WEDNESDAYS WITH DENISE: January 17, 2024

Today’s offering is by Cassandra Atherton, an Australian prose poet and scholar. Her poem below is from the first issue of The Mackinaw which “celebrate(s) prose poetry, in the present as well as its history and its future, and provide(s) a space to publish, read, and discuss this wonderful genre.” “Plum(b)” is full of wordplay and literary references.  Smart and fun, this poet sees not a red wheelbarrow, but a fancy red fridge. Always ahead of her time, it will already be tomorrow (for us in the US) by the time Cassandra reads this in Australia.

Plum(b)
 
William Carlos Williams was a genius. And he has my lover’s initials. Or rather my lover has his initials. I often eat the plums that were in the fridge. But I don’t expect to be forgiven. Not everything depends upon that. Or the wheelbarrow of promises that still lies at the bottom of his heart. That’s just a vain hope. My lover likes plums. The ones with the tough skins and the scarlet flesh. Not the yellow. We like the same food. Except for chops. I won’t eat lambs to the slaughter. Once I was called a ‘goo-goo-eyed’ vegetarian. Which basically means I won’t eat anything cute. With big imploring eyes. Because it would be almost like me eating myself. Baby cows are cute. Pigs are cute. And lambs are definitely cute. Even mutton dressed as lamb. So they are all out.  But I eat chicken and fish and sometimes beef. If it isn’t veal.  He lived on a farm once.  So he hates sheep. He tells me that sheep are the stupidest animals ever. They deserve to be eaten.  He even tells me the story about how sheep follow each other in straight lines and that the earth becomes shiny and solid beneath their feet. And he and his brothers would ride along their little tracks. On their bikes. Red bikes. Like that wheelbarrow in his faulty heart. One day he might even grow me some plums so that I can pick them and put them in our fridge. I want a red Smeg 473L fridge. I want my whole kitchen to be red. He draws the line at a red fridge. He has never heard of Smeg. Smeagol. Smaug, the dragon. He doesn't believe in the nuance of sound. He doesn’t understand the importance of a big, red, expensive fridge. He thinks they are just for keeping things cold. Like plums.  -- Denise Duhamel

 

Cassandra Atherton

 

You can read more from The Mackinaw here:

https://www.themackinaw.net 

Comments

[David Lehman]

Thank you, Denise, for this charming poem with its wonderful opening and nod to WCW's ice-box of plums. Plums really are plummy, and there are so many varieties of them. If you cross breed them with white peaches, you get amazing results, and the basis of the greater Bellinis of all time. Sangria, too. That is why I majored in plums when I was a student at the college of comparative fruits. Great line: "Always ahead of her time, it will already be tomorrow (for us in the US) by the time Cassandra reads this in Australia."

[Nin Andrews]

Love this poem and all her poems in the Mackinaw Review. I'm a huge Cassandra fan.

[Cindy Hochman]

Ah, Cassandra, my favorite Australian poet/scholar in the whole wide world and the mistress of the prose poem. This poem makes me want to paint my kitchen red and eat all the plums in the fridge. Thanks, Denise, for showcasing the vast talents of my Australian "sister." This poem is one of my favorites of yours, Cassandra.

(See you later at Lit Balm.)

[Peter Johnson]

Thanks for posting this, Denise. It's about time someone celebrated Cassandra's prose poetry and all her work on behalf of the genre, not to mention her championing of ekphrastic poetry and even topics as varied as the intricacies of Killing Eve and her work on the Japanese Hibakusha poets and their reaction to Hiroshima and desire for nuclear disarmament. Cassandra possesses the old-school polymathic of such poets as Charles Simic and, quite frankly, the brains behind this site, David Lehman.

[Mary Louise]

Read Shelley and then talk to me.
And she.