.

Americans in Florence

Ooo David! Whoa, you’re well-hung!
But why a foreskin, underslung?
Your left hand, do you hold a sling
or dead Goliath’s severed thing?
Stop giggling, girls, show some respect.
You know we all must genuflect
before Great Art. Meh, this is slop.
C’mon, let’s go, we’re here to shop!

.

.

An Author’s Lament

Whenever I awoke at some night hour,
I’d sit up, try to jot down all my dreams.
Images quickly fled and lost their power.
I ended up with garbled nonsense themes.

Nothing was useful in those cryptic scribbles.
I had invented far-fetched rambling plots.
My characters held forth in quirky quibbles,
maundering like befuddled argonauts.

While rare gems sometimes surface as we doze,
I’ve never found the fabled tanzanite,
that polished, would enhance my mundane prose,
give luster to my modest writer’s light.

Alas, to pen my stories is a grind,
with no help from Apollo’s shining mind.

.

.

Extinction

For eons, fuchsia foxes roamed Thuringia.
Medieval frescoes picture them: the same
as modern foxes, but with fur a color
we might deplore, a gaudy “shocking pink.”
Eight centuries ago they disappeared.
The Foxelungenlied, in Old High German,
chronicles how they vanished so abruptly.

Male foxes hunted in the lowland fens,
as had their vulpine Hermunduri forebears,
killing for food, and torturing for sport.
Such cruelty horrified their vixen mates,
who fled upland into the mountain forests.

This vixen sisterhood took rigid vows:
virginity, obedience and prayer;
their diet strictly vegetarian.
They nibbled fern fronds, sipped clear brooklet water,
sleeping in caverns lined with mauvy moss.
Midsummer Eve, wood faeries danced with them.

They built an athenaeum pledged to learning;
soon mastered alchemy, wrote chansons d’or,
translated ancient Greek philosophers,
conducted academic disputations.
In their scriptorium they copied texts,
in Gothic script, adorned with gold-leaf borders.
Their prioress Frieda won a healer’s fame.
Her distillate of foxglove, feverfew
and fenugreek assuaged all lethal fevers.

Sly Asmodeus meddled in their lives.
Often, a tod would sniff out, stalk a vixen,
then mount her, tie her in a brutal lock.
These ravished celibates quaffed Frieda’s potion
of foxbane-feverwort, aborting any
embryo foxlings planted in their wombs.
Bright bloody viscid fetal clots oozed out,
begrimed their spotless beds with carmine stains,
leaving behind a faint cadaver odor.
Soon all their aerie stank of rancid rot.

In consequence, within one generation,
they all died out. Heartbreaking truth, this legend.

A single vixen manuscript survives,
stored in a musty klosterbibliothek.
Midnight Midsummer’s Eve, white moonbeams slant
through gothic oriel windows; bathe in light
the empty reading room enlaced with cobwebs.

.

.

Mary Jane Myers resides in Springfield, Illinois. She is a retired JD/CPA tax specialist. Her debut short story collection Curious Affairs was published by Paul Dry Books in 2018.

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19 Responses

  1. Julian D. Woodruff

    Three impressive poems, Ms. Myers. I love your sly facetiousness in the Florentine scene and sympathze with you in reading the lament. Narration, especially in lively prose, is very tough for me too.
    Your third I’ll be rereading at least twice. It is a vivid fable, but I don’t yet fully catch its drift. I relate it to a long, incomplete poem of my own exploring the Medea myth. Maybe “Extinction” will get me to take the project up again.

    Reply
    • Mary Jane Myers

      Julian
      Thank you for your favorable comments. I encourage you to take up again your Medea myth poem. These ur-stories are endlessly fascinating and lend themselves to poetic “glosses” in which a poet explores their complexities and relevance to our own times.

      Most sincerely
      Mary Jane

      Reply
  2. James A. Tweedie

    Mary Jane,

    Wicked wit, inspired by an earthy-minded muse that I fear I would fall in love with and embrace as my own, if such were possible.

    Florence through a materially distracted woman’s eyes is in-sight-ful in more ways than one, while jotting down fading dream memories is something I have never done save for one from my childhood that I hope to live out in an attempt to create a self-made deja vu experience this coming March.

    As for the pseudo-mini epic myth, blank verse is the most exquisite vehicle to adopt, which you have done with the wickedest wit of the three.

    Thanks for giving me a reason to have gotten up this morning.

    Reply
    • Mary Jane Myers

      James

      Thank you so much for your generous praise. I’m one of those quiet women in the back of the room who observes the passing parade with a bemused, though I hope not cynical-snarky, smile. Re: the Florence poem. I “overheard” the first line spoken by an American woman much more “neurotypical” than myself. She had returned from her first European trip. I was charmed by her enthusiasm for the shiny objects (leather and gold) she showed me.

      Re: blank verse. This last autumn, I practiced-practiced-practiced, and I think I finally have more or less internalized the “trick” to laying down that consistent iambic track. My new-best-companion is Timothy Steele and his wonderful book All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing.

      May every morning be kind to you. A cup of strong coffee does the trick for me!

      Most sincerely,
      Mary Jane

      Reply
  3. Joseph S. Salemi

    The first poem could be about any kind of shop-till-you-drop tourists in a foreign land, and has an epigrammatic zing to it. “An Author’s Lament” echoes a common complaint of writers who must consciously generate their own material rather than depend on dreams. I once wrote “Pay attention to your dreams. They are the lode-vein of metaphor.” But sometimes all of us have to just crank out our stuff without help from the unconscious.

    As for the third poem, I am blown away by it. It’s a tour de force of fictive mimesis! The diction alone is striking in its elegance, sophistication, and unexpectedness (fuchsia, Hermunduri, brooklet, mauvy, chansons d’or, carmine, aerie, viscid, oriel, cadaver, klosterbibliothek — and what about the wild “Foxelungenlied” and the delightful alliterative bouquet of “foxglove, feverfew, and fenugreek”?) The Plain Language Police in the poetry workshops would send in a SWAT team to suppress such a welter of verbal beauty.

    Julian calls this poem a “fable,” and James calls it a “pseudo-mini epic myth,” and both seem valid descriptions. But I think it is an allegory of modern sexual relations. The foxes are the men, the vixens are the women (the use of animals to represent human beings is typical of a fable), and they have been separated by disagreement. The males kill and torture, and the horrified females have departed to start their own virginal and vegetarian order devoted to erudition, artwork, medicine, and abortion.

    What’s the disagreement? Well, killing and torture and rape would seem to be symbolic of the tedious feminist complaint about “toxic masculinity,” while the decampment of the women into sexlessness, art work, and vegetarianism seems to be symbolic of a kind of women’s liberation lifestyle — self-absorbed and free from all men and offspring. The poem’s title (“Extinction”) seems to confirm this interpretation, since extinction is the only possible result for the fox species.

    This all makes the allegory highly contemporary in its references, and throwing it into the form of an animal fable set in a medieval time frame is also typical of a fable’s tendency to disguise potentially offensive lessons. The camouflage of exotic language, foreign phrases, and the distance of centuries might help deflect the anger of some readers. This disguise is just a fig leaf, though — I’m sure radical feminist readers will see immediately what is being argued.

    This is one helluva good poem. When we stop worrying about modernist rules about language, when we deliberately use older genres such as fable and allegory, and when we don’t give a swiving hump about what anyone says about our work, we have reached a major plateau.

    Reply
    • Mary Jane Myers

      Joseph
      I am gratified by your praise. I have your book “Steel Masks” and study your lines to acquire expertise in meter and rhyme. I feel as if you’ve just issued me a “poet(ess) union card”!

      Re: allegory. This poem had its beginning as a free-verse exercise for the Writers Studio on-line program in spring, 2011. Their pedagogical method is to “copy the masters.” However, the “masters” are all contemporary writers of “free-verse ” and the approved ideology is “progressive.” I copied James Tate’s whimsical free-verse poem “The Blue Booby.” I thought an imaginary bright pink fox would make an interesting visual. Almost as an afterthought, I threw in a barely-discernible anti- abortion theme. I didn’t want to irritate the tutor too much, since I was unsure of my own talent, and like a little child, craved approval. My original notes are:
      This exercise is based on the poem “The Blue Booby” by James Tate.
      The characters are non-human, with human characteristics. Their cus
      toms reveal truths about humans. The style is “mock nonfiction”~i.e.,
      the voice over track~ to tell the story with a great deal of distance. The
      customs are discussed with affection, humor and sympathy. The tone is
      matter-of-fact; the mood is sad. Note: though Tate uses the present
      tense, this is told in large part in the past tense.

      You are correct, Joseph about the Plain Language Police. In many writing classes (both fiction and poetry) I get hostile pushback because of my “belletristic” style. This style is natural to me: it’s the way I think, it’s the way I talk, it’s the style of the books I love, it’s the style of the Roman Catholic Latin Mass that I attend regularly!

      I revisited this poem again in years 2018-2019. My style continued to be free-verse. I ramped up the anti-abortion content. Finally, a few months ago I rewrote the poem in blank verse. I have been practicing “strict” iamb-writing intensely in the last six months, and have edited many of my old free-verse efforts.

      Yes, this poem is an allegory, meant primarily to criticize abortion. This criticism naturally introduces a commentary on contemporary male-female sexual relations. In 2011, I was pushing back (gently!) against the “political correctness ” of my tutor and my fellow students. About 10 years ago, this p-c atmosphere metamorphosed into the virulent “woke” ideology and the alarming imposition of DEI. In re-writing this poem, I added a much more pointed anti-feminist tone.

      Thank you again for your encouragement.

      Most sincerely
      Mary Jane

      Reply
      • Joseph S. Salemi

        You have made me extremely happy, Mary Jane.

        I agree with you completely about the Latin Mass. Its language is profoundly beautiful, and is cognate with the high belletristic style that both of us seem to prefer.

        Please contact Evan Mantyk, and give him permission to send me your postal mailing address. I will send you a copy of another of my books.

  4. Margaret Coats

    “Americans in Florence” is true to life even on study tours that comprise most of my tour experience. We are sex-saturated talkers, especially when European tour guides make a point of prompting. They do so, then smile knowingly at the expected effusion, and afterward bemoan even more frantic American urges to shop in the most unlikely places where any shop can be found. Good observations, Mary Jane.

    Your lament at the workaday quality of completed writing is apropos. I was intrigued by the choice of fabled “tanzanite” as a potentially helpful token. Though the mineral has been around much longer, that name only became a word after the nation Tanzania was formed by joining Tanganyika to Zanzibar in the 20th century. There are so many other “-ite” stones that your use of “tanzanite” supplies a particularly modern ring to the poem.

    Your “Extinction” fable lives in the details–both fantasy and fact. The motif of females abandoning kindred males (for a wide variety of reasons) is widespread, but separation is usually temporary. The vixen sisterhood seems precisely modeled on lives of famed German female saints like Mechtild, Hildegard, and Gertrude. Horrors of rape and abortion in convents sound like typical anti-monastic calumny, which may occasionally have arisen from scandal in an unfaithful nun. But Frieda and her favoring the letter “f” in fomenting potions is funny. Turning it all into an extinction fantasy seems to mock present over-concern about conservation of species such as those fuchsia foxes. The addition of the many gothic touches is (shall I say “ghoulishly”) entertaining.

    Reply
    • Mary Jane Myers

      Dear Margaret

      Thank you for your close reading of my work and your perceptive comments.

      Re: Florence. The first line of this poem is a “quote” from a southern California “type.” I encountered these women often when I lived in Los Angeles (not so much in the Midwest). I agree with you: our talk is sex-saturated, and especially when secular women are socializing with secular women—when no men are around–how and when did that happen? Women also curse freely nowadays. I’m always relieved when I talk with my church woman friends—they talk like “ladies.” A good topic for a poem!

      Re: “tanzanite”—I picked this mineral simply because it is considered perhaps the rarest of the rare gems—found only in one tiny area in southern Africa. I am intrigued by your erudite comment—often I don’t understand the far-ranging nuances of my word choices!

      Re: Fuchsia Foxes. I’m now concerned that my picture of the vixen sisterhood might be somehow critical of those wonderful medieval convents and their genius women saints. I’ll have a think about how to revise the poem to remove this inference.

      Most sincerely
      Mary Jane

      Reply
      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Dear Mary Jane —

        You should never revise a good poem for ideological reasons. I think you should leave it EXACTLY as it is.

  5. Paul A. Freeman

    Americans in Florence. Last summer I was leading tour groups of various nationalities around London, most of which were more interested in shopping and going to McDonalds. I do recall an American guide at Whitehall pointing to Downing Street and telling her charges that was where the British president lived, and another American shouting at other tourists to get out the way so she could get the perfect, unimpeded shot of her beau next to a Horse Guard.

    The choice of the Statue of David is excellent and very funny. Below is a take I made (a limerick) on the same statue, which you may enjoy, though one ‘member’ got a little uppity over my take of such a venerable piece of art.

    “The Statue of David’s a failure,”
    say some for its lack of regalia.
    But clothing aside,
    most critics deride
    its modestly-sized genitalia.

    An Author’s Lament. What writer, of poetry or prose, can’t relate to this poem. Even if I have a brainwave during waking hours, I must note it down immediately before the pearl of wisdom dissipates.

    Is Extinction one of those fevered dreams from ‘An Author’s Lament’? It’s quite an achievement and I imagine quite a difficult piece to write, both technically and mentally

    Thanks for the reads, MJ.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Paul, that is a damned good limerick! If anyone got uppity over the thing, it certainly wasn’t me!

      Here’s my contribution to the fun:

      Mike Angelo’s David, we’re told
      Has a mystery that I’ll unfold —
      Its masculine member
      Was carved in December,
      And the temperature then was quite cold.

      Reply
    • Mary Jane Myers

      Dear Paul

      Thank you for your generous comments.

      Love, love, love your limerick. My irreverent brother (not a poet!) chuckled at my ditty—but he pointed out to me that while David’s testicles are large (necessarily, to confront Goliath!) , his “member” is not. I’m assuming that Michelangelo was taking into account the angle at which the statue was meant to be seen.

      I’m intrigued by your comment that Extinction might be a “fever dream.” It
      definitely is a word-romp, and I possibly lost any rational control of the words!

      Most sincerely,
      Mary Jane

      Reply
  6. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Mary Jane, I am charmed by each and every line of these cleverly crafted, entertaining, inspirational linguistic treats. Thank you very much indeed!

    Reply
  7. David Whippman

    Thanks for these clever poems. “Americans in Florence” is wonderfully irreverent. Maybe the mystery of David’s foreskin could come to rival that of the Mona Lisa’s smile!

    Reply

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