The Poetry of Marg Garner

WOMAN ON FIRE

DO NOT CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT.
Let me burn.

Unlike Joan of Ark,
I set myself aflame.

Metaphoric or not,
it was my own act.

It took me 54 years
to catch on fire.

Leave me alone.
Let me burn.

© Marg Garner



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ON THE BRANCH IN KAMIAH
On the Nez Perce (Nimiipu) Reservation
in Kamiah (Zemyexp), Idaho
In Kamiah, Satch, in the bar every night,
slept sitting up, never tipped over.
How long will it take him to die
that man who insists on doing death
slowly drinking to it?

In Rose's bar, the earth stove is hot
burns clean, pops like slow corn, comfort warm.
Sometimes when I spoke the edges of my words
burned in that fire, and floated to the juke box.

At closing they'd prop Satch out.
Every night a big Indian woman came looking.
She was kind, I could tell by her words, soft
and the way she lifted him up by the arms.

I could see the petals of uncommon sense
that once wrapped him had fallen away,
and he was naked in spite of his clothes.

© Marg Garner



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CLUSTER PICKING, 1956

I don't remember why
they made us pick those beans
three cents a pound.
Maybe I was 13, now it seems
like a life somebody else lived.
People at the factory said
don't cluster pick
hold with the left
pick with the right
leave the baby beans.

But God, it was hot
and the rows went on
all-day long.
A bean-at-a-time took forever
while we drug those bags,
those burlap bags, up and down.

The only shade made by those
awful green vines where spiders
clung to leaves, to beans.

I don't know who told us we "had to"
Maybe for pocket money
Dad was always drunk.
We were a truck-load of kids in
the 5 a.m. dark.
I hated leaving the covers,
my refuge in that other life.

Well, there's nothing left
of the me that was.
Okay, maybe the part
that hates spiders
and green beans
and getting up at 5.
And the part
that would cluster pick
if I thought I
could get away with it.

© Marg Garner



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