Life of the Party
Page 6
You’re such a poet, she says. And I know this is true.
I know that I am.
But mostly, I just want to be unremarkable.
THE LOVER AS CORN SYRUP
There comes a time
when you must explain
to your friends
why you stayed.
I keep writing poems
in which I compare
the lover to something
else as a way of answering
this question, so here
I am, naming the lover
as the sweetest thing
the mouth will ever know.
Here I am calling the lover
sugar’s blood, the reason
behind everything I crave.
Honey, you are something
that morphs the teeth
to a murder of sitting crows,
that mothers ban from their children’s
innocent lunch boxes,
something in everything
I consume, only I don’t
know it until the rot creeps
in and settles in my belly,
until I am left holding my knees
on the bathroom floor,
massaging the cavity from my middle.
Until I read the back of every box.
THE SCHOLAR
the house is heavy with sour burning fish / when i leave / my clothes will smell / of seared salmon / sulking men on the train / will tidy their backs / twist their necks / in my direction / assume my thighs used bait / you know the thing we learn in grade school / about cheap girls’ bodies / how they carry the sea / i make the train smell like gowanus / trash-river lady / all for you / you are back home writing a book / on the kitchen floor / told me this morning / you met someone else / she lives in europe / but you have more in common / like religion / your names / sound nice together / i ask for my things / you give me a garbage bag / i ask for my coat / you beg me to leave it / it smells like you / you say / the last time we made love / you asked me / if i was scared / i think you wanted me / to say yes / when we go to bed / all of the women scale the fire escape / perch on the rust / cackle and sing / you can tell how much he loves her / by how he sleeps / not at all / not at all / not at all
ODE TO MY JEALOUSY
You plague of desert locusts born sullen in my gut,
blood-red betta eating its own tail, how I could describe
you forever as a mob, how I could learn
the name of every kind of wasp and point to you,
but I know you, my emerald heart, my wreath
of kelp, are something more timid than that—
monstrous, yes, but defenseless, also—soft
and sacred like the skin in the pit of my arm,
how I flinch and scream when my lover pokes at you,
calls you out, you, born from a mother I have not
uncovered, you, evidence of this reliable pain,
blood trickle from beneath my vest, you bigmouth
party-crasher, all talk with a plush knuckle,
you mirror made of warped wood, lying dormant
while I win, I win, I win, I win, sometimes
I dream of a surgeon, scooping you out
and stitching me back up, combing my hair
perfect over the scar, and my new smiling self
emerging, how she feels so warm, when she
hears her lover’s name in another girl’s mouth.
THE LOVER AS APPETITE
Gone.
ODE TO MY FAVORITE MURDER
My favorite murder
is the one that makes me sleep
in the living room, an open switchblade
resting on a coaster.
I dream of it against my neck
and move it beneath my pillow.
My favorite murder mutates
each creak into a footstep,
an echo of boots in the hallway.
This house hiccups and a man
has twelve hands, each one turning
a doorknob. No, a window.
No, he’ll come in through the skylight.
I wanted to lock it last month but didn’t
have a ladder. One act of laziness
becomes the loophole into my bed.
That’s how it usually happens
in my favorite murders—a two-inch
plastic knob left unturned and it all fractures
into red. Of course, it wasn’t the window
cracked open that caused it. We know that.
But the detail matters, somehow.
Now, I sweat the bed and fantasize
about a breeze. My favorite murder is the one
whose name I can’t stop saying at parties,
whose phone call I stay awake for, whose quirks
I hoard like tennis balls in my pockets.
The movie I cast and direct.
In line at the bank, the man behind me
wears no socks with his boat shoes
and auditions for the role of killer.
In this scene, he follows me to my car.
In this scene, he watches my lover
and me have sex. He waits four nights
to kill me. When I learned that rapists
can be identified by the flesh under their victims’
fingernails, I offered to scratch my boyfriend’s back.
I don’t know if that method works here
because I’m not alive to see it.
I am hungry for a good story—a well-kept
diary left behind, court transcripts
and a mouthy witness. Maybe that’s why
I’m writing this book.
Melissa says poetry is just obsession.
I don’t know when it happened,
but one day the word favorite
began to mean that which I am
most terrified of. I have told so many men
that they are my favorite.
My favorite murders are the ones
I can place my own body into as easy
as an ad-lib, who sit on the shelf like volumes
of an almost complete encyclopedia—
all that’s missing is the section on my name.
I AM ALMOST CERTAIN I COULD DISPOSE OF MYSELF & GET AWAY WITH IT
take the burden
off his hands.
unless he loves
the regimen
i will do the burying.
clean up after
his messy project.
if a girl can be found
dead, clawing at the seams
of a walk-in freezer
or in a water tank
on the roof of a hotel
& have her death named
intentional, by her own hand,
then so can i.
i can’t ask him to do it
nicely, i can’t beg for no blood.
but i can make a barter
for my own removal.
i’ve already rehearsed
the gospel: leave me here
& go get a snack.
i’ll touch myself
until i am my own
fingerprint. you are nowhere.
you are a man
at the park eating a banana.
i’m not trying to do him
any favors, i’m just faithful
to the way i’m found.
edwin told me once
that when the city<
br />
workers of los angeles
drained the pond in echo park,
they found eight bodies
at the bottom.
i’ll go there, i think,
after he is done.
i’ll wrap myself
in blue tarp, be like woolf
with a stone in my pocket
& no one will think twice.
i always had a sadness to me,
after all. now, i am more beautiful.
THE LOVER AS A DREAM
we are at a circus.
we are not lovers anymore—
this is somewhere in the aftermath
of our loud & bloody affair
& it is raining & there are mice
everywhere, zigzagging across
the carnival cement, panicking
as the water grows around our feet,
ankles, knees. they’re going to drown,
i keep saying but she doesn’t respond,
she wants to know why i’m wearing lipstick.
who are you always dressing up for?
they’re going to drown.
who are you always dressing up for?
they’re going to drown.
i once heard the word conversation
described as a progression of exchanges
but there is no progress here
so maybe i will instead compare this
to the bullet drop—the idea that if you shoot
a gun & drop a bullet from the same location
they will hit the floor at the same time,
hundreds of feet apart.
we are born from the same city
of worry & doubt & fear of loss
but always end up so far
from each other.
she takes me to see the elephants
& i notice that all of the animals
have feeding tubes, bags collecting
pus at the base of their stomachs,
& i keep using the word inhumane.
she wants to take a photo
of the fat, gray beast who is dancing
on its doughy hind legs
for a crowd of leering tourists
but when i give her my phone
she digs through it, finds the evidence
of my new, bright life,
my new, bright lover.
who is she?
this is inhumane.
who is she?
this is inhumane.
we met up to exchange something
of hers i had—an artifact from a time
we thought each other’s homes
safe enough to leave our things—
but whatever it was is not here
anymore, the boil of her backbite
is the only thing we hold together
now & so i tell her it’s time for me
to go & she agrees, she wants
to stay anyway, she wants to see
the grand finale, the elephant
painting a picture with its nose,
& so i leave her there amongst
the sticky chaos, the sweet wound.
it is still pouring, i am still
heavy with the weight of living,
there is a line of sunburnt
people snaking towards the entrance
& still, no one cares about the mice.
MY MOTHER’S ADDENDUM
every time my mother
tells the story about the time
a man tied her up with zip ties,
she adds something new.
last time it was advice.
when a man holds
a gun to your lower back,
you give him a secret,
you say, “this thing here
is only for us,” & he is less
likely to kill you.
today, she adds a reflection.
when it happened,
i wasn’t afraid.
it was familiar,
like i had rehearsed it
so many times in my mind
that all i could think was
this is exactly how i imagined it.
BODY COUNT: 13
with quotes from the Albuquerque Journal’s coverage of the murder of eleven black and brown women, predominately sex workers, and one fetus found in Albuquerque, New Mexico
We don’t believe anyone
is a throwaway
just on the wrong side
of the law
that’s the hard part
the wait
there are no answers
only the chase
women that gather dust
and then gone
maybe it was a person
who thought they were doing the Lord’s work
murdering prostitutes
addicts and burying them
in a shallow grave
maybe they believed
it was an act of service killing
these girls who
shared a common bond
looked out for each other
in the war zone
soft desert runaways
[how many bodies
need to be dug up
before the Albuquerque Police Department
is comfortable
with the words Serial Killer]
we found two more foot bones
we will continue to search until
we’re not finding any more
had we been finding fresh bodies
bodies bodies bodies
bodies bodies bodies
I’d be much more concerned
it’s tough work
in missing persons cases
involving women
with criminal lifestyles
they don’t want to be found
imagine twelve white girls go missing
imagine their bodies found
before they turn to bone
imagine their bodies found
how do I write
a found poem
when there is nothing
to be found
how can i tell you
about a girl
who is defined
by her absence
imagine their bodies
no one cared
whether she ever showed up
[except for those who loved her
who knew she was more than her rap sheet
there are so many more missing
and they’re out there somewhere
maybe they are out there
on that mesa
maybe it’s time
to take a second look.]
EUBANK & CANDELARIA, 2009
Some things are more a feeling
than they are a memory.
My memory is that I was peering
over something, watching.
*
A man who now I might call a boy,
but back then, a man,
bragged about the bodies
of women he left on the mesa.
*
I have heard men refer to the number of women
they’ve slept with as their body count.
*
In 2009, out by the volcanoes,
a mass grave, eleven women and one fetus,
found buried in a row like white lines
> in a parking lot.
*
Adri taught me that when a man pulls up and asks
if you need a ride you always say yes.
You’re always going somewhere
even if you’re not.
*
The papers named him
the West Mesa Bone Collector
and named the girls transient
and troubled and missing for years.
*
It was my boyfriend’s house.
We never went outside
but I wanted to.
I used to look out the window
and miss my dad.
I used to wake up in pain
and ask him what he did to me
in my sleep.
*
He disposed of the bodies
of sex workers and no one thought
to look until they waned into an outline,
until a dog walker found a girl’s femur
in the dirt.
*
We didn’t stop getting in cars.
We still needed a ride.
Still needed air-conditioning.
Still thought that saying no
caused more trouble than anything else.
*
He was never caught.
*
One suspect was found stalking
sex workers with a rope and electrical
tape in his front seat.
One suspect strangled a girl to death
and was then shot by her boyfriend.
What is justice when every girl
in the story is either dead or wanted dead?
What is justice when the man didn’t do
the it we are talking about
but did something like it and buried
her somewhere else?
*
I always thought it was a misnomer—
collector—decorative and terrifying,
but inaccurate. The name
made it sound like a hobby,
like inside his house he
might have a China cabinet
filled with teeth.
[the first call came the day before christmas. i was combing at the green pins of a douglas fir in a holiday tree lot. i wasn’t raised with tradition but i lived with a boyfriend now & we were set on playing house the right way. my father says that the babysitter, who now has a name we use instead, came in to the hospital where my mother worked & held out her forearm, pointed to the blackening cyst, the dark bloom of a needle gone awry. my mother dressed it in clean gauze & asked the right questions. she once taught me about motivational interviewing—how, if done properly, a person will tell you all of the things you didn’t ask but wanted to know. in this case, it was about the babysitter’s father. about her body. about him, awake in her room each night, asking her to keep a secret. about his hand in the hinges of a door, a dog’s mouth clamped on his right calf. the ways we cooed at his wounds, named her rage as brief & uniform as a training bra. never asked why his hands gripped a hinge in the first place.]