Part 3: The Act of Taming Things
“Being born again and again has torn your smile into pieces.”
–Adrienne Rich
for some of us,
freedom was a legend;
a cage of smudged windows
and insatiable longing,
a crippled twirl,
pace
around the apartment
with a wand in hand,
repetitive crescendo in head
or the sudden broken glass
on the porch,
the
knot of fervent caterpillars
sliding through my guts and
prematurely spilling out onto the floor,
dissolving into pools of blood
like little girls ripped in pieces
in the midst of a tornado’s whirl
when they should have hid in the cellar,
waited patiently,
incubated like their wild brothers
anchoring in the moisture of a soft,
hemorrhaging sarcophagus
before they soar;
destroy their cotton packages
and hatch into thin air.
when the day is finally warm
and facing them, they
tear through the tether
unbridled in
exodus, unimpeded
and ready to transform into grand ideas
and take off without interruption
like the little girl’s
scorn;
now grown,
an envoy of acrimony
and the blue-black tones of
home and I pause here to ask myself
before I commit to the
flight,: what does metamorphosis
really feel like?
ask for knowledge,
wait for the visceral reply:
my skin
tearing at the thread of
each inside, each wound
stretching wide
for me to see, wide
like an orbit
enough to case the sky
and black inside turned
outside; now
black each wing of
bone and vine,
black my eyes and
black the sea I shoot
from; everything I touch is black
like me,
and I can see for miles.
“transition (pt.2”
when it came to me
you said I was all
muscled positivity
as if I didn’t hang myself once before;
as if I didn’t try to tell you
how cavernous a grin is,
or anything at all.
even though you are never sure I won’t
find that perfect bedsheet knot
or not or a razor or a kitchen knife
or a drunk night on the freeway and I’m
headfirst in the cement mixer
but I made it out of that
in jail and alive and I am
always palms clasped and grateful.
you say you pray
with FERVOR as I finger the locket,
my brother’s ashed clasped
around my throat
and I hold onto
that same little lie
about choice.
I let go of the wild lavender
sprouting from your toes through
the hints of splattered paint.
there’s a meadow in your abdomen
coaxing foxes from their
holes your knees knock mine,
sudden sting close and sharp
the way memory sits on your skull
then pulled back
how you held me
far away sometimes;
making wind happen
blowing kisses from the pines.
the bath is on, I’m cold.
you always say
I’m cold.
I beckon to the side:
you and I are from the same
arctic sky.
help me in so I feel
the frost of your fingertips
trace me;
my broken back to you now.
my nails are brown tipped and filthy
from digging myself out of my ancestral
grave and I’m spattered in the ,
sweat from a hard night’s day,
walking alleys, stalking shadows
and you’re truly unremarkable
these days save
the mosaic of carpenter’s paint,
some gray cement
garden: no flora, no fauna,
and even God told me to pause
and rest on my previous laurels
before I get carried away.
but i’m a martyr for this,
God,
I crave repercussion
I become a
yawning, clanking watering can
spritzing your open lips,
dolling up your stolid ground
to birth your stories:
pollen murals out of micro gestures,
extinguished longing that suddenly reignites and
I’m grabbing cattails from the gales to
comb out the tangles of your childhood,
fistfuls of mud planting seeds in the
tiny cracks around your chest that my own
sharp-toothed grief left when you
muttered the first
no and I stepped a few
years back.
freedom will teach you how
to stay in all new ways.
there is no difference
between love and liberation
and some were born saints,
you say as you help me
in the mugwort bath,
the smell of rose and lavender.
I plucked the petals and dropped
them one by one
for aesthetic reasons.
not free of indulgence, but
patient your fingers make
stems in the water.
“hurricane”
“I wish I hadn’t done this,” he said.
She nodded,“Yeah, and my friends want you dead.”
“What is the word for the blow that doesn’t change anything?”
–Ariel Gore
all day long
I vacillate between intention
and immediate withdrawal;
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 blindfold,
a preparation and I am forced to
declare it.
your arms are free
someone drew two swords and
showed me and I am superstitious,
lining wrists with crystal rosary and
jasmine smoke and tea and
smashing my fists into a
mirrored wall to feel the way
(across)
it might when I finally
say something,
when I finally stand still enough
to embrace the thing that’s
said.
7.
She walked slowly towards the house. A transfer of guilt must be achieved, she recited in her head. She was moving her fingers, clutching at the bottom of the jacket. The straw lost somewhere, she kept moving her fingers to mimic cradling it. A transfer of guilt must be achieved. What was the rest?
It was the second polar vortex in four years to hit the city this hard. Pounds of air stood packed around her so she felt boxed every step. She couldn’t see. Snow fell all around her and because the wind whipped her face with each violent gale, she was also forced to look down. Forced to crawl upright, she could only feel her way through: the knife-life breezes, the sting right below her eyes with every movement, every touch of sleet against her skin a slow-drawn slap. Every snowflake bruised her; it’s touch burrowed hard beneath her cheekbones and lingered. She was red faced and trudging. I am trudging. This is what trudging is. Her eyes were brimming with tears that wouldn’t leave the bottom of her lids. It is freezing. They were frozen there. A transfer of guilt must be achieved.
Her eyelashes were coated in snow and she could hardly make out the building in front of her. Being drawn to the light in the window, she floated like a black moth to the driveway. As the girl stepped closer, she could see there were candles, maybe a soft lamp, burning in the upstairs window. Everything else was dusky and had the stale feel of abandonment. The house was coated an ashen gray color by owner or night, tall, protruding but with no bright awning or curtains or mailbox or car. No song wafting through the howl of the storm. There was no sense of welcome but it was her only option. Let it be a party. Let it be jovial and light inside. You can deceive yourself into believing anything just so you’ll participate.
About thirty feet from the door, her body was suddenly struck with sensation: panic. This is respite. Stillness creates panic. She stood still and let a shiver take her; let something pass through her. The future was here and it was portentous. She grabbed the sapphire amulet around her neck. God, give me strength. Pausing at the top of the yard, she allowed her breath to come out slowly, deliberately and with planning. What do I look like? She was draped in all black but blue in her flesh; pallid and chattering. She was a ghost in a cloak. Blue like ice. Blue like river. Blue like the ash-filled locket. Give me warmth. Her breath was slow and deliberate and planned. The girl was pacing herself in stillness instead of step.
Before continuing, she allowed her body to stay there, frozen from foresight and weather, in a posture of complete surrender. She was upright and floating allowing the wind to carry her up the short driveway to the door. There was no effort to shovel. The driveway was packed with snow too. It had taken her several steps to get from car to driveway and several more to get from driveway to knob. The door itself was plain beige without number or knocker. There was nothing spectacular here. Looking around once more to confirm there was no one else on the block, she held the locket with her bare fingers and set her teeth together to quiet them. She was a shadow in the doorway. .My breath is slow and deliberate. Her hand balled in a fist, she began to raise her other arm as she fingered the silver chain. I am breath. I am breath. She tightened her fist B r e a t h e. She was muttering. I am safe and protected in white light. She exhaled. God, give me grace. She began knocking loudly, feeling her jaw clench and her respiration stop, the last of her crystallizing in air.
how to say i miss you twice.
“Sometimes I ask for too much just to feel my mouth overflow.”
―
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