Tuesday May 07

On Hiatus

Mary Stone Dockery - Poetry

Mary Stone Dockery is the author of Mythology of Touch, a poetry collection, and two chapbooks, Blink Finch and Aching Buttons. Her poetry and prose has appeared or is forthcoming in many fine journals, including Mid-American Review, Gargoyle, South Dakota Review, Arts & Letters.
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Mary Stone Dockery Interview, with Mia Avramut
 
 
“Chew a bottle cap so your teeth can feel each edge, a knife of memory.” Mary Stone Dockery, what is your first poignant memory, and where is it stored? New brain, middle brain?  (Reptilian is out of question.) Sensory nerve terminals? Teeth? Ovaries? Elsewhere?
 
In my bones, I remember my mother dying. Or rather, at six, my father telling me of my mother’s death. There are some memories before this moment, but they are vague, barely a linger or even pinch. For some reason, this particular memory boils inside my bones, as if someone had snapped my arm or I’d broken a femur as a child and worn a cast for many years after. Her loss is felt there, too, where my body always works to find her.
 
 
I can identify with that. With mother’s death translated into skeletal ache. With other things, too. “You remember lying on a black blanket in his roommate’s bedroom, his chest hair curling around your fingers.” “Sister” and “Recipe for when you forget a past lover’s name” guide the reader through territories of voluptuous, searing intimacy. They make her feel, well, sisterly, embraced by your memories as by her own: never uncomfortable, “faces on one another’s palms”.   This poetry is deeply personal, more so than a memoir, but it reverberates and turns universal through its echoes. To me, it conjures scintillating visions of Lorca and Plath and Dove. Don’t blush. (Or is it the Merlot?)
 
Do the poems we publish here reflect your (direct or distilled) personal experience, or do they inhabit an imaginary poetic space?
 
My sisters all inhabit many of my poems, often as reflections of myself. My brother also makes appearances in much of my writing, and of course, my mother. These poems are all distilled reality – an image, a memory, a feeling, a moment, or a word that may have actually happened all grow the poems into fictional narratives. These poems in particular are deeply personal because my goal is to write the body, where I believe most of memory is stored. But they are mostly imaginary, considering the possibilities, the what-ifs, the I-don’t-knows. Also, I blush easily.
 
 
Better this way, we know where we stand vis-à-vis blood vessels.
 
Now I wonder what your Gestalt is. Do you start building a poem from the deep, acquired knowledge of personal experience, or from the external stimulus emitted by a hectic world of public confessions and newscasts? Top-down? Bottom-up?
 
Most of my poems begin from outward – either newspaper articles or headlines or a personal connection to an image or a word. They are reactions, or part of a dialogue I imagine. When I write a poem, I often include something from other pieces of writing – whether it’s a word, structure, phrase, or even an emotion – in a way collaging my own experiences with another’s. I don’t think these poems are collages, necessarily, but perhaps the process of finding something that I feel a connection with and placing it within my own knowledge and experience somehow helps me fill in the gaps of what I don’t know and wish to know.
 
 
Tell me about your first. (You know, the one you never forget.) No, not that. The poem.
 
There were many poems before the first poem, but none of them felt right. The poem that I’m thinking of did not come quickly –looking back, this poem really is an extension and revision of the same poem I’d tried to write so many times and simply couldn’t find inside of me. It’s one of the first poems where my voice seemed to be clear and fully me. It’s a poem where I felt I discovered something about myself. Writing “Best Trailer in Town” ultimately moved me in the direction I’d been longing to go since I first began writing as a small girl.
 
 
Your poetry is one of private, skillfully shared fact. Is it meant to be read, heard or  ̶  à laJohn Stuart Mill  ̶  overheard?
 
Only a handful of poems feel like they are meant to be heard. These are usually private, but also evocative and sensual. The ones that stun should be heard, I think. But I do tend to have many private poems that I prefer to leave on the page. The speaker is never a voice I can fully represent, I think, and so I leave it to the reader to recreate that voice. The reader can always do it better.
 
 
Teaching. Does it inspire poetry? Bliss? Frustration? Prose? Anecdotes? Synecdoche?
 
Teaching is separate from the poetry process. Even writing that feels like a lie. But I don’t think it is a lie. I love teaching – even as a child I would create spelling and math tests for my younger siblings to finish. But teaching feels like a separate act and it takes a different part of my brain. Perhaps it’s the other way around – my love of poetry inspires my teaching, helps me tell stories to my students to appease their own frustrations with language, and also helps me understand their prose more deeply. I’d rather them get something from my passion than me get something from their struggle.
 
 
In an ideal world, would you teach or write full-time?
 
Write. In a little cottage by the ocean, where I never had to wear shoes. Where I could eat shrimp nearly every day and write in a notebook scraped with sand and go surfing with my husband. What I love about teaching is helping someone realize that they think too little of their own ideas. But ideally, I’d prefer a world where I’d write full-time and teach as a bonus.
 
 
You have ties to Kansas and Missouri, of which I confess I know little, except what Dorothy whispers in my ear on occasion. I suspect this is the case for many Europeans. Tell us about these lands, and about a poet’s life there.
 
My family is from farm country in Northwest Missouri, located near Squaw Creek, down away from the bluffs, near the Missouri River. On the Fourth of July, we would watch the fireworks from my grandparents’ porch as they shot them off in White Cloud, Kansas. During the summer, we’d drive to Falls City, Nebraska to shop at the Dime Store and see a movie at the old theater, often battling tornado weather. Not too far away, you reach Iowa. Growing up, Kansas was simply right across the river – basically the same state, the same place. It has the same trees, at least by the river, and people plant the same crops, eat much of the same cattle. But deep Kansas is more sunflowers, wind, dry. More open. Missouri is greener.
 
The two states, known as rivals, have fostered some of the most amazing writers I’ve ever met: Dr. William Church, Dennis Etzel, Jr, Leah Sewell, Matthew Porubsky, Jennifer Colatosti, Callista Buchen, Gabriela Lemmons, Katie Longofono, Maryfrances Wagner, Amy Ash, Jeff Tigchelaar, Joseph Harrington, Megan Kaminski, Denise Low, Benjamin Cartwright, Kara Bollinger, DaMaris Hill. Also, some amazing writing groups – the Topeka Writer’s Workshop, the Writer’s Place in Kansas City, the Latino Writer’s Collective, Blue Island Writer’s Group, and New Lit OutLoud. The people who make up the groups have inspired me to push myself, to write what matters to me regardless of what’s hip or “in,” and to try new things. These influences are deeply embedded in Midwestern culture. This land has somehow marked its writers and how they feel connected to one another because of topography as well as personal history.
 
 
An impressive lineup! And your description gives me a deeper understanding not only of those places, but also of the images and recalled events in “Recipe”. That poem wraps the reader in nostalgic shrouds and suffuses her with tantalizing gustatory phantoms of red wine paint.  There, I’ve said it. What is your nearest and dearest beverage? Has anyone written about it? Do you two have a history?
 
Once, I might have answered Crown Royal, or any smooth Canadian whiskey. And then Vodka, straight from the bottle. But never tequila and never red wine. More recently, a good amber beer, a local Oktoberfest or Irish Red really warms my palms and gives me good dreams.
 
 
Can you dedicate a short stanza to this exquisite Irish or Oktoberfest fluid?
 
“We drink on the back porch,
glow-in-the-dark balloons strung across the fence.
The beer is amber-rich and goes down quickly.
I’ve been smoking again, can smell it on your neck.
The dog barks at the window and we trace
each other’s shadows, fumble, my hands in your back pocket.
Husband.What sweaty kisses we allow one another
in this heat. My lips swollen with them
and a sudden fever for you, your body.”
 
(from “Because Another Person Asked When We’d Start Having Children” in my latest poetry manuscript One Last Cigarette.)
 
 
Fever…swollen lips… lovers…sisters…fertility…diagnoses. Your poems are steeped in an intense, hyper-perceptive femininity. They tackle the milestones of female existence, on the Stone Dockery-cosmic scale. What is the lot of a female poet today and how is it different from a male’s?  Would you rather ignore the distinctions? 
 
This is one of the more difficult questions for me to approach, because I don’t know really what a male poet goes through today. As an editor, and as a supporter of the Vida Count, I am aware of the numbers. I’ve been truly blessed in my personal endeavors and with publishing because I’ve focused on finding places where I feel my work really fits and I’ve learned how to reject rejection and push forward. That being said – I do feel quite left out when I go to a journal I love and discover only three female poets in an issue of twenty writers. Or when I see contest winners for years in row and find that they are mostly male. I’m not sure what it means. Sometimes it makes me feel like what I write about doesn’t matter to many editors, but because my writing is influenced by the women I read, I know it must matter and that the conversations are out there. Sometimes I worry that people will be turned off by how boldly I write sexuality and femininity – but I can’t help it because it’s what my body knows and because it’s what I end up writing whether I want to or not, so I feel it should somehow, someday be accepted as more than just a “woman’s subject.” At the same time, I have an audience who loves and appreciates the poems I write and I know that this is the reason for my success – this supportive audience who gets it – eroticism, sensuality, roundness, and what I find truly feminine.
 
 
Speaking of bold: I’m thrilled with your “Diagnosis”! Vivid and merciless, it validates my own clinical observations on “mouthing ash into pockmarks” and “bleeding with rubies”. Could you describe, if at all possible, how this poem came to be? I wonder if, for you, it was the beginning ̶ or the end ̶ of a healing experience.
 
A difficult poem, one that went through many different structures. It was the end of writing something I’d been obsessed with for some time. And the poem seems to reflect on the process of that obsession – the topic of my mother for most of my writing life and the ending of that subject matter. Ultimately, this poem was the Bandaid that I needed to apply after realizing much of that was “over.” It doesn’t mean I won’t write about my mother ever again, but it does mean I’ve finished writing about her in one particular way. This poem is the diagnosis of that obsession and the request to move forward.
 
 
“Mythology of Touch”, your mesmerizing, at times obsessive, foray into love, loss, and sex, was released earlier this year, to glowing reviews. Is there anything about this collection, about the process of writing it, or about the way you look at it now, that you have not yet shared with anybody on this good Earth?
 
After reading this book months after publication, I realized how much it seemed to go through the first three years of my marriage in a brutal chronology. I do not – ever – sit down to write about my relationship with my husband. Sometimes I do use this relationship to understand past loves or the loves of my friends, but it wasn’t until seeing it in book form that I realized these poems became confessions of my own fears and frustrations with my marriage, granted in an often overly dramatized fashion. I also realize that this book is very sad, wounded, and I think it’s ultimately the book I’d been practicing writing for over ten years, and I’m truly surprised at the poems that ended up being a part of it. 
 
 
Why is Rufio with you and how did you choose his name?
 
I had puppy fever. Needed one. He came to us at five weeks old with the cutest white stripe down his forehead and onto his back like a Mohawk. We named him after the lost boy from the movie Hook. Mainly because of his Mohawk and we later gave him an even bigger Mohawk so he could fit into our Harley family. He is forever a lost boy – he will never grow up.
 
 
How is he unlike Dorothy’s Toto?
 
He knows English. I swear. He even seems to know how to spell “food” and “egg.” When he wants to go outside he uses his amazing staring power. He has a different staring look when he wants a treat. He sits, lies down, rolls over, shakes with both hands, high fives with both hands, stays, dances, and even plays dead. He would follow us anywhere, but he’d totally do more than bark at a flying monkey. He really likes furry legs.
 
 
A lovely and powerful character! What can you divulge about your upcoming collection? Perhaps a favorite line, or a paradigm shift.
 
My next collection is titled One Last Cigarette, and it feels lighter. The poems are often shorter. There is still a darkness that lingers, but it represents the weight lifted after finishing an MFA program and realizing that my poems can do whatever I ask them to do and that it’s okay for them to do what I’d like them to do. It’s about the next new thing – what’s to come. The ending of my poem “Portrait of a Girl Drawn with Neophobioa” speaks to that:
“If she mapped it again. If she bent over the sink, took him
to the waters. If she cried out and cried out. If she shuddered
feathers. Legs bleeding the whole drive home.”
 
 
That, Mary, gave me shivers. I cannot wait to read the new collection! And so, I cannot help myself. If you were to speculate on where the road of yellow brick might take you, and what it might reveal about you as a poet and as a woman, you would say that…
 
…the road will change colors. It will fade, crumble, and rebuild itself. It will always look back, but not with a Gatsby-esque sadness and longing, but rather to push forward, to see what paths can be found hidden in the tall grass.
 
 
Thank you, Mary. We’ll do our best to follow, reading all the way!
….A sip of pumpkin ale, for the road?
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When You Look at Me, Gray Lungs Shape Your Air
 
 
Your cigarettes remind me
of sex and our copper
scented fingers after.
Louisiana, you say.
And we’ll make promises
to go there, to eat fried oysters,
to smoke near swamps.
We want to capture gator pores
on camera, draw them
into our own skin, black holes
herded into our elbow creases.
When we sit together
on this dark porch,
the sun licking a familiar sky,
wood floorboards splintered tongues
beneath our feet, me unable to look
at anything but the flocks of gnats
hovering above our scorched sidewalk,
we draw trees on each other’s bodies,
pack the branches with wiry nests.
We trace sinew of unrevealed
feathers extending beneath skin.
My feathers hide, pulled in.
Your feathers push toward the surface.
You often point, squeeze your fist,
each branch flinging invisible
birds against the wall.
Go ahead. Call me Thrasher.
I want to be your good bird.
 
 
 
Sister
 
 
Black light dust in your palm
tastes of burn.
 
Cut up Barbie doll legs
sit on your book shelf.
 
Once, we brushed each other’s hair
so long static entered our fingers.
 
Each time we touch
palm to metal,
the sharp slice
of want, of doll
face.
 
This mirror clicks
into place behind us.
Our backs take notice,
turn and twist, spines
crackling like Barbie’s limbs.
 
Toss that rouge napkin
out of the window.
It dances.
 
Sister, you are in my dreams
with long fingernails
and gothic lipstick.
Your mouth curves out
in stitches. How many times
have you re-woven the threads?
How many double knots
exist in the crease
of that smile?
 
The moon enters your back room.
You sit at your desk, hunched,
the knuckles of your spine
bleeding wine.
 
It is here we once cried
over dead mothers.
It is here we found our faces
on one another’s palms.
 
Barbie’s head in the trash can.
She smiles, disconnected,
among broken beer bottles.
 
Sister, I have found your lungs
bruised outside my door.
The steam rising from them
smells of liquor and hot breath.
 
To cut a lock of hair –
 
Once, we looked for fathers
in the cool concrete outside
in stale coffee on the counter
in blackened edges, charcoal paintings.
 
Each time we build
a house around ourselves
we leave out windows.
 
To inject a needle, but no drug.
 
Smear of blush, more dust
along the collar of your jacket.
 
Sister, have you looked beneath the bed
for paper cuts?
 
We walk in and out of rooms.
 
Pull the dangling threads
from my elbows and lips.
 
 
 
Recipe for When You Forget a Past Lover’s Name
 
 
                                                chain-link fence and bolt cutters
                                                vodka, with ice
                                                bee stingers, attached
                                                black light bulbs
                                                merlot paint
                                                empty photo album
                                                bottle caps
                                               
                                               
Pour marshmallow fluff flavored vodka
into four shot glasses and take a sip
every time you hear your own name.
Chew a bottle cap so your teeth
can feel each edge, a knife of memory.
When you find a bee in your glass,
tear the stinger off and tape it
to your photo album. Let your lover watch.
Undress in black light, even though it makes
your skin look ghost-green.
Black lace covering your breasts
will give you a slight voodoo look. Raise your eyebrows.
Cover your fingernails in merlot paint.
Cut the chain-link fence stretched
near your property.
Stand on many sidewalks with your lover
and point at dream houses until a street name
magnifies his dimples and you remember lying
on a black blanket in his roommate’s bedroom,
his chest hair curling around your fingers.
 
 
 
Diagnosis –
 
 
These knuckles fracture          cold weather doors     open with sparrows                 fleeing a dry scene      outside call me a sinner bloody      with biopsy scars mother        eats frozen petals out of urns mouthing ash into pockmarks             skin stretches lamplight           transparent lined paper wrinkled        veins crease my limbs in blue rivers   a mother has a cure in her belt   fury bulletproof lockets          think birthdays think               holidays golden halos burning lines    against shins morning colors               dart toward walls        splatter chain-link flesh           smells of fire       the doctor says hold onto your bandages       bleeding with rubies    smell of fig      of broil