i had a friend who once wore a long pink dress with lace around the collar and ruffles at the bottom and my friend was a man named johann, the type that carried around an angry austrian wrench longer than my arm and told me that so as not to be forgotten he would write his name on the dome of st. peter’s basilica. we all laughed until i screamed and dan turned, wild and still, towards a corner, whispering, “oh fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck” because one moment we were looking down, watching the city breathe and, the next, johann eclipsed rome.
he was afraid of being forgotten by himself, but he was even more afraid that he might never die. we all knew and he knew as well that no one would ever forget johann because once he climbed a tree and it bent in half and threw off its leaves at his feet when he stood before it in a gas mask.
i found him on a street corner in eastern europe, sitting on the curb with a white sack of clothes and a bible, watching traffic and letting yellow dust gather on his red pants. the next morning he was arguing with a taxi driver in arabic. when johann won, because johann always wins, he put me in the taxi across three other people, cradled in their laps, and told me not to let the police see me.
the windows and doors were missing, their gaping frames choked with barbed wire and plastic bags, caught like flies in a spider’s web. it was the enemy’s church, they had been building it for years, and when the bombs drove them out, it refused to be touched. johann walked up the brick wall and put me in the bell tower.
we were the only ones to stand in the balcony where the pulpit and its priest should have gone, looking down, watching to see if the empty cathedral had breath. my father told me a year later that it had a few breaths, all stolen and hidden.
it almost seemed like someone forgot to bring the white soldiers home when the war ended nine years ago, but they were left there on purpose, to keep the peace.
one soldier from across the ocean kept everyone’s peace but his own and though we were not the only ones to stand in that balcony, we were the only ones to come down the rungs growing deep in the grey wall alive.
johann wanted a mustache to match his dress, but the mustache was for the french foreign legion, and the french foreign legion was not for johann’s dress. he kayaked up the nile instead until the police caught him. they never did catch me in that turkish man’s taxi cab.
6.7.11
world war two was handwritten
some things float when they should not, like lamps in the dining room, and some things fly when then should not, like my five-year-old self swinging on my mother’s hand across the gap between the train cars. my father held all our bags and someone must have had my baby sister, but all i could see was the long tunnel of train cars lined up like tin can telephones. i walked the tightrope between, swaying and watching the tracks clatter beneath my feet.
i lay awake last night after an hour of coaxing my shoulders into a curl against my mattress, staring at the rectangle of yellow light coming from the kitchen of the girl with no soul. my window shade lay crumpled on the ground. i do not know whether it was awake or asleep, although i do know it was not curled, but heaped. i lay awake because needed to think of a language without the letter n. albanian has no w, chinese no th, german no ch, but how could anyone’s world be like mine without the letter n? if we took it away, there would be no perëndisë, no bi-wen-ya, no no one, no nowhere, no nothing, no naked, no not, no no,. but there would still be krieg, no matter how many letters we subtracted from our ledgers and abacuses.
speaking of things subtracted and things added and things revealed that should have been left hidden: should anything be left hidden? perhaps bodies in the cemetery, perhaps certain tufts of hair (although perhaps not), perhaps the identical gap in her uncle’s smile. her father always had perfect teeth.
people are staring in my window again, friends of the girl with no soul and newly bleached hair. they are all boys, they all smoke great puffs of burning tobacco that catch, writhing, in the screen of my window, they all talk too loudly when they are drunk and i know who they love. it is only fair that i know. they know the shape of my mouth when i sleep.
they say and i know that i lack a centre: indian boxes all stacked inside each other and holding nothing, but so dense and orange without cause. even now, hello dolly is a siren in my ear, iceland the muse in the other and one of my eardrums has been shattered since that day our airplane flew too high. and in between, who knows, other than a wedding ring my father found on the ground in thailand that makes me someone’s bride, someone with the eyes of a untamed lion demanding my surrender.
i am my vulture-eyed lover’s fountain pen, the length of my body running green and deep.
the light in the kitchen has gone out and no one watches me lying in a curl on my mattress. perhaps she has a soul after all, although there is a loaf of bread lying in the roof’s corner slashed into strips the size of the marbled spoons my mother bought me.
i lay awake last night after an hour of coaxing my shoulders into a curl against my mattress, staring at the rectangle of yellow light coming from the kitchen of the girl with no soul. my window shade lay crumpled on the ground. i do not know whether it was awake or asleep, although i do know it was not curled, but heaped. i lay awake because needed to think of a language without the letter n. albanian has no w, chinese no th, german no ch, but how could anyone’s world be like mine without the letter n? if we took it away, there would be no perëndisë, no bi-wen-ya, no no one, no nowhere, no nothing, no naked, no not, no no,. but there would still be krieg, no matter how many letters we subtracted from our ledgers and abacuses.
speaking of things subtracted and things added and things revealed that should have been left hidden: should anything be left hidden? perhaps bodies in the cemetery, perhaps certain tufts of hair (although perhaps not), perhaps the identical gap in her uncle’s smile. her father always had perfect teeth.
people are staring in my window again, friends of the girl with no soul and newly bleached hair. they are all boys, they all smoke great puffs of burning tobacco that catch, writhing, in the screen of my window, they all talk too loudly when they are drunk and i know who they love. it is only fair that i know. they know the shape of my mouth when i sleep.
they say and i know that i lack a centre: indian boxes all stacked inside each other and holding nothing, but so dense and orange without cause. even now, hello dolly is a siren in my ear, iceland the muse in the other and one of my eardrums has been shattered since that day our airplane flew too high. and in between, who knows, other than a wedding ring my father found on the ground in thailand that makes me someone’s bride, someone with the eyes of a untamed lion demanding my surrender.
i am my vulture-eyed lover’s fountain pen, the length of my body running green and deep.
the light in the kitchen has gone out and no one watches me lying in a curl on my mattress. perhaps she has a soul after all, although there is a loaf of bread lying in the roof’s corner slashed into strips the size of the marbled spoons my mother bought me.
and here we are, miles even from march
thirty cigarette butts in the snow outside my window are
a constellation of my seventh grade braids,
trapped under my elbows in every armchair,
to make a dense wig for some girl
better off bald.
the winter, my warden, squints at me while i
decide to dream
not of every or any armchair, but of
my grandmother’s porch staring serenely,
crouched beside the pregnant tomatoes,
trailing its finger through heaps of soil, tracing its name in the—
you need me again
to listen to you curse and weep and swear you
won’t go inside until a flickering satellite drops on your head,
sitting on the hill with a sullen, raging satchel you forgot to pack,
slouching home before orange and black crawl into the sky.
last year’s red-shingled attic leaked, let in the melt in march,
my mattress damp, the meadow between my shoulders molded.
whenever i moved and whenever i didn’t,
(my back rigid and rusting) my shirt gaped, i shivered and sweat.
my mind, though, still remembered how to tulip.
this january, with the freeze lounging on the sills,
a creased woman with a mustache pushes a shopping cart
piled with red plants through my mother’s cathedral.
i am the silent tower bell, my stagnant tongue and bronze ear
(eternally mute, ever undeaf—to you and your satellites)
lying across two pews like a bridge to nowhere.
i pluck out my eyelashes one by one.
a man with half a mouth and an umbrella mutters, no coffee,
i’ve been wearing the same shadows for days.
a constellation of my seventh grade braids,
trapped under my elbows in every armchair,
to make a dense wig for some girl
better off bald.
the winter, my warden, squints at me while i
decide to dream
not of every or any armchair, but of
my grandmother’s porch staring serenely,
crouched beside the pregnant tomatoes,
trailing its finger through heaps of soil, tracing its name in the—
you need me again
to listen to you curse and weep and swear you
won’t go inside until a flickering satellite drops on your head,
sitting on the hill with a sullen, raging satchel you forgot to pack,
slouching home before orange and black crawl into the sky.
last year’s red-shingled attic leaked, let in the melt in march,
my mattress damp, the meadow between my shoulders molded.
whenever i moved and whenever i didn’t,
(my back rigid and rusting) my shirt gaped, i shivered and sweat.
my mind, though, still remembered how to tulip.
this january, with the freeze lounging on the sills,
a creased woman with a mustache pushes a shopping cart
piled with red plants through my mother’s cathedral.
i am the silent tower bell, my stagnant tongue and bronze ear
(eternally mute, ever undeaf—to you and your satellites)
lying across two pews like a bridge to nowhere.
i pluck out my eyelashes one by one.
a man with half a mouth and an umbrella mutters, no coffee,
i’ve been wearing the same shadows for days.
like standing in church with no lights and long arms, or falling in love
my insides, the cluttered parts, grow cold like the white winter
sun on a woman’s blue silk fan, drifting back and
forth and back.
there was something that used to be tucked in a corner down there,
in the muddled and mismatched places,
kept in a corner or a closet,
something i misplaced that came back and now breaks
in the mornings, when the curtains part
and i know the world like adam knew eve in all her shining,
the drum takes me
a cage, a drum, a small brown bird—am i ready to trade my soul?
the grass is bluer, teal like my grandfather and his ducks,
behind the long, bronze, scarred bars.
teal like my grandfather and his berry bushes,
his cans and cans of jam and his cracking pond,
the timbre of an empty cowbell,
and pulsing, pulsing, pulsing,
your thighs forcing your bike up the hill,
and knowing the top is ours.
the cluttered parts flutter, frosted.
a drum is a cage that speaks true.
sun on a woman’s blue silk fan, drifting back and
forth and back.
there was something that used to be tucked in a corner down there,
in the muddled and mismatched places,
kept in a corner or a closet,
something i misplaced that came back and now breaks
in the mornings, when the curtains part
and i know the world like adam knew eve in all her shining,
the drum takes me
a cage, a drum, a small brown bird—am i ready to trade my soul?
the grass is bluer, teal like my grandfather and his ducks,
behind the long, bronze, scarred bars.
teal like my grandfather and his berry bushes,
his cans and cans of jam and his cracking pond,
the timbre of an empty cowbell,
and pulsing, pulsing, pulsing,
your thighs forcing your bike up the hill,
and knowing the top is ours.
the cluttered parts flutter, frosted.
a drum is a cage that speaks true.
louise in love
louise, ham, lydia, charles gordon, and isabella are traveling nowhere, or so it would seem.
some days they travel by train (travel is easy by train), other days they sleep on hideabeds in boats, and at least once louise and ham drove to the top of a forest fire and sat in their car at the top of the hill, watching the trees grow back into their roots. the clairvoyant behind the beaded screen told louise first that she had been born on an eclipse and then she would be going on a journey. but in the deepest part of her, she always was a journey.
we all are journeys because we all end up somewhere different than where we began—not our bodies, both because some of us wither in the same roots we had on when our seeds were planted and because then we would be on a journey. but we all are journeys.
it is odd that louise should be a journey—she is both so full of the broadest, thickest thoughts and so empty of all else that neither part seems able to traverse anywhere, only to spread wide like too much syrup or hang in a vacuum of sheerness.
louise begins as will without fear, or object, other than to name dogs “lucky to be alive” and to learn about the six knobs controlling the night and the rudderless day. but in truth, she was wary, reading to faint onto a mirror to be whole or to reckon the sums of orchestras and attractions. ham is kept outside in the yard, until louise was ready for him to stop her ticking. even then, she is afraid, because for her, loving is needing and ham might not lend an ear forever, even in exchange for a bed wider than one. louise is a hurricranium.
louise ends believing ham, that love is a childhood dog bite, borne in silence and pain and trapped in a vibrant drama, for “the boat could not be capsized as long as someone listened.” louise ends fumbling in the dark, with ham in emptiness and nothingness, made into nothing. she who was will skates across the syrup to find that vastness is a vacuum of sheerness. “nothing but nothing can save us.”
perhaps it is true that to be saved, your eyes must make a retreat back, back, and still back.
but in the long run, what louise thought was a sea of nothing was truly a forest of fire lit like an ancient woman’s cake, wax dribbling into the frosting and leaves dribbling into the soil.
some days they travel by train (travel is easy by train), other days they sleep on hideabeds in boats, and at least once louise and ham drove to the top of a forest fire and sat in their car at the top of the hill, watching the trees grow back into their roots. the clairvoyant behind the beaded screen told louise first that she had been born on an eclipse and then she would be going on a journey. but in the deepest part of her, she always was a journey.
we all are journeys because we all end up somewhere different than where we began—not our bodies, both because some of us wither in the same roots we had on when our seeds were planted and because then we would be on a journey. but we all are journeys.
it is odd that louise should be a journey—she is both so full of the broadest, thickest thoughts and so empty of all else that neither part seems able to traverse anywhere, only to spread wide like too much syrup or hang in a vacuum of sheerness.
louise begins as will without fear, or object, other than to name dogs “lucky to be alive” and to learn about the six knobs controlling the night and the rudderless day. but in truth, she was wary, reading to faint onto a mirror to be whole or to reckon the sums of orchestras and attractions. ham is kept outside in the yard, until louise was ready for him to stop her ticking. even then, she is afraid, because for her, loving is needing and ham might not lend an ear forever, even in exchange for a bed wider than one. louise is a hurricranium.
louise ends believing ham, that love is a childhood dog bite, borne in silence and pain and trapped in a vibrant drama, for “the boat could not be capsized as long as someone listened.” louise ends fumbling in the dark, with ham in emptiness and nothingness, made into nothing. she who was will skates across the syrup to find that vastness is a vacuum of sheerness. “nothing but nothing can save us.”
perhaps it is true that to be saved, your eyes must make a retreat back, back, and still back.
but in the long run, what louise thought was a sea of nothing was truly a forest of fire lit like an ancient woman’s cake, wax dribbling into the frosting and leaves dribbling into the soil.
uncanny
late this morning, the uncanny came knocking on my door to ask if i was in need of a black, men’s belt or a burgundy curtain panel or love letter (it comes in a set with guilt, two for the price of one) or a magenta secretary’s dress (with white triangles flung about the bodice, stabbing my ribs and breasts). everyone except the macedonian woman wearing the red handbag around her neck knows that burgundy and magenta should never be on the same serving platter, much less the same mannequin, but i still said, yes, yes, if i must yes, and i suppose yes.
the brown postage box underneath my bed is the mouth of a pit leading down into the boiler room, where lie heaps and piles of merchandise the uncanny sold me.
the uncanny, however, did not sell me my stare. the albanians, some old men, all the smoking women, and a few construction workers, lent it to me for free. i am afraid when i remember the ladder peering in my window, and tonight the stare does not wander from my peeling sill. i pretend to be the panopticon until you forget your name and the sound of elastic panties snapping.
there are so many objects in the world all shuffled and rotated in circles and we are all children on a carousel turning the opposite direction, reaching for the golden ring(s). you might have my umbrella one day and i your slick, round eyes. dollars for pipes, pipes for dollars, dollars for pillows, pillows for dollars, dollars for salad forks, salad forks for dollars, dollars for why must you look in my window to find what you want?
the brown postage box underneath my bed is the mouth of a pit leading down into the boiler room, where lie heaps and piles of merchandise the uncanny sold me.
the uncanny, however, did not sell me my stare. the albanians, some old men, all the smoking women, and a few construction workers, lent it to me for free. i am afraid when i remember the ladder peering in my window, and tonight the stare does not wander from my peeling sill. i pretend to be the panopticon until you forget your name and the sound of elastic panties snapping.
there are so many objects in the world all shuffled and rotated in circles and we are all children on a carousel turning the opposite direction, reaching for the golden ring(s). you might have my umbrella one day and i your slick, round eyes. dollars for pipes, pipes for dollars, dollars for pillows, pillows for dollars, dollars for salad forks, salad forks for dollars, dollars for why must you look in my window to find what you want?
mother mary anne
mother mary anne died a long time ago in wichita,
which is in kansas or oklahoma,
or some other place that looks like a wide, dusty chessboard
someone forgot in the garden last spring.
the tree she planted from the rosary beads
she bought in a paper packet at the seed store
creased and wrinkled and blew away but
her tan tweed suitcase outlived her,
plodding along the side of the road,
its hitchhiker’s thumb trailing behind,
waiting for a ride.
i am creased and wrinkled like an old highway map
and the wind is tugging at my corners.
which is in kansas or oklahoma,
or some other place that looks like a wide, dusty chessboard
someone forgot in the garden last spring.
the tree she planted from the rosary beads
she bought in a paper packet at the seed store
creased and wrinkled and blew away but
her tan tweed suitcase outlived her,
plodding along the side of the road,
its hitchhiker’s thumb trailing behind,
waiting for a ride.
i am creased and wrinkled like an old highway map
and the wind is tugging at my corners.
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