— Shout —
a poetry memoir
Laurie Halse Anderson

sweet gum tree, felled

Ernest Boy Scout troop

awkwardly erecting small flags,

blue and gold, on deadfall

branches propped upright

with rocks, while a white-haired woman

cooks the boys’ dinner over an open fire,

white-haired man sharpening a chainsaw

with a rat-tail file, properly,

with long, smooth strokes,

echoes of his wife, slowly stirring the pot.

The other men? Troop masters and dadfriends

slump-dressed for Saturday, clustered coffeeing,

watching one of their own revving

the other chainsaw, two-stroke oil smoking,

blade deadly dull and ready to kick, hungry

for legs, not wood, but this dad-dude

is clueless in sneakers, not boots,

blind to his need for protection, so damn tough

he leaves his headphones on the stump,

safety glasses, too. He squeezes the trigger

and the chain spins faster, motor screams,

oil smokes, and the other men lean

into the illusion of power

becoming more deaf

by the minute. But the saw, it sticks, bucks,

won’t cut right, so the dad-dudes complain

and curse the machinery,

glancing at their phones.

The boys who pledge their allegiance

openhearted play

with sticks and stones

watching close.

The white-haired man, finally satisfied

puts down his tools, while the white-haired

woman

in steel-toed boots

puts on her safety glasses and headphones.

She starts the chainsaw with a single pull

looks at the old man, her husband or lover,

and he grins, knowing what comes next;

the old woman saws through expectations

and the sweet gum trunk like butter,

wood chips spitting at the openmouthed

dad-dudes unable

to process the sight.

piccolo

She hated being a six-foot-tall woman

in 1947, a freak of nature in a town

without a circus.

The class picture that year, organized by height

shows four tall boys, my Amazonian mother

then another twenty dudes, all smaller.

She wanted to play the piccolo

or at least the flute, delicate instruments

elegant, feminine testaments to belie her size

but the director gave her the trombone

cuz she

had the longest arms in the band.

She hunched, slouched with panache,

tried to shrink herself down

to the size of other girls, origami-folded

herself in upon herself, accidentally forging

a backbone that twisted

and misaligned her hips.

After days at school reducing her frame

and presence to blend into the bland expanse

of North Country expectations, my mother

would go home and cross paths

with her father, who wouldn’t stand

for his girl to bow to the will of others

he forced her to stand tall

erect

against the wall of the living room for an hour

each night, shoulders back far enough to kiss

the wallpaper, her chin lifted, tears pearling,

the ache intended to remind her

never to bend to the whims

of the small-minded

She hated every minute,

but she taught me the same way,

and when my daughters shot up and towered

over us both

their long arms, strong hands snatching

basketballs and softballs, playing trumpet,

slamming gavels,

leaping over mountains and storming castle walls,

my mother rested in their shade

and finally relaxed

into the shape of her own satisfaction.

lost boys

My mother’s last supper was homemade

mac and cheese.

Tethered to her oxygen machine

she ate at the kitchen table

with Daddy, me, and my beloved,

we drank champagne for their anniversary

and ours

then helped her back into bed

because Death

was gently knocking.

Getting pregnant was easy for my mom.

Staying pregnant was near impossible.

Her womb rejected boys, the doctors said,

claimed her body created a hostile environment

for the male fetus.

Five never-born sons

Five unseen brothers

Five failure marks in Mom’s column

of the marriage scorecard

Six decades of my father’s disappointment

On the other hand, the inside of my mother

was mahogany-red

cozy for girls like me. I snuggled in, feasted,

watched movies through her belly button,

tasted her fear

at the five-month mark, the gallows mile marker

for the boys. She’d light another cigarette

slip her hand across her belly, the skin tent

between us,

and whisper a prayer.

I’ve always loved my ghost brothers; they are

wolves

patrolling the edge of my sleep. They keep me safe

from the worst of my nightmares

crushing the fear in their jaws,

then going back on patrol for more. I wonder

how much they know about our family

about the complicated mothering

of she who carried us inside her.

When I was little I had no idea

what she’d been through. She used to say

“Affection is a sign of weakness”

which totally baffled me because she could be

both affectionate and strong. I’d give anything

to understand all of the layers

of tragedy that forced

her shell to become so hard.

After Mom’s last supper, that homemade

mac and cheese,

relatives from beyond the grave came calling:

her parents, grandparents,

and Mom’s favorite dogs.

She greeted them with delight, chatted happily

as she drifted to sleep.

Hallucinations, the hospice nurse said,

but she wasn’t there

when the five never-borns arrived: tall and strong,

salt-and-pepper hair, ice-eyed like Daddy,

high cheekbones like Mom,

and I knew it was time to release our mother

so she could cross the river home

to where the rest of the family was waiting.

tangled

I have two bookcases

filled to spilling

with balls of yarn entwined

with dreams and schemes

for a life creative

enough to knit, stitch

all my prayers into sweaters

and socks and hats,

I have a faded plastic grocery bag

brimming with my most

favorite skeins,

audacious schemes.

Kin unpinned, my mother

was 100 percent wool, unprocessed

and itchy as hell, a hair shirt unraveled

then rerolled like razor wire

—carefully—

into a porcupine abristle

with resentment,

protecting her underbelly

resisting all attempts to untangle

her complications.

That’s the story I am dying

to knit together,

if I could only find

the pattern.

blood moon

I had my last period the month

before my mother died

but years later I still dream

about bleeding,

the alarming crotch trickle

racing to the toilet

berating myself

cuz I didn’t replace the emergency

tampon in my purse

In the dream

I pull down my pants

cursing the useless, translucent

toilet paper

but I stop

cuz it’s not blood,

not anymore

The only thing that flows from my womb

in that dream

and in this waking

is thick, dark ink

word-fertile and raw

ordinary damages

My father lived for five years after my mother died

nobody was more surprised about this than he

three days a week, I’d pick him up at dawn

and we’d head to the gym, where I’d work out

while he sat on the bench, coffee in hand

charming the ladies

then we went to the diner for a delicious,

unhealthy breakfast, I’d read the paper,

he did the crossword puzzle in pen

and we talked

unrolling our family legacies

of trauma and silence

the stoicism that alternates with rage

the kindness that hides anxiety

the struggle to balance darkness with light

walking in the world and hiding from it

the cost of numbing pain,

the weariness of wrestling

the hungry need for forgiveness

the redemption of offering it with no strings

my nephew came home from Afghanistan

in the middle of those years

lots of soldiers from our village were returning

looking much, much older than when they left

I realized that their children would be crippled

by the ghosts of their parents’ war

like I was. I wrote The Impossible Knife of Memory

with those kids in mind. I talked about the book

to my father all the time. He approved,

knowing full well

it was ripped from the pages of our lives.

My favorite scene in that book

takes place in the graveyard

where Hayley ponders the impact of the dead

on the living

how the things once done shape

the not yet dreamed of

she learns how to remember

without being destroyed

Before she died, my mother told me that Daddy

had been institutionalized

diagnosed as manic-depressive

when he was studying

to be a preacher and she worked to pay the bills.

This was right after he beat her

and broke her teeth,

when the ghosts and the dust of war cycloned

through him

and pushed him over the edge.

After that asylum stay

he never received counseling or medication

or therapy

instead, he gutted it out on his knees in prayer

and in long walks by the Erie Canal, begging

for the strength to stay alive

I am eternally, ridiculously grateful

that he found it.

At the end of his life, my father’s mind frayed

at the edges

sometimes the ghosts appeared to be real,

as the veil between the worlds grew thin.

His heart was tired, too.

When a cardiologist suggested a pacemaker

Daddy asked if it would clear the fog

from his brain,

erase the hallucinations, and tame the monsters

busy throwing off their chains,

opening the army trunks

where the real horrors were buried

the doctor said possibly, but probably not

My father stood and said,

“I will not live without my mind,”

then shook the doctor’s hand and told me

it was time to go home.

beeched

Beech forests dance

so slowly, only the wind

can see their grace

patterns slow-gliding

synchronized swans

on a still, dark lake

of dirt

Most trees take care of each other

and the beeches are no exception.

Underground tendrils secretly feed

the girl rooted in the sterile glacial till,

old ones lean to the side

so the boy burned by lightning

gets more sun than his brothers.

Survival of the fittest

is a recipe for loneliness,

the beeches susurrate

if you know how to listen,

guaranteeing a nasty life,

brutish and short. When one

suffers,

all are weakened,

but when everyone thrives,

we dance.

say my name

Halse rhymes with faults

assaults, vaults

halts close to scalds

and haunts

then salts confusion for the unwary

cuz no one can pronounce it

’cept kin

Names have roots deep

like family trees in graveyards

tapping endless wells

guarded by Norns, wyrd sisters

word sisters charged with our fates

Old English roots of

Halse

are tangled in gehálsian

a verb that means “to implore

or invoke the gods;

to speak,”

in Danish, hals means “throat”

William Chalker Halse

fled England in 1798

to Nova Scotia, where he married

a girl named Sarah

her last name

was

. . . . wait for it . . . .

Story

Sarah Story

if I put that in a novel, my editor

would make me cut

it out as too ridiculous to be true

but it is

Halse rhymes with waltz

watch me dance

and don’t forget it

reminder

the wings of angels connect

to their backbones

just behind

their steadfast hearts

tree trunks connect

sun-breathing leaves

chlorphylling with life

to their roots, muddy-dark

the spines of books connect

page to page

writer to reader

teacher to student

page to page

past to future

pain to power

page to page

rage to peace

this note about anatomy

from me

to you

is for the remembering

that after you speak

after you shout

your open mouth

will breathe in

the light for which

you’ve hungered

and your backbone

will unfurl until

you can again dance

to the beat

of your steadfast

heart

POSTLUDE: my why

stories entertain

engage, outrage

uplift, help us

overcome

our troubles

writing rage-poems by the sea

pen, hands, claws stained with ink

until the bottle runs dry

and then I write in blood, spit, and fire

lantern’s light in the mirror

scattering the dark

stories activate, motivate,

celebrate, cerebrate,

snare our fates

and share our great

incarnations of hope

thanks for listening.