International Exhibit of Rubber and Other Tropical Products

Heart-holes, like James'

can be grown out of,

can be grown into.

He talked of the 1921 World's Fair,

his tongue forgetting the 

picket-fence front-teeth buried

behind the cemetery gate,

beneath the granite headstone,

so that as he "wrrrrr"ed, by the time

he "llllll"ed, it was too late: the unruly

tongue would be punished by the

moonshine in the brown bag he kept poised

just above his bouncing paper-thin brown-trousered knee.

A baby.

His baby.

He, as baby.

My heart-hole expanded and shifted

to make room for James and 1921

the world

the moon

the water

the me

Space for a universe stood

still.  Breath barely moving my

hallowed frame.                          Waiting.                                   My

emptiness starving, its jaw

disconnecting

acrobatically back-bending to encapsulate me with

James

1921

the world

the moon

the water

midnight foxtrots and toddles 

skating on prohibitive ice sculptures

November - December - January - February - until

we lost our teeth

Don't go without ( )

The coffin disintegrated around me, me reborn with

golden locket stitched to sternum: inside

a heart thumping: then, closed and clasped, kept safe, soon over-grown with

woman's breasts, mother's breasts

breasts milking bathtub moonshine to 

infant conductor of the racing, 

desperate jazz band.

*

*

Anthology of Elegies

Should have put this up a bit ago...our last assignment was to write in another student's voice. We drew names. I should hassle the gal who got mine and get that up here. It was interesting hearing other people talk about a style they found in my writing.

I took about half a dozen pages of notes trying to figure this gal's form out; she's super talented and didn't read that much in class, hard combo. The predominant theme I found was vocab, she uses this great vocabulary, but I'm not sure how much she says. This is based mostly on the century she read in class and I remember getting totally lost and had no idea what the point was, but I felt in a very beautiful place all the same.

I still feel like a jackass that 'big words' was my guiding tool to writing Vania.
*
*
Closeted, the anthology of elegies I've sewn on your many sleeves while standing tip-toed to transcribe the rhythms of your chest. These oxygenated eyes see aching groans of inhales and anhedonic cries of exhales beneath woven fortresses, beyond epithelial stone walls, through marrowed prison bars. We pass cacophonic codes through needles, via emergent transfusions, clandestinely; tattletaling guards stand at every gate. The tactility of my tasteful tongue speaks Braille better than I. The shifting tectonic plates, active fault-lines of your otological structures hear signs better than you. What lengths, what languages, simply to ask how your head rested last night.
*
*

Ed and I Chew Differently

*
*
always biting off more than i can chew becomes
hazardous when locked jaw has no key and
i must learn how long egg and hooks take
to disintegrate in cavern of spit and milk and 'spro.

knowledge never wasted.

happy holidays from brownie-blinged grill.
happy birthday from champagne-shined enamel.
aloysius lilius' calendar replaced by
columns and rows of bottles and brews and
bins of dirty dishes. they say 'monday'
some say 'makersday.'

(what is the need of shooting-starry colorado nights, with sheetcake and coffee to rest beneath?)

soft diet keeps jaw loose, keeps

secrets public record, keeps teeth receptive to etiquette tips:

* smaller bites, more food

* swallow, then speak

* back of hand to cover front of mouth when

laugh/sneeze/yawn cannot be temporally displaced

*molars for leafy mastication, not revenge

*tongue to distinguish savory/salty/sweet/sour,

not to lash/discipline/howl/hang

must be his ancient ancestral blood, grace in marrow that

does not fortify my bones,
bones of aryan hand stretching

skin's napkin, porous enough to wipe

renegade sauce from gaping corners of

renegade aryan mouth,

mouth full of half-chewn wisdom and rice.
*

*

PROJECTS FOR PUBLIC HEALTH SAFETY

Fresh tracksnot unlike paths of breadcrumbs leading back to the broken-legged hiker.
I'll be right back. I'm going for help. I'll be right back.

Anthony runs his fingerprints along the trail, hoping to find the injured climber,
instead finding
dirty needle sticking out of
a spoiled vein imbedded
in composting tissue
instead finding
irises rotted years ago
after first hit after first
trick, when they rolled
up and back to see skull's inside
instead of
heavy breath of heavy man
perspiration fogging optical illusion
of a mom and a me, her
heavy beaded wedding dress
a glorious sleeping bag for a
tremulous seven year old.

Some premonition:

white-out behind

eye-whites

heavy

flakes


the size of infant's palms



swirling

around

the snowglobe

of her sunken sockets.

Baby Jane's


hands

not waving but



fists

fighting

mid-January

Manitoba



storm

screeching

obscenities
to a new mother before

whispering

fuck it



and wrapping up in yards



and yards


of snow.


Anthony puts the Narcan back in the lunchbox of lifesavers and shouts to the bus driver out the open apartment door. That true, what they say? How no two snowflakes ever the same?

Undercarriage

*
*
*
Wes soaked dried blood on my forehead and said I wanted to be Anna but I just ended up Vronsky. This may be funny someday. When I no longer have bandages around my wrists, my skin is wholly pale instead of polka-dotted with purples and blacks with edges of greens and yellows.

This may in fact never be funny.

I once heard a joke that Tolstoy told a joke. That was the joke. People laughed. And by people, I mean Wes and his fellow doctors of Russian literature. You and me, we did not laugh at the joke. You, as I, laughed at the tears running down Borisov’s face. And laughed wondering if Borisov was a real name, or if he’s actually a Smith from Detroit, his father a lawyer and his mother wearing pearls as she organized local charity events. He’s got a Midwestern accent and no one really knows anything about him other than his work in St. Petersburg and his fistfight with Erofeyev in a La Guardia terminal. I hope that story comes up soon. It is so unbelievable that sometimes I want to learn Russian to find out what untranslated scenes he stole the brawl from. Borisov and Erofeyev. In La Guardia. Apparently over a translation of “wish.”

“Wish” could be misinterpreted easily. Did Erofeyev mean desire? Want? A sexual context? I’ve never read Erofeyev or any -ev, but I imagine that such textual nuances are difficult to maintain even for Detroit’s own Smith-Borisov.

All is beside the point.

I was only Vronsky in so much as I survived what was meant to kill. I was only Anna in so much as I found myself between the tracks and the train. I did not jump; my volition was still on the platform, stuck on the left sole of a pair of black boots between two suitcases.

It is something to look into the eyes of the one you love best and think you know. One weekend in the country, then this can end. We will end it like the adults we’ve forgotten we are. I am married and you practice statistics. I’ve spent fifteen years with him qualifying my emotions by a language I do not speak; I cannot spend another quantified by a new language. Why will no American man speak to me in American terms? You understand, yes?

His eyes read yes, this is it. His eyes said yes, this is it. Get it Borisov?

When it is funny like Tolstoy, maybe I can ask Wes. If he is still, still here. Instead of thinking his changing the bandages is my punishment, look what you got yourself into, maybe he is saying I love you this much. Instead of silence as torture, it is silence as forgiveness.
*
*
*

8:02

.
.
.
Tell me I'm not beautiful because you don't understand, that when he crushed his fist against my jaw and the socket popped and the bones broke, the angels sang and the rain stopped, I fell to my knees and fell on my palms, and smiled a crooked, slack-jawed smile to the saving grace of hot summer tar on the hot summer street because in falling, I felt.

In 12-18 month intervals he was a number in an unsuited uniform in a yard. During the first, I felt too much. After the second, the third, the forth, I felt nothing at all. The burns healed, the cuts healed, the fractured bones bonded. During the second, the third, the fourth, since no one else would, I ran my own fingers along the scars from my sternum to my breast, from my breast to my belly, across my belly, hip to hip, marking the space where only one grew and no more would grow.

No more. Not one.

No one but the creator would love such a mess, could let his hands graze the collection of scar tissue which became my home.

Welcome home.

12 months.

He created me and I am his. Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the trinity of Drop-out, Pusher and Corner Shop Lord.

Oh Lord.

Welcome home.

Create me anew, touch my soul. Through my jaw with your fist, through my chest with your steel, to inner chambers of my heart, the inner folds of my mind. Where you are sixteen and I am fifteen, and when I play-fight and push you, set my soles to run away, you set me on a stoop, align our eyes and say: Stop, for real; I just want to hold you.

Stop.

Then you left again, 12-18 months. I was stopped.

You came back and I hadn't moved and you had been moved, so there this life began. You held me. You made me. My nose, my jaw, my womb, my toes, my tongue, my teeth, my voice, my sound. Everything re-formed.

Today I repent, for wondering if it could have been any other way, wondering if me naked could now look any other way, my heart full could now beat any other way, if I could have been created, crafted and sculpted, painted and perfected by hand, any other hand.

Tell me I'm a pity because you don't follow. Tell me my shame because you don't see. Tell me I'm not beautiful, because you don't understand. Tell me I don't count because you don't comprehend. That you created him, with your hands. Lashed his back, tore his tongue, boxed his ears. Filled his mind with sediment which settled exactly as you planned. Don't shake your heads and your self-righteous fingers at me, I stopped and I stayed and I tried and I gave.

12 months. Welcome home.

Because at 8:02 on a Tuesday night a college boy put his hand up my 17-year-old skirt and at 8:02 he turned the college black and red of his soon-alma-mater, and at 8:03 he grabbed my wrist as yours were in cuffs and he pulled me away as you were driven away for 12 months.

12 months at 18 is like 9 months from conception, life taking form. 12 months at 17 is like 11 months from birth, sounds taking form.

I tell him he is beautiful, as my split lip drips drops of my hot bloody words on your porcelain hands, because I understand. I was made to understand: that you gave him no choice, so you gave me no chance. I understand.
.
.
.

Stabbing at Poetry

.
.
.
adam withheld the apple when he heard my stomach growl


fear is the basis for
all human emotion,
which is why thao says she
has never seen romance;
which is why dr. stewart asks
how have you
never been in love;
which is why i say
i am not enough afraid.

i have
two feet
and they
are enough.

if i had
four would
we be
a dog dizzying ourself
with our own tail?

i have
two arms
and they
are enough.

if i had
more, would our
branches hang and tangle,
trip passersby?

fear grounds men
in the kingdom.
men who give me
blue pills for voices
red pills for visions
white pills to get
out of bed today.
men who
walked me to
the garden gate
with prayers of
be not afraid
as they
locked the
world behind me.
.
.
.