Seedlip and Sweet Apple

By Arra Lynn Ross

“A miraculous text of narrative and speech fragments . . . to raise up Mother Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers, her ecstatic voice, energy, and vision.” —Hilda Raz, award-winning author of Letter from a Place I’ve Never Been

Seamlessly bridging the material and spiritual worlds, Seedlip and Sweet Apple takes the reader into the mind of a true visionary: Mother Ann Lee, the founder of the Shaker religion in colonial America. With astonishingly original poems inspired by extensive historical research, Arra Lynn Ross creates a collection linked thematically through the voice and story of the woman who was believed by her followers to be Christ incarnate.

Broadly and inclusively spiritual, this remarkable debut captures the ineffable experience of ecstatic vision, activating the progression from literal reality to heightened perception. Simultaneously, this journey delves into the manifold issues of gender and religion, public image, and charismatic leadership, as well as the line between cult and commune and the tenuous bond between faith and behavior.

Written in an impressive cornucopia of forms—including iambic quatrains, free verse, and prose poems—Seedlip and Sweet Apple honors a complex figure startlingly relevant to contemporary life, pointing to a revolutionary way to work at living—and to live in working—that promises simplicity, peace, and joy.

“Situated between glossary and glossolalia, word and vision, the communal act of language and the singularity of inspiration, Seedlip and Sweet Apple reaffirms the tradition of American visionaries, even while reshaping that tradition into an innovative and dynamic lyric. Arra Lynn Ross raises the roof with her convocation of tongues. A pioneering collection of poems.” —D. A. Powell, National Book Critics Circle Award–winning poet

“A work powerful in voice and craft.” —Feminist Review

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Feb 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781571318091

Arra Lynn Ross

Arra Lynn Ross is the author of Day of the Child and Seedlip and Sweet Apple. She is a poet, essayist, and puppet worker whose work has appeared in Passages North, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, Birmingham Poetry Review, Antioch Review, and the Iowa Review. She lives in Michigan.

Book preview

002

THE WORD OF LIFE

I was once as you are . . .

-Mother Ann

Inside My Skin

1742, Baptism at Christ Church, Manchester, England

In the name of the Father

The words flew up.

The seams of my body came undone-

my breath-the flutter of a dove’s wings,

its shadow bruising the scarlet sun of the altar window,

bruising the golden wheat beetling from its stalk, bruising the bound sheaves,

the bent head of Jesus on his dark cross.

Tears of warm blood streak his cheeks,

gush into the furrows of his quivering ribs.

and of the Son

Then the bird was gone, the shadow

of the bird, its opal-throated song- gone.

I fell back inside

my skin, my seams, my chafing frock, my father’s arms.

The tip of a nose, chapped bottom lip, my tongue.

I tasted the water-bittersweet, tasted a word,

two words, three words, a name, a rose, a seed,

a longing and an answer, clear and true

as green shoots in the spring.

And as wordless: a sound only, a taste, a touch, a scent

opening-

and of the Holy

Ecstatic

When we were younger and my brother William still a head below me,

we would run to the pastures and chase sheep,

belting out the loud baa as we flew after them,

hands outstretched and waving like scared birds.

As we ran, we turned from each other

till we stood at far sides of the field,

the dirty-wooled sheep between us;

he was a dark body jumping up and down in the mist,

his palms small dots tossing in the air.

Early Work

1745, Manchester, England

I walk home when night is folded tight like a prayer,

wrapped in the woolen overcoat William wore before his arms got too long,

wishing I knew the names of trees;

that tall one at Sorrow and Toad roofs the roads, veils the stars.

The sky is bright tonight, and I can see the dirt clear,

the rutted grooves torn open.

My hands, stiff from winding the warps,

clench up when I sleep and some mornings

I have to pry them apart by knocking one against the other.

I press my fingers backward for about a minute

so they won’t curl back down.

Then I straighten the other.

William Tells of a Public Whipping

I worm us through to the front of the crowd. A man killed a fat hare on Blackmoor’s land. We’d seen him singing for shillings in the streets, light of bone and laughter, a girl-child on his shoulders, and she with no shoes. Now, he pulls off his waistcoat and stained undershirt, drops his rough flapped hat to the cobblestones, and turns his naked back to take the leather. The baker’s wife beside us whistles high and higher till the note breaks, while her boy, barely able to hold his own weight, drops rocks. The sound is lost in the crowd. No one will pay for him, for the hare. The whip slices, again, again, and screams tear the air ragged. His girl scratches at the eyes of the old woman who holds her at the well. Ann grabs my hand and will not let go.

Mother’s Touch

Mother squats and stares,

her face wrinkling into frown.

What do you mean, you don’t want a marriage?

I’m scared of the hunger.

I dreamt it,

the dark hole eating

the world.

She leans over me, hand sticky with dough,

squeezes my forearm hard, hisses,

don’t say no more.

But it’s wrong, Momma,

how people touch-

blind flies

feeling for food

and all the meat’s rotten.

Wraps me at night,

I can’t breathe

it’s so tight and wet

like my own skin falling in.

I can taste the sin.

Girl? She’s kneeling now,

her eyelids thick with grief.

(My screams wake her

at night.)

We’ll find someone nice.

Your father’s man, Abraham, has good hands.

Her fingers bruise my lips,

holding back the moans

but the trembling takes me

as it always does, deep

as the crack

that divides my sleep, night

after night.

The sounds steal out

from somewhere

darker than me.

I won’t. I can’t! I scream,

striking her face,

wishing

I could fold the world over

and make it rise up right.

Found