Writing Spaces

image:  Evangelist with Lion (probably Mark), Geoffroy Tory, Book of Hours, Rowenwald Ms. Library of Congress

Chacun à son goût

Chacun à son goût,

my father always liked to say,

having been a French major

in Missoula, Montana

and man of decided tastes.

Those ran to

crumpets with milkshakes

up in British Columbia

since he detested tea,

Tanqueray martinis

on the riverbank at Pecos

near the Indian ruins

in a thunderstorm,

Manhattan deli style

pastrami sandwiches

with horseradish mustard

and kosher dill pickles

across from the Santa Fe library

most Saturdays

after mowing the lawn

and before the Met broadcast,

green chili and pork

wrapped in the Norwegian lefse

my mother made, instead of

white “library paste” tortillas,

huckleberry pie in Yellowstone

after helping to pick a bowl of

lively purple berries in the woods

(big grin of ecstasy across his face),

chocolate quite anywhere,

his good cheese sandwiches,

smoked oysters, pickled pigs’ feet,

espresso he brewed for himself,

and those godgiven eggs he got

in the bar in upcountry Kamuela

with his fellow Marines that Christmas

after the November landing on Tarawa.

—Christie

Writing Spaces

image:  Writing Girl, Konrad Westermayr, 1913

Aqueduct

The leaves are beginning to turn there

at the end of September, and the last light

hangs a little yellowed too over the valley

before starting to pale into dusk.

There are watchers in the windows,

looking out across the aqueduct

to the far bank, the deeply wooded slope. 

But what are they watching? 

What is it they can see that I cannot?

When the bus drops us off

I feel how far I am from home, how far

from understanding where I’ve come. 

And yet I feel a strange sense of belonging,

finally, of being at the heart of things,

as if I might now simply walk across

the ancient long-dry water channel

of this aqueduct into my life.

—Christie

Writing Spaces

Mills College was always a good place to write, and it was there I learned letterpress printing, and spent many spring nights setting and printing poetry for the literary magazine, The Walrus (while listening to frogs outside the window, and the counting off of quarter-hours by the Julia Morgan campanile).






image:  College Book Art Association 

More Publication News

The first two of these haiku inspired by my time at Mills College were published in the Winter edition of the Mills Quarterly.

Eucalyptus Press—

setting type on late spring nights,

minding “p”s and “q”s.

time passing calmly

sitting at its feet, steady

old campanile

Orchard library—

grilling sausages late nights

on a smoky fire

January term—

reading Shakespeare comedies

on a Meadow porch

rainy winter night,

cleaning crab from Chinatown

in a dorm room sink

an early French class—

crossing chill Lucie Stern bridge

ahead of the sun

—Christie