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Little Tricks of Linear B
by Diane Wakoski
The beginning was the dream,
and the voice was a turban gourd.
A strum.
What are we hiding?
Our new bodies
born underground with pearls of old corn?
Our dry husks
on the winter-hard ground/
where
is the moment
between wet rotting
and ashy desiccation? The beginning was
a dream.
But what country is shaped
like an ear of corn?
Which
one like a bunch of grapes?
Which one, a pomegranate?
What map leads to the chrysalis nut?
The Dream
I was afraid to move my head or neck. I realized that stiff
branches of little
black grapes, like nubbins of concords, only
jet black, were protruding out of my head. My face also was
covered with
black nodules, but these were velvety clusters,
also like grapes but spread out flat over the lower face, not
protruding
like the head grapes. The feeling I had was of
horror at the moistness and simultaneous stiffness of the new
grape
spikes on my head and I knew that if I tried to touch
them they might pop and squirt a bloody juice all over.
Helplessly,
I knew they were a vegetation disease coming out
of my body, like a beautiful but malevolent fungus, and that I
must
do something at once. The only action which seemed
possible was to break large 1,000 unit capsules of golden oily
Vitamin
E, all over my scalp. I felt the viscous honey-coloured
oil seep into my head and felt that if anything could heal me,
it would be the Vitamin E. But I knew it would have to remain
covering the erect little grape-bunch knobs for a long
time
before it would dissolve them. And that I would be sticky,
messy and uncomfortable as well as untouchable for
some
time. Still I felt hope as I woke up that the Vitamin E would
heal this vegetable disease. When I was awake I
felt bathed in
the Vitamin E oil, as if it were warm sunshine.
What country is shaped like an ear of corn?
California.
The Golden State.
From which I fled, but now dream of. Does
it matter
where anyone belongs?
Do we have a choice? Grinding the corn for tortillas
I think of myself
as smokey flesh
hung to dry in the midwest. Jerky,
smoked meat. Yet, it is not California I
long for.
But my youth.
Not golden but moist. The spikey grapes of my young
tongue,
the moistness of my mushroom body.
In a cheap roadside restaurant this week
I saw a poor
family, travelling
for the holidays.
At the table was a fat man with scuffed shoes and greasy hair,
a squashed
spongy nose and bad teeth: the father. The
mother: his small, mean-faced wife. With them was another
man who had grease-stained
hands and skinny body, and was
wearing a beard which protruded from his face brushily, as if
it were about to fly
away. There were several children with
frog-like faces, including a fat teenage girl with the father's
bulbous squashy
nose spread across her face. She was the one
who interested me, tho I found them all so repulsive that I was
also
fascinated. For she was a graceless person but obviously
newly aware of her sex and flirting with the man with the
brush
beard. As I looked at her I realized that her youth, the
freshness of her ugly (not even very clean or well-groomed)
face
and body was undeniable to anyone over forty. At first I
thought, how pathetic. To have only youth and nothing else.
But
then realized that I had never had any more. This girl was
myself as I refused to see myself. In the past. Even now. I
moved my hand to my head and touched my scalp to see if the
grape bunches were still there.
She lives in
a country shaped like
an ear of corn; no,
this one was a pomegranate, the seeds still fresh and
bloody, and stiff
as corn, thick with juice,
as the nubby grape bunches growing out of my head
had been.
Oh, little girl,
Oh,
Marsh King's Daughter,
why are you here,
in my life today?
The Marsh King's Daughter
Her feet,
stuck in a loaf of pumpernickel bread, as punishment
for her bad behavior
pulling off the wings of flies,
tormenting the cat,
not obeying her parents
she is
sent under the mud and algae of the marsh,
immovable in her loaf,
to be crawled over by insects,
hissed at by snakes,
with toads and frogs hopping in her hair.
This is the punishment:
to remain
in the marsh kingdom
until someone whom she has mistreated will voluntarily
come to rescue her. Oh,
little girl. I know now
why you are here
and not in the land shaped like an ear of corn,
not in
the pomegranate map,
or under the grape arbor.
The heavy loaf holds you in this swampy place,
weighed
down by grain,
stuck in dough.
The Dream Focused
I am a faun, a satyr, my head
is
horned with nobby stiff grape bunches.
The black is obsidian, polished,
but the black rot is moled on my face,
I
am grinning
but in pain. Lechery
does not interest me,
but my form is set, appearance
false to myself. The
grapes,
my horns,
the horns I should not have.
Who will rescue the Marsh King's Daughter?
Not the ant with legs missing.
Nor the grasshopper with cracked thorax.
Not the blind toad.
Not
mother who kneaded her into the loaf
and stuck her feet-first into the oven.
Not father who is away from
home
sailing the Pacific.
Not brother who helped her set the butterflies on fire
in the glass jars.
Not anyone from the country shaped like an ear of
corn,
for that voice
is distant,
distant
The Dream Related To Another Dream
In this dream, a terrifying figure who is white
with black
spots, the head of a borzoi with sharp teeth and the
appearance of a jester, stands in the hall outside
my room. I
am not sure if it is not myself standing there, inside this
figure, but whether it is a monster or myself
I am frightened
of it. The black spots seem intense and a source of evil. I know
I am in danger. This figure in memory
is somehow the same as
myself in the vegetation dream. The grapes have the same
intensity as those black spots on
the white jester.
The Dream Again
It focused on my head. I really did not see my body at
all.
Only my head.
The predominant sensation is a feeling of new growth.
The stiff bunches of little
black grapes are just emerged from
my head, and are vulnerable under their tense skins. Easy to
crush. My fear is
that they will break and bleed and spread the
disease as well as disfiguring me, for I am definite that they
are a
dangerous growth like cancer which will destroy me. My
face too is covered with the growth, but there it takes the flat
fuzzy form of black felt or velvet. Like a web it is spreading
over my face from the bottom near the mouth up. I keep
wanting to touch my face and head but am afraid it will mar
the growth. I begin to break the cylindrical Vitamin E
capsules over my head until the warm golden oil starts to run
in rivulets from my head to my brow and finally down
on my
cheeks. I know it is healing my growths and could nullify
them.
What does the Marsh King's Daughter
think of
while she is plummeting upsidedown
into the swamp?
She is baked in her loaf
which will weigh her
down always
in the swamp.
Does she repent her life
or only think with anger about the mother who
baked her
into the loaf,
the wandering father,
a painful world which she wanted to destroy?
And now another pain: the swamp
itself,
the Marsh King,
her father,
whom she will never see.
Final Dream Narration
Wanting to touch the sprigs of grape knobs but afraid
they will burst. Feeling them growing tightly out of my scalp,
I
know they are a diseased growth and are nearly complete.
Wanting to put my fingers on the juicy knots but knowing I
might
make matters worse if I touch them. I break the E
capsules like honey over my head. Maybe this will cure me, or
at
least prolong my life? The growth on my face does not really
concern me as do the horns of grapes sticking out of my head.
It is those I need to heal.
The Marsh King
rules the state shaped like
an ear of corn. But I
rule
the pomegranate
map.
Yet, it is in the state of the grape
where the Marsh King's Daughter has been thrown
into
her father's swamp, her feet baked
into her mother's heavy bread.
And these three countries will be the scene
of
destruction, and the
landscape
for healing.
First the Vitamin E
will bathe the woman with
grapes
growing out of her scalp.
Then she will break the bread
off the soft white feet
of the Marsh King's
Daughter.
Then, oh, then, she
will offer a glass of wine to the Marsh King,
and they will all perform these rituals
in the land
shaped like an ear of corn
But what if the Sunshine oil does not cancel the growth?
Black, rotting,
fertile with death.
What if the loaf has ossified and the soft white feet
of the Marsh King's Daughter must be
cut
off with the loaf?
What if the wine is refused
by the Marsh King who is a beer drinking football player,
and what
if the state shaped like an ear of corn
is nibbled away by mice?
What if Hollywood itself is transformed into a heron
and flies
away?
Where will George Washington,
looking for hot countries be?
Will the King of Spain ever
shake hands
with the Marsh King or
his footless daughter?
What if dream does not inform us but, instead,
rules the world?
The Marsh King's Daughter
with her bleeding legs, footless
cannot even walk home
after
she has been dragged out of the swamp.
Will my grape horns turn to rock?
Will the chrysalis nut ever be cracked, only
to find
a stone butterly inside?
Not,
will the story ever be told,
but
what is the story?
Who
speaks the truth?
Copyright Diane Wakoski
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