Poemunity — your poem community

Hardly any of me is solid any more, I mean I buy things every day. And there comes a time when I am feeling as windblowed as the apples in the Shenandoah. And there goes I who then again began tho what does this Mrs. Begin? (she says I am) And cast down me wretched sinner unto thee I am slightly different from a corpse at a funeral in that I am less made up but made up worse. Who I thereby did appoint myself but forgot which was mirror. I stand stabbed with wrench piss rabid at the counter matter of things in the room with which I identify. Somewheres crossed up in hot antartic mountains they live backwards together. Whose feet then were backwards whose feet were needing shoes so badly in 1964 that millions virtual millions of shoes were sent to “Appalachia Virginia” for they were too poor—“backward.” America glared haughtily at local shoe burnings that Christmas. But I’m not antarctical nor hypo thetic. My mind gleams like the fangs of a viper in white heat dying to sink my teeth into the throat of something wrong.

For Ana Menendez It only takes one night with the wind on its knees to imagine Carl Sandburg unfolding a map of Chicago, puzzled, then walking the wrong way. The lines on his face are hard to read. I alternate between the tv, where a plastic surgeon is claiming that every facial expression causes wrinkles, and the newspaper. I picture the surgeon reading the lines on Sandburg’s face, lines that would’ve made more sense if the poet had been, say, a tree growing in a wind orchard. Maybe he simply smiled too much. I’m reading about the All-Star game, thinking that maybe Sandburg saw the White Sox of 1919. . . . I love American newspapers, the way each section is folded independently and believes it owns the world. There’s this brief item in the inter- national pages: the Chinese government has posted signs in Tiananmen Square, forbidding laughter. I’m sure the plastic surgeon would approve, he’d say the Chinese will look young much longer, their faces unnaturally smooth, but what I see (although no photograph accompanies the story) is laughter bursting inside them. I go back to the sports section and a closeup of a rookie in mid-swing, his face keeping all the wrong emotions in check. . . . When I read I bite my lower lip, a habit the plastic surgeon would probably call cosmetic heresy because it accelerates the aging process. I think of Carl Sandburg and the White Sox; I think of wind in Tiananmen Square, how a country deprived of laughter ages invisibly; I think of the Great Walls of North America, each of them a grip on some outfield like a rookie’s hands around a bat when the wind is against him; I bite my lower lip again; I want to learn to think in American, to believe that a headline is a fact and all stories are suspect.

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: “If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden ...” I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.

When did I learn the word “I”? What a mistake. For some, it may be a placeholder, for me it’s a contagion. For some, it’s a thin line, a bare wisp, just enough to be somewhere among the gorgeous troublesome you’s. For me, it’s a thorn, a spike, its slimness a deceit, camouflaged like a stick insect: touch it and it becomes what it is: ravenous slit, vertical cut, little boy standing upright in his white communion suit and black secret.

Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman, Some type of supernatural creature. My mother would tell you, if she could, About her life with my father, A strange and sometimes cruel gentleman. She would tell you about the choices A young black woman faces. Is falling in love with some man A deal with the devil In blue terms, the tongue we use When we don't want nuance To get in the way, When we need to talk straight. My mother chooses my father After choosing a man Who was, as we sing it, Of no account. This man made my father look good, That's how bad it was. He made my father seem like an island In the middle of a stormy sea, He made my father look like a rock. And is the blues the moment you realize You exist in a stacked deck, You look in a mirror at your young face, The face my sister carries, And you know it's the only leverage You've got. Does this create a hurt that whispers How you going to do? Is the blues the moment You shrug your shoulders And agree, a girl without money Is nothing, dust To be pushed around by any old breeze. Compared to this, My father seems, briefly, To be a fire escape. This is the way the blues works Its sorry wonders, Makes trouble look like A feather bed, Makes the wrong man's kisses A healing.

here. Have been for centuries. No, longer. Everything already has been. It’s not a reasonable place, this continuum between us, and yet here again I put the olive trees in, turn the whole hill-sweeping grove down, its mile-long headfuls of leaves upswept so the whole valley shivers its windy silvers, watery ... A strange heat is upon us. Again. That was you thinking that. I suggested it. Maybe the wind did. We both put in the horizon line now, the great loneliness, its grip, chaos recessed but still there. After finitude you shall keep coming toward me it whines, whitish with non-disappearance. We feel the same about this. The same what? We feel is there more. That’s the default. We want to live with the unknown in front of us. Receding, always receding. A vanishing moving over it all. A sleepy vacancy. It’s the sky, yes, but also this thinking. As from the start, again, here I am, a mind alone in the fields. The sheep riding and falling the slants of earth. The sleepiness a no-good god come to assume we are halfwits, tending, sleepy, the animals gurgling and trampling, thistle-choked, stinging. A dove on a stone. No sky to speak of, the god lingers, it wants to retire, it thinks this is endgame, what could we be — mist about to dry off, light about to wipe a wall for no reason, that random. This must have been way BC. Or is it 1944. Surely in 2044 we shall be standing in the field again, tending, waiting to surprise the god who thinks he knows what he’s made. Well no. He does not know. We might be a small cavity but it guards a vast hungry — how bad does that hurt you, fancy maker — you have no idea what we turned our back on to come be in this field of earth and tend — yes tend — these flocks of minutes, whispering till the timelessness in us is wrung dry and we are heavied with endgame. Have I mentioned the soul. How we know you hustled that in, staining all this flesh with it, rubbing and swirling it all over inside with your god-cloth. Rinse. Repeat. Get this — here with this staff which soon I shall turn into a pen again — brilliantly negligent, diligent, inside all this self truly formless — I hear the laughter of the irrigation ditch I’ve made, I see the dry field blonde-up and green, day smacks its lips, they are back, the inventors, they are going to do it again, sprinkle-seed, joker rain coming to loosen it all. How many lives will we be given, how many will we trade in for this — it comes in bushels, grams, inches, notes, crows watch over it all as they always have, come back from the end of time to caw it into its redo again. Cherish us. Will not stop. Nothing to show for it but doing. The flock runs across as the dog chases and I walk slowly. I admire what I own what I am and I think the night is nothing, the stars click their ascent, I feel it rise in me, the word, I feel the skull beneath this skin, I feel the skin slick and shine and hide the skull and it is from there that it rises now, I taste it before I say it, this song.

I abide and abide and better abide, And after the old proverb, the happy day; And ever my lady to me doth say, "Let me alone and I will provide." I abide and abide and tarry the tide, And with abiding speed well ye may. Thus do I abide I wot alway, Nother obtaining nor yet denied. Ay me! this long abiding Seemeth to me, as who sayeth, A prolonging of a dying death, Or a refusing of a desir'd thing. Much were it better for to be plain Than to say "abide" and yet shall not obtain.

Harry Whittington: the man accidentally shot by Dick Cheney Have you ever been in a situation where somebody you thought was your friend did something that hurt you very much, and then they tried to blame it on you, and then you had a heart attack? Just wondering. I thought Jack Abramoff was my buddy— a small fish with a large chicken. What a dick. Why’d he have to remind me of my first wife, Jacqueline Bouvier-Kennedy-Onassis-Bono-Crowe-Pitt-Degeneres-Federline? Of course, that speaks volumes to and of itself. On the other hand, everything tastes like chicken. And cooked people taste like butter. I barely touched the clam chowder but I ate the chicken fried steak. Then I ate hot beignet and sludgy chicory and I accidentally drove the hot ‘n’ sporty. Now I may try the chicken fries. Why poo’ed vindaloo? The founding fathers risked life and limb just so I could trust the kung pao ham. But the former potions master spiked my polyjuice with mango juice, and now I like drinks with chicks in them. Doesn’t anyone care about my feelings? All I wanted to do was kill little birds. Because, you know, that’s fun. I forget, which one am I banging, that Plame bitch or the Ambassador to Switzerland? I’d ask Dick which of the two he’s screwing but he never answers my emails. In other news, I’ve been up to my neck in new food intern activity. The skewers are kind of like hot wings, except they are made with chicken tenders. The backwash is kinda long, but watch the whole thing for the slo-mo matrix-esque finale. Way cooler than any other stick figure theater. A barn-raised quail just said “Bugs Bunny isn’t real.” Is there no end to the horrors this shooting will reveal?

I allow myself the luxury of breakfast (I am no nun, for Christ’s sake). Charmed as I am by the sputter of bacon, and the eye-opening properties of eggs, it’s the coffee that’s really sacramental. In the old days, I spread fires and floods and pestilence on my toast. Nowadays, I’m more selective, I only read my horoscope by the quiet glow of the marmalade.

I am a daughter and a sister. I wonder when I will die. I hear the warm weather coming. I see stars in the day. I want to learn my whole ballet dance. I am a daughter and a sister. I pretend to be a teacher at home. I feel like I am a teacher. I touch hands that are growing. I worry that I will never change. I cry when something or someone dies. I am a daughter and a sister. I understand that teachers work hard for students. I say that I don’t like bullies. I dream about me not moving while trying really hard to run. I try to become a good friend. I hope that there is no more dying or killing. I am a daughter and a sister.