Larina Warnock
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“The world was strep throat raw,” Larina Warnock writes in “Young Love for all the Wrong Reasons.” And it's a stunner of a line: deliberate, gritty, red and raging as the image it invokes. But the poem itself unfolds sweetly, kindly, and so very sadly. And this is what I like about Larina's work, how she's able to couple such dissonance. She does it also (and perhaps more guttingly even) in the poem "Where the Truth Hides": At nine or ten, especially when absence / permeates every hello, you aren't quite old enough / to know that secrets half a mile wide twist / around and behind the eyes of everyone / who loves you... A truth like that, hide though it may try to, will out itself whether you are nine or ten or thirty-nine or forty. The Nepotist gets it. The Nepotist knows you will too.
The poet's own misgivings about her final poem aside (see below), it's The Nepotist's greatest pleasure to publish the whimsical work of his friends. In fact, in the original call for submissions he specifically requested poems that the poets loved but could find no other home for. The Nepotist only hoped he would receive such a fun and gallivanting romp through Storyland such as this one. Nota bene: I don't think the poem is ultimately as light as it appears to, on first read, be. There's a darkness surging underneath the dis-tressing, and I'm not just speaking of 'Punzel's red-brown roots.
Thanks, Larina.
***
Where the Truth Hides
I spent that week outside of Wenatchee
with Grandma and Grandpa and you.
Was I nine or ten? The photograph shows
that was when I still wore my hair in braids.
Short bangs. No ribbons. You were picking
apples that year—God knows why—and your
folks brought me along on vacation so you'd have
visitation time. Not much could surprise me
by that point in my life: Not the current of the Columbia.
Not the ridges around Rock Island Dam. But the man
I referred to as "my real dad" always rose above
expectation in those days, showed me new ways
to see and to be. There wasn't a dream
you didn't reach out to seize and I
believed you were more than a man back then.
At nine or ten, especially when absence
permeates every hello, you aren't quite old enough
to know that secrets half a mile wide twist
around and behind the eyes of everyone
who loves you, that heroes are held to the earth
by lies hard as roots in basalt.
from Guitar Without Strings, scheduled for publication by The Lives You Touch Publications (http://www.thelivesyoutouch.com) in Fall 2010.
***
Young Love for All the Wrong Reasons
The world was strep throat raw
and east-beating concrete reflected
Chloraseptic heat. At that age, poverty waits
like an infection in the pus-filled pockets
of the city, and one thinks they could scratch
their way through if the skin were just inside-out.
Untreated, what begins as beneficial fever
transforms into swarms of rheumatic intention.
No cardiologic cure for chambered spasms
or skipped beats, for errors so purposefully made.
This is why I still look back and praise the decision
to walk away. Antibiotic dreams of letting go.
***
Rapunzel’s Distress
A diligent prince with a rescue in mind
approached a dark tower (once upon a time)
and knowing the name of the captive above,
he ah hmm’d and ah hemm’d ‘til his throat cleared enough,
called, “Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your blond hair!”
and I, from my perch, sang, “It’s not blond down there.”
The Prince didn’t heed that short warning I gave,
but increased his desire for that pretty girl to save,
and since she had not responded to his first valiant try,
he ah hmm’d and ah hemm’d again, wiped sweat beads from his eye
called, “Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your blond hair!”
And I, from my perch, sang, “It’s not blond down there.”
Rapunzel dropped her braid, though she feared the Prince would see
the telling red-brown roots that had said it all to me.
The Prince began to climb the wall while clinging to her braid,
but noticed on his upward path that darker strands were splayed,
called, “Rapunzel! Rapunzel! What’s wrong with your hair?”
And I, from my perch, sang, “It’s not blond down there.”
Rapunzel stuttered, sputtered, “I thought it more attractive,”
but the Prince replied most angrily, “Dyed hair implies you’re active,”
and with that he leapt back to the ground and saddled up his horse
just as the wicked witch came ‘round (Rapunzel’s step mama, of course).
She called out to that valiant prince, “But don’t you love her hair?”
And I, from my perch, sang, “It’s not blond down there.”
The moral of this story, though it may seem somewhat small
is if you’re gonna dye a little, then ya better dye it all.
***
About the Poet:
Larina Warnock works for Willamette Neighborhood Housing Services (http://www.w-nhs.org) in Corvallis, Oregon where she lives with her husband and four children. Her poetry and prose has appeared or is forthcoming in The Oregonian, Space & Time Magazine, Poet's Market 2011, Today's Caregiver, Wheelhouse Magazine, and others. Her chapbook, "Guitar Without Strings" is forthcoming from the Lives You Touch Publications. Larina is a student at Saint Xavier University and serves as the volunteer site administrator for the Academy of American Poets' online discussion forum (http://www.poets.org/forum), editor of The Externalist (http://www.theexternalist.com), and president of Writers on the River. She is a graduate of Partners in Policymaking and is scheduled to graduate from the Leadership Corvallis program in June 2010.
On the identity of The Nepotist:
It's easier to tell who the editor isn't than who it is. For example, neither OPW Fredericks nor Christine Klocek-Lim have time for another lit rag. Colin Ward would never put out a call for submissions and tell people to send whatever they want. The grammar of the call for submissions is too good to be a non-writer, but too honest to be a famous poet. In the end, the opportunity to have someone publish something whimsical (and probably crappy) as 'Rapunzel's Distress' makes the identity of the editor, well, irrelevant.
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