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Cardinal Points

~ Poetry By Sandra Sidman Larson

Cardinal Points

Category Archives: Politics

What Was and Wasn’t Reported

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Grief, Politics

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November 22, 1963

Zweibach cookies like stumps
on the high-chair tray.
On TV, a smiling Jackie wearing
a shocking pink Chanel suit
and matching pill-box hat, deplanes
behind her husband, the President.

I turn the TV off and go out to hang
laundry in the sun’s eye, getting work done
before noon gets stuck in the trees. The baby content
in his carriage, another child playing inside,
another inside of me. The work gets done.
Errands are run, bills paid, I turn on the TV
again to find out what’s happening in Dallas.
The tube flickers with light, then the screen fills in

I drop the clothesbasket, a jumble
of shirts on the floor, and the baby begins to kick
inside of me, the others to cry as I scream
out to Jackie. She is hatless now.
She is standing by the new President.
I stand there too— by him, by her, by our country—
bloodstained, dazed, and rifle-shot.

The miniature fire engine, careens to some far
emergency in another room. More clothes
need to come in, a damp chill will stiffened them.
I undo each pin and take them down. Now supper
must be started.

War Again, A Liberal’s Protest Song, 1990

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Politics

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Remember those lofty words—life, liberty
the pursuit of happiness—the shots heard ’round
the world? But this Desert Storm, now I ask you:
Columnists tell us we’re so relieved we’ve righted
Vietnam. Righted Vietnam??? I guess I never
realized the hate, the loathing and the self-defeat
that those who thought we could have won it felt
through almost twenty years. Forget the jungle,
the civil nature of the war, the hero status
of Ho Chi Minh, much less the armies of Chinese
who were poised to cross the border. Why not just accept

we’d been suckered by the likes of Bao Di?
Well, we could have bombed it back a century,
but some of us were just a little squeamish after
Hiroshima, we figured we’d better leave a few
green patches. At least I could rejoice when
we left some of the children with their skin.

Since then, some credit is due, I will admit,
we took in Cambodians, Vietnamese adrift
in boats, we’re working on it yet. And we did
get out without the domino effect
although the Hmong might beg to differ
as they write their odyssey, stitch by
stitch, into this quirky quilted land.

The other side had a point, we protesters didn’t play
out the right scenario. We stayed behind,
thought those that went should have known much better.
While we marched, they died or lost their limbs.
We didn’t have a parade from them, however,
we finally commissioned a shiny wall & etched it
with the names of all those returned in body bags
and those with bodies that didn’t need a bag.

But would a parade have wiped away the names or
the jungle nightmares of those left alive?
Yes, we should have done it. If they do return this time,
we won’t begrudge them their hurrahs. However,
let’s do it right, let’s celebrate only the heroes,
the decent common Joes. I’ll cheer for those

who just got trapped in this predicament, or others
who felt the mighty call to defend
our American freedoms–we certainly can
understand how no one’s love was lost on Saddham Hussein.

So they flew the planes, they fired off
the artillery that freed Kuwait and felt
no jubilation for the humans who met
a different fate. But let’s not include or overrate
the heroism of the likes of one returning
Minnesotan who said (in a very close paraphrase)
It’s the ultimate game to watch them drop.
I certainly enjoyed it.

So let’s get out the yellow ribbons
for all the patriotic military men, but
I’d like a little prime time for
an American army of another sort.
Maybe in the not too distant future
we can ribbon heroes that do not carry guns,
but wear their missions on their hearts.
Let’s have a parade of ticker tape for them.

There’s Rosa Parks who claimed her dignity,
battling white men who wanted her seat on the front
of the bus in Montgomery and her legions
of freedom riders, the high school students
at Little Rock or Andrew, Michael and James
killed by sheriff’s deputies for registering
black Mississippians and that General Martin

with his “I had a Dream” speech, or even earlier,
the likes of Harriet Tubman and Phyllis Wheatley.
We’ll let them call out the cadence for our stride.
I’d line up the company CEO’s who divested
in South African apartheid and furthermore,
I’d ribbon the 30,000 peace corps workers
who, with less than a sergeant’s pay, have risked disease
and death in third world countries helping people
in ways unrelated to the defense industry,
learning indigenous languages and then
quietly coming home. We’ll include those scientists

trying to save the rain forests or those helping
the Yugoslavians, but those rearming
the dictators of the world before this latest
conflagration and before the next, we’ll not
include them. We won’t leave out Gloria Steinam.
I’d add all the low paid social workers and even
the police who hold their fire and those as sick to death
as anyone of the racism that stalks our city streets.

We could name names of those leaders
who deserted this war on poverty and left
the enlisted to tinker with the rusting
machinery of care, certainly we don’t want
them in our ranks. And bringing up the rear,
we do want all those adoptive parents, fearless
Sarah Brady, Greenpeace, and, last but not least,
Amnesty International that doesn’t let
the sun set on anybody’s inhumane prison.

So far its an uphill battle, jingoism
can’t cure it, a frenzy of waving flags
won’t purify the heart or wash away
the consequences for those of us
too intimidated or too old
to call for bolder strategy. So let’s roll
out what we must, now that the Kurds
are on the mountainsides,
no food, no shelter, no place to go
in the icy upper atmosphere, and
ethnic cleansing is beginning to take its toll
in Bosnia, Herzegovina. But after this

let’s dismantle the armaments, the rockets,
and stem the diaspora of our despair,
send in the United Nations forces
before a firestorm is set that sends us
out into the next century with nothing left
but an upper hand to wave.

How the Endless Summer Ends

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Love and Lust, Politics, Seasons

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Daisies still smear the soft meadows
lying outside my living room window.
Petals of the heliotrope have almost given up,
lie limp in the shade. Summer is aging.
Soon loosestrife will take charge.

The telephone man is here, talks
incessantly as he installs my second line.
You know what goes on in Washington
in summer—those politicians in large boats
out on the Potomac squeezing the buns
of sweet young things? I hate even the thought
of politicians, don’t you?

Boats adrift, the sun’s haze seems
to ripple the surface of the water,
not much breeze. Looking out, I respond,
I don’t think about politicians much
anymore.

Outside my window, marsh grasses
Bend in small gusts of wind,
arch as if in ecstasy.
Like some sleepless revelers
the crickets never seem to quiet,
their chorus rising to a crescendo

of summer’s end, and isn’t that the faint
sound of a band rounding the corner,
one last dah-thump, one last thrust
of daisies, one last night
for the heliotropes almost
exhausted from it all.

Season Of Memories

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Life Reflections, Politics, Seasons, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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Mother, all you remember is how you feel
you don’t remember anything.

My son Andrew’s complaint at age 16

I’ve read recently that medical researchers are working feverishly
on pills to improve the memory. Would we really want to dwell
on the past, the painful — the loss of our missing limbs,
our old enemies, waiting rooms, burnt skin?

How would we appreciate the moment —a spring day
of cherry blossoms — if we were forced to live
in such a tenement of overcrowded memories?
My son Andrew was only five in 1968

when we visited the orthopedic clinic at Walter Reed
Army Hospital. We sat in the waiting room with stacks
of books to read, waiting for ghost pictures
of his femur and predictions about whether breaking it again
would spur growth in his one short leg.

All the other patients were in blue and white seersucker robes
and army-issued slippers. I didn’t ask him what he thought of them—
those without their limbs, parts of their skulls blown in.
On our way home, we drove around the tidal basin,
huge marble buildings with the triumphal feel of Rome.
Cherry blossoms from Japan fringing everything.

I barely remember my mother’s cousin who survived
the Battan Death March and a Japanese prisoner of war camp.
Everyone is moving toward death, but marching there
was a different story, or so they said. He never spoke of it —
hundreds and hundreds of men dropping silently in spring.
Like a frail cherry blossom, once home, he didn’t last.

The only bone I’d broken was my arm in a field at Camp Nyoda.
Dearie, this is going to hurt. One hand on my shoulder
and the other holding my wrist,
the doctor took the arm and yanked it
in that one perfect motion of realignment.
That little girl, Phan Tri Kim, running down the road

trailing her burning skin, I read not long ago that she is in Paris
and the green beauty of Vietnam is bringing the tourists back again.
This year, I’ve heard the cherry blossoms are already blooming in Washington—
not the tear gas, police in plastic helmets with mouth guards, running
right toward us, batons raised, the thousands of protesters
on the mall. Now there is just the shiny wall.

After the organizing, after the protests, I was home, as I recall,
each afternoon when the boys returned from school
but I have forgotten what the argument was about
when Andrew first brought me flowers in spring.
Comfort is a complicated forgetting and remembering.

Published in Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens 2003, Pudding House Press chapbook series

The Unstoppable Sixties

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Grief, Politics, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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Jackie steps out of Air
Force One into dazzling
Dallas sun. Her handsome
Jack behind her. She’s wears
a shocking pink Chanel
and matching pill-box hat.

The Texas governor presents to her
a dozen violent roses.
She holds them in
her white-gloved hands
in case the roses run.

Now riding in the open car
in her lap she holds
her husband’s head,
feels his weight pressed on her,
the brambles of the roses.
Her suit is stained with red
as red as if the roses ran.

Aloft again,
headed back to Washington,
still in her pink Chanel,
she takes the bread, the wine
as red as if the roses ran.

A killer kills the killer
and he had a name of red—
The story doesn’t end.
On a balcony,
in a hotel lobby,
they bring down Martin, Bobby,
both lying there
in beds of blood
as red as if the roses ran
as red as if the roses ran.

Published in Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, 2003, Pudding House Press chapbook series

A Real Red Scare

26 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Coming of Age, Politics, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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During my junior year in high school my friends hung around
after school, went to Bonds for a malt, to the gym
for basketball practice, or to the movies while I went home
to watch TV, more specifically the Army-McCarthy hearings.

I thought it so outrageous for Senator Joseph McCarthy
to call all liberals and union workers—even worse—innocent,
apolitical people—Communists—not just Communists,
but Soviet agents or blame them as the guys who lost China
to Mao and his red guards. Were you or did you ever know one?

It was obsessive and I knew it (36 days, 32 witnesses,
71 half-day sessions, 187 hours of TV air time, two million
words of testimony). My friends were incredulous. I guess, not like me,
they’d never been to Salem, Mass. or studied the details

of American history—or maybe they believed these folks were witches,
so why should they worry? And who cares
about the First Amendment anyway? Let them stew
in the Fifth. But I thought it outrageous

for I regarded Joseph N. Welch, chief attorney for the Army,
as a prophet even before he uttered that final, cutting rebuke
to the senator: Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?
Have you no sense of decency? His words, I believed,

paraphrased Jehovah’s own, while McCarthy, with his faithful aide
Roy Cohn and their red-hunting plan, were from Satan’s ring—the truly crimson
crowd. I have in my hand a list of 205 cases of individuals who appear
to be either card-carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist party.
(81 were supposedly from the State Department.)

I couldn’t believe the folks they’d done in (about 10,000,
the best estimate of who lost their jobs) including, I later found out,
when my sister married him, my brother-in-law, a conservative
Republican who was learning how to speak Russian, hoping
for a career in the foreign service.

By attending the trials via TV, it was, at least, one way to rehearse
all my denials regarding whatever I was guilty of,
even though, like my brother-in-law on the other end
of the political spectrum, I wasn’t un-American.
I was happy, though to see McCarthy finally go up in smoke;
condemned 67-22 on December 2, 1954 for
conduct contrary to Senatorial traditions.

In the Sixties I felt some comfort with the flare-up
of liberalism, but then, given our need to prevent the domino effect
in Vietnam (that red scare again) it began to fade until, with the rise
of Ronald Reagan, liberalism was back to being heretical

again. But now the twist was different, one must be a fervent supporter
of the totally unrestrained market economy. Such fanaticism
did in my political aspirations and my brother-in-law never could join
the Foreign Service. So I suppose there were rings of fire
for everyone, whatever your political persuasion.

Published in Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens
2003, Pudding House Press chapbook series

The Wrong Address

22 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Politics, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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Tags

birth

Cuidad de Juarez, Mexico

i
A new mother wrapped in a worried face
and hospital gown stands thickly
in the hallway talking to the volunteer doctor.
Aa a small band of newborn philanthropists,
we troop by her, grouped behind our guide,
the priest and clinic administrator. And we follow
him over well-scrubbed, but cracked
linoleum floors, and walk by a few beds
covered in frayed chenille spreads
and enter the small nursery where tiny, purple-tinted
twins lie in two old fashion oxygen tents,
with miniature prongs stuck into their noses
which are tethered to bottles that bubble.

Como estan? We ask.
Muy malo, the nurse replies.

Another volunteer on the phone tries to find
a city hospital that will take in this pair
born with little weight and no pesos.
The mother had summoned the priest’s
wheezing ambulance after she delivered one baby
to her sofa. Father Baca could help, she hoped,
if she came to this meager clinic at the base
of her barrio, a hillside covered with tarred
cardboard shacks that clung tentatively
to the hill, where dead dogs lay in the middle
of littered streets and all people withered
in one way or another.

ii
Now we encounter other dogs
tethered to DEA agents who stalk
along the long lines of cars filled
with passengers, who like us, hope
to convince these officials in uniforms
to let them cross the border. The khaki
faces look us over, for a moment,
then waved us on as if
we weren’t the ones in question.

Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy Onassis Died Today

19 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Grief, Politics, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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Tags

The sixties

May 19, 1994
I
As if I were opening a jewelry box
to find stones priced for my life,
the jangle of blood from split arteries
the clatter of newsmen
a rasping sound
barbarous times falling into gibberish
jealousy that left its mind behind
the jeopardy of infidelity
lurch, twist, twitch
who is this court jester Oswald
and where is his cabal
the jet set left on a jet plane
her pink suit so much jetsam
Jackie—Love’s hobo now

II
The TV a pipeline to grief.
We went out into the streets
huddled at corners of the assassination
as if it happened here on this block.
Nasal voice floating endlessly
over the blood-spattered leaves of fall
saying over and over:
Ask not what your country can do for you—
ask what you can do for your country.

Game contestants couldn’t provide the answer
the rubber pointers frozen. We were left
to figure out the prize.

III
A small son in dress coat standing by
his mother’s side salutes
the cortège, the riderless horse.
On the boulevards remaining leaves
like gloved hands wave farewell.
The parade died out of sight.
Jackie in black veil,
the mystical Mona Lisa, couldn’t lead us
and her small son grew up to drown.

Jackie was born on July 28, 1929

Published Whistling Girls and Crackling Hens, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2003

My Life as Minnie Mouse

19 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Coming of Age, Politics, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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Tags

feminism

I began with small ears flat
against my head.
They grew bigger each year
astounded by what they heard.

As a child I had a voice that wasn’t
appreciated. I wanted to know where
babies came from, why Grandma
never laughed at Grandpa’s jokes.

In the middle of the story I was bound up,
told I was a woman, to put heels on my feet,
gloves on my hands.

My heart longed for a guy named Mickey.
He might have been my soul mate, if he hadn’t been
so damned cute. Yet I’m not complaining,

I gained a happy attitude once
I stepped out
of polka dot dresses
and became
a little less plastic.

Published Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2003

She Who Moves Forward Without Moving

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by Sandra Sidman Larson in Grief, Politics, Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens chapbook

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Tags

flowers

For Diana, Princess of Wales’ on the Occasion
of her Funeral, September 6, 1997

On the casket a spray of lilies, a small
wreath of shaking tea roses. Sun mottled streets.
Bells toll. A leopard, his golden paws poised
on a maroon field, stares with alarm
at the mournful crowd. Diana’s riding
through the hunting park today. Two motherless
sons, the blood of Charles II join in. She moves
forward without moving.

Elegant women and men ushered into Westminster.
Welsh guardsmen lift the coffin. Voices of high,
boyish tenors heard above organ chords.
A catafalque awaits under the flying
arches. Over the geometry of the black
and white terrazzo, two royal lineages at odds,
she moves forward without moving.

Limousines pull up in front. The Welsh
guardsmen again, shoulders interlocked,
load the hearse with the weight of an old century
that believes these tears are too trite
for affairs of state. She moves forward
without moving

The hearse heads north to an island crypt
fit for a sister of Ophelia
where on a weedy breeze the sweet power
of discarded women rests and moves
forward without moving.

Published Whistling Girls and Cackling Hens, Sandra Larson, Pudding House Chapbook Series, 2007

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