It’s all the same poem.
“Grief part 7″
I’ll remember you as a
long desire;
intangible, a
carnation sunset
leaking out of me.
And the keeling over
later, the aftershock:
cramp, the bite
in self preservation;
survival and the
slow repetition of
phrases cementing
the indelibility;
the dormant rage in
prophecy.
you only get pregnant once.
then I become the squalling
daughter and you
become the thorn.
“Liliana” or “grief pt 8”
Vision of me being young and asking for Lilith and at the shore the rocks and looking up at her and she was huge and growing taller. I was wearing the striped dress I always wore as a five year old and looked just like my five year old self . I saidI said I’m heartbroken and beckoned her to hold me with my mind like I always do. I felt her surround me. I said rip my hands off rip them off and she was big and growing bigger and then the three of them were there: Hecate Lilith and Artemis like I pictured them so I could see them in visions. artenis. being in all white as usual and Hecate being in all black. Artemis was the shortest. They were on the rocks just out of my reach deliberating over my preparedness. Hecate said “maybe it is time, she has been devout” then suddenly We are on the cliff, they said they were going to push me to make it easier. I said no I have to jump or it doesn’t count that’s what you said; then i face the ocean and the cliff became even taller, so tall it was implausible and I had to land between the three rocks. I fell deep in the water and kept going further and further. there was nothing in the water. No animals, just black water and I could feel myself floating. Lilith said nothing, notice there’s nothing. There was a mirror on the bottom and Lilith told me to look in it. I saw myself five years old and then a sea lion mouth open behind me then she said let the shark eat you and I let the shark eat me and he took me somewhere and spit me out.His stomach was cold and full of water but there was nothing ominous.
She said this is the bottom and I fell upwards again and was back on the island w the man in the red and white and this time his trbe attacked me. I said forgive me show me mercy and he said mercy? I was on a pyre. One of the women was hovering over me, the same one that helped me before. I thought the man was another person based on an old reading I had received, an old lover that I harmed in a past life and began to apologize for an old transgression never made clear and saw myself stabbing him in the neck, in the front, the blood gushing:
I promised him i would never see him again in any life ever. Our paths will never cross. I waved my hands in front of his eyes and a very mild fog appeared, and then I was taken to the warehouse except it was empty then a stage just for me that first had someone singing then quickly cut to a projection that said never gonna happen. then I ran through a field in the city that Had two deer with glowing eyes and then back underwater. I felt the need to jump again and then back to the island where he was there. I said I told you i’d never see you again. Why are you here? He had blue eyes was very dark and thin wearing black garb. a black tunic. We were the same height His skin and garb matched but his eyes were blue. He was older in His seventies, He said maybe I’m not redacted. I said then who are you?
He said I’m elegua. we are your ancestors
The twenty minute nap on the plane and the first male god to ever present himself to me and consistently
“Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey.”
—ocean vuong
“A strong woman whose strength is her solitude, a weak woman pierced by visionary raptures, those are my mothers.”
–ursula le guin, searoad
all day long
I vacillate between intention,
maybe a couple steps forward
or skirting one craving
and then the immediate withdrawal,
the later three walks and
four coffees, twelve cookies
and picking a fight;
my habits,
my beloved
hermeticism and the double meaning of
everything and I’m
ambivalent about every choice
I’ve given myself over to;
even in completion,
I shrug.
let the wind take me.
now I am
in Philadelphia,
applying for an Access card,
going on interviews at spas
and also scrounging social
service work not sure if I can face
it again.
writing letters to an old client,
lying saying I got into Temple’s
education program and I’m
raising my hand in meetings
to volunteer for service.
getting invited to social things.
crying endlessly and in public,
which refreshes me.
I am dog sitting; house sitting for
money in Queen Village,
and I spend the days
drinking their coffee
and sneaking their chocolates.
using their washer for my own
heavy blankets,
and walking the pit bull
without the choke chain
she gave me.
not trying to make a fuss
about it even though I want
to put it around her,
walk her on her fours and
then tug a little bit.
instead I
observe the doors of people
in Society Hill: clean black or
mahogany with the numbers painted on
them or in brass next to their
outdoor lanterns, their empty
flower boxes soon to be leaking
zinnias, petunias, geraniums.
and
heavy doors.
strong wood.
this reminds me of the time
I was being driven around an
area of DC I didn’t recognize.
we had weaved through Georgetown and
then I noticed these houses towering over
me, gargantuan and white and
lawns that you could roll down.
I asked the driver what neighborhood
we were in and he flatly said,
this is a rich ass neighborhood.
this is where the super rich pentagon people
live and I said
we should rob them.
I begin to circle the area
with the pit bull.
“Spring Valley”
in Colorado,
his name was Alex.
I am passing 3rd street unaware
of my hands withering,
clutching my phone.
another bad habit of mine,
not wearing gloves and never
placing my hands in my
pocket.
he was very young and
wide eyed and used to doodle
through meetings
watching the layers of people
shift in their seats, gathering
outlines with his pencil.
I would try to peek,
said hi to him only if I passed
him but mostly enjoyed the thrill
of picking a home group full
of freshman in college,
the perversion of me
unfolding like that,
so uninhibited in my quest
for sobriety, spreading my
legs in the chair
in my turtleneck dress and
brown tights.
three children catch me muttering
and smile. they watch
my fingers curve around an object,
then divide as I tap each tip
with my thumb like
I’m counting.
they are thinking
I have secrets,
not that I am crazy.
one time,
he kept his eyes closed as everyone
in the circle shared.
when it was my turn, he popped
them back open and stared
the length of my story.
I was too confused to make
direct eye contact with him;
this being so flagrant
and sudden, I fluster
with bold advances.
I spent one whole year fantasizing
about him. not lured by his youth
which makes him easy to command
but the way he was clearly taken
by me, his insouciance,
and his right to be that way,
being only eighteen and
forced here.
the children notice my
mouth moving as I walk down the
street, reviewing.
they all think I am writing about
them. I am writing about a cloud
I passed once.
cry cry cry and then
just start fucking laughing,
I say out loud
so the ten year old widens
her eyes
as she passes.
“Something spreading underground won’t speak to us,
under skin won’t declare itself
not all life-forms want dialogue with the
machine-gods in their drama
hogging down:
whats for dinner?
bad guys.”
–anselm hollo
where I grew up summer had
an intensity. the days were long,
bright and humid.
we would be drenched in sweat by
noon, loitering outside of 7-11 asking
for change to buy slurpees and
the mosquitoes could pile up on us
until we were just slick with
sweat and blood from
both smashing them onto our thighs
and cutting the welts off with our
paper clip knives
we had begun to use to scratch our itches.
and then these winds would hit you.
first, you embrace the coolness
because it was 101 degrees
and when the air drops ten to twenty
in a blow,
it is welcomed.
you feel this more at the beach
but I remember many times shivering,
coming inside after
rains hit to jump
in the shower and others
peeling back the slick of
my shorts, completely stuck
with now rainwater and
my perspiration to my hips
and feeling no respite at the beginning of August.
people forget that February is the coldest month
and that August is a swelter.
even if it was bright outside,
the sky would cut to black.
this was monsoon season.
hurricane season.
when a storm hit,
we opened the windows
beckoning the air to come in.
I watched the
weather channel every morning to
see around what time they predicted the
afternoon thunderstorm would hit and
being more fixated on some measurable instance
of rightness that was public,
was obsessed with dressing exactly appropriately
for the weather each
day before meeting my friends.
on anything sixty nine degrees or above,
I wore shorts and anything above seventy-seven,
a tank top.
I ran and sweat a lot.
also I love getting caught in pure raintstorms.
I was often turning the channel on
and off to time it..
to this day I have not found anything
as soothing as preparation
and facing things
with as much immensity as a southern
coastal storm.
the thunderclap is so
loud it is alarming.
you feel it.
it is a bomb going off
and lighting quickly follows.
we were taught to count the beats
at the end of the thunder clap
and the sight or sound of
the crackle of lightning
to see how many miles away
the storm was.
but sometimes they coincided
and you saw the lightning hit horizon
if you were on the shore.
waves growing in size.
these clouds moved faster than the current.
rain falling so hard
it felt like needles
or sleet and we named
them:
Allison
Bernard
Cornelia
Duke
Elana
Fred
alternating gender
alphabetically each year
as if they
could be shrunk like that,
these wild beasts that
pummeled us,
our uncontrolled.
“Oya”
she was pandering to my
emotion, calling this episode
a real child even though my friend
took my side and mentioned how
dramatized television is
and that those cases are slim.
BUT
she said you said kill everyone.
I never said kill everyone, I said
if the law is x=x then it’s x.
I could see her reaching for
the feminine in me
which
as far as I could see
was straddled and leaning back.
confident enough to be the first one
to volunteer for the exercise,
which I remind her, is not
examining the morality of the law
itself but to remove debate around it
so that it may be better enforced,
without outcry and fairly.
when I finished nine hands
went up. we were a class of eighteen.
unsure of why
I volunteered for the exercise
first, and given the freedom to begin
with any declaration, why I chose to
examine how mass assassinations
could really kick things off to accept
blindly that some people are
executed.
the argument was not over
until all counter points had been examined,
the professor said.
she was tall and smiling when
I spoke and I felt thankful for her
defense of me any time she reiterated,
I was correct in re-summarizing the
exercise for each of the
nine hands that went up,
consuming the bell with a
theoretical society that arbited
punishment blindly as the statue
alluded to also,
the society we try to
have now is composed of
criterion like that.
I was eighteen and glowing
and enjoying the attention
with zero conviction about
the death penalty.
and when it came back to
her, and she presented it again
after many others had spoke,
I am sure I said,
to be perfectly frank,
we would HAVE to
kill the child in order
to make the law work.
and then I just kind of laughed
because the exercise itself asked you to
first pick a side and fight for it;
not to defend the death penalty
but to remove morality from law
having the freedom to remove all
structures of law around murder,
I could have created a punishless state
in which murderers walked free
or a Hammurabi and it is with the
same amount of callousness, that I
have begun to plant
nightshade around your house.
probability being like
you probably like to touch
things like me
and thinking it
to be Queen Anne’s Lace
giving it to your girl
for Valentine’s Day.
“Valentine’s Day part #1”
daturamoon.com 