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The CRC Blog welcomes submissions from published and unpublished poets for
BACKSTORY OF THE POEM series. Contact
CRC Blog via email at caccoop@aol.com
or personal Facebook messaging at https://www.facebook.com/car.cooper.7
***This is the ninety-ninth
in a never-ending series called BACKSTORY OF THE POEM where the Chris
Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific poem and how the poet wrote
that specific poem. All BACKSTORY OF THE POEM links are at the end
of this piece.
****All images are given copyright permission granted by Tameca Coleman
for this CRC Blog Post only unless otherwise noted.
Below Left: Title Photo - Tameca L, Coleman in March of 2019
Below Left: Title Photo - Tameca L, Coleman in March of 2019
“Mermaid, 1969”
by Tameca L Coleman
Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form? This particular poem actually started as an interview. I was creating a long essay for an auto/biographical course during my undergraduate studies at Metro State College of Denver (now MSU).
I started with my grandmother who told me never to ask my
grandfather about this time. Grandma was fiercely protective, and even said
that I should just go ahead and make some things up. She told me a few things,
like how her, my mother and aunt used to drive to the coast to look for
seashells and watch the sun set, and how everything was so green. She told me
about the market, and taking all the classes she could to pass the time, how
the air force paid to have the family pack up their whole life and move it overseas,
and how the appliances didn’t work because the plugs were different than in the
US, and how this rendered their American appliances useless.
But, when it came to my grandfather’s part of the story, Grandma explicitly told me that if I ever asked about that time, I ran the risk of sending him into an emotional tailspin because his experience was truly horrible, and to boot, he carried a lot of guilt in regards to the role he helped play out during that war.
I did some research with what time I had, and learned about
some of the terrible things America did. I also learned about how a group of
angry locals who were so fed up with American presence that they even threw
Molotov cocktails (Below) at the school buses headed towards military bases. My grandmother
told me about that specifically, and how school on the base was cancelled for
long periods of time because of such scares. I did my best to weave all of
these findings into my biographical account.
I never thought I would look at that biographical piece
again, but the next semester, in one of my undergraduate poetry classes, I
pulled the essay out of its box of papers.
In my mind, there was so much irony
in the fact that for my mother, this was one of the very best times of her
life, and for almost everyone else involved, it was a time of stress because of
the known dangers connected with the war. This point of irony became an anchor
for me as I revisited the pages. I pulled out my mother’s account surrounding
one moment, the visioning of this mermaid on the rock, and added enough
background details to set readers in place. I tried to keep as much of my
mother’s innocence during those times intact, and also remembering road trips
we had taken when I was young, my brothers, parents and myself with my
grandparents. I researched what I needed to. For example, were there starfish
and conk shells on the Vietnam beach?
In my mind, there was so much irony
in the fact that for my mother, this was one of the very best times of her
life, and for almost everyone else involved, it was a time of stress because of
the known dangers connected with the war. This point of irony became an anchor
for me as I revisited the pages. I pulled out my mother’s account surrounding
one moment, the visioning of this mermaid on the rock, and added enough
background details to set readers in place. I tried to keep as much of my
mother’s innocence during those times intact, and also remembering road trips
we had taken when I was young, my brothers, parents and myself with my
grandparents. I researched what I needed to. For example, were there starfish
and conk shells on the Vietnam beach? 
Has this poem been published before? And if so where? The poem was published a few different places, including Pirene’s Fountain, admittedly quite some time ago: --> http://www.pirenesfountain.com/archives/issue_05/current_issue/coleman_temeca.html
Anything you would like to add? Thank you again for reaching out to me to guest blog on your project.
When
Mom wasn’t making cakes
or
practicing her off island dialect
of
Japanese to the scowling market ladies,
when
she wasn’t taking classes on ikebana,
when
my sister and I were not at school
on
the Kadena air force base,
she
drove us across Okinawa.
We’d
hang out of the windows,
hair
plastered to our necks, enthralled
by
green on green, terraces and vineyards and jungles
green,
women with baskets on their heads
traveling
down the road in their bare feet.
We
passed cart-driven men, their ox carrying
bundles
of sugarcane. We left them in dust,
giggled
as we passed, waved and smiled,
pointed
until Mom made us stop.
These
were the best times for me:
When
the car arrived at the reef,
after
we’d seen the oranges, yellows,
and
the reds of the sun setting over the water,
after
fried chicken and Nehi soda,
after
the first sighting of stars,
we
hunted cowries with our flashlights,
the
drying starfish and conk shells there.
We
found shells nicked by seagull beaks,
with
something inside of them, still living.
We
found sea glass, coins, trinkets, sand
dollars
and oyster shells.
One
night there was a woman
balanced
on a rock over the water.
She
was just sitting there, running
a
comb through her impossible length
of
hair. At first I thought
her
a mermaid, but her feet
folded
to her side like arms
hugging
in close. Her tattered
skirt
and ill-fitted blouse
waved
in the cooling night.
Her
hair, greyed-black, whipped
at
the rock, just as the air force jets
sped
across the sky on their courses
to
and from Vietnam.
She
became a silhouette against the sunset,
etched
behind my eyes, forever.
tameca.coleman@gmail.com
BACKSTORY OF THE POEM
LINKS
001 December 29, 2017
Margo
Berdeshevksy’s “12-24”
002 January 08, 2018
Alexis
Rhone Fancher’s “82 Miles From the Beach, We Order The Lobster At Clear Lake
Café”
003 January 12, 2018
Barbara
Crooker’s “Orange”
004 January 22, 2018
Sonia
Saikaley’s “Modern Matsushima”
005 January 29, 2018
Ellen
Foos’s “Side Yard”
006 February 03, 2018
Susan
Sundwall’s “The Ringmaster”
007 February 09, 2018
Leslea
Newman’s “That Night”
008 February 17, 2018
Alexis
Rhone Fancher “June Fairchild Isn’t Dead”
009 February 24, 2018
Charles
Clifford Brooks III “The Gift of the Year With Granny”
010 March 03, 2018
Scott
Thomas Outlar’s “The Natural Reflection of Your Palms”
011 March 10, 2018
Anya
Francesca Jenkins’s “After Diane Beatty’s Photograph “History Abandoned”
012 March 17, 2018
Angela
Narciso Torres’s “What I Learned This Week”
013 March 24, 2018
Jan
Steckel’s “Holiday On ICE”
014 March 31, 2018
Ibrahim
Honjo’s “Colors”
015 April 14, 2018
Marilyn
Kallett’s “Ode to Disappointment”
016 April 27, 2018
Beth
Copeland’s “Reliquary”
017 May 12, 2018
Marlon
L Fick’s “The Swallows of Barcelona”
018 May 25, 2018
Juliet
Cook’s “ARTERIAL DISCOMBOBULATION”
019 June 09, 2018
Alexis
Rhone Fancher’s “Stiletto Killer. . . A Surmise”
020 June 16, 2018
Charles
Rammelkamp’s “At Last I Can Start Suffering”
021 July 05, 2018
Marla
Shaw O’Neill’s “Wind Chimes”
022 July 13, 2018
Julia Gordon-Bramer’s
“Studying Ariel”
023 July 20, 2018
Bill Yarrow’s “Jesus
Zombie”
024 July 27, 2018
Telaina Eriksen’s “Brag
2016”
025 August 01, 2018
Seth Berg’s “It is only
Yourself that Bends – so Wake up!”
026 August 07, 2018
David Herrle’s “Devil In
the Details”
027 August 13, 2018
Gloria Mindock’s “Carmen
Polo, Lady Necklaces, 2017”
028 August 21, 2018
Connie Post’s “Two
Deaths”
029 August 30, 2018
Mary Harwell Sayler’s
“Faces in a Crowd”
030 September 16, 2018
Larry Jaffe’s “The
Risking Point”
031 September 24,
2018
Mark Lee Webb’s “After
We Drove”
032 October 04, 2018
Melissa Studdard’s
“Astral”
033 October 13, 2018
Robert Craven’s “I Have
A Bass Guitar Called Vanessa”
034 October 17, 2018
David Sullivan’s “Paper Mache
Peaches of Heaven”
035 October 23, 2018
Timothy Gager’s
“Sobriety”
036 October 30, 2018
Gary Glauber’s “The
Second Breakfast”
037 November 04, 2018
Heather Forbes-McKeon’s
“Melania’s Deaf Tone Jacket”
038 November 11, 2018
Andrena Zawinski’s
“Women of the Fields”
039 November 00, 2018
Gordon Hilger’s “Poe”
040 November 16, 2018
Rita Quillen’s “My
Children Question Me About Poetry” and “Deathbed Dreams”
041 November 20, 2018
Jonathan Kevin Rice’s
“Dog Sitting”
042 November 22, 2018
Haroldo Barbosa Filho’s
“Mountain”
043 November 27, 2018
Megan Merchant’s “Grief Flowers”
044 November 30, 2018
Jonathan P Taylor’s
“This poem is too neat”
045 December 03, 2018
Ian Haight’s “Sungmyo
for our Dead Father-in-Law”
046 December 06, 2018
Nancy Dafoe’s “Poem in
the Throat”
047 December 11, 2018
Jeffrey Pearson’s “Memorial
Day”
048 December 14, 2018
Frank Paino’s “Laika”
049 December 15, 2018
Jennifer Martelli’s
“Anniversary”
O50 December 19, 2018
Joseph Ross’s “For Gilberto Ramos, 15, Who Died in
the Texas Desert, June 2014”
051 December 23, 2018
“The Persistence of
Music”
by Anatoly Molotkov
052 December 27, 2018
“Under Surveillance”
by Michael Farry
053 December 28, 2018
“Grand Finale”
by Renuka Raghavan
054 December 29, 2018
“Aftermath”
by Gene Barry
055 January 2, 2019
“&”
by Larissa Shmailo
056 January 7, 2019
“The Seamstress:
by Len Kuntz
057 January 10, 2019
"Natural History"
by Camille T Dungy
058 January 11, 2019
“BLOCKADE”
by Brian Burmeister
059 January 12, 2019
“Lost”
by Clint Margrave
060 January 14, 2019
“Menopause”
by Pat Durmon
061 January 19, 2019
“Neptune’s Choir”
by Linda Imbler
062 January 22, 2019
“Views From the
Driveway”
by Amy Barone
063 January 25, 2019
“The heron leaves her
haunts in the marsh”
by Gail Wronsky
064 January 30, 2019
“Shiprock”
by Terry Lucas
065 February 02, 2019
“Summer 1970, The
University of Virginia Opens to Women in the Fall”
by Alarie Tennille
066 February 05, 2019
“At School They Learn
Nouns”
by Patrick Bizzaro
067 February 06, 2019
“I Must Not Breathe”
by Angela Jackson-Brown
068 February 11, 2019
“Lunch on City Island,
Early June”
by Christine Potter
069 February 12, 2019
“Singing”
by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum
070 February 14, 2019
“Daily Commute”
by Christopher P. Locke
071 February 18, 2019
“How Silent The Trees”
by Wyn Cooper
072 February 20, 2019
“A New Psalm
of Montreal”
by Sheenagh Pugh
073 February 23, 2019
“Make Me A
Butterfly”
by Amy Barbera
074 February 26, 2019
“Anthem”
by Sandy Coomer
075 March 4, 2019
“Shape of a Violin”
by Kelly Powell
076 March 5, 2019
“Inward Oracle”
by J.P. Dancing Bear
077 March 7, 2019
“I Broke
My Bust Of Jesus”
by Susan Sundwall
078 March 9, 2019
“My Mother
at 19”
by John Guzlowski
079 March 10, 2019
“Paddling”
by Chera Hammons Miller
080 March 12, 2019
“Of Water
and Echo”
by Gillian Cummings
081 082
083 March 14, 2019
“Little
Political Sense” “Crossing Kansas with
Jim
Morrison” “The Land of Sky and Blue Waters”
by Dr. Lindsey
Martin-Bowen
084 March 15, 2019
“A Tune To
Remember”
by Anna Evans
085 March 19, 2019
“At the
End of Time (Wish You Were Here)
by Jeannine Hall Gailey
086 March 20, 2019
“Garden of
Gethsemane”
by Marletta Hemphill
087 March 21, 2019
“Letters
From a War”
by Chelsea Dingman
088 March 26, 2019
“HAT”
by Bob Heman
089 March 27, 2019
“Clay for
the Potter”
by Belinda Bourgeois
#090 March 30, 2019
“The Pose”
by John Hicks
#091 April 2, 2019
“Last
Night at the Wursthaus”
by Doug Holder
#092 April 4, 2019
“Original
Sin”
by Diane Lockward
#093 April 5, 2019
“A Father
Calls to his child on liveleak”
by Stephen Byrne
#094 April 8, 2019
“XX”
by Marc Zegans
#095 April 12, 2019
“Landscape
and Still Life”
by Marjorie Maddox
#096 April 16, 2019
“Strawberries
Have Been Growing Here for Hundreds of
Years”
by Mary Ellen Lough
#097 April 17, 2019
“The New
Science of Slippery Surfaces”
by Donna Spruijt-Metz
#098 April 19, 2019
“Tennessee
Epithalamium”
by Alyse Knorr
#099 April 20, 2019
“Mermaid,
1969”
by Tameca L. Coleman
