Sweetness that is not sweet February 24, 2013
As if an interruption of a chain of thought, she posted an
oddly nostalgic poem about orange juice.
In some ways, it reminds me of the poem she wrote about Koch
in that it uses a lot more descriptive language than it typical for her poetry,
which is generally more oblique, using specific details and use of color.
More importantly, it talks about her upbringing,
uncomfortably comfortable, recalling a painful and unhappy childhood, since much
of her early life was largely about survival.
The poem opens with her padding down to the kitchen in her pjs,
struggling to open the refrigerator door where inside she searched for the
carton with a picture of an orange on it.
Again, she gives specifics unusual for her poetry, about the
“cool blue light” and the vague scent of “plastic and sauce and freon.”
She reflects on the place from which the oranges that make
the juice come from, and then alludes to the dark terrors of her life, this
ritual of drinking to help her distance herself from those “less nice,” thoughts
and fears left over from the day before (a clever use of turn of phrase,
implying left overs that are food, and the residue of life’s feelings). And how
the cool air from the refrigerator blue through her “mussed, uneven hair,” the
open door caused the refrigerator motor to whir in “fits and starts.”
Too short to actually reach the carton for herself, she had
to rely on her moth to pull it down for her, after which she (her mother)
plunked her (the poet) down at the brown table with grooves that accommodated expansion
“leaves” that made the table larger when they needed more room at the table,
largely abandoned so that the grooves collected detritus from spilled meals.
All this bearing an eerie resemblance to my own childhood
and a similar table, where she and her brother did what I did, digging out the
gunk with a butter knife (I always used the prongs of a fork) making mountains
of this on the sides.
Her mother put the glass of concentrated juice in front of
her “and the acrid too sweet sip” launched her out of the last “cobwebs of
sleep.”
Then, dressed in clothing her mother picked out for her and
donning her backpack she went off to school where she faced the abuse other
kids handed out. And the juice that had served as inspiration became a bitter
brew that bit at the back of her throat.
The good and evil, the right and wrong, the positive and negative
of this symbolic beverage rises above a mere nostalgia for an idyllic past,
which was not at all ideal, but a series of traumas she needed to constantly overcome,
and looking back as an adult, it was a bitter brew that was too sweet and still
causes her heart to race.
Unlike Elliot, who measured out his life in coffee spoons and raised the question as to whether he
should after tea and cakes and ices have the strength to force the moment to
its crisis, she drinks her coffee black, a symbol of the harsh reality of
growing up as opposed to the illusions of sweetness of youth, when sweetness in
retrospect was no sweet at all.
As an adult, she does not “pad” over to the refrigerator in
the morning as she did as a child, yet there are rare times when she opens the
door to the refrigerator and expects to see that carton there, its bright face
providing hope for the upcoming day, and the promise that she might find hope
for the rest of her life.
But it is a promise never fulfilled in the past, and by implication
that it cannot be relied about for the future either.
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