Chrystelle Kinsella, Poet

My name is Chrystelle Kinsella. I write poetry, screenplays, history articles, and books for children. In October, I was hired by the Tehachapi Newspaper, Mountain Signal. I'll write several articles per issue, covering arts, artists, and events like the building of a local Habitat For Humanity house. I am also a fabric artist and quiltmaker and very involved in a local guild making philanthropic quilts for California Children's Hospitals, Cancer Recovery Camps, and Child Protection Agencies. I currently have a Women of History article published by the Tehachapi Museum, an article on Mid Nineteenth Century Quilting soon to be published in Piecework magazine, and am collaborating with my daughter-in-law on a book about protecting quilt provenance with artistic labels. I am now a "returning" college student, majoring in English, and living up to the (4.0) "potential" that my teachers used to gripe about while they measured just how far my miniskirt hem was from my knee. My writing career began in my Quebec grade school classes, where French nuns (hovering) made us take an hour of penmanship each day. Fearing penance, and the brutally allowable strap to the palms, I prayed myself into a providential friendship with paper, pen, and words. At lunch, when the other girls were pilfering "Zagnuts" and "fried pies" into their parochial uniform pockets, or sneaking Pall Malls in the bluckky ladies room at the Unico Station, I was paying three nickels to a winky old Monsieur at the Stationers for a tablet and Papermate. "Merci," because; I had to write something down. Later, I wrote poems in the backseat of Volkswagens when I hitchhiked through ten Western States, at the back window of my San Francisco Victorian, in the back booth of the Park Avenue New York Restaurant/Nightclub my husband managed, and in the back pew of our Tehachapi Church whenever the "Spirit" moved me. When my son, Peter, was still "Petey", he loved books, and every time he picked one up, he'd open up mid-story, close his eyes, bring the book to his face, and breathe deeply. I'd like to bring a reader to that kind of a moment, a kind of ephemeral, "Mmmmm that poem smells good!" I live in the mountains of Tehachapi, California. I have a family of artists and musicians. My husband, Bill, concentrates on "fine" portraiture of old craftspeople, and is a singer. My son, Damian, is a graphic artist and cartoonist; his work has appeared in True West and The Saturday Evening Post. Damian's wife, Adrienne, is a muralist and children's book illustrator; she painted a Native American mural in the Library at Loyola Marymount. My other son, Peter, plays eight instruments and is at college studying to be a Navy Chaplain. (kinsella@antelecom.net)

Barren Land

When you flung out your hand
Confetti flew into the universe.

You should have swept for landmines,
Guess you knew we'd say no grace and eat it up.

And I suppose when Adam left
He stripped the bark from Eden's trees

And carried it in dust-born hands,
Enough to carve thorns for the side of this rebuked humanity.

Therewith the trilling bird was set
To sing forlorn to all the rest,

The harbinger to one lone dove
Escaping from the gopher wood.

Not even flood would wash anew
The sin of ravaging our home.

Then only one tree justified…
One felled to frame our recompense.

So when you conjured long ago
That man subdue this plot of clay

And bringing him from out of it,
Did you not sorrow at your scheme?

Daddy Drinks

He had great cheekbones
A cinematic sculpture indeed.
The wedding suit
Double-breasted
Pressed to the nines
Hiding the wrinkles-
The future horrors.
She must have thought he had promise,
(judging by the photo)

Later he lost the vogue
Sat in his boxers on the divan
Drunk.
Frankly, his little side trips to the state of oblivion made me
Edgy.

Can't say as I blamed him really,
His childhood had been vandalized
All the doors to the past
Slammed and locked.

We loved him anyway.
Somewhere under the abrasive beard
Abrasive words
Was genius without arrogance
The cheekbones
High comedy
The guy in the photo.

And all the while
My mother
Trying to push back clock hands with prayer knees
Ahead to some place of Catholic order,
A dream she had of
Sobriety
Normalcy
A Sing-along-with-Mitch.

Typing Roses

The last time she heard the door handle
Clack
He took with him
Her best valise
His old Royal, although the 'L' had lost it's verve
And a fractional pang of guilt

Told her he was tired of bone of contention for dinner
Told himself, "You don't need a compass to come back".
Snagged his trousers on the muskrose gate
And sheepishly began…
(but no)
Remembering: "The log in thine own eye".

He left her as she was
Out in the Foxglove and Jacobs ladder
In her Mary Contrary hat
On her loamy knees
Staking brutish flora into submission.

He wasn't a vagrant for any amount of time
The lifestyle didn't suit him
He preferred a small room
Downtown
Under the zutz of neon.
There he tried to tether all the words that
Made their way round his head.

There in his poet's corner
Zutz
Proud of his parsimonious ways
He'd turn the Zenith Preacher on
And after hearing glory chants
He'd justify his ways
As though confession were the truth

On Tuesdays he would lick manila
Ask publishers "What am I bid"?
For his rendition of their loves lament.

And she at home with blackberry stains
And scratches under silver bands
Flipped to the Table of Contents
Monthly
Their joint-name
Pursed upon her lips,
Then turned to Garden Services and ordered Cecile Brunner.

She waited each day at the gate.
The postman with a lacking ear
Had previously upon his rounds
Been sacked of consolation
She, in a blue-eyed wink of grace,
Absolved him of the need.

When pomegranate at the wall
Had turned from ruby sweet to gold
She thought she heard the handle
Clack
So, turned the kettle whistle down
Then turned to see his conquered face
And blessed it with a kiss.

Him

There's something electric

His thoughts arc

Maybe you should check the breakers

Then, ask questions

Wire rim across the temple
Wraps an ear
Curls down around
Some mystery
Some cryptic kind of process going on behind that

Cary Grant
Copernicus

Some universal logic with dimples and a fedora

I don't suppose you got the license number of that glance?

City Ride

I wanted to shake that city by its shoulders
Comb the knots out of its hair.

Kettle drums down in the park said
"Melon baskets, yellow scarves".

I tried so hard to taste the salt splash glimmer skin of
Stone cooked fish.

I thought I saw a lone bird wiping
Smudges from the sky's right cheek.

One more taxi through a tunnel
Spraypaint landstakes rudely claimed.

I closed my eyes, the driver murmured,
"Wherdja say yawanna go"?

Somewhere water is simple blue
And rain slips off the lotus skirt

The sun is blonde and whisper warm
The music dance is black and sway.

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