Name: Time Travel
Duration: P00H02M35S
Description: We are what we remember.

Time Travel

from Seaglass Strange by Red O'Hare

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about

We are what we remember.

lyrics

Sorrow makes for thin places.
The air pulses and suddenly
I am 3 in Mama Latory’s kitchen.
Swiss cheese and tomato soup

Cool teak flat under my palms,
the sound of glass in a low sink
or soft Virginia lilting,
I am 6 in my grandmother’s house.

I hear the click-swish-hush
of hard heels on old tile,
Hebraic corridor murmur
I am 12 and learning my Torah portion.

A change of wind
brings hot pavement scent
I am 14 and scuttling
through hallways like gauntlets.

Cracked fluorescent sunset
I am 16
and chain-smoking at Starbucks,
riding the train in bright, thick shoes

The light curves gray and sharp.
I am in Good Shepherd Cemetery.
I am 19 first week of January
and we bury her again.

I smell wet leaves and I am 21 in Olympia
choking “if you're going to hit me, sweetheart
please close the windows
so the neighbors don't hear.”

When the ground is soft,
I am 23 and learning how things grow.
I am trudging through acres of mud.
I am wide and strong like old trees.

I see blizzards and I am 25
Colorado snow in my thin shoes,
My father weeps
as we bury his only brother.

Old Kentucky bitter as bile,
I am 27 in Oakland,
falling into bottles
like I used to fall in love.

I believe people can be haunted
the same as houses,
that we fashion our phantoms
from the things we have lost.

So revel in the thin places.
These ghosts are gifts.
We can travel through time
on the back of bending light

Watch your life unfold.
A series of stuttering snapshots.
The taste of blood can take you
a hot wind can guide you.

We are what we remember.
I remember my grandmother's voice.
I remember kitchens
safe and clean and warm.

I remember hallways
in synagogue and in school.
The smell of green earth,
my first burn of whiskey.

We are every age and time
We are time-lapse-star-sky,
and we not just the things
we had to do to survive.

We are every person
we have ever been
and we
are still alive.

credits

from Seaglass Strange, released June 7, 2019

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about

Red O'Hare Portland, Oregon

Red O'Hare is a Ashkenazi Jewish American poet from Oakland, California where she featured twice with Bay Area Generations. A product of Presbyterian missionaries from the Belgian Congo and Eastern European carny folk, Red has been performing poetry for 20 years. She works in a bakery and is compiling a list of people who want her dead. ... more