Munyori Poetry Journal
Sacramento, CA
United States
manu
1. Let me start by congratulating you on your new
publication, Low Notes. How do you feel about this
achievement?
Wonderful! My publisher, Quinton Duval of Red Wing
Press, selected these poems from my full-length
manuscript. He also suggested the order in which they
appear in the chapbook. I deeply respect him, both as
a powerful poet (you should check out his most recent
book, Joe’s Rain!) and as a sensitive reader of other
people’s work. I’m still kind of surprised that a
chapbook of my poems now exists, and it’s especially
gratifying that it exists as a result of working with
this fine writer who believed in the project and made
it happen.
2. Tell us a little about yourself and your writing.
When Quinton Duval suggested a chapbook to me, he
asked me to include an essay about myself and my
poetry. The difficult process of writing that essay
made me realize that my creative process has been
inextricably intertwined with my life as a single
parent.
3. I am still working my way through Low Notes, and so
far I love the poem "From the Spanish". The image of
the fig is so fresh that it reminds me of the figs I
ate growing up in Mazvihwa, Zimbabwe, figs I collected
from a generous fig tree. Does this poem have a deeper
meaning about language and bilingualism?
I’m not bilingual, so I don’t know what it’s like to
think in another language. However, I was around
Spanish-speaking relatives as a little kid, and there
are a few words and phrases that I must have first
learned in Spanish. I consider myself monolingual,
so it surprises me when, on rare occasions, a Spanish
word comes into my mouth before an English one.
Working on this poem allowed me to think through a
phenomenon that puzzles me.
4. What can you tell me about the title of your new
book, Low Notes ?
I begin my essay in the chapbook with a consideration
how poetry works for me—like a bass line, like a
rhythm section.
5. Some of your poetry shows a connection with
folktales, and one of them is even entitled "Tell Me a
Story". What does this connection mean to you?
All folktales, no matter what culture they’re from,
contain elements of truth about the human
condition—our jealousies, our hopes, the way we grow
toward and away from one another. And they’re so
tightly crafted that nearly every object or person can
be seen as a metaphor for one experience or another.
Usually, though, it’s just the main characters whose
perspectives we consider as listeners or readers. I
wonder, sometimes, what some of the minor characters
are thinking. For instance, in my little poem “The
Princess and the Pea,” the voice in the poem is that
of the pea. Though the original story is ostensibly
about a delicate princess, to me it is also about
secrets. I tried to give voice to a secret. The
pea in this case is the “other woman” who knows she’s
affecting the princess even though the princess
doesn’t consciously know the pea is there. And so
this children’s story is a metaphor for an adult
situation. Wow! That was much more long-winded than
the poem itself!
5. What kinds of material are you working on
currently?
During my winter break, I plan to return to my
full-length manuscript in order to polish it further.
In the meantime, addition to tinkering with drafts, I
have vowed to become more diligent about sending out
my work. One of my weaknesses is that when I have a
few precious moments for poetry, I am far more likely
to work on a poem than to write a cover letter to send
a batch of poems to a magazine even though
publication, too, is an important part of the process.
You are helping me reach this goal by welcoming my
work into the inaugural edition of this beautiful
journal. Thank you!
Three Poems by Lisa Abraham
Tell Me a Story
My son scans a pixel-bright galaxy
familiar as Star Wars, his plasma pistol
blasting aliens into pools of slime.
Like him I’m enthralled by the story,
a shiny world praised in legend
that he sees on X-Box and I see mirrored
after a rain. Tennis shoes in a puddle,
circles waver from my soles
as I stand on the reflections of clouds.
It’s that scent of opening,
the sidewalk with its scrim of mud,
edges blurred and passage possible
my eyelids citrus orange
when I close them to see myself
like everyone, the center of all stories
about the squeeze from one world to another.
My son could be Gilgamesh
backed by a soundtrack of electric guitars
and I could be the I in any poem
that leads to surprise through familiar passages—
subways and highways, dying parents
and all those rivers,
stories we each return to sighing
sing it, minstrel, again.
Thinking Back
(After Rapunzel)
“We think back through our mothers if we are women.”
--Virginia Woolf
Grateful I didn't have a child
doomed to scrub, I scrubbed
other people's linens
and our one-room cottage floor,
working toward each twilight
when I could gaze over the garden wall
into the witch's tangled plots
of cabbages and herbs.
She was neither wife nor maid
and could read books
of subtle poisons. Intrigued, I hungered
for her lettuce, her rampion
until my appetite grew
greater than fear and I sent
my husband over the garden wall.
But there he agreed to the witch's demands
and the two made a pact
with my womb—the witch’s greens
in exchange for my first born.
Barren, I agreed. But then
my belly grew. Rapunzel was never more
than an empty space in my arms,
my body so full of grief I was stunned
for years. But when I heard her
toddling through the witch's garden, I began again
to spy beyond my own walled yard.
She'd tug the witch's skirts
until the hag set aside spade and basket
to run a gnarled finger along
her smooth cheek.
Each season I watched the witch
hunch further into herself as she approached
the loss she knew love would bring—
Rapunzel shorn and banished.
But I learned from traveling minstrels
that near a scruffy desert town the girl
set up shop, mixing potions for the locals
until her prince, blinded, stumbled into her again.
I heard they lived happily ever after
a privileged life, though his people
found her odd. She ate raw greens
and shunned palace luncheons
for a garden where she'd read
or kneel among rows of bush beans
with a shovel and a basket.
And her twin little girls—
one named Hazel, after rumor of me.
The other, Gothel. After the witch.
The Princess and the Pea
I gave away my second-hand bed.
My lover asks
Why sleep on the floor?
There's a futon
under the mattress he uses
with his girlfriend.
I can have it.
No.
What he's hidden
she senses. Even her tender
dreams have bruises—
she's restless now
when she turns from him
each night to sleep.

Lisa Abraham's new book, Low Notes published by Red Wing Press, 2809 Higgins Road, West Sacramento, CA 95691 or (916) 373-9022 . For orders, use above address or contact the publisher at red- wing@sbcglobal.net
Copyright belongs to the author. Enquiries to manu@munyori.com
Munyori Poetry Journal
Sacramento, CA
United States
manu