Howl! Happening is pleased to present a poem by Penny Arcade as part of Petrarch in Love, an evening to celebrate Spring and honor the April 6, 1327 meeting of Italian poet Petrarch and his beloved muse Laura. Featuring Penny Arcade, Anthony Haden-Guest, Nemo Librizzi, and Ilka Scobie. With Video Projections by Luigi Cazzaniga.
Another Barbara
Walking in the kitchen,
the terrace doors
are locked
against the sun
against the gypsies
The bowls of dried fruit, the cranberries, the candied ginger,
the apricots and raw cashews
arose suddenly
a din in their bowls
I distracted, then focused
looked around
It seemed a greeting, trumpet to attention
Then I felt a slight girlish presence,
and I apologized wordlessly,
because while I had considered her
I had never really thought of her
A giddiness rose in the air between her and I
just momentary,
the crack between the other world and this
wordless though dense with information
It is definite even I,
a stranger
Late to the party by decades know
That you will never find Barbara again.
You come to my bed
Giddy, childlike and open in the morning
I am shrouded in aloneness from the night before
when you like the Prince in East of The Sun and West of The Moon,
who at night turned into a wolf or bear,
retreated to your room
wordless and heavy,
to be alone with yourself
I cannot send you away when you come to me
The woman in me must receive you
must comfort you
must give you what you silently require
eventually when you have had enough
the toe dip into the water of intimacy
You leave
You do not want to go further and I say nothing.
Sometimes you kiss my mouth hello or goodbye and I let you
Just as I see you kiss the mouths of everyone you know
I do not receive your kiss indifferently
Yet to turn you away would hurt you and I know that
You say “This is hard for me” and
“You don’t know how hard this is for me”
Because I am sensitive this takes a toll on me
I am open
permeable to you
I cannot close to you
That is the way it is.
When you say again
“I met her four times in the same day”
It bursts out of me
I say it laughing but I mean it deadly serious
“Yes, Yes,” I say, “I know!
Four times in the same day!”
what I don’t say is:
Between your children and your dead wife
there is no room for anyone else.
This is what the wraith said to me in silence
“Don’t give up on him”
And then
“I don’t like being used as an excuse”
I told you expecting to be scoffed at
instead all you said was:
“Barbara can be meddlesome”
What ever lies between you and I is a leap
I don’t know if I want to make it either
My role as the submissive female
Might be fun during sex
but there is no sex, there is only submission
Sometimes I rail against this role
What you call hostile is the storm you set off in me
across those rocky waters
I fail to communicate across the gulf
between us
You call me from the other room
after telling me that I am brutal, unkind
head down, hurting and mute
I am unable to express what is so complex
and includes among other things
a woman who died 20 years ago
who bore you two children.
You call and I come
grudgingly, but I come
bloated with tears that
don’t , can’t fall.
(mad with tears)
You anoint me with 15 essential oils
(or more)
I can only manage a weak:
‘So you annoint people you think treat you with hostility?”
It is my attempt to show you that you are wrong about me,
wrong about my motivation.
You kiss me
And I am hungry for that kiss
Yet you are holding back
or have no interest
or little interest
I can’t tell
And while it feels sad
I take what joy I find there
Later I say
“I liked kissing you “
And you reply
“It wasn’t much of a kiss.”
Take this poem to your therapist
It could save you a lot of money
Maybe you do not know
that there are different kinds of hostility,
different kinds of brutality
Maybe you are unaware of yours towards me.
I am sorry I make you want to be more open
or make you to want to change your life
Sorry I make you want to open closed doors in your heart.
The tears stand in my eyes
I know that I have created this painful relationship
that promises joy and fun and completion
but delivers only resentment
and drips and drabs of sweetness
I know what a psychiatrist would say:
“Why do you allow this?
These are his problems”
You say
“This is hard for me”
That is not love
Love is easy
It is easy to love.
—Penny Arcade 2011
