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| High-spirited
and unpredictable, Marcia Southwick's third collection
is, among other things, a remarkable mirror of our place
and time. With unrelenting curiosity and brio, she reflects
our materialistic, shopping-obsessed, informationally-exploding,
and deeply confused culture right back at us, showing us
the world we live in with unflinching honesty and compassionate
affection.
"Southwick's poems are funny and touching, sparked
by her gift for expression and her expert use of collage
and mimicry, but they are also memorable in their quest
to see us all, ultimately, in terms of our spiritual
searches and our deeper needs. If we are lost souls,
Southwick shows us how hilarious our dilemmas can be
and how here, at the end of the century, we flail around
attempting to deal with them. This is a book to treasure,
read aloud from, and share with friends."
--David
Young
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DOROTHY
AND TOTO IN NEW YORK
Dorothy, scooped up by a tornado, plop--lands
on the Fifth Avenue
doorstep of Eileen Ford's Modeling Agency, her
make-up looking
like toxic sludge & her hair like kudzo swallowing
a barn in summer.
Toto, a blind white mutt w/ black circle around
his eye--who noses his way
through alfafa, or hops up steps, turning left
for the kitchen & his bowl,
without bumping into walls--cowers near Dorothy,
his nerves
rattling like dice in a cup. The door opens & Dorothy
learns the book-
on-your-head walk, the hip-swivel & hair-toss.
She learns to hate men
who say, "You gotta call my agent when you
get to L.A.," or "Let's
get a cupp'la stogies & a pint bottle of Double
Black Stout."
(Their charm is linear & superficial--more
persona than personality--
except when undressed for success.) She forgets
Kansas--her aunt's
purple Cabbage Rose wallpaper, raisin pie, & oakleaf
lettuce--
her uncle's handmade bits & spurs and classic
Don Dodge snaffle.
She forgets how easy it was to make worn-out boots
into bird houses.
Once she preferred a good britchen to a crupper--a
britchen keeps
the saddle from moving forward, but unlike a crupper,
a britchen turns
the horse's entire hindquarters rather than just
the tail. Now she forgets
what a crupper is, & also the ten-pound leeks
at the county fair. A long way
from clotheslines in the back yard, she's all chit-chat,
cognac,
weekend tee-shots over the dune--all Tony Bennett
at Carnegie Hall,
&
politically correct faux-fur. She's all pate imported
from Paris,
stone crabs from Miami, violin concerts in glass-enclosed
pergolas,
&
purebred Irish Setters. Alas, poor Toto! He sniffs
Central Park
benches (& grassy patches like home) for Dorothy
but can't catch
her scent, masked by Paul Mitchell hairspray & Coco
Chanel. Toto--
a shaggy mutt so far from his alfafa & his
bowl, so far from his back
yard in Kansas with the smell of laundry flapping
on the line, & sunflowers
that, unbeknownst to him, turned their heads to
follow the arc of the sun.
--Marcia Southwick
Copyright c 1999 by Oberlin College. May not be
reproduced without permission.
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