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Overview
Through the persona of Cora Fry, a wife and mother living in a small New Hampshire town, Rosellen Brown explores the ambivalent ties of love, loyalty, marriage, and family in a series of related poems. This volume includes the entire text of Cora Fry (1977), a kind of dramatic monologue, written in spare, simple lines, which describes the young woman's daily life and troubled marriage. A sequel of newer poems, Cora Fry's Pillow Book (1994), confronts the challenges that come with a woman's growth toward middle age, reflecting an older Cora's place in her family, community, and the larger world.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466884137 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2024 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 192 |
| File size: | 489 KB |
About the Author
Rosellen Brown is the author of the novels Before and After, The Autobiography of My Mother, Tender Mercies, Civil Wars, and Half a Heart; the collection of stories Street Games; and the collections of poetry Some Deaths in the Delta, Cora Fry, and Cora Fry's Pillow Book. She lives in Chicago.
Read an Excerpt
Cora Fry's Pillow Book
By Rosellen Brown
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 1994 Rosellen BrownAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-8413-7
CHAPTER 1
CORA FRY
I want to understand light-years.
I live in Oxford, New Hampshire.
When, then, will the light get to me?
The year I die
there'll be no snow.
Look, Nan, the
first shy snow
half falling.
Like moths I
shook out once
from a coat:
they fell down
slowly, so
slowly, and
some woke up
halfway out
into the air.
The rest fell
to the floor
still folded.
Nan, do you think moths dream?
All the men
are on the plows.
It's snowing up-
side down now.
My father
runs this show.
Here he comes, slow,
riding high,
a roar, a
yellow eye
in the ice-fog.
Some men hate him
good. But his
followers
follow in his
slippery footsteps
casting salt,
snow on snow,
December
manna.
I.
"Fry," I said
when he touched me on
my breast. "Do you think
of women,
other women, when
you're touching me there?"
In the dark
I could feel him blink —
butterfly
kiss like I give Nan
on the cheek.
"Sometimes," he said, "sort
of to crank
it up." He half-shrugged
but couldn't move much.
"Don't worry,"
and put his mouth there.
"No one you know."
II.
I thought I'd
try it too. I made
a dozen
faces come bend down
to kiss me,
all neighbors and Frank
from work — but
scared, I turned my head
so hard Fry
said "Hey kid,
should I go brush my teeth
again?" I
gave my mouth to him
and saw black.
It takes something I don't have
and don't want. So it's Fry now
forever.
I go on Sunday
for some mystery.
But Reverend Merman
takes my hand and milks
it like an udder.
I blame myself but
at the door he dries
me out until I
crack. Gossip seeps in,
face powder, after-
shave, sermon on hope,
oh Merman, mermaid,
I give a dollar
(what with inflation
that saves half a soul)
and the hymn. Jesus
himself could sit down
beside me here and
find me out to lunch:
Chicken. Rice. Green peas.
One bad winter
my father poached
a deer and I died
thousands of hard
separate deaths
waiting for the
sheriff to come.
The blue light swung
across my wall
one snowbound night.
I stopped breathing.
I woke up Sam.
But it was just
the deputy,
fat Lloyd the tease,
coming to get
Daddy, his plow
and all, to pull
some foreign car
out of his field.
"Some kid got throwed
clear in a bank,
but he hit hard."
I clamored till
I got to come,
in Dad's army
blanket, shivering.
The boy was still
lying in blue
shadows, his arms
out like a snow
angel. He woke
after a while,
blood in his mouth,
swearing he had
only one beer.
The sheriff laughed
and winked at us.
Lloyd muttered "Bull ?"
Quarter to four
on a moony
night in late March
I swallowed hard
and the deer went down.
I saw Chickering Webb today.
He put his whole hand on my thigh
once in the high school library.
I kept smiling and took it off.
That was the day before he went
crazy, and holed up in a house
with Judy Carney. Poor Miss Sleigh,
it was her house they chose to have
their orgy in. They defamed all
her father's books (Earl Sleigh the judge),
they gummed the walls with Crisco and
they gashed the sheets and cracked her bed.
Nobody ever said Judy
went crazy too. She wouldn't press
charges or tell us anything.
Chip thinks people stop
when he can't see them.
The summer people
load their cars and go
out of Oxford's sight,
far out of mind — though
every December
the Johns send a card
crammed with skyscrapers
and lit store windows
to whet my envy.
This year a tiny
car dragged a huge tree
through downtown traffic.
It's a game we play,
postmark to postmark.
Fist raised against fist.
For Oxford this year,
I sent a single star.
When the snow
got up to the window frame,
grainy as
sugar, each crystal a face
in a crowd
and the crowd silent for death,
do you know,
I wanted a field pale green
with sheep sorrel —
warm and sour,
those light clover heads shaking,
"Everything's shaggy, newborn. Lie down here
and eat me!"
What are friends for, my mother asks.
A duty undone, visit missed,
casserole unbaked for sick Jane.
Someone has just made her bitter.
Nothing. They are for nothing, friends,
I think. All they do in the end —
they touch you. They fill you like music.
The moonless night
the ice hill
the snow without shadows
are mine because
I need them.
I drive down the long slope
in first, waiting
to lose hold
and slip to the bottom.
They'll find the car
pulverized
and my shadow for shame.
But it all holds:
luck, gears — sand
to the stop sign.
Bless the sweet town grit!
Joe Fox
sent his kids away
to school.
I think
if they'd been some way
special —
too smart
or sick or dumb ?
To me,
Joe said,
they're special: they're mine.
Then what
the hell
does that make mine, asked
Father.
Makes 'em
yours, I guess, said Joe.
Sam beat
the buttons off Tom's coat
for that,
and I
loved Meg so much I
stuck my
tongue out
at her for a month.
Cut her,
Cut her,
Father taunted,
see if
she bleeds
red or white or
don't you think it's
blue now?
I go to work because it pays.
I go to work to get away.
I go to work to change my face.
I go to work to wash my hands
and wear a wig to save my head.
(I leave mine home.)
I go to work to be unknown
and in the kitchen sweating rain
I put a heavy tray down full
and watch the new man watching me.
What messages between his eyes
and mine there's room for here. ? He's thin
as someone's undernourished son.
If I go ask for some glasses,
depending on my voice and where
my shoulders are, compared to his,
I could make room on his pillow
for my head, with or without wig.
I move my tray the other way.
Felice moves then, smiling her gap-
tooth grin. Her thighs, I think, open
and close, mouth breathing mostly in,
chattering at men endlessly,
wanting to be shut, not sweetly.
Felice has stopped two babies quick.
Times she thought they were taking care.
"Don't trust them, Core, with a blind nun.
They could care less. No matter how
they watch your ass, it's yours to watch."
The salesmen's convention
means ass cooked to order,
complained about, drinks spilled,
can't I sit on their lap,
see what they've got for me,
"a very special tip."
I put tapioca
and coffee down, smiling,
smiling as if I'm deaf
until I hear this one
shark-shouldered manager
lean to his friend and say
"That Billie Holiday,
before she got big-league,
some café in Harlem,
brought change between her lips.
And I don't mean her mouth,
pal, I don't mean her mouth."
I slam his second cup
of coffee, not well aimed —
I'd love to singe his lap
so he'll see purple pain
next time he gets it up
for waitress, wife, or whore.
It splashes on his cuff.
I'll live without his tip.
Nan curled in my lap.
Look at the picture: spaghetti legs!
I think I was happiest right then,
when she pulled my breasts
right inside out, like party favors ?
* * *
"That's what they're for, Nan,"
I tell her when Chip pats them gently.
When she needs to know
I'll warn her men only think they own
your breasts. When Fry bends
to them, sometimes it feels like Nanny
or Chip, and I cry.
"Did I hurt you, hon?" he'll say. I swear
they let down milk for him.
The flowers won't grow
in the north window.
Grandmother Rule
I know went mad.
She starved to bone
and broke herself.
Mother says all
the women in
the family do,
this way or that,
which leaves some room
for Nan and me.
When it comes time
to read her will
we'll pick our pain
slowly and well:
the family jewel.
The closets are going to explode.
The table is going to collapse.
The sink is sinking.
The door just slams and slams.
The baby's crying, where's his sister?
Don't jump on me, my bones are empty.
My joints are being washed and ironed.
I'm getting an extra hour of sleep.
Before there is no more to heal up,
I'm taking the cure: I pass. I pass.
Fry says a word
in my poor ear
I could do with-
out. In the dark
all of me frowns.
He'll be sorry
when he gets there.
Reverend Merman
tried to convince us
only the seasons
are real. They prevail,
is how he said it.
And, friends, they triumph.
They do. But meanwhile —
what a bother — here
we are. Here I am.
Rain's in the bucket,
cow's in the pea patch,
the pigs want dinner
and so do the kids.
I think I'll tell them
when winter prevails
on them, they won't be
hungry anymore:
they'll be snowchildren
in the great triumph
of time over tooth
and nail. I'll tell them,
Go melt on God's fool.
I watch my cousin Valerie
who lives at the top of Brick Hill,
riding Sim's arm, smiling, smiling.
She's young, it's enough just to find
some dark place to lie down with him,
no steering wheel, no mosquitoes,
and know that everybody knows.
She listens to him talk football.
She prods him and laughs a little.
Doesn't she know the end's written?
When he sees her lie in the light,
finds one hair under her nipple,
she's got her Tupperware together,
he puts his ear to her swollen
belly for the first child only.
He says she was a good listener,
he watches the ball come toward him
out of the snow of the TV,
he catches it. Now it's the ball
of his gut, tight with fries and beer.
After her third the doctor winks:
"I took that husband-stitch for you,
dear." He thinks that's what holds husbands,
the tuck he takes in the yard goods.
He's a husband, doesn't he know
they want to graze in new meadow?
What holds them is what lets them go.
The diving crew
is under ice.
My father says
muffled goodbyes,
walks to the hole
and disappears.
We stand knotted
in a corner
of the wind-wall,
away from the
mother whose child
stiffens far down
in a stone shroud.
We don't know her,
this visitor
who brought her son
for evergreens
and frozen ponds,
a white Christmas
up in Oxford.
We only hear
her voice rising
to beat against
the wind's sharp wall.
Bubbles rise. My
silver father
stands dripping ice.
Shaking he spits
the child out whole,
and then he cries.
That table:
white oblong
blue-bordered
enamel,
chipped and clean.
Hit it right
with a spoon,
it rang out
loud for you.
Our kitchen's
all in it.
'45?
'48?
The baking —
the bread pail
hitched on tight,
screwed with that
big silver
butterfly;
me cranking
our breakfast
for the week.
The turkey
set on its
buttered rear
like a dog
met with an
accident.
The berries
giving up
their hard stems.
My homework
Mama cleaned
all around
with her rag.
Her housedress —
pink and green.
Bobby sox;
Mother in
red loafers;
me with my
winking dimes.
Sentiment
hides under
the blue rim
out of sight
like chewed gum.
Was it mine,
that childhood?
Sweet and soft. ?
Now see me
saving it,
even when
it gets too
hard to chew.
Did you know during
the Second World War
they turned the lights out
"in the country" too,
and listened for planes
roaring in German?
Even New Hampshire
had targets, though God
only knows which hill
we thought they wanted.
I was a child called
Cora Pearl Hubberd
you could hear crying
all over town,
shamelessly. I thought
I was about to
die. Nothing fancy:
just die in the dark
of war, of missing
my father.
* * *
My cousin Norb died in a tree
by sniper fire in Anzio.
I always pictured a monkey
and in my head changed the subject,
that was so disrespectful.
All I remembered of Norbert
from Keene, smart enough for glasses,
was how he peed in the bushes
visiting us when he was twelve.
How when he pulled his zipper up
he said, "Don't look at me like that.
Sometimes a man has got no choice."
I was staring hard at his face
that was very blond and pink veined
to keep from watching how his hands
tugged and propped up and then tucked back
the intricate thing he carried
sheathed, the way my brother hid his.
Worse than the monkey, when I heard
he died I saw his silver arc
that spattered on the day lilies
saying NORBERT WAS HERE and gone.
All the places
I've never been
Minnesota
Greenwich Village
Daytona Beach
I don't really
want to go there
but just to see
how people look
with thousands of
grandmothers from
foreign countries
(none in English)
Would the difference
(Mother says yes)
make me nervous?
My father
says choice rots
the bones like
candy rots
the teeth.
I have a neighbor
who is always deep
in a book or two.
High tides of clutter
rise in her kitchen.
Which last longer, words,
words in her bent head,
or the clean spaces
between one perfect
dusting and the next?
Up to East
Oxford, the distant cousins
of rich men
live scratching in their good names
right on the
blacktop shoulder where all the
action is.
NIGHT CRAWLERS BODY WORK BRAKES
DRINK FRESCA
Their trailers rust. Their old cars
stand grazing
like horses put to pasture.
Chip runs like a squirrel
his cowlick his tail
* * *
And Nan is old
enough to smile
like a daughter-
in-arms. Secret.
No teeth showing.
* * *
They do gnaw me
sometimes.
Their voices grind
fine, my
thumbs, my liver.
I can't
be a weapon,
it would
be too easy
to pinch, to kill,
to say
some word they won't
forget.
And if I died
would they
remember me
shouting?
Fry's hands have life lines
traced black to the bone.
He rests them against
my weak-white shoulder
and I shouldn't wilt.
Fry who walks through worlds
I can barely see,
fixing things that have
no voices: Brakes.
Clocks.
They're the animals
he feeds tenderly
or gives a light shove
to ease their movement.
On the bureau now
our old healed clock glows
under its warm skin.
You can do
anything alone
anything but
laugh out loud
We watch them hoist a streetlamp
over the bridge at the brook.
The stiff crane squeaks and lunges.
Why do we need a night light?
The dark outside my bedroom
is the safest dark there is:
sweet-smelling, familiar.
Glow worms wink up from the road
after rain. The moon comes back
and it shines like melting ice.
Now I study hard shadows
that were never there before.
I wait for someone to bolt
out of the light toward my door.
Coming home late from work,
I stopped the car one long thirsty minute
on the hilltop near my father's meadow.
Something plunged and tossed in the center
like a show animal in a lit ring.
He threw his head, he shook it free of air,
his legs flung whichway. There were the antlers,
a forest of spring twigs that rose and dived,
dancing. Singing, for all I knew, glassed in.
I rolled my window down
knowing I'd lose him, and I did: he ducked
into nowhere. But I had that one glimpse,
didn't I, of the animal deep in
the animal? Of his freedom flaring
only a quick blink of light? I think spring
must be a crazy water animals drink.
I used to
play here but
the field was
so much bigger
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Cora Fry's Pillow Book by Rosellen Brown. Copyright © 1994 Rosellen Brown. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Cora Fry,
Cora Fry's Pillow Book,
Also by Rosellen Brown,
Copyright,