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| Image from here. |
In Order for Masks, Moreno puts on different masks when facing the different men in her life. For her brother, she orders a mask of "the opposite" "to make nil our old resemblance to each other." For her Father, she orders one like "the chaste face he made" to make him believe it is the same kind. For her lover, she orders one that can "change in shape under his grasping hands." While the idea of putting masks on has been read as deceptive by some guys in glass, I thought it depicted strength in the way women chose deal with the expectations of the men in their lives, almost like as a coping mechanism as a way of achieving order and peace in all her worlds. The mask is her method of quiet defiance; no one really knows what she looks like or is thinking of when she is behind it.
In Speck of Rain Roaring, Tiempo likens the woman to a "string, stretched over rushing wide resonances." I did feel the tension recurring through each of the images she presented, yet consistent throughout was the image of a woman so still, whose continence was unbroken. The things she chose to reference (so subtly I might add) reflect the heaviness she feels with this burden of stillness; Atlas in one, Sisyphus in the next breath. We had a good time trying to decipher how men really felt when women cried. There was one classmate who was so insightful when she said that even in crying, there is a double standard. When women are criers, they are seen as a bit over-dramatic, loony even -- but the idea that a woman so in control of her possessions can shed a single tear is the more troubling and guilt-laden notion for most of the men in our class.
The good thing about these two poems is that they lend themselves to so many different readings. It did make me think about how I myself deal with what is expected of me. It made me think that maybe, instead of feeling melodramatic about not being liked, I must simply deal and put on a mask to facilitate my existence. Maybe it is a woman's adaptability and her willingness to be so that makes her strong.
Order for Masks
by Virginia R. Moreno
To this harlequinade
I wear black tights and fool's cap
Billiken, make me three bright masks
For the three tasks in my life
Three faces to wear
One after the other
For the three men in my life.
When my Brother comes
Make me one opposite
If he is devil, a saint
With a staff to his fork
And for his horns, a crown.
I hope by contrast
To make nil
Our old resemblance to each other
And my twin will walk me out
Without a frown
Pretending I am another.
When my Father comes
Make me one so like
His child once eating his white bread in trance
Philomela before she was raped.
I hope by likeness
To make him believe this is the same kind
The chaste face he made
And my blind Lear will walk me out
Without a word
Fearing to peer behind.
If my lover comes
Yes, when my Seducer comes
Make for me the face
That will in colors race
The carnival stars
And change in shape
Under his grasping hands.
Make it bloody
When he needs it white
Make it wicked in the dark
Let him find no old mark
Make it stone to his suave touch
This magician will walk me out,
Newly loved
Not knowing why my tantalizing face
Is strangely like the mangled parts of a face
He once wiped out.
Make me three masks.
Speck of Rain Roaring
by Edith K. Tiempo
Ich bin eine Saite I am a string,
Uber rauschende breite stretched over rushing
Resonanzen gespannt. wide resonances.
- Rilke -Rilke
Did she borrow
Her stillness from the chair,
From the book, her drink, the cigarette?
So quiet,
You'd think the other way around,
That it was her self-possession
Settled the chair she sat in,
Enfolded and completed it
With her legs and torso, gouging
A shape that little by little became
Permanent.
For she belonged wherever she was,
Or rather, wherever she was
Belonged to her,
Green calyx around its burden.
The olive nested in her glass.
Even when later he told her: Go,
And do not come back,
It was the capacity to contain herself,
(Atlas, maybe, or Sisyphus)
To hold that rolling rock
Frozen at every locus
On that fickle hill;
To locate herself Pinpoint or
Dust Mote, and the whole
Globe the footstool,
Even when later she dropped
The round tear
That spilled and spilled inside of him,
Sweat in his pores,
Rheum in his eyeballs,
Blood in his eardrums,
Speck of rain roaring,
To swell the water floods,
Even then,
When it was his rage
That gnashed and cut
His own thick tongue.
