Excerpt from upcoming work by Agnes Walsh: Longevity and Guts from Going Around with Bachelors coming 2007 from Brick Books

The following is from Agnes Walsh's upcoming book of poems with Brick Books, Going Around with Bachelors, edited by Stan Dragland and slated for release in spring, 2007. It is reproduced here with the kind permission of Kitty Lewis (Brick Books) and the author.

The selection presented here was made with fond memories of Rattling Books recent visit to Brooklyn in mind.

The photograph is from the Provincial Archives of Newfoundland and Labrador (PANL).

Longevity and Guts
The Grandparents

Patricia and Thomas

The trader anchored in the harbour and the packmen came out on deck. They spread their wares: Gerald S. Doyle products, jewellery, boots, and clothes. Men rowed out standing up. Since it was a short row, to sit down would look too leisurely. Women never went but only hoped the men got right what they wanted. Tom wasn’t sent but he went. He picked out a ring, a thin gold band, paid in coin and rowed back to the creek half-grinning. Patsy was turning fish in the hot August sun. Her stomach was swelled only slightly, maybe she could get away with it. Anyway, there was Tom rowing towards her looking cocksure and full of purpose. Winter wouldn’t be so hard after all.

The Aunts

Margaret

When Aunt Peg came back home she wanted to be called Margaret. I said ah, but I love the sound of Aunt Peg. She pulled back, set her shoulders just so and exhaled sharp and quick through her nostrils. I never said Peg again. She threw a glass of beer onto my fifth cousin Anthony’s chest, telling him she would not let the Americans be talked about like that. I hear she squared her shoulders, pushed back from the table, went over to my mother’s house and changed her airline ticket to get the hell out of Newfoundland and home to Brooklyn. It irritates my mother to no end that Margaret is so goddammed proud. She won’t return. Aunt Lil says she never will. They talk about her in the parlour, I listen from the kitchen. There’s more to it than Anthony and the Yanks. That priest on Jude Island who tried to haul her into his bed. She went home, didn’t say a word to anyone. He got up at the pulpit the next morning, scared to let another minute pass, and denounced her as a liar who should be tarred and feathered. She hadn’t told a soul, though by then it was too late. No one believed her. Her own mother turned away. Aunt Margaret came back when Grandmother was in the ground. Proud and fierce, she walked through our town butting invisible enemies. I became her silent bodyguard. I wanted her honored here... but too late, too late, it was far too late. Now she’ll never come back. She’ll be buried in Brooklyn, New York.

Sisley

The family says, “Well sure everyone knows Sis is an alcoholic. She can’t get herself to bed without staggering, would get lost if she had to follow a straight line.” Sisley came home once but I never saw her. “Mom, how come I never met Aunt Sis?” “Your Aunt Sis? I’ll tell you why. Because she landed into town, went to Jimmy’s, drank gin day and night and then flew off back to New York again. Why she spent almost a thousand dollars to come home and drink the same brand of gin she could get there is beyond me.” I wondered if Aunt Sis ever went to the corner store for mix, ever looked at the Southside Hills from Jim’s kitchen window. Jimmy says she still had her black and orange hair, down to her waist, but that she always wrapped it up before coming out of the bedroom where she slept with her ninety-year-old mother. Wish I could have seen her, cigarette between her lips, the curling smoke making her eye pinch up as she folded out the cards in solitaire, and sloshed the plastic stirrer into gin and ice.

Lillian

Everyone wanted to get away. There was a whole slew of us lined up, signing our name on visa applications. Above all else, get out. Why turn over one more maggoty fish, iron one more shirt, scrub one more floor for two dollars a month? Give me a warm Jewish restaurant on Eighth Avenue where you get respect and tips. Aunt Lil worked hard, married Pete Wasinski. I remember him in the grass, under the dogberry tree, coins falling from his pockets like bread crumbs, laughing as the wind stood his hair straight. Mom said that when he died the shoes blew off his feet from his massive heart attack. Well, he did have such a big heart, making sure we kids found the silver in the grass. Aunt Lil married again, a man from home. Came back to Newfoundland saying she could never stay in the States anymore: “All the small town feel is gone from Manhattan.” Lillian, oldest daughter, never had children or a pet, but has a full-length sealskin coat. “The only thing your grandmother gave us,” she told me, “was longevity and guts. That was all she gave us.”

Ellen

In the snapshot she has her sweater pinned at the neck, but her arms aren’t in the sleeves. This strikes me as unlike her so I look for more. It is some sort of courtyard where she stands, drooping veronicas lined against a black fence. Her smile is a question of delight, like when someone says, “You are beautiful,” and you say, “Pardon?” because you want to hear it again. The wind is blowing in the photo, her skirt tail is kicking up behind her. At her feet a small dog barks silently and she leans into a man who looks like Trotsky (he stayed at the Cochrane Hotel on his way to Mexico, and she worked next door). I asked her about this once and she gave me that smile again and brushed her fingers across her lips as if the room was bugged. “Facts,” she said. “Oh my, why do you always need the facts, you with all these photographs?”

*************************************************

Agnes Walsh is currently the first Poet Laureate for the City of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. She recently gave readings in Iceland with Anita Best and forged the beginnings of an Icelandic presence for Rattling Books which you can read about elsewhere in this Blog.

Agnes Walsh's title In the Old Country of My Heart was recorded with Rattling Books and is available as an audio CD or MP3 Digital Download online from rattlingbooks.com.