The Gospel of Breaking
Page 3
worth leaving if you’ve got ghosts to chase
or a tongue quickly turning to acid at the floor of your stomach
ignoring the nonsense of small talk you reached for your keys
patron saint of the urgent runaway
patron saint oflet’s get the fuck out of here
you fashioned a highway while i was making plans for a cliff
you filled the tankgrabbed my hand and saidlet’s go
like there wasn’t already an ocean on either side of us
like all the walls weren’t closing in for good
and the way you said it
you made me believe
joker
when you finally decided
to stop playing
the joker
you packed up
everything and
moved to the
farthest city
you could afford
now you tell your jokes for a living
and give your sadness away for free
alphabet soup
some of the words are yours and some
of the words are mine in the same way that we have both held all
the letters of the alphabet in each our mouths and
never come to the same conclusion
when I am angry you smirk and I am more angry
except also horny now and backspace confused
some of the thoughts are mine and some
are not mine in the same way that I look in the mirror and try
to erase my catapult-mouth error
the aching moon at the gate of my throat
if I turn to the side I will not disappear I tried
to tell you I am not delete that kind of good girl
if I turn and turn and turn if you unsee me
if I pull the tangle of my hair from your fist
ctrl make the meat of my thigh a ghost between your teeth
maybe if I just keep spinningtill the words blur
till the lyrics and the thrill and the taste mix up
maybe make a wife of the churning
if I press my eyelids close
to any sleepy highway horizon
lawnmower begginglock
any beaded papercut
make a spectacle of my own flesh
spill typewriter ribbons from my shadow
esc.
seconds
I bite my own lipcurse at myself (curse)
think of how silly it is to have been chewing
for 35 yearsand still be getting it wrong
except tonightbefore my altar when flesh pierced
rubiesat the jagged edge of my own tooth
I whispered(thank) you(thank) you
for an awareness of my own body from my
own body(blessed)
for gifting myselfthis blessed sensation
I once needed from you
it’s only a good ride if you can choose to get off
or: to the people who would call robin williams a coward
what dainty fish-hooks have danced in your heart
dangling the whimpering shadow of which sadness
what tiny worries
that you would ask more of a man
who has already given you all of his fresco-song
the last of his flashlights
emptied out for you his lashing laughter
do you know what it is to think of the thing a hundred times before coffee
to make the bed anyway
have you designed the moment until
every room you enter fills itself with sharp objects pointed in your direction
to call someone a coward for surviving years of this torment is selfish
to do it with a mouth full of their laughter is simply ungrateful
what jokes do you tell
which holy cities have you saved
that you would string up the mask of a clown
so you might be entertained
what do you know of rest
or the needing of it
what do I know
there is no measure for this madness
that we should tell a man how much he can take
how much more he owes us who have offered
so very little to replenish what we readily consume
did we expect this to be endless
will there ever be a time when we do not ask for more
they said we wouldn’t need these
life jackets on dry land
i.
mama remembers herself a little girlturned away
from a birthday pool party
mama remembers herself a little girlturned away
ii.
Before we fly from trinidad to the small island
we drive up the hill to stay in the BIG hotel
now, NEWLY RENOVATED, it has stood on this
same perch for the “better” part of a century
mama remembers herself, a little girl turned
away from a birthday pool-party because this
big north american hotel didn’t yet let brown girls
bathe themselves in full sunlightsomehow
scared the world would be hypnotized by the shine
probably even mama didn’t know she was a diamond
in a pool of glassthe way they treated her
when we reach the hotel nearly fifty years later
standing new and shiny in the same cursed spot
we learn that the pool is the last piece of the renovations
it will not reopen until after we leave
today I saw a small blonde-haired girl drift back and forth
impossibly buoyant child carried upward atop
a weightlessness so vast and deep that she could not touch
her feet to the bottom of itthe big blue stretched out
around her a clean white tile framing the scene in its perimeter
mama was a little girl once
once
I was too maybe always will be someplace
iii.
After hours of travel
I pull the tiny computer from my pocket
eye each blue image pouring from its screen
every one erupting new colour
some unknown and still-beloved brown face
smiling after another
a newsreel of necessary medicine
dancing dark girl pops her shoulder in my direction
mean-mugs until the camera looks away
brown-skinned boy and his father blow each other kisses
with a tenderness that quenches my dreams
the remedy is loving each other harder
loving these black bodies more than waterdeeper still
mama remembers herself
mama remembers herself
mama remembers
(sugar plum)
mommy sat down on the porch to put her foot up. She has so much to tell me today, about the iguana and how it could make aunty run, about the good bush that washes away the bad spirits anyone might put on me. I must take some to charlotteville and bathe with it in the ocean. She tells me too many times about the fish I am already sure I do not want to eat. But I listen. mommy is ninety-nine and she has earned all of her indulgences. So she tells me again about the house she built, how no man helped her do it. When I ask about her mother, she tells me her maiden name was murray. I want to know more about her mother, my great grandmother. I want to know what she looked like and how she smelled and what she did to stay alive. Was her hair long like mine, was her skin dark like /uncle/?
mommy doesn’t talk much about her mother. Says she liked her mother fine, but she loves her /daddy/. So I listen to her talk about my /great grandfather/ defratis. She tells me he was nice, and fair, with beautiful hair. Half guyanese and half portugese. She tells me he had plenty money, was a rum dealer with lots of business, rum shops here and there. She tells me how he died at thirty and how a woman who wo
rked with him told her the story. Some jealous man put poison in his rum so he could steal up all of his business. She asks me if I understand. I do, but as always I have a tough time telling the difference between truth and myth.
Satisfied of my understanding she goes on. She tells me how she loved him. How she cried and threw herself down in the street, just a little girl of five, begging her /father/ not to go to work. She only met him this once, but she loved him her whole life.
When she rolled around and threw a fit to stop him leaving, he reached for his belt, began to unbuckle to lash her into better behaviour, but he stopped himself. Picked her up out of the road and carried her into the store. He told the young woman in there to cook some food and share with her and then he was gone.
mommy says that if her /daddy/ hadn’t died, she would’ve gone with him, travelled to portugal and all over. She says he would’ve left her some money and she wouldn’t have had to work so hard all of her life. Things would’ve been different. She would not have stayed in charlotteville, or married /my grandfather/, (she doesn’t say much about this but I think I already know he was a heavy-handed man). I listen. Eventually, in a moment of gratitude I say that if things had been different I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t exist. That’s what I’m telling you, she replies. My gratitude melts into a kind of passive sadness, she has already measured this option, has found it acceptable. I say, but what about your children? I would’ve had different children. She doesn’t say it with malice, but a tepid resignation. I repeat BUT I WOULDN’T EXIST!
No, you wouldn’t be my child. It’s a reasonable compromise for her, a whole life, house, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren still, gambled on trust for /a man/ only met once, gambled on the kindness of her being fed, instead of beaten.
I think about the longing I have suffered in my life. How I have stretched toward people who would not have stayed even if there were no venom.
The promise of possibility is a trap that has kept me from the joys of my own life.
And what joys am I missing, in clinging to a /daddy/ who is always going, always walking toward poison and away from food? What love do I dishonour and ignore, in searching for a face I hardly know?
Let them go to their poison /great grandfathers/ and /daddies/ too. Let them go and leave behind children crying as they will, mourning as we do. Let them go, and let us see what wild plants grow in their absence. What medicines will spring from a line of women with lost /fathers/ and distant /daddies/? A line of maidens and witches who carry their own names and build their own houses, and birth their own bloodlines and cook their own food.
black feminist
In response to patti smith’s “rock ’n’ roll nigger,”
in response to solidarity is for white women,
and in response to my white, activist, feminist, poet friend who let slip
from her mouth a humorous exclamation of “NIGGA, PLEASE!”
They saidIcould be a feminist too!
after all, they are going to need someone at the meeting
who knows how to tighten up
all those white-girl dreadlocks
oh yesthey saidI could be a feminist
that isof course
as long as I don’t ask any questions
try not to mention the dirty mouths of old icons
or how proudly mother deities suffered themselves
black and dirtyblue and bruised
so they could use one of the really good words
words made for the megaphone-mouths of punk rock stars
words like nigger
like everything that’s yoursis going to be mine for the using
like didn’t you know what we were doing here
likego ongive them your storyyou’ll see how it shines
like fresh blood for the cameras
there are going to be a lot of cameras
and
they said I could help must be good for something
must be some big-toothed benefactor that would just eat me up
articulate black girl such as myself
just the right amount of mad
Shhhhh!
They didn’t mean it like that,
no need to get upset!
We’re all in this together
alright then
put me on the front lines
give me your blackestmost brackish kind of weather
this thick skin is just waiting to be goodfor something
yesplease
give me a nice big sign that reads
ME TOO!or maybeme too?If that sounds better
you know? They said I could be a feminist
as long as I don’t talk about this black girl body
about that cold red body of water
about an inheritance so great that no one body could apologize it away
as long as I don’t remind anyone where so many of the ideas
for this movement came from anyway
no one likes a know-it-all
and yeseven in this progresssomeone has got to play the fuel
all of us have to make ourselves useful
and surelyno one has yet forgotten how sweetly and happily
dark bodies take to making kindling
they said i could help
they said i could be the best kind of help
and still you cannot touch it
and what is it you think you will find in my hair? some secret
weapon, or a wisdom you know you can reach for but never touch
a knife, a key, a mirror?
are you hoping to find yourself in there?
a lineage to a history you have refused? forgotten
the name of an ancestor who didn’t carry anyone
away from their love of freedom
what are you searching for so deep in my roots
in the cold and glaring white of this security line
some way to make me feel darker, smaller, still
observed and counted, caught and branded
should we go into the small room again?
so that you can remind me
which parts of my body belong to me
which pieces will be mocked first, stolen later?
is there some story you want to remember
too long and thick to be believed
some warm indigo hand on your face
some sweet nipple you want to suckle
when you dig your fingers into me
WHAT IS IT?SPEAK UP!
the room is fullmicrophones listening
your own children can hear
desires wriggling under the x-ray
and your ghostsspeak clearly now
what is ityouare hoping to find?
in my mind there is a place where we are both whole
Go to sleep little baby Go to sleep little baby
you and me and the devil makes three
don’t need nobody but the baby
mama would lullaby me to sleep underneath the humming canopy of mango trees on the island where she was born
it is my earliest memory bandana in her short black hair the flesh of island fruit ripening the air around us and the calm sound of mangoes dropping one by one
branches shifted in the windcasting jigsaw-puzzle shadows on my newborn faceI remember the smellI remember the feel of the place
or then maybe I only think I do memory is a funny thing and sometimes your mind plays tricks on you
It is possible that I was too young to remember this at all that my only real knowledge of this
was hearing the words of my mother’s stories fall happily from her lips
I have read about the malleability of the mind and certain thinkers find that even the suggestion of a memory
can create the belief that we ourselves were there
perhaps it is a function of our humanity this natural tendency for empathy the ability to put ourselves in the place of another
and this
hungry disease that
lurks inside of me
the mementos that I know to be mine show the wear and tear of times when I had to be more mother to herthan she could be to me
coming home from school to find her curled in the darkness of her room, crying and shaking like the wet twisted leaves of her mango trees
running my fingers through her hair softly
go to sleep little baby go to sleep little baby
trying with ten-year-old hands to pull her back into the land of the living depressionit is the gift you never wanted that just keeps on giving
and I think it is the disease of our memorieseither we remember too much darknessor we forget too much light
in retrospections that I know to be mineI have found both of ussteeped in our own darkness smothered by it
I imagine how she must have feared that it would grow fat inside my belly like a seedthis dark maladypassed from one loved one to another
butmama if it is true that we can create in each other new and old and borrowed memories
then I will plant you nothing but mango trees
and warm island breezes and your daughter’s face looking up at you with all the love and life you have given me
and your voice sweet as it could ever be softy
don’t need nobody but the baby
what forgetfulness is for
i.
Some say that the bond between lovebirds is so strong that if you separate two birds that have mated for life they will pluck out their own feathers to commit suicide it sounds tragic enough to be called beautiful though, I wonder if this is not an attempt at suicide at all but one last effort to remove whatever obstacle may have come between them
to render the vulnerability of nakedness the simple need for skin on skin
ii.
like any good small-brained big-hearted animal I am a firm believer in the power of forgetfulness
but I’ve been studying timelines in the same way I used to learn your eyes
so meticulously that I could pick them out of lineups blindfolded so delicately that
I could walk your lashes like tightropes hung from sky
hoping to find the exact intersection where our lives first intertwined wanting badly