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Building A Poem |
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Artist Statement
I grew up on a lake in northern New Jersey. I’m always happiest when by the water. I received my undergraduate degree from Ithaca College. I am a gymnastics coach, fiction writer, and poet. Three years ago I dreamed of a man with one leg so long it could reach across the ocean from coast to coast. Since that night I’ve been working on a novel about him, enacting the sentiment from the title of a Schwartz short story, a title that I love and hope always to live by, "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities."
Thesis Work
An excerpt from my novel, Of Roots and Leaves.
The walls were round and high, the grey sky a lid, and the rushing falls the stew of some crafty gods. Jonis sat on a flat rock and I beside him piling little stones, seeing how high and how long they could hold.
We were at a gorge off of 96 B. It was a place that Inka and I frequented on ‘hangover mornings’. We lay on the rocks and let the water glide over us, soothing the headache and nausea of the night before. Without water to cleanse us we would be no different then the slates of rock that climbed the sides of this cauldron gorge, colorful moss and flowers, dirt and bugs. On summer afternoons, like this one, the water was strong. I propelled down the rocks and filled everything with its sound. I could find no pitches in the rushing of water, only a peaceful muffled drone.
“The waterfalls are nothing like this in the fall and winter,” I told Jonis. “The water levels drop, the falls trickle.”
“Transformation,” Joins said. “It’s everywhere. I have to tell you about her, this bird woman. She’s quite a character, has these vivid memories of flying and peacock feathers. She says she knows the way it feels to birth an egg.”
“Would it be much different from birthing a child?”
Jonis looked perplexed as if he hadn’t yet considered questioning her story.
“She knows what species she was by the types of feathers that she’s see in her visions,” he said.
“And what species is that?” I asked.
“The Black Shoulder Peafowl. I looked it up: black wings and a grey body. Supposedly the most beautiful of the females.”
“Oh was she?” I thought of the feather spread. I thought of the strut. How could I compare? I hadn’t see Jonis since that night at the bar and after the way Inka acted I wasn’t sure that he would call again, I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. But when he did, I experienced an old kind of excitement, the little girl at a sleep-over staying up all night kind. I didn’t want to think that I was on a long list of new friends that Jonis called and met up with. “Peacocks have very piercing calls.” I said, recalling their sound as aptly as their shape and color. “Sharp G, an almost human cry. It’s disturbing.”
“I wonder if her human speaking voice matches the peacocks sound? You’ll have to meet her and pitch her voice for me. Wouldn’t that be great! I’d love to include something like that in my paper, real evidence to support her story.”
“You sound like you’ll marry her,” I said.
“Well if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Why should I mind?”
Jonis laughed. “She must be going on 60. Don’t be worried.” And I thought, how dare he think I should be worried. I remember that thought – it was the first time that I judged him by his disability. It frightened me.
Contact
catie.jarvis@gmail.com
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