To peel
Flesh off the
Cracked wood boards
Separate what was once alive
From the plastic
But sometimes in the
Rubble there is life
2
From
Under the concrete
A rescue dog hears a heartbeat
Life
Barks to alert
Dog and rescuers
Find
Warm-blooded person
Heart still beating
Pumping blood
So subtle
Buried in all that rubble
Yet this dog
Hears
There are no
Buried secrets
They
Know compassion
As they tread carefully
Walk over and through
Mountains of
Broken
Unstable
Rubble
To find life
3
8 days
Under rubble
Entombed
Only able to roll
A few inches
Wiggle your toes
Only able to pray
Psalms blocks out the panic thoughts
And claustrophobia
As earth shattering
Aftershocks
Threaten, threaten
To rain death on you
But the rumbles are the
Machines
Chomping through
Concrete
Wires
Broken glass
They find you
Under 10 stories of concrete
You were at work when
The earthquake hit
Your husband gives you a bit of water
Poured through a small hole
You see light for the first time in over a week
That night
Dusty rescuers
Pass your stretcher
Carefully
Hand to hand
Over the hills of broken brick
You are one of the last ones found
Alive
Your husband would not give up
Stupid reporter at the scene
Shoves a microphone into your face
Asks you if you knew you would survive
“Of course, why not?!” You say in perfect English
And then to the amazement of all
You start to sing!
An IV in your arm as you carefully
Get into your car
Your grateful husband
Drives you all away so
You can see for yourself
What has happened to your island
After two weeks
An 85-year-old woman is found
Under the rubble of a church
She is frail but alive
Stained-glass windows not shattered
And then another miracle
Under a house
A skeletal six-year-old boy
Is found
He is smiling!
His face dusty
He takes it all in
His arms are open wide
Everyone at the scene cheers
He cheers
He is passed to his crying father
Who never gave up
19
in spirit scrapping seafloor merriment
i arrive wild with banshee reverie
seeking beyond
broken securities coveting access to my body
beyond
salvaged excrement
and fingers groping for self in mirrors of me
i stand in spirit ruling she body
shipping unseen
carrying burnt and ashen fears ogling to nest
wearing shards of smiles shattered yesterday
so flowers reach
i arrive standing here
spitting from bone black bones
chamber of solar symphonies
hunting flesh’s grief
i tell no tales
i tell knowings of wreckage and gold
so sing me, sing me
pursing dawn’s reverie
in spirit mourning exhumed seepage
i stand keeping space for dreams undealt release
and seek beyond
secluded safety
where communal sutures are necessity
when child is a dead field
none wants to turn nor cultivate
for fear incapability and that she won’t harvest
i arrive rooted resilient
spiriting heart’s burst against rooting timbers’ sway
where presence barnacles low tides
surviving to sound of her sea calls
in response she clings
a chamber of solar symphonies and bone black bones
hunting flesh’s grief
i tell no tales
i tell knowings of wreckage and gold
so sing me, sing me tilling dawn’s reverie
in spirit sucking sweet of bees, i stand predisposition
breaking decay, drafting nectar from my skin
and momentum of wind where ancestors keep
seeking beyond
padded throats hoping for something without claiming
what do i call her
whatever i name
here, summoning spirit of undoing
a past pattern mistress reading feelings for belief
i shine existence with an unbound rag
and seek beyond
suicide’s repetitive plight
hunting flesh’s grief from bone black bones
a chamber of solar symphonies
i tell no tales
i tell knowings of wreckage and gold
so sing me, sing me bringing dawn’s reverie
in spirit feeding fury, i arrive hidden
a panther
carving hymns of being and light
seeking beyond
shame housing secrets silently knotted in plastic
and stuffed in pipes of ovaries
growing beyond surgical cuttings
as above so i below
i pray to woman i know
in spirit tossing change
elevating broken hyperboles
misnamed conformities
seeking beyond
kneeling or prostrate
opening keys and shifting biology
i arrive here, standing
spitting from bone black bones
a chamber of solar symphonies
hunting flesh’s grief
i tell no tales
i tell knowings of wreckage and gold
so sing me, sing me
i am dawn’s reverie
20
They appear in the empty morning
thin blue whips, branching veins in their wrists,
the sweat and blood of Jesus on their tongues.
Suddenly everything is so comforting:
lakes frozen to the bottom,
a forest cathedral,
a trembling voice that sings.
21
Frozen pop canticles,
written in wormwood tomes,
measured on moral metronome,
played by the dollhouse quartet;
Little maiden blue, burqa blessed,
she holds monstrous stories told
in the spaces of her lyre; infantile,
how her voice is muffled by the cloth
Somnambulist siren, she wonders
whether the screams or the carapace,
crunching shell splintering,
count as musique concrete
Cordial contessa, she sings blessedly
of cinematic corpses laid on silver platters
and how the cracked light reflects guilt
on the soles left by the entrance.
Salome, come twirl in furs from Venus,
complete this revolution of love,
>
take a bullet from erotic submersibles
as they come up and over your plaid skirt
22
I cry every time I watch the scene where you burst
through the church doors
Singing louder than the choir hired to replace you, Hummingbird.
As if it were that easy to erase you like blackboards after school
You left permanent fingerprints on your father’s heartbeat
The day you reached through your mother’s insides
and had to be pulled out arms first
What a peculiar melody you are
often mimicked but not quite duplicated
Gospel nursed you on her tit
But the gossip of church folk taste worse
than that of spoiled milk
Collection plates could never buy you the sequin gowns worn by Billie and Ella
So with the passing of each season you grew salty
borrowing the sharp tongues of
neighbors to butcher your
name Sugar
forever to be known as Shug
The beckon of Big cities never reminded you of your surname,
called you whatever you
saw fit
Detroit, Chicago, and New York found your southern
hospitality charming.
A foreigner amongst family when your flesh tones
mirror a crowded room
The first time you heard yourself on wax you were a puddle
on the recording room floor
The first person you rang, your father
When the butterflies escaped your throat the dial tone swatted them away
A Daddy’s girl never fully recovers from heartbreak
So you sing the Blues
Bare yourself naked every time you step foot onstage
Belting each note from your abdomen in hopes of luring back the winged creatures that
once belonged to you.
You’ve never been monogamous in your adult life teetering back and forth between Jim,
Jack and Jameson
Some might say you have a problem, call it daddy issues
But their words fall flat.
They are out of tune with your nature
How sad it is
To be revered by everyone except those your heart
bleeds for the most
Funny how you taught Ms. Celie every lesson you refused to learn
Forgiveness is a gift not forced but earned
One day,
a righteous indignation will rise up in you
and past-life yous will fill your shoes and walk down familiar roads un-traveled
the ancestor’s spirits will cry out a Negro Spiritual that lines your uterus with rebellion
your guardian angel will deflect the darts
of those whose business this is none of
and when you walk down the center isle with no groom in sight staring at eyes that blinked
you into existence
Speak the peace that has finally returned to your countryside
Wrap the branches of your fig tree around that which gave you breath
and know, that you are finally
Home
23
I was born into a Disney menagerie with not a single goal.
It is 1967 anybody with an amp could have an ambitious hallucination.
When I wake from the cell of my dressing room, I feel the bird’s flight
in my body. The wing pang, lifting heave, locating itself above
my slumped shoulders and shoveling vines with my single voice.
It’s just a voice, brunette with bangs, floating, dirigible,
ready to explode
but can’t. So I snatch a pair of drumsticks and love
their suspicious feel
in my hands. Secretly, I want to smash glass.
I hate the color of an obedient deed so why do I sing its octave?
Notes that open in compassion, ribcage propped apart. My heart
lodged too close to my ribs. I’m a tree-limb steady in a high ball
generation of acid and Joplin slang.
From the surface of a mirror, my body emits hues
of yellowish orange. I hear the click of distasteful tongues
disturb my perfect silence. The motion of twirled knitting sticks
and the way yarn licks the air as it snarls towards me.
The crocheted mass, an exquisite dangle from my lap.
That’s the music that’s mine. I don’t want sex, just synchronicity.
There is a stadium grace when I sing. Sand and the streets
breathe the same cacophony of sing-song jangle and station wagons.
I’m able to fill a cavity
with a 4/4 drum riff wedded
with the throat call of longing.
The camera adds 30 pounds. But pounds of what?
30 pounds of silverware
30 pounds of fan mail
30 pounds of stroganoff
My heart beats so fast I enter slumber. I hear
the winged timpani in my chest. I enter a sleep . . . A black note
floods the swollen roof of my mouth, an empty beehive home,
a Los Angeles suburb . . .
If only the skeleton of a girl like the white key of a withering
piano
could sing. An ambulance siren . . . that bird’s contralto.
My mother picks me up. Karen, I’m sorry . . .
The clock of attachment stops.
24
Having been a child-star actress is a double-edged dildo.
(Insert a metaphor about getting fucked here.)
No one should have to look back to see
the bright future ahead of them. The future holds
then pushes you away.
So I’m done
trying to muzzle the sterilized bevel of a best friend.
I’m gonna tie those pamphlets for cures around this needle
and wave the white flag.
I just want to lean into the duct tape
this vial is holding up to my mouth.
Cut creativity’s circulation off.
Get some rubber nooses together and gang-bang my arm.
Growth has outgrown me.
I’d rather not be a word
associated with weeds and dicks.
I’d rather spend all that future brightness
looking up La Brea’s sparkling skirt at dawn.
Hitchhiking up that boulevard’s famous slit,
catching a ride with some opiates and trading spit.
I’ve heard Junk is starring in Scorsese’s next movie.
This syringe knows people.
Forget my Mother and Father in all this.
They are a language that died on an ancient tongue.
I’m going solo now. I’m going to floss my teeth
with the pubic hair of the Hollywood night air,
memorize my lines before I snort them.
I want to know what it feels like
to die in the arms of missing limbs.
To fade to black,
then fade through that.
To get on my knees and crawl
on all fours into character.
To end an act in my own skin,
covered in someone else’s skeleton.
25
I used to live with a bottle of whisky and my panties crumpled on the floor of some man’s hard wood. That is not to say that I was always drunk or that he was just a man and not Billy, Jim, or Ben, sometimes Kathy, Mia, or Beth when I was twenty.
I used to remind myself that I was living, a modern goblet cradled in my palm like messiah-made Vermouth; Or, as if the glass were a breast waiting to feed me.
Shuffling to the bathroom late at night, I thought the lights looked like moons in the vanity mirror, an orchard of dense halos protected by metal framing that I wanted to touch but could not reach. What a p
aradise I thought I was making. What a trick, to hide and then forget that I was hiding.
26
It sounded made up. And after
five hours of neuropsychological
testing, of being faced with beads
I could not arrange on wooden posts,
of Stroop tests, of blocks I couldn’t
position in the patterns they asked,
of recalling lists of words I recited
but did not properly organize into
categories to help me remember them--
I did not want some made up diagnosis.
I wanted drugs. I wanted a pill
I could take that would provide
concentration, motivation,
organization and every other “ation”
I needed and never had. But I only
got one-- an explanation.
For my whole life. A fucked up
looking glass to recolor history--
the reason I have no mental filter,
why I only like music for the lyrics
not the actual melodies, why
I can’t find my way out of a paper bag,
the cause of my bad handwriting
and hatred for anything math-related,
the basis for my fear of exercise
and team sports, the root of why I don’t
get art or philosophy or why I got
enraged every Sunday when my ex
wanted to do puzzles or play Scrabble.
But when you’re 30 and you learn
your white matter doesn’t function
properly and that’s why you keep
getting fired from bullshit jobs,
why you can’t sustain relationships,
keep friends, why you can’t ever
keep your mouth shut, why you
insist on always telling the truth
even when you’re becoming
your rude, crazy grandmother
who yells, “he’s too old for her,
she can do better,” in the middle
of your cousin’s wedding ceremony--
it’s not any kind of comfort. It doesn’t
turn failures away. It just reminds
you that you never had a choice.
It proves that a malfunction in the right
hemisphere controlled personality,
formed what you could and couldn’t do,
and ensured that you take everything,
even the diagnosis, the wrong way.
27
I’ve bought the bloody myth
swallowed that sucker
hairy legs and all
crawled careless into bed with a fantasy
and now I’m hopping antsy with expectation
having drawn these crooked lines
in what looked to me like sand
my uncertain frame stands
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