Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Rule breakers
Cabbage Patch mouths held to the mic
of her first ghetto blaster,
squeaky voiced stories
clinging to tape.
Played back to applause.
Too bad the babysitter
could not keep secrets.
No matter how the girl
hiding behind her
pleaded.
She assured the parents
the girl was good, that listening
was no trouble. Mistook
their nods for agreement.
Fact: finding sitters for silent children
is hard enough.
The rule: write your stories,
record your voice,
play it back with doors shut,
never ask another human being
to listen.
The young woman stands behind the mic
reading poetry.
Her children at home
singing show tunes
for the respite worker.
Her parents in the front row.
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8 comments:
I don't understand the sequencing here. I feel like there are leaps I'm supposed to make but I'm failing.
I think it's the fact/rule stanzas that confuse me. I don't understand the scene with the babysitter and the parents, either?
I think I understand that the young woman at the end is the girl from the beginning?
The scene in the first stanza is vivid, and feels like the characters are having fun. The stanzas after that feels ominous, and I'm not sure if that's just me-- did you mean them to feel that way? If so, I don't quite understand why. I sort of do, but not to the degree that that feeling is coming across. (if that makes sense)
It's supposed to be heartbreaking. The parents find out the girl played her taped stories for the sitter and forbid the girl to ever play stories for anyone again. The parents believe if anyone has to listen to her stories, they'll never want to come back to the home again. How do I make that clear? What else could the middle stanzas mean?
I think you need to somehow make clear the "fact" is their opinion, and that it has a consequence which they act upon or verbalize. The "rule" is also an abstraction, it isn't clear who is making the rule or if it is just an arbitrary one that exists in a vacuum or the narrator's mind.
If you can somehow tie in the parents making the rule or having the opinion, or that she's never asked to babysit again or whatever the consequence was?
Right now the cause and relation/causation/consequences are unclear.
I bought in to 'the rule' and the 'fact' was brilliant. That last stanza was powerful.
I was with you all the way. Or at least I think I was. The girl in the last stanza is the child that played her recorded stories for the babysitter who could not keep a secret and now that girl is grown still spilling family secrets at poetry readings only now it appears to be okay -or- is it? Does having her parents in the front row indicate things are all good now or are they mentioned because she is uncomfortable? I do not know and I am okay with this.
Her children are with the respite worker which indicates some issue has followed her... the mentioning of this and of course the fact that her parents wanted her to keep some things secret. But her children are not expected to be 'silent'.... they sing show tunes. Again a bit ambiguous and again I am okay with this.
The ambiguous nature of some of the situations make me feel that the girl is still sorting through what happened as a child and what is appropriate to share and what is not. Not sure if I have this correctly or if this was the intended message but felt it might be helpful for you to hear what I heard in this piece. In any case I enjoyed reading this.
Thanks for sharing what you heard, Jonina. It's always helpful. We're mostly on the same page.
The girl wasn't supposed to share her writing as child, but when she was grown she shared poems and the parents had grown okay with that, and she encouraged her own children sharing their voice with others.
There is no terrible family secret. The secret was the fact that the girl had asked the babysitter to hear what she wrote and recorded. The parents believed that babysitters (and friends) would never return if they had to listen to the girl. And the respite worker doesn't indicate a dysfunctional family dynamic, just the children's disability.
Thank you Angeline... nice work!
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