Two poems at Bat Bean Beam

I have been enjoying Cilla McQueen’s “publication in many parts”, Serial, here at the New Zealand Poet Laureate website.  I decided to try my hand at a homage to that style in response to Giovanni’s two posts on Haiti and Avatar.

I should note, too, that for someone who makes at least part of her living teaching Film Studies, my relationship to the cinema is surprisingly ambivalent. The scale of the spectacle in a movie theatre presents a physical barrier for me. Since my mid-teens I have been affected by irregular bouts of nausea and vertigo watching films of all kinds on the big screen, which, now compounded by pregnancy, makes cinema-viewing at present more or less impossible. So Avatar remains a no-go zone for me, which is why, in part, I’ve tried to come at Giovanni’s discussion from a rather more obtuse angle.

In response to this post:

Lazarus Voodoo, buried under blocks, pushed upward: the stone gave way above his palms. He sprang backward into the light, out of the pit, into the place, into the arms of Mary and Martha and Yeshua.

He never told what it was like down there. After a while, this didn’t matter; there were enough stories of that kind anyway, the dark, the heat.

In response to this post:

Yeshua had family in Florida. The others didn’t especially want to go, but really, for what, for now, was there to stay? So they went, with the clothes they were wearing, Lazarus V. as ever doing his little turn as they got on the boat, looking back.

It was Yeshua’s friends, not Mary or Martha, who’d given L. his silly nickname. Now, there was no reason for it not to stick; he’d come up out of the ground! They called him “Voo” and took him to the movies. “Hey, Voo.” He imagined it was “vous“, some English-language misuse that included his sisters, who came too, came with Voo.

In the theatre he slept, hidden behind his glasses. Maybe his sisters did as well. The green came through his eyelids into his REM, into his dream, imaginary water.

In the foyer, Mary handed over her glasses and whispered, “I don’t remember a thing”. Martha took his hand. “I wonder if we’re going blind.” Yeshua and his friends were already in the carpark, beyond the bright lights of the interior, looking for their ride home.