36 Abuse poems

gone from a man claimed the girl a man named the girl got the girl stored up in his room • ran away runaway gone Dinah gone • 19years of age about five foot three inches brown hair         a cask-shaped mark over her left eye • no one speaks no speech just hatching • thought he knew her well when she was in there with him not a word was spoken who to trust now? thought he knew • presents a gap between her upper foreteeth when she smiles

She wants to set the house on fire, gas in both hands, gas on the wall. It’d be like the sea torched from its floor. She’d run like light from basement windows. or maybe suck all arms to room ablaze, so housed in gut piping. the copper hollowed, reaching to a heated black rot at bottom. Like ants; maybe she crawl in the dark. low on the belly maybe she thug out late, lay low and ink eight walls. lay low like cold, she might strip bare, black glass. sometimes strut, sometimes hide late. she runs from house to ember, a sum of sink. She breathes through flame a room of spoons. one bar brick, one black-eyed room splatter, one torch spent for each arm, from coal to alley, she heaves hue of concrete into each limb. A house of blue-ring flames to mimic; someone better run.

Listen first for anyone. Fill your pockets. Measure the ditch with a wad of gum. Listen. Stay still. Break open the gate with your fist. a backseat to torch. Ditch it. You will need someone, still. but later. from a pay phone. for the rope. Empty your pockets. Check for wild fur and the pant. who wad seats. or possums who hiss under wild shrub. Sharp shooters check the wind. So measure your mouth. the curve of howl. drool and its drop against the wooden tiles. Possum under salt and pine. Screech it. Score the rope with your teeth. Collect the drool in tin. Check for rust. Pull out the nails. Wait for the wood to sag of blood. to good and stalled. Mount the mouth. slip down. Slide under sludge, until the caves open and break. and salt your wounds. and play the black cricket. and nail on the stars. Run low to ground. until your hairs unseat. and your cheek full of shotgun howls. and sags. and, and touches its own blood to light.

Let us descend into the blind world now. — Dante, “The Divine Comedy” As above, so below; as below, so above. — Three Initiates, “The Kybalion” A Lowcountry marsh trembles with the blood of an African Who refused to climb out of the salt and mud of the bay And quite literally lost his head. A hunter named Hunter Waits for the man’s wounds to close and for him to rise Again. Some call this festive cruelty Paradise. Pleasure. Demby, the African made to rise and suffer another shot, Calls it the Afterlife, the unceasing blind world of death He welcomed expecting the end to his captivity and exile. But there is no end to the perfecting of cruelty even now In the Afterlife, where a hawk humped up in the high weeds And a house on fire are a congruent sadness, a brief history Of nature’s one duty for flesh —decay, decay, decay... Sometimes, it is as if every bird in the Afterlife trills this One song. And I forget who I am, but then I look down At my feet shuffling in darkness and hear my name — Till ... Till ... Till ... And I know I am no farmer, blade Or mule driven over some roach-ragged road to field And fray, and sometimes I forget how I came here to After- Life, to pleasure, to domestic violence, to drive, be Driven, and then I look down at my hands. It is a war That brought you this peace, a war that brought you this peace. And then, I heard a question: “Shall we kill all of the masters?” And before I brokered an answer, I heard a voice say: “Then, we must kill ourselves, first. And who will Be left to kill the masters?” I turned to find nothing But a boy in a tree and a girl beside him, their heads Tolling in the wind like pecker-fretted fruit. Voice, I said, Come now or do not come at all. And there, a man I had seen before scratching in dust next to a drill field With a dictionary and a strange astronomy for a face. Ezra, is that you, I asked. “The peasants’ bent shoulders, Odysseus and the dead bullock — call me whatever you’d like. I come to every name like a white ox toward Pisa And the butcher’s road. I come to Paradise dragged By the hair ... with one day’s reading and surrendered Temple.” You do talk funny, I said. “He do the police In different voices,” he said. And when all the voices sound like the police, I said, kill all the voices. And so ran. I ran from Ezra who ran after me and demanded he be My guide. “There is no running from the forest of men. There is no running from men.” I’ll be damned, I said — But before I could finish Ezra said, “That’s right. Be damned. Be here taloned and tumbling the sky down in Paradise. Here. Be in your cage and free.” But here is not the here I seek nor sought. For that here harangues me And I might as well be the nigger coming over The obstacle fence, a periplum of certain disaster, A choir of empty cups sitting loudly before the famished, Your prince, dear Ezra, hanging by his heels in the piazza, The sprezzatura of maggots rummaging the round heart For its divinity and pulse. Ezra, nothing of you but the dead. And so, I ran past the possum running through the skull Holes of a dead man lying in the fog that licked them Into a wet testimony, the possum testifying, too, to their death — Coming, going, in ruins and floating out, out, beyond Their murders and dropped plates, out beyond the Thame-ish Rivers and its drowning traditions. And then I looked back And saw Ezra. He had come to his cage and could go no farther. “Till,” he said. “Bring me up from beneath these decks, One slaver to another.” He winked and I winked back, Handed him the katydid buzzing in my pocket, as I had done Before, dug a trench around him as another had done before, Then said, “Ezra, be here in your cage and free,” and ran. And then I came upon a mountain and then a chasm For which there was no bridge and so turned back To find a possum running behind me, and I asked him, Dear Possum, what do we do with this darkness Between us, and the possum said nothing and ran on Into the darkness, into the chasm and fell speaking of The end of touch, the desire to forget desire, shadows, The fear in a handful of dust, a woman’s mouth, Fear I had known of and visited though now I cringed At the thought of that violence, the violence that I brought — And so thought to throw myself, too, in that chasm When a hand touched my shoulder, a voice said, “Not now, Maybe never. On we go, dear boy, through this weather. Let’s find us another theory of light. Or darkness.” Then, she laughed, for it was a woman with a lit darkness And a careful chin, glasses, her body a tin of tender. What do you know of me, I asked. She said, “Louis, I know of you as I know fog — that it comes on Through the alleys and past the dead boys and girls Who had not wanted to die in those alleys and ornament The city’s sight. Louis,” she said. “I’ve known all your light. But do you know mine?” And I hadn’t, I hadn’t. “I was a taken city burning,” she said, “a burning house Built to heal the sick, a sick house full of healing, The owl, moccasin, and panther — a rising For which there has never been such risen, the total Black. I is the total black. Flame and fox and knot Of the what-nots you would have forgotten if not for me, I am perfect fucking memory, no-dominion-defied, The god-head-glitter-gussied-up-for-the-going-down.” And though I thought I saw I had not seen. Instead Of one body, three. Women. And who and who and who, I asked. They laughed at my asking and said, “You Wouldn’t know us, but we will tell you our names — Mother, Song, and Holy Yoke. Audre, Gwendolyn, And Lucille. Follow us. Or heel.” And where And where should I follow you? They did not answer, Instead, they walked on the edge of the abyss Laughing as if the abyss. “We are what is whatnot, The ever shimmying out of the never-wound. Louis, do you follow or do you fall,” They said. “Are you short or is you tall?” And on and on they played, pleasured, and pigeoned With each other, kiting sound and word between them As I have seen lovers do, passing cigarettes and smoke From one mouth to another, the smoke the shared body Of a God that has no master or mastering plan Other than abiding in darkness, abiding in both Its coronation and crucifixion. On and on we walked. And I followed. Beyond the bears chortling pears From Augustine’s outstretched hand, out beyond the river Scissoring the changing maple, its leaves ambering Then auburn then green each time a child appeared And touched its trunk. We stopped, watched. I asked Who are they. And the one full of light and knives answered, Waving at a few who journeyed to the edge of the water But did not wade in. And why don’t they wade in, I asked. She snickered, quieted, then said, “Wind and foxes, what was never mine but was and was.” As if she knew I did not understand, continued, “‘The ones I got but did not get,’ the wild hair they could not grow But scratches me now as it did once in a dream. Our abortions, Louis, our ones given and gave. Dem. The ones given all of their years at once. And none Or never.” And when she spoke, I saw another come To the shore and wave at me, a boy given and gave, the crushed- Color of late evening long after the pickers have come In and settled near a pot of ox bones boiling in the evening Of their own water, once again predicting the arch And strange astronomy of the flesh and its march march March to October and the battered soil. I mean I turned From the one waving because I could not be beneath The stairs of his steering and stare. Paradise, Why do you bring me to such weather? Why Would any man come down from his noose for this? “Because coming down is exactly the point. All heavens lesser and below heaven. Noose, not ... You came to see what has become of death ...    ” The women spoke as one who had many tongues — All Holy Ghost and gut of a river gabbling over the white Stones. And where are we going, I asked. “Where language begins, Till. Paradise. But over there.” • And wasn’t this paradise that I had entered Through the thick marsh waters out of the cane The crowds fleeced of their living flesh at the far bank The intubated children with their gas masks Hanging from their hands and wandering The sand in wet hospital gowns in this their new cancer Wasn’t this paradise A boy headphoned and heart drunk Swaying at the back of the crowd mumbling to himself Started from the bottom now we’re here Started from the bottom now my whole team is fucking here

Each time we moved to a new apartment, and we did three times, I knew I shouldn't, that I should leave while I had the chance, but each time we moved to a new apartment we were desperate, had been kicked out or priced out and we only had one bed, no savings, just friends some of whom knew that you fractured your hand punching through a wall, inches from my head, and some of whom were aware that you threw things at me when I said things you didn't like, as if my words were things I threw at you first. It made sense to you. I can't remember the bad things I said—my self-serving memory enraged you, and why not: I always remembered the bad things you did. And, yes, I do remember everything you threw: a chair over our heads at a bar (Liz was there), a mirror like a frisbee aimed at my knees, a carton of fried rice that splat on the shade of our only nice lamp, oil stains patterned it with tiny bugs. Also, you threw me against a wall, but you always said it was because I made you so mad because you loved me so much and didn't want to lose me that you'd lose control instead and later beg me to stay, that if I left you it meant you would never be loved and I couldn't bear to have you think that about either one of us. I wasn't someone who'd let herself be hit; I'd never take that from a man. A man would be a criminal if he did what you did. But you had been hurt and all that pain and anger needed more time, and I made you so crazy, I was so stubborn and good at mean words, what else were you supposed to do? You liked to raise your fist pretending to hit me and then half-smile when I winced or cringed. It was important that you had never actually hit me, never punched me with a closed fist: you'd only grabbed me and choked me and flung me and made dents in the wall next to me, and narrowly missed me, but we knew you meant to miss, never truly meant to clobber me on the head with something heavy, something light, maybe, like a book I loved. When a woman you love hits you on the head with a book you love, is that love? I was so ashamed and afraid someone would find out about us, then I was afraid and ashamed people already knew but didn't know what to do. Did I really think this was a secret? Not from the cops we called during two bad fights or from Peggy who let you stay with her rent-free that month I kicked you out. You two had a blast. But I couldn't pay the rent on my own, so you moved back in, triumphant, Peggy still in love with you, and you gloated about how much money you'd saved. Surrounded by friends, whom could I tell? Why would I tell anyone who didn't already know us well enough to already know? If everyone knew, none of us said so. We talked, all of us, almost constantly, intimately, so how did we keep ourselves so quiet? You and I, together in this, were alone with this, alone among women who loved us. The two of us never more alone than when together.

I grew up in a big house where weakness and expressions of joy deserved punishment. And I was raised on the via politica with the grease of yesterday’s glories, a thick grease collected under arctic skies. I was lit up. My notebooks, my hair, my heart reeked of smoke. That’s when we saw each other clearly. Or rather, what remained of us. Damaged like lottery numbers scratched away with a blade. How different we were! Those with round faces were righteous; those with narrow faces were cautious. One listened secretly to Puccini, another to silence, the music’s music. The oldest one declaimed monologues inside a ten-by-ten-foot cell he had built for himself. And the mysterious one simply had diabetes. But how similar we were in severe circumstances! Alarmed like a flock of magpies that the smallest stone sends into the sky toward the mouth of the abyss. Then it became obvious there wasn’t enough space for everyone. We separated. Some went on living in via verbum, telling of what they knew, what they witnessed, and so, through their narrative, creating their own grease. The others crossed over the ocean. And those in particular who went farthest away never speak of their annoying history of wretched survival, burying it in the darkest crevices on their being. Unfortunately, as with perfume, its scent lingers there for much, much longer.

“But there were times when you offered your consent with older men. You chose them, & you were not afraid. Why not?” You don’t know the true success of survival till you’ve experienced the adrenaline of a too-close death. What is there to fear when you’ve licked the edge? It is going to be an oppressively hot summer, the New York Post says, but I’ve got a few of my own stowed away, enough to occupy a foreign desert. There was one summer, his name was Tito and my sisters still say his name just like that, “Tee-toww,” the O a benchmark in the bottom of the jaw. I was just 12 but the gaze itself made me a flame, so no one could tell, I guess, or no one would tell. He was the kind of heavy swelter that had the whole block at mercy, everyone’s connect to whatever they needed, which was much and in bulk. Power is a switch that yokes me up at the waist — I was young & enamored by this pattern of men who shouldn’t want me but would risk day to touch the stark chant of me. Each time, I imagined a witchcraft enveloping the bone. I remember, once, at some low hour in the trough* of that summer — my mouth a voyaging boat, Tito’s spine a current of illicit knots, his hand a spindle on the back of my coarse head — he looks down at me, & moans out “Who the fuck are you?” I say, and the answer is always the same thereafter: nobody, who are you? *Okay, in any event, Elizabeth and I were in the pool, swimming and playing.

Bibiana: Wanting to get close to one’s abuser is no sickness. Wanting to create a cocoon of normalcy when one is subjected to a crime is no syndrome.

I’ll snip your hair Cut it all off until you look like a man I will replace your weight loss bars with bars to make you gain I will cut your credit cards in half I will shrink all your clothes Every trick in the book I will try I will give all your shoes to the dog I will do it all Crazy is where you will be driven Off a cliff you will want to jump Then when I am all done I will look at you with big doughy eyes And I will say I am sorry But I have my fingers crossed

And now, reader, I come to a period in my unhappy life, which I would gladly forget if I could.Asia Graves looks straight ahead as she calmly recalls the night a man paid $200 on a Boston street to have sex with her. The remembrance fills me with sorrow and shame.“If you want attention and you see that you’re getting it, you just follow your feelings,” senior Araceli Figueroa, 17, said. “It’s sad.” It pains me to tell you of it; but I have promised to tell you the truth, and I will do it honestly, let it cost me what it may.A plague more commonly associated with other countries has been taking young victims in the United States, one by one.