NATIONAL POETRY MONTH: 2017
MARY C. LEONARD

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After Seeing
Figures, Colors First:  Fransje Killars  Mass Moca
© Mary C. Leonard

My memory--the fabric shop the cutting table,
                         the dusty choke of fabric bolts
Mom's voice,  don't forget, nose to end of arm for a yard!
 
 
Not the neon pink stripes of this installation
             not the green and black hearts,
                            in long lines of aqua poplin
 
 
Not the textured lime lace 
             not the mannequins
                        veiled in saffron silks
 
 
This-- our sewing room
            gingham and rickrack skirts
                                    packs of Vogue and Simplicity
 
 
This-- pinning the thin skin of patterns
              the whirr of the Singer sewing machine
                        and standing doll-still for fittings 
 
 
This-- be careful of how the fabric runs,
                        Be careful of plaids, they have to line up!
 
                    
I exit the exhibit, wrapping my head
            in an aqua and emerald scarf,
                         throwing the ends over my shoulders.
            letting it go crazy in unmatched plaids.

The WORD For Spring - En/Ein
(From Chapbook: Twenty-first Century Flint)
© Mary C. Leonard

Blue divides land from sea and the Dead Sea divides Israel from Jordan and in this composition, acrylic on canvas, Farouk Hosyny, Egyptian, divides with a black slash like a road, a wadi, an en, an ein.

Remarks
I am out of it. We hiked at Ein Gedi
and I held my breath as I climbed up rocks,
focusing on sky, clouds, anything
out of range, but the sun was too close
and my own body betrayed me with dizziness
as if I were both Arab and Jew living on the edge.

I am out of it. We hiked along the black slash of
the wadi and I could feel myself losing balance
as if I were walking on circus stilts across a
divide and the upside down V of my legs, ^, slipped
away like language between enemies.

Wadi--An Arab Word
(Water once ran in this dry riverbed. Now rocks
plummet to a depth of black space.)

En/Ein--Hebrew for spring
Berekha--pool
Ermeq--valley
Gesher--bridge
Ma’yan--spring
Mappal--waterfall

I am out of it. I choke on these words, stumble
over Chalcolithic ruins, wild goats, hydraxes,
ibexes, 6000 years. Saul pursued David here.
The guidebook says, This is just a mini-tour.

Gesture
The black slash divides the canvas
but thrusts upward like the trunk of a tree,
rooted in an earth hiding ruin over ruin, and the
blue gesture moves to frame and soften, circling
back like an arm of life. And that small black v
pushes me into the white space of the distant
clouds. A false security.

Language
And conflict is like the code of tic-tac-toe,
pencil marks of x’s and o’s played to the death,
and all that remains is a black slash.
And those V’s? I drew birds as V’s in first grade,
graceful, small, large, always in black crayon
pressing them hard, so that they could fly,
in and out of the birdhouse, the sky, imitating
the language of teachers who reduced birds to V’s.
In this composition, the black V is a simple
mark at the center, leading my eye to a white
space, as if to say, For one moment, can’t we see
beyond our histories, fall like brothers into the
clean white of folded clouds?

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Mary C. Leonard is a poet, humorist, teacher and journalist. Her poems, essays, short fiction, and mixed genre pieces have been published in numerous journals, including Hubbub, The Chronogram and Blotterature. She is also the author of four chapbooks. Mary was a finalist in the Hill-Stead Museum's Poetry Contest, and she won first prize in the Lucy Cady Lamphier Contest. Mary has recently been selected as a winner of the Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize. Winners will be participating in a reading on Sunday, May 7th, 2017 at 1:30 p.m. at the Town of Colonie Library, just outside of Albany, NY.

Mary has been a dedicated teacher for decades and is known to leave an indelible impression on her students. She has taught at every level, from public high school to Trinity College in Hartford, CT. Since 1988, she has been an associate of the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College, where she taught incoming freshmen in the Language and Thinking program from 1990 through 1998. She also teaches a summer program for students in grades 10 through 12 at Bard College at Simon's Rock. The Young Writers Workshop is now part of the National Writing and Thinking Network, the largest consortium of summer writing programs in the country. 

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For more of Mary's work, see "Love Letters" published in Compose.