Munyori Poetry Journal

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