9
Georgia Jones-Davis
Georgia was born in Southern California and was a journalist for many years. Her roots in journalism and in this part of the world come through strongly in her poetry. Events in the news, the Valley, the weird and goofy American world of Tarzana, the foibles of suburbia’s inhabitants, the plight of vets from pointless wars, the plight of the artist, the fraught relationships between parents and children, the eruptions of foreign volcanoes, the longing for faraway times and places where one can be free from the constraints and clutches of drab commercialism—these things and many more besides make up Georgia’s poetic universe. She came to poetry early but left after a particularly ugly encounter with some Judge of Fine Writing. She returned twenty years later and is now actively involved with the Valley Contemporary Poets and has a new chapbook out, called Blue Poodle, available to buy today. Now free from the destructive Gatekeepers who hindered her early development, she devotes much or most of her time to poetry. I am grateful for her service and her work, and very pleased she’s agreed to read for us today.


Blue Poodle

You are girdled in your mother’s
Navajo concha belt,
The black leather dried, cracked.

Some never solve the equation:
Mom and apple pie.
You haven’t.

True you said
There are times you have envied
Orphans.

In your dream last night your mother
Leaped or fell into the ocean.
You dove in, rescued her, wondered why.

At the governor’s tea you and she modeled
Mother-daughter squaw dresses,
Pale pink with silver bric-a-brak,

Flared by crinoline petticoats. How smug
And pretty she looked, how they flashed,
Her conchas, when she swirled.

Always small in your mother’s eyes,
You hoard her valentines addressed
To the world’s worst Jew, the little bitch.

When you were seven
She bought you a blue
Poodle at Los Niños for Valentine’s Day.

Jointed, the legs moved, head swiveled,
Its tongue a fleck a bight red flannel,
The cloth of its body trunk, velveteen,

The curls of its fur
The color of the Santa Fe sky
At the first sign of snow.

So heavy, the goddamn belt,
And the silver conchas are a currency
Impossible to save or spend;

Full moons that rule the roots of warring women,
Unblinking eyes of the sleepless shark,
Scalloped blossoms tarnished by years of freezes.

Jesus, a perfect fit.


 


© 2013 Georgia Jones-Davis
Georgia Jones-Davis was a Featured Poet who read her poetry at the July 2013 Second Sunday Poetry Series