Jonie McIntire
Jonie McIntire is well-known throughout the region as a poet and writer. Along with her husband, Adrian Lime (a poet and visual artist), Jonie has attended and hosted more iconic Toledo-area reading series than almost any other living literary artist in the area.
Jonie’s work has a tender sternness to it, a kind of motherly loving hardened by life and time. This is familiar to many of us and I think speaks to the culture at the core of this region. It is evident throughout her work that Jonie has lived, really lived, in that way that forces us to confront people, truths, experiences, and situations that we never imagined, that we made it through, that linger but perhaps with the sweetness of a poetic resolve.
Jonie is a tenacious and prolific writer, constantly working to create new work, explore new ideas, and publish, but also organizing readings, events, and advocating for local poets while connecting the literary community to positive and progressive causes. She just does this, asked or not, and has been doing it for a couple of decades now.
Jonie earned the recently revamped title and position of Lucas County Poet Laureate for these efforts — the first woman to be honored as such — and we are so proud to host her collection here as the first featured writer for the OHMI collection.
Artist Bio included below.
There is a toughness in your work that I love. It’s not gruff or mean, but perhaps stern, determined, or even a little snarky. I mean this to say there is a unique Midwestern quality in your work to me, very down to earth and curious about the work of every day life (e.g. the raw power of a mother cooking bones for her family).
I feel this in the poems even when it’s not present in the subject matter. Is that fair to say? If so, where do you draw from in your writing to find that spirit and what do you hope to convey to the reader?
That’s all very fair to say. I think perhaps it’s not just Midwestern but perhaps about economics as well. Rustbelt poetry, Appalachian poetry, blue collar poetry. A little about place and a lot about connection and survival.
I have a cousin who is an incredible teacher and she told me about when she was first getting started, how she took a class about class, about how people in different economic classes function just a little differently. Not just about access and the usual socioeconomic markers we think of, but about how we approach things differently. People in the top 1% have screens and reputation precedes them. People in upper middle and middle class rely on money, they rely on investments and buy insurance to protect themselves. And people at the bottom rely on community. It can be the only stability they have. Although I have been very fortunate and certainly fall into the middle class category, the steps that led to it involved relying on community. I was an only child latch-key kid who moved a lot, so the backbone of community that I think a lot of people may grow up with had to be built slowly by me.
I find in writing and in reading an opportunity to connect. There’s an intimacy in words, someone else’s words spoken in our own tongues, heard in our own mind through our own voice. So that those words from someone else become our own. I think a lot of what I write is accessible because I write to be honest, with myself with my reactions, even when it can uncomfortable. When I have read poems like that in the past, by Marge Piercy or Audre Lorde, I connected with them, felt like someone was finally saying things I’d thought but didn’t know how to say. To me, writing that way makes me fearless and present in my life, even if I am a horribly anxious person otherwise.
The Toledo poetry community and scene have a rich history. You have been involved in much of it and were mentored in one way or another by some local legends. What do you think is unique about Toledo’s writing community and what (who) are or were some of the influences you carry with you? Why?
I moved to Toledo from San Francisco. At New College of California, I had taken a poetry class but at the time I was more interested in writing plays and scripts. It’s kind of an expensive town to live in [and I] wanted to go back to school but didn’t have the time or money to do it there. I picked Toledo because I wanted to be back in Ohio and my dad had done an internship at MCO and said he really kind of liked the city. So it was sort of random. That was over 25 years ago.
Even when I started at UT, I had just switched from Political Science to English and didn’t really intend to focus on Creative Writing. My first mentor was Jane Bradley, who I took a short story class from. She had so much personality, it just filled the room. It was hard not to fall in love with her, or her excitement when she lit up about something.
I met Kerry Trautman in that class, who has been a good friend ever since and who became part of my poetic foundation. Kerry and I took a Creative Writing Poetry class from Joel Lipman that next autumn, and there we met Adrian Lime. Adrian invited us to join a writing group he was part of that met on Almeda Street, and we met John Swaile, Michael Kocinski, Lori Nickoli, Michael Hackney, Trina Stolec and some other incredible writers. We read at what used to be Sam & Andy’s, which is now Manhattan’s. Those readings pulled in more and more people and I met Don McKivet, Bob Phillips, Arnie Koester, Nick Muska, Nicol Kostic, Star Bowers, Red Walker. At the time, Adrian was living at the Collingwood Art Center, back when it had artist residencies. I took a class from Tim Geiger in his first year at UT and even remember when Lyn Lifshin visited the campus. So we were steeped in our community at the time.
Then, Adrian and I got married and sort of consumed by our jobs and our kids. It took a good ten years or so before we really returned to our writing community. I was pulled back in by Harley King, who worked at the same corporate office that I did and who was a fellow poet and a wonderful artist. He brought me to the Original Sub Shop and the Broadway Bard readings that Hod Doering ran. Hod probably did more to get me to write than any other person. He was a tireless cheerleader and set a model for me for being welcoming to all writers and especially new writers who were nervous.
Through those readings, I met Melvin Douglas Johnson, another incredible mentor to anyone who met him, patient and encouraging and always there, just loving any place where poetry was being shared. I started running readings with Hod and getting more involved again. Adrian had worked with John Swaile and a few others to revive Back to Jack, which had been a yearly beat poetry tradition, and I got involved as well, which gave me a chance to work with more poets. And by going to open mics, I met Huntor Prey, the Raven, Rhapsody, Cindy Bosley, Leonard Kress, and many others who each have had an influence.
Editor’s Note: If you want to know about Toledo’s rich history in poetry, start Googling all those names above. That’s a ‘Who’s who’ list if there ever was one!
“Toledo will be known as the town where poetry is born, grows, or stays to find its fortune.”
You’ve been recently named Lucas County Poet Laureate, a tremendous honor. Thinking about the future, what are your goals and vision for the position and for our area? What mark or spark do you hope to leave behind?
My problem has never been lack of ideas... I got a MILLION of 'em! But I do have a certain attitude about leadership roles. A Poet Laureate isn't here to tell anyone what exactly art is or isn't, but rather to show how expansive and accessible it is. It's an advocacy position, in my mind, intended to fill in the gaps where our local literary community may not be as robust as it can be.
So most of my plans are simple and small... make poetry more visible, add it to our everyday in small ways, so that poetry is something Lucas County knows is alive and all around us.
To that end, I have a recurring article in the Mature Living, we're adding poetry to the Toledo Lucas County Public Library’s Dial-a-Story offerings, we have a monthly writing workshop series and quarterly open mics at the Library. I even have monthly Pop-In poetry hours over Zoom. I have a larger goal of expanding on the good work that the Ode to the Zip Code series has built and promoting poetry written about Lucas County, about specific neighborhoods, features and histories. I am hoping to get some grant money to be able to create physical poetry installations in neighborhoods across the county.
In addition, I want Toledo to be known as a destination for poetry. For now, I'm traveling and doing readings and spreading the good word about Toledo poets and poetry. Even just taking on the role of Membership Chair in the Ohio Poetry Association has made a difference... all our mailers have a Toledo address now, the printer for our newsletters is local here.
The long term plan? Writing workshop series that involves visiting writers. And the big long term plan? A writer's in residence program. Writers come here for a couple of weeks or more, focus on a project, and give back by leading workshops, engaging in mentoring projects, and staging local readings. Ultimately, award-winning poets will seek out our program to be a part of, will nurture other poets, and Toledo will be known as the town where poetry is born, grows, or stays to find its fortune.
Love is a Carcass
A roasted grocery chicken,
purchased as dinner
with a coupon about to expire,
fills the car in steam.
The smell seeps in before
the front door is fully open
and the children run up,
eagerly hungry.
We barely make it to the table –
our savage fingers
dripping flesh into our mouths.
Our lips glisten smiles
and you walk in, laughing -
look at us!
We talk, cheeks full,
of the time with the fish
on the grill, whole
with his eyes and us
circling with forks.
Then another time with
snow forts, the second baby
coming home, and earlier,
to the first baby –
and all the while
both kids chime in with
memories they don't have
but heard. They are
wide-eyed and we have talked
back, long before the work
left and the bills
turned red,
before we two became
we four, back
to our audacious wedding,
only fifteen minutes long
with flies and hayrides,
and the Sharon Olds poem
and how we refused to explain
that moo shu pork
is a vow, that love is a carcass.
Our fingers are filthy
and we find rags
to wipe them off,
the four of us
rubbing our bellies,
placing bones in water
to make tomorrow’s soup
from the juice.
On Taking Ritalin
At the optometrist’s office,
metal and glass owl-like mask
pressed to my face, the doc flips
lenses 1 or 2, 2 or 3, often
one slightly less blurry
or another like an old tv
where the colors don’t line up.
Until and now 1 or 2
show the thin black outlines
the starkness of colors
the still clarity of sight.
Passing
The day my uncle hung himself in the backyard,
his sister sunbathing in the front, and his brother
spotting him just before the snap,
my father and I toured a college campus,
ate Ethiopian food with our fingers –
my father, always so tidy, humming
as sauce dripped, his pressed grey slacks
wrinkling as he sat cross-legged at a table
on the floor, beaded pillows framing his back.
We drove home listening to hair bands on the radio,
naming the guitarists – he’s got the blues guys
but I always beat him in hard rock.
As I watched out the window, surrounded by the steady
turn of tires, my head against the headrest,
I would try to catch the poplars on the roadside –
to see them clearly before they blurred back
into streaky watercolor landscape.
I had to focus, block out everything else
and stare at the tree – pick a leaf and watch
around it, but only for a moment.
Then I lost it and the car seemed faster,
the ground whirring by.
When we got home, it was my mother who told us,
her usually booming voice a small quiet thing,
completely calm.
Larry Bird Shall Lead Us Out of the Darkness
featuring the words of Dick Stockton and Tom Heinsohn during Celtics vs. Bulls 1986 Easter Conference Finals
1
I don’t know if it was Dick
or Tom who said it
Larry Bird
shall lead us out of the darkness
2
Maybe that’s what that isolation game is doing,
is drawing attention to the individual one-on-one
Afternoon beer in hand, I’m timing myself –
can’t check the Covid-19 tracker for another 98 minutes.
The foul trouble has become a situation now
you want to talk about macho pride?
Hulu plays old basketball games, the ones
I watched in high school, when Michael Jordan
was new, when you couldn’t let Kevin McHale
near a net without him scoring, before
I could hear my husband shouting at the President’s
daily health/economic/hate claims.
He gets mesmerized by the penetration
He said “why not? I’ll go all the way.”
Everyone thinks the Celtics will win this game
but I’m smug as I watch. This IPA and I know.
3
Bird, the rebound
I feel guilty
being exhausted.
Move it around
out on the open court
Get him moving left
I feel guilty not knowing
what to do with myself.
4
They never really found an identity this year.
The Bulls don’t have Scottie Pippin yet.
No Rodman, no Kukoc.
You have to force your way
to an act of willpower,
to create tempo sometimes.
We have nights when nobody in the house
sleeps.
Other players have to get involved.
In Houston, my aunt is afraid to leave the house,
even to get toilet paper. Her best friend has already died.
5
They talk about Larry Bird incessantly.
A master of the half inch -
He takes advantage of every half inch.
They don’t know yet
about Michael Jordan. Not really.
Imagine if you gave him a yard.
But I do.
6
My husband is ready to leave the country.
He’s inconsolable about politics.
This has been a chessmatch -
I have never seen as many fouls called.
We don’t know what
to do with ourselves.
7
They say it again –
Larry Bird shall lead us
out of the darkness
But to where?
Publication Credits:
Love Is A Carcass was Originally published in the 2016 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Anthology
On Taking Ritalin was originally published in Gasconade Review: Strange Days, Stranger Nights
Passing was Originally published in Gasconade Review: Missouri is a Ghost Shaped Thing
Larry Bird was originally published in Of Rust and Glass.
Artist Bio
Jonie McIntire, Poet Laureate of Lucas County, Ohio, is the poetry editor at Of Rust and Glass and Membership Chair for Ohio Poetry Association. Her most recent chapbook, Semidomesticated (Red Flag Poetry, 2021) won Red Flag Poetry’s 2020 chapbook contest. Her prior chapbooks are Beyond the Sidewalk (Nightballet Press, 2017) and Not All Who Are Lost Wander (Finishing Line Press, 2016). Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and for Pushcart prize. McIntire hosts a monthly reading series called Uncloistered Poetry from Toledo, Ohio.
