#artist feature

Rosie McFarland sent us a story she was told by a 23-year-old Haitian man named Calos: a powerful memory of losing his most prized possessions forever when he was four years old. We were curious about what happened after the story ended, so when Rosie suggested we interview Calos for a feature, we jumped at the chance. Below you will find Rosie’s story of how she met Calos, our questions for him regarding his tale and his current life in Haiti, and photos of him and other Haitians that Rosie met during her time there.

- Jen Lombardo, Non-Fiction Editor

Calos is all muscle and smiles. The muscles create an intimidating first impression, which is why he is great as security for Haiti Bible Mission, but when you start talking to him, he smiles. His huge smile lights up, crinkling his eyes and warming your heart, and the intimidation quickly melts away. He is the sweetest guy, and loves going to school. While I was there he was doing math problems that surpassed me long ago. He teaches himself English by listening to audiobooks, and loves stories.

I interviewed and collected stories from 30 people in Haiti, including Calos, for the book Seeds in a Dark Fruit Sky. Calos has many amazing stories to tell, and he would find time to sit and talk to me even with his busy schedule. Near the end of my time there I started reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe out loud for the group, which he loved. I enjoyed talking with him, as his English is actually very good. He is quite modest though, and will smile, waving a dismissive hand saying, “No, not that good.”

I got the idea for Seeds in a Dark Fruit Sky because many of the people that I got to know there, including Calos, have wonderful stories to tell but no platform on which to share them. Whether it is because of stereotypes or a lack of fluency in written language, the voice of this small country is often overlooked or unacknowledged by the wider world. The English manuscript for this book is currently being written, and will be verified by each storyteller with a translator before being translated in Creole. It will be published as a bilingual book to help people like Calos. They will be able to teach themselves how to read in another language, which will show Haitians that they are not alone and that they have beautiful and complex stories to tell. This book is expanding the way we can share stories, and it is a way to keep these stories firmly connected to their roots.

Q: After you had to bury your marbles, did you and your friends find different games to play or did you have to sit around and watch everyone else keep playing?

A: I was really sad for a while watching other people play marbles.  Really, really sad.  But one of my friends had a soccer ball and we played soccer and basketball.

Q: Did you ever dig them up and play again?

A: No, I did not dig them up again.

Q: You taught yourself English partially by listening to audiobooks. How long did it take before you could carry on a conversation? What was your favorite audiobook?

A: After two years of studying with audiobooks in English, I was able to hold a conversation for thirty minutes with someone in English.  My favorite audiobook was “Learn How to Improve Your English.”

Q: When you were four, marbles was your game of choice; as a 23-year-old, what do you do for fun?

A: I play basketball and soccer, but I like soccer better. I also like watching TV for fun. I also hang out with my friends and play the piano.

Q: What do you do for work?

A: I am often the gatekeeper on the Haiti Bible Mission compound and provide security for the mission. I also play piano at the church.

Photo captions:
1: Calos (photo property of Haiti Bible Mission)
2: The author with several children from Te Wouj, Haiti
3: A group from the Haiti Bible Mission
4: Two girls in the Te Wouj school

There are overcast days - few and far between, thankfully - when poetry seems a futile pursuit. While the world strains & cracks, the belief that poetry cannot effect change hovers in my peripheries. This is, of course, the antithesis of our mission, and in the future, when I begin to doubt, I’ll be happy to have this feature bookmarked. Lydia Flores’ writing is a swift kick in the pants - a compelling reminder of the personal and political power of poetry. It’s Required Reading for any poet who has ever felt disillusionment trickling in!

-Wilson Josephson, Assistant Poetry Editor 

Where I found Power… in your wallet, in your heart or both….

My mother died on November 18th 2004 and unlike most things you would find in a dead person’s wallet– pictures of children, grandchildren, spouse, whatever, photo ID, credit cards, and cash– a poem was found.  I wrote a poem about where I saw myself in fifteen years, I was about 12 when I wrote it. And I suppose that poem held some type of truth or obscure significance because why else would my mother keep that poem in her wallet? That poem found its resting place in every wallet she had, in every purse she carried and went with her everywhere she went.  Some poetry brings you to the ocean and leaves you like the waves at the shore with a sweet memory, and some poetry brings you to the war and leaves you with wounds of truth and a change inside. 

I decided that if I was going to write poetry, I was going to write poems that people can keep in their wallets, in their pockets, in their hearts… I was / I’m going to write poems that people never forget, like a war wound. My mother has long been dead, I miss her terribly, but she’s not here to read my words and, because they mean something, do something with them…carry them. Other people are here to do it though.

I probably can’t say that I’ve become any or are doing/have done any of things I wrote in that poem. What I can say is that I failed and I am failing, I’m still trying, but most of all I’m writing and my poems are still scratchy in their throat. For so long all I could do was scream inside, inside the privacy of my own conscious and notebook pages, because nobody or if any, not many will hear them because It’s a, female, black mouth.

I had to and have to remind myself, when I feel like giving up on writing, that I planted one poem and that poem bloomed in my mother’s heart– that she kept with her, like a pressed flower–How many more can I plant even if I never get to see them bloom? Because they won’t always show me their garden hearts or I’ll be dead before I get to see them. Yet from time to time that reminder fades in and out because how can I be the black honest, passionate- whatever have you- gardener and not the angry black girl shouting with a garden rake in her hands, that the world sees? How can I write those beautiful poems that keep returning like the waves at the shore and be, female, black?  I’m still trying to figure it out. And not being white/ male/ or whatever else that’s not black or what America calls for, makes it seem impossible. It makes writing, writing poems, speaking, and/or just being, dangerous.

I believe poetry to be power and I will continue to write poems that intend to make a home in people’s wallets, pockets, in people’s hearts. But I can’t be Walt Whitman and a black female. I can’t be Sylvia Plath and black. Maya Angelou is dead, Gwendolyn Brooks is dead and it’s the same war, which has gotten more grittier. My body is like a gamble and no matter how many wallets my poems end up in, I’ll never get to take off this funeral dress so while I’m here, I might as well write well in it and die with have written well in it, praying that my poems are powerful enough to be remembered… even when they forget my name and black face.

I will always be what I am to the world, but my poetry is and will be more than what the world sees me as. The wallets, the pockets, even the rooms, and the hearts my poems may end up in will always be more important than me because poetry is more than just my pen to paper signed with my name.  Poetry is more than what this world sees the author as, more than stereotypes, metaphors, and beautiful language or whatever else. Poetry is a catalyst, it is rain, it is truth, it is hope, it is bigger than these little words. Poetry…it is power.

Today, we have the privilege of publishing poetry by Wiley Birkhofer. “Boots” is, sadly, being published posthumously. We are lucky that Wiley’s poetry continues to be shared by his friends; not only do their efforts preserve his work - they carry Wiley into the present.

Here is your chance to meet the poet. Here are impressions - anecdotes - descriptions - snapshots - of Wiley Birkhofer. Here are voices of the people who loved (and love) him.

-Wilson Josephson, Assistant Poetry Editor

Leigh Lucas

Wiley Birkhofer—dancer, lover, singer, poet—was a man as much of the body as of the mind. He lived poetry with his body and stuck parts of it to the page. Without his body, we look to his pages more keenly than before, see them more vividly. Wiley’s poetry is as gorgeous as he was—layered, unpredictable, striking, and wild. It’s the kind of poetry that startles you awake and leaves you gasping for air asking yourself, am I crying? No no, I’m laughing. His art lives. He left us with so much and so much wild poetry.

Matthew Rohrer

One of the things I loved about Wiley was how voracious he was with poetry. If I showed him something or suggested something, he’d be back in a day or two having read everything by that person. Having incorporated it like a white blood cell just swarming all over it and making it a part of him.

And he just kept growing and growing.

As an example of his industriousness and his focus, I’m thinking of a reading Joshua Beckman gave at the writer’s house. In typical Beckman style, rather than read from his new book, he unveiled an insanely complicated and unusual new form he’d just invented, and asked people from the audience to come up to the podium to read these new poems. Wiley volunteered right away, and then about halfway through the reading he raised his hand and asked Joshua if he could share one that he’d just written, during the reading.

Wiley brought this voraciousness and total commitment to any project, especially to his thesis, especially right at the end. He wrote poems that looked like upside down trees, or plant roots, or corporate flow charts. That was one poem.  You had to answer a question yes or no and go to the stanza that followed. His energy in person was infectious, and his energy on the page is still there, fresh as he was.

Holly Coddington

Wiley Birkhofer:
their penis manly
hanley ramirez
took a fastball to the cock
no longer shaves his forehead with a sponge
(8:18 AM)

Holly Coddington:
he shaves his sponge with a forehead picked off a penis tree
(8:19 AM)

Wiley Birkhofer:
NICE!
you know exactly what i want
turds marinated in corn
bleach from dad’s old shin squeegie
(8:20 AM)

Holly Coddington:
The moon is half-cocked on pubic rope
don’t call me dad
(8:21 AM)

Wiley Birkhofer:
moons
are always good
in poems
the ocean
birds
(8:25 AM)

Holly Coddington:
moons over my hammy
oceans are for drowning pianos in
birds are for flying into windows.
(8:28 AM)

Wiley Birkhofer:
moons are super
birds are basically oceans
okay i gotta go
(8:29 AM)

Holly Coddington:
bye bye
(8:29 AM)

Wiley Birkhofer:
you’re very funny
and imaginative
dirty nasty
(8:29 AM)

Holly Coddington:
haha and you are weird and sweet
and wearing an ego suit
(8:30 AM)

Wiley Birkhofer:
in workshop, rachel told me “you have a very interesting relationship to ego, wiley”
(8:30 AM)

Holly Coddington:
which you unzip and flash us
unzip your ego suit and put your dick on your forehead
(8:31 AM)

Wiley Birkhofer:
i think your analogy is spot on
(8:32 AM)

Friday, March 21, 2014 9:54 AM

Wiley Birkhofer:
i love you
you’re an amazing person
really funny
CGHAT 4 LIFE
(9:54 AM)

Ari King

Ari King: What are you not good at?

Wiley Birkhofer: I’m not good at - this is going to be very psychological - feeling good about myself because of who I am as opposed to which other people like me and things they tell me I’m good at. You know…like I know because my friends are laughing that I am funny not I know that I’m funny because I know that I am funny and I think that I am funny. (Snaps fingers) That’s a really good example!

AK: What are you good at?

WB: Well, I’m really funny. Maybe not in this interview but I’m very light-hearted, I’m very spontaneous, goofy-I hate to use that word-and I care a lot about my friends, I care a lot about the people I met in college, the people I met since. A lot of people are selfish and stuck in their head. I’m stuck in my head but I’m not selfish.