The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: CHAIR

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit Tabatha (whose posts alwaysalways inspire me!) at The Opposite of Indifference for Roundup. Is it really February?? 

For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann. Thank you, friends, for reading and responding! You're helping me keep going. :)

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?

In January I wrote about: apron, bar, basketball, bed, bicycle, birthday, boat, broom, button, cake, car.

Here are February's prompts: chair, chlorine, church, concert, cookbook, couch, dancing, desk, dessert, dining room table, diploma.

CHAIR

First: a poem from ARTSPEAK! 2015:

 This Old Chair

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- after “Sewing Chair” by Dorothy Johnson

Me, wait

for you?

That's not

all I do.

Turn me

upside down

and you'll

find proof:

I am also

Spider's

roof.

- Irene Latham

... and now today's writing:

I was a picky eater as a child. Maybe this wouldn't have been a big deal in some families, but in mine the rule was “clean your plate.” There were times when I couldn't – or wouldn't – clean my plate. (Word choice there is completely dependent upon whether you were asking me or my mom!) On those nights, while my siblings played board games or watched a family movie, I spent the evening hours sitting at the kitchen table staring at the green beans (or whatever) on my plate. On those nights the hard ladder-backed kitchen chair became a boat or cave or spaceship. I'd push the chair back from the table and bring my knees up to my chest – a habit I still have today. I imagined and dreamed my way through those awful hours. Eventually the chair would become a chair again, harder than ever, so I would quickly stuff those green beans into my cheeks and dash for the bathroom, where I would spit them into the toilet.

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For those of you out there who may be parenting picky eaters, I can tell you that this practice did NOT help me learn to love my vegetables. It DID make me super-compassionate when it came to raising my own picky eaters! The “clean your plate” rule was not one we chose to continue. And these days I'll eat pretty much anything – though I still don't lovelovelove green beans. :)

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Finally, a poem that appears in my out-of-print book of poems for adults THE COLOR OF LOST ROOMS, which includes a number of ekphrastic poems. Now you know exactly where this one comes from... and how poetry is often a blend of fact and imagination.

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Alligator Pears in a Basket

- after the painting by Georgia O’Keefe

Eat, his mother said. You must

clean your plate. He crossed

his arms and clamped his teeth.

Sat at the table for hours.

By bedtime his mother’s eyes

blazed. You can’t make me,

the boy said, and the pears

came alive, their jaws snapping,

their leathery skin slapping

against his tender cheek.

And then they all went to bed:

the pears, the plate, the mother

and finally, the boy. His eyes

half-closed, ever watchful.

- Irene Latham