Eve at forty’s dissatisfied
with the shape of her hips
& having to correct the record—
the scratching out, the adding in.
If given her youth to live again,
she’d’ve covered up & found
a quiet corner of the garden
away from need & distraction,
away from the constant pummeling
rainbows & seedless grapes.
She’d wanted to be a mother,
but not the mother of all,
the butt of jokes, the fractured rib,
when it was merely a moment
of weakness & slight despair.
You, too, encounter moments
of weakness & slight despair,
when its easier simply to let go
& see what tomorrow brings.
There were no pills to halt
the onslaught, no backup plan.
God, she thinks, it was just a flash,
and then quite suddenly
she was denied ice cream forever
& lightning bugs & strolls in the park.…
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I require angels—
Antonin Artaud
Two angels, weary, find a coffee shop,
order black coffee with their perfect minds.
A baffled server sets white mugs behind
a limp flower. The rising sunlight stops
above the bloom. A laughing man mops
the sidewalk. The angels send him tired joy
and stare at the black surface of their cups
still seeing marked doors they counted, annoyed,
all night. They don’t like knowing who will die
each day. Their long wings—folded, undeployed—
sag. They know that the coffee’s only a symbol
and they are tired of those, too. One gambles
on a scone, dropping coins as a decoy
sin. They both wish they were able to lie.
– Mark Mitchell…
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I.
The Garden
An enchantress sighs
in the room you thought empty, clearing a place for you. She calls out, this
seductive crone, in a language you almost recall. She needs to remind you of
something, but you have no way to respond beyond the ghost-like assent of your
presence. Beyond the barking of the dogs, below the level of speech is a place
that grants access, so you enter. She carries a lifetime of pain and loss. Hers
is an unassailable grief that finds release in the few remaining joys left to
her—calling birds down from the trees and feeding them from the palm of her
hand, bathing throughout the moonlit night in the tropical garden, loving the
humid air that pours the essence of jasmine, lemongrass and nightshade across
the ravaged contours of her flesh, a white cat the sole witness to the forms
she takes in her purposeful flight from pure earth to pure light.…
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A bottle and Styrofoam container against the passionflowers
the silver-streaked scrub hopper, took to the chestnut light:
what we resist, breathlessly we visit in our sleep
like the Fritillary among the bog, drawn from long nectar pints:
when I was born, I stood origin-less like the hunger along the Rio Grande.
Among the stray flight on brush stalk, a selective mutism
reticulated, variegated, an artifact that crossed from Mexico
from Sonoran folkloric sustenance, and in the gulf, chestnut sunlight,
stamped out an unseen pirouette, breathless, like a Cordera
sung to later generations struggling to resist, inherited
on a day-laborer’s rucksack, Regal Fritillaries disappeared from the East
in the late 1970s; now a Calvary belts out in strands along abandoned Forts
near dried-cracked Pastures: the softest part of a rose preexisted
the emerging violets in their fragility last forever:
no one noticed, not even in a eulogy, when the last one dropped. …
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The
most important guest arrived Saturday morning. She was carried in a quilted
knitting bag next to gnome doll whose red-white-and-blue top hat affectionately
earned him the name Sam. His blue eyes were painted on and from beneath his
white curls, he stared uncannily at the first arrivals and party guests. Does he notice that I am still not married?
Does he know that I haven’t been home in a year,
or seen my Grandma in the last three?
“We drove with him in the backseat next to me the entire way,” Aunt Monica drawled, her Alabama accent at ten decibels. She was marked with a catatonic frenzy that only death brings about: doling out tasks to her sisters—schedule the mass, order the flowers, reserve the space for the luncheon— while her singular concern was the residues of the body that lasted over 90 years.…
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A
story does not always come in a row like rising corn: sometimes it comes in
pieces. I’m sorry to say that we will begin in the third act and leave the
first alone. See, below.
We begin with Andromeda. She is standing in a white room. In front of her is the mother who
bore her — or, rather, some of this
mother. Andromeda watches. Her eyes are like a snake’s: unreadable.
What Andromeda would tell you is that she grew up alone. Of course, this is a naked lie. Andromeda has always been surrounded by people. Her nanny and sometime suckler, Aeschylus, who reveals the secrets of life and afterlife with an abandon that leaves Andromeda without a sense of tact. Her guardian and boyhood crush, Agamemnon (who else?),…
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I pull the thick pieces together
while stitching with a large, curved upholstery needle and thick, waxed thread. It’s difficult to push the sharp point through
the thick material while simultaneously joining
the parts. It seems nothing ever goes
back to its original shape once torn.
I learned to sew in high
school. After classes, I worked in an
upholstery shop. The old craftsman hired
me part-time to remove the worn fabric
from furniture, then make a pattern.
Once I mastered pattern making, he
taught me more advanced skills such as
tying springs together with twine then covering them with cotton padding.
Eventually, I was taught to sew the
thick off-white fabric over the repaired springs
with a stout steel needle. Five years
later, I’m applying the skills I learned from the craftsman. …
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