478 Identity poems

I am unable to jump more than ten feet in the air. I am blind. I am unable to understand the dark passages. I begin to speak of being deprived. I believe that I am being kept in want. Who governs me? Who is to say what I am, and what I am not? I wish to be conscious of myself. My frontiers are long and insecure. I contract them. I cannot command them. I determine myself not to desire what is unattainable. I have a wound in my leg. I am a schoolboy. A rule does not oppress me if I impose it on myself. I assimilate it into my substance. I can never be thwarted. I cannot want it to be other than it is.

Beauty is my irreparable and today I became geometric. A faux linear figure that distills a skip trace of First principles. In a whiteout of Atlantic snow banging stars into the femoral vein of Euclid while rows of lavender circuits, all porous, surrounded me. I genuflected before the hospital parking of my father’s jaundice, for I am a good daughter of the colony. The colony which begot the immortal heart of the markets. Resource nursed all young bucks of the florets, a liquidity I should service or else receive a lesser dessert. With my smudge cleanse at the ready I find myself dispensing with the usual future haunt of stability; a survival signaling my relationship to time, or I’m out of it, entirely. Chanting hell as hair veils my face as if this is a Western. Come polygon and I circumvent the disaster,do not disturb my circles. Holy I went, holy all around my head, the holy I am went careening down the back stairs of this low-rise rental. Striated by the pinnacle light of this city that has my blood pooled purple at the center of its gravity. You can scan the ground from overhead for death pits. I read this on the internet when I was dehydrated, lonely, and afraid. Office plants all broad-leafed repositories for cognition’s patent heart. I’ve gone and been abominable. A column extended from the top of my head into heaven. At the edges of my system an Anishinabek or Indo-European projection of words my nerves could translate into the crawl space of animal magnetism. White pine verticals send us up as a stomach pumped by filial love. Oh, inconsequent curb of my street I refuse to kneel, this day like any other, a cousin charged with trafficking. Still waiting to be ordained, I make mask of our features that are retreating. Plush pockets of rust about another falsehood of water, a creek that pleats. I’ve gone and got a blister. That summer a black bear’s muzzle was coated in shellac from the aerosol can she bit through on my mother’s porch. A half-century after my grandmother’s mother said, don’t ever shoot a black bear, they are my people. So I continue to speak more than this mortuary sunrise where I am only just alive. Boozhoo, today is over.

How should I index myself so that you can retrieve & cut me from the 1970 catalogs of infant headshots & paste me beside you? This I wanted to know while the grandfather held up his 1940 photo of three men laughing beside a new Buick. He said, "If you could identify them, then my life would be changed forever." If anyone knows the names for paper as vulnerable as skin, then please tell me if I find my birth documents burned, ripped, or yellowed with information missing, or if I don't find them at all? I listened as the panelists advised the grandfather to search the database, my body like too much information unsorted: all errors, useless without a way to see it linked to get somewhere. My arms disappearing while the grandfather passed his laminated photo around the room.

You hold onto life like a hostage. You're deeply embedded. You're an actor slipping into a new script. You're a comma Whose purpose is to mark the moment when prose is suspended, Where begins a poem's pensive silence or some dark drama. You're a Charles Dickens character in the opium den Of a long life. All you want is to sleep through the nights after Satisfying intercourse, but your mimesis may have been Caught by sexually transmitted diseases. Disaster Is an evening when you're so hungry every apple core Evokes grocery stores. Being the only one and only, They can't clone or disown you. The only thing you lack is your Adult teeth, beneath the rotten teeth of what makes you lonely. And the truth is that devolution concurs with disposal Till it emerges, when entourage lobbies for Decalogue, And hype is the new preparation before its proposal, Calling for the removal of all shoes, shirts, and demagogues, And the zealous anti-Orientalists who refuse to Use anyone's last names first when denying them service at The sperm bank, where the preferred euphemism is "super glue." Remember the joke about the butcher who couldn't get fat? Rejuvenated vaginas and enhanced penises squeak Thanks to Puritanism gone gaga vis-à-vis bling-bling À la bada bing. People piled up form a sexual peak. Two condoms put up their dukes inside a contraceptive ring. Champagne is the new organizer for your political Campaign to conceive something tantamount to FASD Of the spirit. Were you surprised or did you wax critical When you emerged from the driveway to your domesticity Without any disease but your family's questionable Cultural history? Is it such a mystery that your Mediocrity's latently poised to emerge? That you're full Of traditional vulnerability? You'll pace the floor Until you face (at a number of paces proportional To the gravity of the insults that have been thrown your way) Yourself dressed like a clown. Your brain will halt to urbanely sprawl And then catapult your past beyond your future like a clay Pigeon across a clear blue sky, toward a lemonade stand At which the theory of other minds attempts to explain Why petroleum prices fluctuate with body count and Meaningful relationships end in kaleidoscopic pain.

The city where I grew up was not a western city, nor an eastern city. It lay north of Bohemia, south of Greenland, below sandstone Switzerland in a river valley, green with fields. It was the dump in the middle, the rump of an exquisite gesture in stone — a suite in Hotel “Old Europe.” Stuck under layers of wallpaper, newspapers from a world gone by: reports of Zeppelin flights, League of Nations conferences, “Miscellaneous,” alongside adverts for brassieres and ironing boards. But the view to the river was blocked with gray barracks. And the southern wing, and the northern wing, broken like the Baroque Palace, furnishings given for junk. All of it somehow stranded: the steamers and churches, the domes. And not much life in the bar. But then I found it one day down on the banks, under rusty nails, heaps of nuts and bolts from machines long since dismantled, factories expropriated, torn-down, I found it amongst the bones, unearthed by scavenging dogs, ribs and vertebrae, splinters of human and beast, so it seemed — the key to the city. And found a kind of peace. And knew where I was, and where I came from — until I saw the photographs, not the ones at home in the album, but for sale on the street market stall. Archive pictures, postcards of street scenes, city views from between the wars, moments from a life gone by, some still with the stamp “original print, by hand.” Past the housefronts, all still intact, over the bridges, the broad terraces, along the Königsufer, the banks of the Elbe, people walking, all dead now, but the youngest in their prams. Mothers in dark coats and hats were chained for all time to this or that man with a briefcase. On a traffic island, a boy in lederhosen who would never age, staring from the poster for “Riquet Cocoa Chocolate.” “Alsberg Ladies Wear, Wilsdruffer Straße: the new bathing costume from Alsberg.” And the beauty in silk stockings, getting out of the tram, no. 11, picked out by chance, and her too, fixed in that spot forever. All of them passersby in time — the girl at the flower stall on Altmarkt, the one by the striped awnings on Prager Straße. At the station the clock forever at half past ten. A morning that lasts for eternity — mostly in spring, in summer, in a city that was not eastern, nor western. Scarcely a photo that ever showed it in deep snow. The sign for Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten stood by the entrance to the subway. Soon an r was missing, an n, then an a. Power cuts, petrol grew scarce, people took to bikes again after Stalingrad. Not long now and almost all of it will be erased, a phantasmagoria like the desert palace of Kubla Khan. And your gaze leaped back and forth looking for the place it all began. Was it the high tide? The moment that saw the sparkling twenties in. People peering over the railings at Brühl’s Terrace, dismayed at the rising of the Elbe. Like mourners at a wake all clothed in black. An entire people clothed in black, back then. Though the worst was behind them: four years of war in Europe, carnage. All of them losers, people suddenly with time on their hands, time to gather in dark clumps. Only a girl in a sailor suit, laughing and spitting over the railing into the swollen, mud-brown river, cold as the grave. Or maybe the storm in the thirties, that wrecks the funfair booths at the Vogelwiese fairground. Visitors watch the chaos in despair. Ghost train guests.Roll up and test your strength

It’s like flying in your dreams, she said. You empty Yourself out and just lift off. Soar. It’s like that. * Red.               Red.                Red. Just that word. Sometimes. * Yang & Yin. Like twins tumbling through summer. He, the rooster crowing sun; desperate—afraid— As only men can be. And Yin? Let’s say she has long hair— No, that won’t work. If we are to believe the ancient Chinese, she was a dog howling moon. * When I counted out the pills, it was a slowing down. Like the delay between when the car goes through the dip and your stomach falls away— And won’t stop. * Of course it was because she didn’t fit my mold. So I punished her. And why? And why? And why? You did it, I said. You did it. Wouldn’t fill my world. * And eventually we all kill our mothers. Their eyes a tenderness that doesn’t flinch from it. Knowing. Eventually. * What else is there? * Paula’s paintings are real. The women thick, visceral, like stubborn cliffs the sea cannot contain—or drown. * Or dogs. And such as these drove Homer to despair— And his cry: Oh to see! To see! To see! * So Paula says: To be a dog woman is bestial is good. Eating, snarling. Utterly believable. Gross. * Like when Cesaria Evora breaks your heart with a smile all melancholy and sea and salt. Assim ’m ta pidi mar Pa ’l leva ’me pa ’me ca voeta And it doesn’t matter that you don’t know what the words mean. Some things are beyond that. * So. Tanya bought the record because Cesaria’s face is beautiful with all the lost love of the world and darker than the blue of the sun setting over the Atlantic. * It’s in the angle of light washing her hair with sun into a puddle that catches in the throat The wood deck creaks from the weight of all that air and sun and silence Water chuckling in the tiny fountain in the corner holding up the song of wind chimes and flies And it’s all here. Fire. Water. Stone. Wood. * All caught up in Yeats and the cuckoo that wasn’t a real bird but cried with all the agony of the desire for flight hemmed by wooden wings, and springs and cogs. I think. * Or looking for Rilke— How the panther is like the rage of a doll’s soul caught in the body: but to say: under an open window, a violin Accomplishment though is another matter— Just ask Baudelaire and so I thought I could do it. Necromancer, necromancer, necromancer make me a mate only one of my ribs pray take. So why won’t women fit into that space? * Is that why in the photograph David plays an inflatable lyre? Does his smile make it all artifice? * But life is this and it will not be contained. The Igbo say: No one can outrun their shadow. And this is good. This is hope. Because, or maybe, we cannot outrun love. * To drive down a road, she said. Until it stops at the edge of the sea. An ocean vast and immense, she said. If you are lucky, she said. It fills you.

Don't ask me who I'm speaking for who I'm talking to why I'm doing what I do in the light of my existence You rise you spit you brush you drink you pee you shit you walk you run you work you eat you belch you sleep you dream & that's the way it is In the morning tap water tasted fishy coffee sits in its decaffeinated cup caca & incense have a floating romance & a stale washcloth will make you smell doubly stale so don't get kissed on the cheek don't get licked on the neck at 8 a.m. the trains & buses are packed with folks farting their bread & butter farts the gymnasium is dominated by the stench of hot tennis shoes & one in the locker room a few silly-talking intellectual-looking coke-drinking cloth-dropping paper-littering spinach-pooting smug arrogant women wait to be waited on & in another locker room there are odors of crotches & jock straps bengay, tiger balm & burning balls sweat socks & sweat suits of body-building door-slamming iron-pumping phlegm-hawking men all sour & steamy & wrapped up together in a swamp of butt-popping towels but don't let it get you down don't let it psych you up Outside the ledges are loaded with pigeons clouds are seeded with homeless people & lyricism of the afternoon in a sub-proletarian madman squatting & vomiting from his bowels a brown liquid of death in front of your house & it's not happening because of you those socks don't stink because of me a bureaucrat is not a jerk because of us I'm not this way because of them you're not that way because of me don't ask about influences You rise you spit you brush you drink you pee you shit you walk you run you work you eat you belch you sleep you dream & that's the way it is

You look sleazy tonight ma said. Cheap, I said. I’m doin cheap. You got any idea how much it costs to do cheap these days? To do gold City of Paris three-inch platform sandals and this I. Magnin snake dress? I’m doin cheap. You look like a bird, she said a Halloween bird with red waxed lips. —In high school you could either do cheap or Shakespeare, college prep or a pointy bra, ratting a bubble haircut with a toilet brush. I was not allowed to do high school cheap; I did blazers and wool skirts from the Junior League thrift shop. In high school it was don’t walk in the middle of Richie, Leelee, and the baby, you might come between them. You look like a skag wearin that black-eyed makeup, people are gunna think you’re cheap. While I poured red food dye on my hair to match my filly’s tail for the rodeo, ma beat her head against the wall, she said tryin to make me nice. I tried real hard, but the loggers, the Navy guys, they always hit on me. Cause you’re an easy mark, ma said. And I played guilty, I played guilty every time. But now, I said now I’m doin cheap.

Well yes, I said, my mother wears a dot. I know they said "third eye" in class, but it's not an eye eye, not like that. It's not some freak third eye that opens on your forehead like on some Chernobyl baby. What it means is, what it's showing is, there's this unseen eye, on the inside. And she's marking it. It's how the X that says where treasure's at is not the treasure, but as good as treasure.— All right. What I said wasn't half so measured. In fact, I didn't say a thing. Their laughter had made my mouth go dry. Lunch was after World History; that week was India —myths, caste system, suttee, all the Greatest Hits. The white kids I was sitting with were friends, at least as I defined a friend back then. So wait, said Nick, does your mom wear a dot? I nodded, and I caught a smirk on Todd— She wear it to the shower? And to bed?— whie Jesse sucked his chocolate milk and Brad was getting ready for another stab. I said, Hand me that ketchup packet there. And Nick said, What? I snatched it, twitched the tear, and squeezed a dollop on my thumb and worked circles till the red planet entered the house of war and on my forehead for the world to see my third eye burned those schoolboys in their seats, their flesh in little puddles underneath, pale pools where Nataraja cooled his feet.

Myself I'm like a dress my mother made me, a fabric self split open with a sigh as I grew and—bewildered or proud or full of rage—patched with nicer material than we'd had before. I got the sense it was all wasted on me. But a needle's sharp to pierce, is itself pierced—so as to sew like I was taught. Like I learned: no dress could ever be beautiful or best if it had me in it. I was the stain in a place we couldn't fix. Having fallen on a slicer of some kind. Double-seamed, scabbed over, a new body pocket in the pattern. How to stitch up that wound right into the clean vertical rip in some on-sale flannelette? I'd never again be cold. Skin's holey not holy. In mad winter alone with drink, I think: tattoo needles don't use thread but ink to mark a place in this ever-moving skin and that wound is ornament. But who needs a mark to know what's marked? I would pray to the dark in the dark. But what did I ask for, what did I know to ask for? Nonfatal wounds: they're there when we die, deliquescent, vibrating like a drum skin just after each beat moves off. A part of music. A way a body keeps time, is time's keeper, vigilant till time up and goes to find another body. Another's warmth and shelter. Or related injuries. Anyone who hurts another was hurt that same way, so how far back behind our backs do we go to finally find the first hurt; whose finger points to say, "You! You're the one who god knows why started a cycle of unending pain," to someone's child in short pants? A baby just torn a hole in her amnion swirl? And what of me? I can't tell where my flesh meets the rest of me, ragbag full of rags, shot full of holes but that's just the way cotton and silk and everything I said up till now looks when it hits the air and is cried on. I'm so inside out I evaporated entirely already as August does, my actual dress shredded at the seams— unsalvageable. Who would ever love me like this? And just like that, I stopped thinking about it. I agree to meet you at the ferry heading to a place neither of us wants to go but both just said sure, I'll go...if you want! We should turn back, nobody said. Oh we should before it's too late, nobody said again, insistent this time.