Poetry Night

by Donna Schoenkopf

I went to Poetry Night last Thursday night.

It’s held the third Thursday of the month at the Benedict Street Marketplace, a restaurant a block away from St. Benedict’s Church, the church of my youth.

There are white tablecloths on the tables and good food.

People come to read their poems to each other. Mostly the poems are about feelings. Or Mom or God. And a decent percentage are about odd takes on things. My favorite.

But I have to tell you, I love every single poem that I have ever heard there. It is a deep and personal sharing of a person’s psyche. Talk about getting inside someone’s head!

Once I wrote a poem titled “Pee Poem” about being unable to hold my pee in my old age and “peeing like a horse” and getting a sling in my bladder and now having the bladder control of a 19-year-old.

It pretty much shocked everyone. But they liked it. I think they liked it.... Maybe they were just being kind.

Because people in Oklahoma ARE kind. They do not want anyone to feel uncomfortable. They hurry to your side when you’re feeling like an outcast.

(I don’t think they know that I LIKE being an outcast.)

Most people come from the same basic ethnic background here in Oklahoma, and any difference is a big one. And sheep, ooops, I mean people, feel uncomfortable when they are not part of the herd. But I grew up (like Obama) in Hawaii and was a minority almost all my life and although not quite out of the herd, I am definitely on the edge. It feels natural to me.

Anyway, Thursday night I brought my daughter Rebecca’s newspaper, where she USED to be the Editor (or Editrix as she likes to call herself. She even had a little icon of a whip next to her name. How cool is THAT?) but she quit. On principle. Of which I am very, very proud. Because I have raised her right. Or left, as the case may be.

ANYWAY!!! The first issue of which she ever was the boss happened to land on May Day, a festival after my own heart, and she wrote a column about me. ME!! And it was called, “Mi Mamacita Comunista”. And it was about all the things I taught her.

I decided it was PERFECT for Poetry Night.

I was pretty sure no one there had actually had anyone proclaim they were a Communist right in front of a large group of (probably) conservative Republican Oklahomans.

I was fourth on the list of readers. Preceeding me were Carol, a poetess with many published books of poems. She was our Guest Reader. They were poems of Mother, Nature, thoughts on things in life.

It was nice.

Then came a very old woman, whose son helped her to the microphone. She read two short poems. About Mother and Nature. I think.

Then came her son, who read his poem about an Oklahoma Ice House. It had good imagery.

Then came me.

At Poetry Night there is much introducing of ourselves and explanations about how and why and what our poems are about. So I explained I was a Communist.

That got their attention. There was a rustle of whoo hoos. There was some laughter. Nervous. But also delighted laughter.

I talked about my daughter’s job as editor and how she wrote her first column in her new newspaper about ME and what I had taught her.

It is a HILARIOUS article.

Some examples:

“It is our patriotic duty to cuss loud and creatively. Lenny Bruce wants us to stick it to the squares. For America. And the children.”

Yeah. I taught her that.

And, “Good places to pick fights are at parties and in line at the grocery store.”

Well, actually I taught her that one by example.

Then I got to “Blame America First.”

There was dead silence. Nobody thought THAT was funny. That was DANGEROUS talk in these parts. Because everyone here, left, right and center, holds their American citizenship close to their hearts. You could get killed otherwise.

I wanted to say, “I blame America first because I know we have immense power and we’ve abused it and I’m apologizing to the world for it.” I wanted to continue, “And I am not a Swede or a Ghanaian. I am an American. I can only be responsible for what MY country does. And I will not sit silent.”

But I didn’t.

Then I got to the part about the flag.

“When your kid has to write an essay on ‘What the Flag Means to Him,’ and you are writing it for him just like she told you to, be sure to include ‘The Right to Burn It.’”

Nobody laughed. Again. Dead silence. I wanted to say, “But that’s why I LOVE the flag. It’s willing to martyr itself for my right of Free Speech!”

But I didn’t.

I can’t remember much of what other people read except one guy’s poem had a phrase that impressed me, “my feet were eating chestnuts.” That was really attention-grabbing. Can’t get THAT image out of your mind, can you?

And Jim, my husband number one, was a hit with his poem about living with his Gramma and two other old women, a 90-year-old Mexican woman and 75-year-old Polish woman, in Texas during WWII and being only 8 years old. Everything was quiet in that little Texas town. Except the Polish woman sweeping the street.

That was a cool one.

Then some more and some more and some more.

I sat in my chair, rigid, feeling like a suspect in a crime case. Thinking only of what I had read and how I had alienated everyone.

Because, you see, as much as I like being on the outside, the weird one, the Big Mouth, I, too, am a person (sheep) who, I repeat, feels uncomfortable if put completely outside of the herd. The edges are fine. It’s where I want to be. But TOTALLY outside? Ay yi yi, caramba! She is scary out there!

But then, during the break, a wonderful, brave woman, a friend from Shawnee’s environmental club, came up to me and smiled and told me she wasn’t quite on the edge as much as I was but that she had the same inclinations.

Back to more poems. I think one was about being a homosexual, but I’m not sure. I could barely hear them, my mind was in such a state of pure fear and agony and shame.

Finally, the evening came to an end.

We all got up and started to mosey around and people came up to me, all proud of me, telling me this and telling me that and sharing (A softly spoken, “I’m a Socialist.” And a woman who KNOWS Jesus is a liberal.) and caring and making me feel LOVED. I mean actually LOVED. And I felt so good and cherished and I loved them all back and laughed and smiled and loved them back some more.

And this morning, in my email, Jim, husband number one, thanked me for my reading, saying that most everybody loved it and yes, there were a few folks who were offended, but as the Russians say, “Toughski shitski!”

These are my peeps. We all hang out on the edge. With each other.

I love Poetry Night.

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