Mercedes Webb-Pullman

Poetry

 

 

After Goldilocks

 

Momma Bear thinks Goldilocks should be

locked up. She’s angry. Baby Bear misses

his friend. He liked having someone smaller

in the house. He’s sad. Poppa agrees with Momma

for the sake of peace. Secretly he doesn’t believe it’s Goldi’s fault.

 

What kind of parents wonders Momma let

a child that age go walking in the woods,

alone? She’s disgusted. Baby Bear doesn’t

like being alone much, doesn’t understand

people afraid of the woods. He’s confused.

Poppa hums. He’s not investing in this situation.

 

Goldi’s mother, frantic when Goldi didn’t

come home, called the police. They found her

deep in the forest, in bed with a young bear.

Two adults were asleep in the same room.

Arrested, charged with unlawful imprisonment,

the Bears engaged the Hells Angel’s lawyer.

He was sharp, and cheap.

 

She broke and entered, why wasn’t she charged?

Momma won ‘t let it go. Who’s going to pay for

the broken chair? When will Baby get his bed-clothes

back from forensics? The rape charge was dropped

after Goldi underwent physical examination by

a Court-appointed doctor. I don’t mind sleeping

on the rug beside my bed. Baby Bear tries peace.

 

Poppa Bear, who’s usually just right, wants them

to think about it from a sociological point of view.

Remember, we’re three hairy homosexual males

who ride motorbikes. They don’t understand us,

they’ve never seen gay men make a family before.

Just be glad we got off lightly. Home detention -

no problem in winter, we’ll hibernate at home.

And maybe it’s time to look around for a little

baby sister bear for you, son. Momma is a great

little mother, for a man.

 

 

Anne Sexton, listening to the devil

 

The devil stays silent,

harsh as a mountain cliff-face.

Rigby, uglier than a husband,

fiddles with machines in the workshop,

mumbling. I exhale a peppermint breath

benediction. He works in stained overalls,

curses the devil through his dry lips,

cracked by chemical vapours and sun.

He barks ‘Why?’ like an angry parent

already discounting any reply.

He’s formal and hostile.

The devil lies right under our feet.

 

Everyone thinks they’d recognise

his appearance, even without a body.

He didn’t have a body when I was a teen.

Then, he was tiny, hiding in dark cracks

in the floorboards, ready to leap, a spider’s hunger.

As a child, I thought unborn babies

hid there with him, among lost hairpins.

Then, my pillow was as soft as a breast,

and inside, winter fires purred. Rigby,

when he gets here, ask him ...

Dammit Rigby,

ask him why life breaks me down.

 

 

Annie

 

Oakley shot a squirrel

in the house, through the orchard,

to get a hickory nut.

 

A rifle fired writing

side to side.

 

The encyclopedia failed,

her audience truly split

edge-on, tossed in the air, cigarettes

from lips, a card riddled

before it touched the ground.

 

Perhaps her ability to repeatedly

touch, while using feet.

 

R. A. Koestler-Grack watched 

Chief Sitting Bull. Oakley

skipped her rifle,

aimed at a candle,

snuffed out the whizzing bullet.

 

Chief Sitting Bull watched corks off bottles,

a cigar held in his teeth.

 

 

 

Antigone

 

Death upon death upon death

stretch out behind me. I come

from a blood-thirsty family,

punished by Gods through 
generations.

My father Oedipus was also my brother. 
He’d killed his father the King, claimed

his mother the Queen in marriage. He

didn’t know.

 

When my mother learned she’d married

her own son, her husband’s murderer

had fathered her children, Jocasta

killed herself. 

She’d tried to circumvent the prophesy 
by disposing of her first-born son. He lived.
came back. Can the Gods ever be tricked,

or appeased?

Blinded by anguish, Oedipus left his kingdom
to his two son/brothers, to share year-about.
My brothers killed each other in battle.

My uncle Creon claimed Thebes, called

my brother, Polydices, a turncoat, refused
to allow his body burial rites. When I tried
he arrested and imprisoned me.

Did I actually bury him? Or, did I throw
his ashes to the wind? Did this happen while
Oedipus still reigned? I hanged myself.

I was to marry my uncle’s son Haemon. 
He saw my body, joined me in death.
When she learned, his mother, my aunt

Eurydice, killed herself.

Or, did Dionysus intervene, and Haemon
and I were married?

Or, did Haemon rescue me from his father,
hide me in a shepherd’s hut to give birth

to our son Maeon?

Was Maeon recognized by a dragon’s mark?

Did Heracles plead with Creon to spare our lives,
in vain? 

Did Haemon then kill us all, so no one

got out of this 
alive?

 

Do the Gods ever wonder why?

 

 

some Bessie blues

(for Jan)

 

Beale Street blue Mama blue

standin' in the rain blue

aggravatin' Papa blue

me and my gin blue

 

eavesdropper blue

thinking blue

there’ll be a hot time blue

Alexander’s rag time blue

 

see if I'll care blue

outside of that blue

ain’t nobody’s business blue

dirty no-gooder blue

 

keep it to yourself blue

my sweetie went away blue

oh Daddy blue

I've got what it takes blue

 

do your duty blue

you've got to give me some blue

I'm wild about that thing blue

baby won't you please come blue

 

put it right here blue

baby doll blue

mean old bedbug blue

squeeze me blue

 

St. Louis gal blue

Chicago bound blue

worn out Papa blue

yellow dog blue

 

young woman blue

bleeding hearted blue

whoa Tillie take your time blue

cake walking babies blue

 

blue spirit blue

at the Christmas ball blue

nobody knows you when you’re blue

rocking chair blue reckless blue

 

back water blue bo’weavil blue

muddy water blue safety blue

Gulf Coast blue hard time blue

careless love blue

 

don't cry baby blue

gimme a pigfoot blue

send me to the 'lectric chair blue

yodeling blue

 

my man blue poor man blue

preachin’ the blues blue

lost your head blue

Sam Jones blue

 

empty bed blue

Mama's got the blues blue

graveyard dream blue

Devil's gonna get you blue

 

a good man is hard to find blue

I ain't got nobody blue

down hearted blue

cemetery blue

 

 

 

Notes on the poems:

 

After Goldilocks  

 

A variation of a 19th-century fairy tale. The story was first recorded in narrative form by British writer and poet Robert Southey, and first published anonymously as "The Story of the Three Bears" in 1837 in a volume of his writings called The Doctor. It has been interpreted and adapted ever since.

 

Anne Sexton, listening to the devil

 

Anne Sexton, American poet, a pioneer of ‘confessional’ poetry, Pulitzer Prize winner in 1967 for her book Live or Die.  My poem is after ‘For Eleanor Boylan, talking to God’ by Anne Sexton.

 

Annie  

 

Annie Oakley, American sharpshooter and exhibition shooter who toured America, and the world, with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. She performed before royalty and heads of state. My poem is a found poem, from the text of the wikipedia page Annie Oakley.

 

Antigone

 

In Greek mythology the daughter/sister of Oedipus and his wife. Versions of her story form part of works by Sophocles, Euripides, and Hyginis, and she is depicted in ancient paintings and on vases.

 

Some Bessie blues 

 

Bessie Smith, black American blues singer known as The Empress of the Blues in 1920/30’s. The most famous female blues singer of her time, she influenced other musicians including Janis Joplin, who bought and installed a headstone on Bessie’s grave. (Jan Preston is my sister-in-law, another blues and jazz singer/musician.)

 

It is a list poem, referencing the titles of all the songs Bessie recorded during her career.

 

 

 

Mercedes Webb-Pullman graduated from the International Institute of Modern Letters, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand with her MA in Creative Writing. She is the author of Tasseography (2014) and Track Tales (Truth Serum Press, 2017). Her poems, and the odd short story, have appeared online (Bone Orchard Poetry, Caesura, Connotations, Danse Macabre, The Electronic Bridge, 4th Floor, Main Street Rag, Otoliths, Reconfigurations, Scum, Swamp, Pure Slush, Turbine, among others) and in print (Mana magazine, Poets to the People; Poetry from Lembas Cafe 2009, The 2010 Readstrange Collection, PoetryNZ Yearbook, many anthologies from Kind of a Hurricane Press, and the Danse Macabre anthologies Amour Sombre and Hauptfriedhof (Hammer & Anvil Books, 2017). She has also won the Wellington Cafe Poetry contest in 2010, and wrote a foreword for their collection of 2012 contest entrants, which included another of her poems. Since then she has been awarded 3rd prize in United Poets Laureate International Poetry Contest 2015, and is particularly proud of having a haiku (the only one from New Zealand) in 100 Haiku for Peace, an international publication in five languages. Her lucky number is 8. Blue. She lives in Paraparaumu Beach, New Zealand.

 

Her new poetry collection, The Jean Genie (Hammer & Anvil Books, 2018), is now available exclusively on Amazon.com {US GB FR DE IT SP JP}.