)
But when that large nest rustled, and the fledgling
rose, its new wings flapping, and landed, briefly
on a branch, I forgot about everything
I planned to do later: have lunch
at that roadside café where we always ended up,
the lively political discussion that would ensue,
even the exquisite dessert, its perfect blending
of hot and cold. But, then just as quickly
as it had appeared, the little eagle
dropped back into its nest, out of sight.
Would this be a good place to address
the reader, to instruct?
Listen! When the beauty of a thing insists
on being seen, you must give yourself over
to it, for this is the shimmering everything: the moment
and its volumes of unwritten poems.
But here’s the part where I make my confession:
I lied. I never saw that eaglet.
The stupid guy I was dating left his backpack
at the trailhead. And I, being even stupider,
drove him back instead of letting him take my car,
going with you and Jack to see the bird.
But everything else is true: the lizard,
the café where you told us of your miraculous
sighting, the steaming apple pie. I saw you last month
at a workshop you taught. It never occurred to me,
not for a second, that it would be the last time.
You said, Here’s a trick, a really cheap trick:
End your poem with a rhyme.

from Poets Respond

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Jackleen Holton: “This poem is for my first poetry teacher, Steve Kowit, who passed away on April 2nd. He was a great poet, mentor, and one of the most generous people I’ve ever met. Steve had several ‘tricks’ for writing poems, which he used in his own work, and I have tried my best to include in this tribute piece. My favorite is this: Tell at least one lie in your poem.”

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September 24, 2014

Jackleen Holton

HOOTERS

I’m at Hooters, you tell me when I call, and I make you repeat it because I’m sure that I misheard. But on your third attempt, I catch the word. Oh, Hooters, I say, and wonder if this is the beginning of the end. And the waitress is there, trying to take your order. Can I call you back? Sure, I say and hang up. Go ahead, ogle her, in her little orange shorts and white tank, pulled tight, those owl eyes bulging. She’s probably flirting with you now, the way they’re trained to do, commenting on your accent, asking you where you’re from. And I know she’s not pretty or even beautiful, but gorgeous, because I knew a guy who worked construction at the franchise before it opened, who watched as the girls came in for their interviews, and there was this one who smiled at him, and he remarked to a co-worker, she’s hot, but the other guy shook his head and said maybe, but she wasn’t Hooters-quality gorgeous. And just after college I met a Hooters girl named Stephanie who was a few years younger than me. And as we sat in the Italian restaurant with our mutual friends, an older man stopped by our table to call her that very word: gorgeous. Envy prickled in me, not because I wanted to work at Hooters, but because I probably wouldn’t make the cut, what with the little bump in the center of my nose, my eyes set a bit too close together, not to mention my cup size too small for their requirements. But that was nearly twenty years ago. Even Stephanie the Hooters girl is now past forty, as are you, sitting there waiting for some terrible food to be delivered as you watch the parade. What’s next, I wonder, strip clubs and lap dances? My old boyfriend Dave had a drawer full of other women’s numbers. Is that where we’re headed? The phone rings. You should come here, you say. It’s such a typical American spectacle. I laugh. I’m good. While shopping at Target, you got hungry. Outside, the first thing you saw was Hooters. Of course, I reply, those big eyes. In college, the opening of the restaurant sparked many a debate in my women’s studies classes about the objectification of the female body. But now I’ve accepted the fact that women will continue to objectify themselves. If anything pisses me off about it anymore, it’s that they’ve co-opted the owl. You tell me you’ll try to come by later. But later you call again, your stomach aching. Too much salt on that chicken breast sandwich. You’re going to bed early. Poor baby. I hope you feel better, I say, and mostly I mean it. I look out the window, thinking of owls, the real kind, like the one I saw last week flying from a dark eucalyptus, over my balcony into the canyon; the sound it made, less of a hoot than a harrowing shriek as it flashed a momentary silver then disappeared into a copse of black trees.

from Rattle #43, Spring 2014
Tribute to Love Poems

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Jackleen Holton: “I was trying to write a poem for a class I was taking. I think we had five different prompts that week, and I was coming up with nothing. So, to distract myself from the task, I called my boyfriend. From his first sentence, ‘I’m at Hooters,’ the poem sprang forth and, by the end of the evening after he called me back with a stomach ache, it had pretty much written itself.” (web)

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January 24, 2013

Jackleen Holton

GOD KNOWS I WANT TO BE GOOD

That’s why last year I went out with Michael
who drove a white Prius
and wore beige vegetarian shoes. And when
we’d meet at a tofu bistro the same distance
from both of our houses, we’d go dutch because
we knew the importance of sexual equality. We had good
conversations, talked about dwindling
rainforests and fragile ecosystems. We liked
the same movies and poems.
God knows I want to be good, so I tried
to ignore that boorish guy Mark at the party who bragged
that he once caught a trout with his bare hands. I mean,
what an asshole, what a hairy-chest-beating
Neanderthal. So why did I let him
pull me into the bathroom, shove those
fish-snatching hands under my shirt?
The other day, a friend told me that Michael’s
engaged. I said good, good for him,
and nodded my head like a chicken. As for Mark,
it’s been a whole week since the night I groped
around on his bedroom floor in search
of my underwear. Tonight, I lie
by the window, my body still
humming like a long dial tone
in the dark.
 

from Rattle #37, Summer 2012

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Jackleen Holton: “I write poetry to make sense of things, and for those brief glimpses of the divine in the ordinary, but mostly because my childhood dream of being a lounge singer didn’t pan out.”

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