SISTERS
Everyday is my sisters’ fresh borne heroic task
To set straight and smile and surge forward
Everyday some people get fired, terminated,
Let-go, sent-away and everyday sisters press on
Everyday for each one of our flower sisters
Is a picture of music dancing with her sisters
Equal sisters modestly managing instructing
Standards-keeping and innovating the tribe.
Sisters maturing solid prudence, perspective
Along with moderation, fortitude strongest
Sisters overall unswervingly planting the future.
EDWARD MYCUE, born Niagara Falls, New York, raised in Dallas, Texas. Earned a magna cum laude BA from North Texas State. Teaching Fellow at NTS, Lowell Fellow at Boston University, Intern at WGBH-TV Boston, Fellow at the MacDowell Colony, Peace Corps Volunteer teaching in Ghana. Upon return to the US entered a period of intense Civil Rights (SCLC, URBAN LEAGUE, NAACP, naming a few from those days) activities & immersion in the counterculture & working for six years for the Dept. of Health, Education & Welfare in the 5-state Dallas southwest region office, then Washington, DC.
In late-sixties in Europe, worked in shipyards and warehouses in the Netherlands, harvested grapes and vegetables in southwest France, and delivered washing machines in West Berlin. Also tutored American writers in Elsinore, Denmark and immersed himself in London’s poetry ferment, and on June 1, 1970 moved to San Francisco. Joined the Gay Liberation Movement. Began working for Margrit Roma and Clarence Ricklefs’ The New Shakespeare Company-San Francisco.
Met painter Richard Steger on Memorial Day in 1971. Both joined literary/ artistic conversations in English and in translation, publishing poems in the explosion of small-circulation literary magazines and presses that provided the ground for a literary life. Ed was drawn by George Oppen into a writers’ group that met first in Lawrence and Justine Fixel’s living room that evolved into in Ed’s living room with poets Lennart Bruce, Laura Ulewicz, Jack Gilbert, Shirley Kaufman, Ray Carver, Josephine Miles, Nanos Valaoritis, Mort Marcus, William Dickey, Frances Mayes, Honor & Wayne Johnson, William Talcott, Adrianne Marcus, Jim & Eleanor Watson-Gove, Elizabeth Hurst, Jules Mann, Helen Sventitsky, Andrea Rubin, Carl Weiner, Sybil Wood, Marsha Campbell–and more now–over the last 41 years. First as a partner with Lawrence Fixel in founder/ proprietor/ publisher Dennis Koran’s Panjandrum Press, and later with his own Norton-Coker Press (with Laura Kennelly’s MRS JUNG book as first of dozens), Ed published with Richard Steger 19 issues of TOOK, a free magazine.
Since 1970, Ed’s published works in addition to poetry, criticism, essays, and stories have appeared in 2000 literary journals, magazines, zines, broadcasts, fliers, broadsides, and broadsheets. Publications (often with artwork by Richard Steger) include DAMAGE WITHIN THE COMMUNITY (Dennis Koran’s Panjandrum Press, San Francisco 1973); HER CHILDREN COMME HOME, TOO, Sceptre Press, England 1974); CHRONICLE (Mother’s Hen Press, San Francisco1974); ROOT ROUTE AND RANGE (Gary Elder’s Holmgangers Press, Alamo, CA 1976); ROOT ROUTE & RANGE THE SONG RETURNS a 88-page poem (Walter Billeter’s Paper Castle, Melbourne, Australia 1979). In the 1980’s: THE SINGING MAN MY FATHER GAVE ME (Anthony Rudolf’s Menard Press, London, England); THE TORN STAR (Larry Oberc’s Opposm Holler Tarot, Indiana), EDWARD (Michael McKinnon’s Primal Press, Boston, MA). NO ONE FOR FREE (SF,CA); GRATE COUNTRY (split chapbk w/Lainie Duro, Chicago); IDOLINO (SF,CA); NEXT YEARS’ WORDS (split chapbk w/Andy Lowry,Chicago); THE SINGING SURGEON (Colorado); 1990’s PINK GARDENS BROWN TREES (Bernard Hemensley’s Stingy Artist/Last Straw Press, Weymouth, England); BECAUSE WE SPEAK THE SAME LANGUAGE (Paul Green’s Spectacular Diseases Press, Peterborough, England); SPLIT, chapbook w/Jim Watson-Gove, Mycue’s half titled LIFE IS BUILT FROM THE INSIDE OUT. 2000 came NIGHTBOATS (Jim Watson-Gove’s Minotaur Editions, Oakland, CA ). Then, 2008, MINDWALKING: NEW & SELECTED POEMS 1937-2007 (Laura Beausoliel’s Philos Press, Lacey, WA ).
September 2009, Jo-Anne Rosen’s Wordrunner Press of Petaluma, California issued online, Edward Mycue’s first Echapbook http://www.echapbook.com of 25 selected poems, I AM A FACT NOT A FICTION. A television program featuring Edward Mycue is on the internet and also here…
7 SISTER SONGS: MARGO COOKIE JANEY ARDA-& ELENA (OUR OLDEST BROTHER DAVID’S WIFE WHO BECAME OUR FIFTH SISTER) –
some popular songs that relate to these my sisters:
1..MARGO “what the world needs now’ 2.COOKIE “raindrops keep falling on my head” 3.JANEY – ‘till there was you’ 4.ARDA ‘close to you’ 5.ELENA.’I’m looking over a four leaf clover’(Dave’s favorite & of parent’s Ruth & Jack)
1.What the world needs now is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of
What the world needs now is love, sweet love
No, not just for some but for everyone (WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW: by Hal David words, music by Burt Bacharach, 1965)
2.But there’s one thing I know
The blues they send to meet me won’t defeat me
It won’t be long till happiness comes up to greet me,
To greet, greet, greet, greet me (RAINDROPS KEEP FALLING ON MY HEAD: Hal David words, Burt Bacharach, 1969)
3.There were birds in the sky
But I never saw them winging
No, I never saw them at all
Till there was you (TILL THERE WAS YOU: Meredith Willson, 1950)
4.On the day that you were born the angels got together.
And decided to create a dream come true.
So, they sprinkled moon dust in your hair of gold,
And star-light in your eyes of blue.
That is why all the girls in town follow you all around.
Just like me, they long to be close to you (CLOSE TO YOU: Hal David, Burt Bacharach, 1963)
5.I’m looking over a four-leaf clover
That I overlooked before
One leaf is sunshine, the second is rain
Third is the roses that grow in the lane
No need explaining the one remaining
Is somebody I adore
I’m looking over a four-leaf-clover
That I overlooked before (I’M LOOKING OVER A FOUR-LEAF CLOVER: Mort Dixon lyrics, music Harry M. Woods, 1927)
6. I should add I have a 6th sister who is my partner-spouse-Richard’s sister 14 years younger than him and her name is Charmaine. A song that comes to me when I think of this lovely (now mother and grandmother) would have to come from opera. Not Tosca because that is only right in that the heroine is so true and honest and proud and beautiful. No, I will have to settle for a 1926 GEORGE & IRA Gershwin classical-pop song
SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME
There’s a saying old says that love is blind,
Still were often told, “seek and you shall find”
So I’m going to seek a certain girl I’ve had in mind
Looking everywhere, haven’t found her yet
She’s the big affair I cannot forget
Only girl I ever think of with regret
I’d like to add her initial to my monogram
Tell me, where is the shepherdess for this lost lamb?
There’s a somebody I’m longing to see
I hope that she turns out to be
Someone who’ll watch over me
I’m a little lamb who’s lost in the wood
I know I could always be good
To one who’ll watch over me
Although I may not be the man some girls think of as handsome
To her heart I carry the key
Won’t you tell her please to put on some speed, follow my lead
Oh, how I need someone who’ll watch over me
There’s a somebody I’m longing to see
I hope that she turns out to be
Someone to watch over me
I’m a little lamb who’s lost in the wood
I know I could always be good
To one who’ll watch over me
Although I may not be the man some girls think of as handsome
To her heart I carry the key
Won’t you tell her please to put on some speed, follow my lead
Oh, how I need someone to watch over me
7. Laura’s not formally a sister. We met in 1958 and remain friends. The song for Laura is simply one written in 1951 by Dale Evans.
HAPPY TRAILS
Happy trails to you,
Until we meet again.
Happy trails to you,
Keep smiling until then.
Who cares about the clouds
when we’re together?
Just sing a song,
and bring the sunny weather.
Happy trails to you,
Until we meet again.
© copyright compiled by Edward Mycue 31 May 2016
A FIGHT FOR AIR
I. A Fight for Air
Towels soak in the sink
Roots crack, splinter
Each sound’s a stone screaming
successive millions
of mute islands
a secret care I keep folded
under my fingernail
dawn after dawn
The thrill is uneven The saliva curdles
Sunset climbs closely
to the fight for air.
II. Buried World
The Great River
plains desert
Red Rock Red River
Gulf of Mexico
deltas bayous hill country
conscribe an end and a beginning, leading
from these years this journey back
to nineteen sixty-one
Dallas: blotch concrete spread out on the plains.
We’d come to Texas thirteen years before
in a slope-back forties Ford.
I was eleven then.
We passed through Erie, Kentucky, Delta States
to arid, fissured land and bottomland and floods
to dying apple trees.
Then summertimes
and othertimes
Dad took us with him one by one
to get to know us
on his travels through his Southwest territory,
him talking brakelinings for a Firestone subsidiary
company that let him go not long before he died
in a chaos of fear
and pain he said was not like pain
but was pulling him apart.
III. Father
“We brought our children from New York
to take a better job.
My wife supported me.
Her hair turned white that first year.
She was thirty-three, had borne us seven kids
in our hometown, Niagara Falls.
We fought and stayed together
pounding with our love.
I was thirty-six that year
nineteen forty-eight.
Our oldest son was twelve.
The baby was a year.”
IV. Rain
Starting
Caution
Stop
Signal
Passing
Being passed
My father seems beautiful
his geographical eyes a cage
of ocean dreams
who’ll never dream again
so stubborn, gentle, singing anytime
some snatch of song he’ll never sing again.
Nostrils flaring, lungs honking, at the end
he couldn’t hold his teeth
only wanted air Air
His food came back
I hear him say NO, No not pain I’m
falling
No steel,
green-painted, rented tank of oxygen could help
since death will come when cancer eats the brain.
It rained the day he died
and it rained again on burial day. Good Luck,
it’s angels’ tears, they say the Irish say.
The dog killed cat run off morphine soaking into sand.
Gigantic stones snakes apple trees his eyes.
V. Grave Song
End of night
melted
threw my heat in the fire
O my mama place in the white
it was too big for me
I wanted out out I got out
Go downstairs
say off wiz de light off wiz all de lights
up up up
up wiz de fire up wiz de fire
(say ‘UP’ with the fire)
I am afraid
of the door rats on the stairs miles
miles miles to the light and I can’t
say it
there’s only me
and and everybody
and that is no body nobody
but some thing
behind
Lock it! Lock it!
Go go downstairs
Run Run Run Run out out out
They are moving
Dark
is light Things in the air
Tie Ta Tie Ta
Tie Ta Tie Ta
people gone
Cows moo in the fields and are gone
It does not hold
Hums Hums Hums
Hung birds in bottles, eggs writhing like worms
and the fire burns.
VI. Little Lifetimes
Children crush crackers between stones
celebrating luck and joy
seeing with ears, breathing music from trees, flowering
in pure deliciousness
awakening graves, unarmed against the rain. In time — silence:
stoning sterile trees,
praying the dead will sleep between the swollen roots.
The wind rushes in saying hold my ground, carve
your own road — the design that develops.
Now a face begins to emerge seeking air
examining death to discover patterns
in the movements of little lifetimes.
© Edward Mycue