Gabriella Brand….

Eastern Iowa Review and PortYonder Press just produced an anthology called All Things Anne (of Green Gables). My short story Akage appears in its pages. The setting for Akage is Japan, not Prince Edward Island, but maybe you can guess what the title means.

Read it here: http://portyonderpress.com or BELOW:

Akage

The fertility doctor had told Midori that time was running out. In his opinion, she should try to conceive within a year. Certainly before next summer.

When she explained the facts to her husband, Masashi, he didn’t seem all that surprised.

“We married late,” he said, “It stands to reason that we are racing the clock.”

Masashi was a consulting engineer at Mitsubishi, known for his perfectly knotted tie and his devotion to the company. He was nearly forty, with slightly stooped posture from sitting too long at his desk. He assured his wife that he understood the parameters of the baby problem.

 Midori, herself, after hearing the doctor’s opinion, got on the bus as soon as she finished her job tutoring at the Total Language School near Shinjuku. She went all the way to the Kokubunji Temple, where she stood in front of one of the smaller altars, and clapped her hands together and bowed her head.

“O, Kami-sama, I want a baby so bad. Please. This year. As soon as possible.”

She was a petite woman, with pale skin and beautiful black hair cut in a careful bob. Standing there at the altar, in her fashionable autumn coat the color of persimmons, she looked younger than her years. She would be thirty-eight in July.

Later, at the temple store, she bought a good-luck amulet for fertility.

She was not used to praying, so, after a few weeks, she wondered if the gods had turned a deaf ear because she had been so blunt. Perhaps she should have said “please” with a greater degree of politeness.

Masashi suggested she buy a thermometer.

She started to confide in a few friends about her dilemma. How she was now monitoring her body temperature. How she was obsessing over the calendar.

“I’m losing hope,” she said to one of her closer colleagues, an Australian woman named Jennifer.

““Why don’t you try a more relaxed approach?” suggested Jennifer.

She was smiling broadly, looking as if she were about to tell a joke. The gangly Australian teacher had two rows of large teeth, like a stallion, and a twinkle around her eyes. Midori grew very still.

The two colleagues were sitting in the lunchroom. The air smelled of rice balls, hand-soap, and felt-tipped  markers. In the background they could hear the voices, in different languages, of other tutors still working with private students in the cubicles.

Jennifer’s face lost its smile. She stared at Midori and continued her advice.

“Don’t try so hard,” she said, “Chill out. Re-live your honeymoon.”

Midori looked surprised/.

“Our honeymoon? You mean return to Prince Edward Island? That would cost a fortune,” said Midori.

Five years ago, she and Masashi had taken a once-in-a-lifetime tour all the way from Tokyo to Toronto, then on to the Maritime Provinces, with their final destination being the home of Anne of Green Gables. Like so many Japanese, Midori admired the little orphan they all called Akage no Anne, the redheaded Anne.

“Oh, you don’t have to go to the same place,” said Jennifer. “Just re-create the atmosphere.”

But how could Midori and Masashi recreate the wind blowing along the bluffs of that magical spot? How could they recreate the Haunted Wood or the wildflowers blooming in August?

“Look,” said Jennifer, who spoke with an openness that Midori found both shocking and admirable. “You don’t need Prince Edward Island, you’ve got hundreds of charming islands right here in Japan. Pick one and go away for a weekend.”

Midori tried to explain. It wasn’t just that PEI was charming. It was imbued with Anne’s spirit. Both she and Masashi were able to feel it. It was in the air and in the grass and in the sky. It was in the little red-headed Anne actresses who replayed scenes from the books and stood outside the hotels. It was in the carriage rides offered to tourists. She and Masashi had felt so happy there. For those few days, it was as if Anne’s way of being was just another commodity in the world, available to everyone.

 “Well, daydreaming about a storybook is not going to bring you a baby,” said Jennifer, and she picked up her bento box and excused herself.

On one level, Midori knew that Jennifer, with her quick remarks and her forthright opinions, was absolutely right.

Daydreaming didn’t help.

Maybe a quiet weekend with Masashi will do the trick, she said to herself, picking at her tamagoyaki, but not actually eating it.

A few days later, she brought up the idea of an island getaway with Masashi. He was reluctant at first, because he was in the middle of a big project at Mitsubishi. He didn’t want to travel too far from the office.

They ended up booking a ryokan on the island of Enoshima, just a short train ride from their apartment in Tokyo. The inn had crisp white sheets, a beautiful cedar bathtub, and a view of the Lighthouse. Sagami Bay was not the Lake of Shining Waters, but it was pretty enough.

They passed a perfectly pleasant weekend there, lingering over breakfast, visiting the caves, standing on the sandy beach until the sun set.

Unfortunately, in spite of Enoshima’s attractions, the little marker on the home pregnancy test kit stayed in the negative zone.

Then, one day, as Midori and Jennifer were again having lunch in the faculty room at Total Language, Jennifer casually brought up the idea of adoption.

“There are lots of babies in the world who need homes,” she said. “Or older children, even.”

Midori didn’t know any adoptees. Except those called Mukoyoushi, who were adults adopted by families to protect business interests. Adoption of children wasn’t at all a popular custom in Japan.

But the Australian friend persisted.

“Your little Anne, for example. Wasn’t she adopted?”

Midori sighed. Yes, that was true. The carrot-haired girl’s parents had died of typhoid. She had been in and out of orphanages, living with Mrs. Thomas and later with the Hammond family until the Cuthberts had taken her in.

But still, Midori wasn’t sure what Jennifer was suggesting. Midori sat and stared at the tamagoyaki on her plate, but didn’t make a move to eat it.

Jennifer said, “Ne?”, with her best Japanese intonation and then waited for some kind of acknowledgement from Midori.

“I don’t know,” said Midori.

“I mean,” said Jennifer, growing feistier, “ I think it must be a beautiful thing to open your arms to a baby who needs a home.”

Midori raised up her eyebrows and stared at Jennifer.

“Look how well your Anne turned out, right?” continued Jennifer.

“Well, my Anne, as you call her, wasn’t a baby when she arrived at Green Gables. She was eleven years old.”

Midori’s voice was shaking a bit.

“But she was still lovable, right?” said Jennifer.

The two women sat in silence for a while.

In her mind, Midori turned over the pages of her favorite book. She thought about how the saucy little Anne wasn’t so lovable in Marilla’s eyes. Not at first. Nor did she make a good impression on the neighbors. And yet, little by little, Anne Shirley won everyone her over to her side.

Midori thought, too, about the whole idea of disappointment. How Marilla and Mathew had asked the orphanage for a boy, not a girl. How sometimes life doesn’t bring us what we want, or expect, or think we need.

That night she slept poorly. At one point she even dreamed that Akage no Anne showed up at her door. The child was wearing a starched pinafore with purple jam stains all over it; her red tresses were flying away in six directions. Midori took a brush and said to the dreamy creature, “Here, let me fix your hair.” When she woke up, the sensation of smoothing down those long red locks remained on her fingertips.

Midori and Masashi went on one or two other relaxed weekends during the winter, but after a while, the idea seemed pointless and Masashi took to returning to his office on Saturday afternoons and staying late into the night.

Midori decided to put the home pregnancy kit in the back of the bathroom medicine cabinet. She had grown tired of checking it.

Every day she went to work, bought groceries, and came home. She never took the bus out to Kokubunji anymore.

At work, she and Jennifer talked about the weather in Tokyo, how rainy the spring was, how the cherry blossoms would be late. There was no mention of babies, adopted or otherwise.

In the quiet of the evening, with her husband still at the office, Midori would find herself staring off into space, comforting herself by watching a film, listening to music, or leafing through books, including her old battered copy of Anne of Green Gables.

One night, she got to thinking about all the happiness that had come to Marilla and Mathew with Anne’s arrival.  

So many good things, thought Midori.

Her chin started to tremble, then she wept uncontrollably. When Masashi came home he found his wife curled up on the sofa. Her beautiful bobbed hair was stringy and tousled. There were dozens of balled-up paper tissues at her feet, a half-eaten bowl of soup on the low table, the television was illuminated, but silenced.

He took her in his arms, and they talked.

It was actually Masashi who took the first steps. He did thorough research, something he found easy to do. Then he called an agency and made an appointment for both of them to speak to one of the adoption counselors.

In his careful, precise way, Masashi double-checked every page of the complex application.

It was not legal to specify gender. And there was no box to request red hair.

But otherwise, things looked promising.

The Comstock Review is pretty amazing. They’ve been publishing since 1986, as a non-profit organization, devoted to poets and poetry. I’m honored to have my work appear in their Spring/Summer 2019 issue.

Cleft: Inevitable

If I’m the one to go first, I’ll try to remember to leave something on the edge of the crevasse, my gloves so you can remember the shape of my hands, a small candy heart, that photo of the two of us by the Swiss lake.

But if you are the one who leaves first, how will I continue the climb alone?
Of course I can figure out the poles and crampons, the tricky compass.
The technicalities are not the problem.

It will be the absence of footprints, the slap of frost, no warm breath.

I’ve long been fascinated by the Canadian painter and writer, Emily Carr. Who wouldn’t admire a woman who went off – in 1898 – by herself – to stay in aboriginal villages in British Columbia? She was a daring Modernist artist, Canada’s answer to Georgia O’Keefe. At the same time, she was a staunch environmentalist before most people knew the word or understood the concept.

Today, Aji Magazine (pronounced Ah-hee) published a poem of mine about this amazing artist in their “Emerald Issue”. http://ajimagazine.com

Brushed: Emily Carr

No one asked her to come.  She just came. To Cumshewa,
To Haida Gwaii. To The Islands of the People.
A leather satchel, wrinkled like an old woman’s nose,
stuffed with tubes of pthalo blue, camel hair brushes, old rags.
A dented frying pan, blackened by beans, hung
onto the slope of her horse’s back like a metal tail.

She was there to paint the hidden woods and waters,
to sweep the mines of aqua and marine.
Her arrival stirred the native sons, who narrowed their eyes
and hid behind the virgin firs at her first approach.
But the elders knew sacred when they saw it
and praised the transparent quiet of the stranger’s step.

At night she bedded down alone on the forest floor
letting the wolves speak to her, fauve to fauve.
By day, with hurried strokes, she copied the beryl pond,
the turquoise lakes, the blue-green domes.
Before the loggers slashed, before soapsuds curdled streams,
she stashed emeralds onto canvas, none too soon.

I’m just back from Montreal where I participated in the launch of My Island, My City, a collection of new work from forty different writers, sponsored by Montreal’s own Lawn Chair Soirée and edited by Jan Jorgensen. I was delighted to have my poem Skating to China included in this anthology.

If you don’t know Montreal (one of my favorite cities in the world!) you might like a bit of an explanation.

The quick facts are:

1)Montreal is really an island in the huge Saint Lawrence River.

2) Jacques Cartier arrived in the area around 1538 (think about that for a minute!).

3) He was certain that China lay beyond the rapids blocking his further passage. The area south of the city became known as Lachine (China) and still bears that name.

4). Eventually, around 1821, they built a canal to bypass the rapids.

5). You can bike, walk or rollerblade along this now refurbished canal path.

6). It’s really fun to skate to China.

Skating to China

It’s not that hard, even for an old lady with bunions and a bad knee. Bring water.
Start at the Vieux Port and just keep going. A few kilometers or so.
It’s mostly flat, except for a few dips below the highways.
If you’re too chicken to fly downhill, take off your blades and waddle under the Décarie
in your SmartWools alone.
Cyclists, with their lime green jerseys, will buzz past you like flies.
But pay no attention to speed.
Put your skates back on again and continue
Notice how a city, too, takes its time. Getting rooted, decaying, rising again.
See here the graffiti, the crumbling walls, the edge of Montreal unfurling.
Then the greenery, the new and tidy condos, the canal reborn.
All along, the wild smell of the sea will follow you, floating on the Saint Lawrence like
the feather of a gull.
There will be wind and boats and birds and all things marvelous, which you might have
temporarily forgotten even existed, but now you remember, and you’ll want to hold them
inside you, even as you leave them behind.
When you arrive in LaChine, remember why it’s called LaChine.
Turn around.
Skate home

The Alaska Writer Laureate, Peggy Shumaker, provided the poem prompt for the spring issue of Willawaw. The prompt was Parenthood, Unplanned. I’m honored that two of my poems, Edelweiss, and Nest, appear in this issue.

Check them out here:

http://willawawjournal.com/gabriella-brand/

Edelweiss

Mother was always the oldest of mothers.
The gray chignon, the lace-up Oxfords, the little metal cart she pushed back and forth
to the Blue Goose Market because she never learned to drive.
The other mothers kept their hair short, so practical for playing tennis,
riding in convertibles, quick showers after a swim.

Mother, as the oldest of mothers, was a bath person.
The hard-milled soaps, imported from France, the shrimp-colored girdle dropped
onto the tile floor. Sometimes she’d let me sit, as a little girl, on the edge of the tub,
and I’d stare at the flat crepes of her breasts, the two or three hairs growing on her
shins like thistle. Did I come from that body? I would ask.
Yes, she would say, you were a bloom in the desert.

Mother was always the oldest of mothers.
Not frail exactly, but the old country was in her bones.Something slightly brittle.
Given to fretting: wet socks, drafts, sniffles, prunes. Frugal, too, she was, because
there had been a war. She knew people who had eaten shoe leather, put sawdust
in their bread. She could not bear to watch me toss a half-eaten apple into the trash.
So much waste in America, she would scoff.

Mother, as the oldest of mothers, didn’t like surprises.
The questionable report card, the note from the teacher. It was best to prepare her.
She had already suffered the ultimate shock, the one that turned her auburn hair
the color of ash. Once she told me how she thought the doctor had been joking.
But then you appeared, she said, the edelweiss in my winter.

The Nest

She was the grandmother, after all, so she had little choice. But they were a handful,
those two brothers, sullen as sin, given to the surreptitious pinch, the bully stare.

She had brought them home from out West, two little disruptions to her cozy
retirement. One was eight, with scrawny limbs like a toddler.The other was six,
with cheeks pale as chalk.

Their mother was long gone. Some said a half-way house, she was messed up,
that girl. Others thought Las Vegas, a so-called ranch, the legal kind with doctors.

The grandmother said little, except, perhaps, a prayer under her breath. Neighbors
whispered that she, herself, had once been a nun, or a yogini. Who else would have
such patience?

She must have known that nothing would change overnight. Doors would still be
kicked in from time to time, rocks thrown. The kitten would be tortured, its paws
bound with rubber bands.

First came Cleanliness, a nightly bath, the banishment of lice. Godliness would have
to wait while she cured the scarlet scabs of impetigo and taught them how to wash
their necks.

For afternoon snacks, she insisted on apples, cut into fourths, or whole-wheat cookies
that tasted like dust, but she was not above a little bag of M&M’s for chores well done.

That first summer, she pointed out Venus rising in the evening sky, The Pleiades
falling above their heads, the velvet bats flapping around the street lamps, the
natural rhythms.

All her efforts. They won’t make any difference to those kids, said the neighbors.

In the spring,she took them to see the nest, waking the boys each day at dawn,
showing them how to focus the field glasses on the wisps of straw,the fragile eggs.

One morning two little birds, barely feathered, cracked through the shells. The boys
watched as the mother bird chewed the worms herself before dropping them into
the gaping baby mouths.

In time the boys would understand about hunger and nests and the natural order
of things. For now, all she could give them was the safety of the morning meadow,
and the future hope of flight.

Gyroscope Review has a new issue coming out.  One of my poems appears in its pages (both print and online).  Check it out here:

Socks, then and now

We’re drinking the water that used to be sky,
We’re standing on ground that used to be sea.
The turning is constant, it’s all on the wheel.

See these socks? The hand-made ones with the stripes?
Do you know where they came from?
Before the skeins of wool? Before the sheep was sheared?

Why they were stars, of course. And storms. And blades of grass, like tongues.
They were buzzing clover. And sucklings of milk.

We should never cease to marvel. At our socks. Or anything else.

(Honeycombs, for instance)
I tell you this because I am old.

When I was younger, I didn’t understand about comings and goings.
Back then, if a seam scratched, if the socks sagged,
I’d snarl and sulk, even as the aunties would knit me a new pair.

But now, I smile, because it all seems so clear.
I’m breathing the dust that used to be rock,
I’m eating the bread that used to be dirt.
And I’m pulling up socks that used to galaxies.

You can try to look for separation between yourself and the rain, but you will not find it.

Now that I am ancient, I expect my socks to rub and gape and finally unravel,
and when they do, (although Lycra takes a long time), I am at peace.