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Contents
A Few Words
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Add your Voice
Poets
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
publisher's note
This eBook is best viewed at smaller font settings on your device.
a few words
Shut up and sit down. New Age be damned if the old do not heed the voice and concerns of the young. Here are the voices of many, woven into one. If each face is a book, here is a testament: the groundplan of a social network. Here are our fears, disbeliefs, visions, and wishes welded into words. Here is our love, our desires, sprung from the incessant chatterbox of our adolescence. Here is the voice of the un-dead and the un-compromised. Make no tradition of this. We have had enough.
moderato cantabile
1
blah blah hard-hitting
first line.
some bullshit about where I’m at.
connecting it
to something
seemingly irrelevant.
elevating a combination
of mundane thoughts
to the epic.
ask a question
to throw everyone off.
explain the past
in terms acceptable
to the present.
challenge the present
to re-consider
its coping mechanisms.
blame myself in the process.
free myself in the blame.
write about
all that I’m going to do about it.
run the risk of being condescending.
get dangerously close
to threatening.
shrug off rejection,
secretly expecting acceptance.
not saying anything about it,
as the next line
disarms with the word, ‘poop,’
put in a creative context.
feel accomplished for typing,
not trying.
get tired
of thinking what comes next.
insert trademark
unconsciously.
wonder how much more
before I can stop
and go back to the luxury
of lifestyle.
prepare the rationale
that denies the distraction.
write down
whatever it takes
to not think
the word waste.
end with superiority complex
wrapped in
the cleverest thing
they done ever did
heard.
2
At the end of your ten-day meditation retreat
you got in your car
drove thirty peaceful feet
and ran over a bird,
splayed its holy guts on the pavement
like god finger-painting fuck you
across that deep breath
you were holding
the way your mother held her first born.
You, thank goodness,
were torn from the bible
the day before they burned it
for the verse about dancing to tambourines.
Once
you saw the blood of Christ on a knife
carving redwood trees into church pews.
Now every Sunday morning
you hear glaciers melting
and you see the feathers in your rearview mirror
scattering like prayers
searching for a safe place to land.
Hold me to my word
when I tell you I will leave today,
catch a bus ticket west
just to stand in the center of your highway
stopping traffic ’til every feather’s answered.
I’ve seen too many prayers
caught in the grills of eighteen-wheelers.
And folks like us, we’ve got
shoulder blades that rust in the rain,
but they’re still G sharp
whenever our spinal chords are tuned
to the key of redemption.
So go ahead world, pick us
to make things better.
You wanna know what the right wing never got?
We never question the existence of god.
What we question is his bulldozer
turning Palestine into a gas chamber.
What we question is the manger in Macy’s
and the sweatshops our children call the North Pole.
What we question is the idea of a heaven
having gates.
Have you never stood on the end of a pier
watching the moon live up to her name?
Have you never looked in the eyes of a thief
and seen his children’s hungry bellies?
Some days my heart beats so fast
my ribcage sounds like a fucking railroad track
and my breath is a train I just can’t catch.
So when my friends go filling their lungs with yes,
when they’re peeling off their armor
and falling like snowflakes on your holy tongue, God
collect the feathers.
We are thick skin
covering nothing but wishbones.
Break in. You’ll find
notebooks full of jaw lines
we wrote to religion’s clenched fist.
Yeah, we bruise easy.
But the sound of
our bouncing back
is a grand canyon full of choir claps
and our five pointed stars
have always been open to the answer,
whatever it is.
Look me in the bullseye,
in the laws I broke
and the promises I didn’t,
in the batteries I found when the lights went out
and the prayers I found when the brakes did too.
I’ve got this moment
and no idea when it will end,
but every second of this life
is scripture.
And to know that, trust me,
we don’t need to be born
again.
3
i begin in a rude place praying awkwardly
my body is ugly. and a consequence of silence.
i watched myself being born
i came from crocodile mouths,
i swam thru the bronx of my mother’s belly
she married those cracks in bible passages. her jesus-witch-brew
cried a liquid city between thighs and blurred
bookcases until a heartbeat broke
centuries
a noisemaker spat and bled thru his golden horn.
a poet held me down on a bed.
this is old news, all the stethoscopes have told it before
silence is scary.
i watch the singing ones and i want to move in their throats
and i want to sleep in them and wake
and not be so scared allthetime.
i don’t want to talk about the kissing ones or the ones who are smaller than their mouths who die in the middle of the street and how small children are chastised for wanting to touch them. who are the lullaby god’s Worst . . . or the funksmell that follows them across bridges and beneath breasts and powders armpits with their crying.
if i could tell you i love you in a language where fear didn’t exist
i know
i would remember the earth as a piece of my chest
4
I.
you kiss my breasts
and the blood gathers beneath my skin just to be near you.
becomes the place i bathe you
a shimmering mineral pool of diamonds and berries
oshun’s honey and magnolia blossoms in bloom.
this is my dream . . .
i am a mermaid
you—
on the shore cutting watermelon
you—
feeding me
you—
rubbing oil into my hot body.
you and i
a river running through us.
II.
this was me before you—
mouth wide in the arkansas lapping the waves
that flowed from your hands.
my feet in the river
pressing blessings through rocks and mud
sending godlove anointed water to you.
i prayed for you—
through lotawatah/ and tenkiller/
and eufala/ bird creek.
deep fork.
through waters surrounded by land and air. open sky.
through lakes and rivers who’d heard rumors
of the sight of the sea.
how the very presence of it will
drop
you
to
your
knees.
i sang your ship to me
sang the siren song that was in my belly the first time I saw your face
your eyes
the unbearable beauty of you.
come to me come to me come to me come to me come to me
if you had sailed away from me . . .
if you had sailed away from me
i would have died on this rock
fish falling through my fingers like sighs.
you listened to me-
through the altamaha/ and the ohoopee/
the ogeechee.
the flint/ocmulgee/the mighty chattahoochee.
your heart and soul swimming to me.
and now?
there is nothing else that sustains me.
sweet soft. a quick/lick from a sugared spoon.
III.
your rivers are georgia pines deeper than green.
the liquor in a pot of collards. a smoky bone.
the tip of your tongue in my mouth.
taste the salt of my tears.
you are macon mud rich
a frozen rock
in a hot spot.
me
breaking through to the core.
my rivers are sky and sky and sky
a little golden girl barefoot on the creek plains
arms reaching to the sky/waiting for the storm
giggling with the wind and the rain.
a perfect peach.
my outstretched hand holding for you a single drop of dew.
IV.
i am the fish that swims both ways in the river.
-they say because i’m not sure of my direction.
-i say because i wanted you to catch me.
you are the land that barely breathes.
-they say because no one had watered your garden
-you say because you were waiting for me to soak into your soil.
we are the trickle the sprinkle the geyser the gush
the creek the crawl the river the wider the ocean the awe . . .
-they say it’s because opposites attract.
-we swirl in our whirlpool and laugh at the moon.
5
The moon prowls ’round
stalking at a distance.
She is a tank.
Her silent rumblings—
pass through no-man’s land and
rattle our atmospheres,
the crust; blue surges,
neap and ebb,
bend outward our walls
till tiding break
the fasted lines
and we awake
to wave our sullied underclothes
up feebly
at the sky.
6
And so what that we sewed lashes on the eyelids of the moon?
dilated the sky’s cervix and climbed high inside Her womb
In June, I was Oshun, and I applied the night’s perfume
to the hollow of my collarbone and invited him to prune
away the shadow shroud I plied upon my loom
And so what that we ignited violet branches in my room?
shook the blooms asunder, blanched the thunder with our tune
We were titans hiding in the shrubs that line the tomb
of Babylon, playful in our nakedness we prattled
daft about how craftily we painted parallaxes
I watched him raptly humming he’d already won the battle
contemplating atoms and his brandied Adam’s apple
But no matter had we splattered the canvases of Saturn
built pyramids on Pluto, or graffitied Venus caverns
He sees me no cosmic sovereign though I jewel his crown with stars
A glitterfaced infatuate catching drinks slid down the bar
So no matter that we flattered ourselves splinters of the fracture
between the ribs of Eden and the breath of heaven’s blackbirds
I am gigglethroated gloater straddling to ease his backhurts
licking ligaments and knees ripped on the edge of April’s laughter
And so what that I refuse to glue back the glass that shattered?
I am prismskinned remembrance staining days with my refraction
7
We are all mirrors
We speak outbursts & job interview
Logos on our tongues
One movie quote away from laughter
One text message away from crying
Lips riddled with bilingual subtitles in the language
from a world we are not from
In thee
business of selling the priceless
Merchants of imagination
Only good @ what we’re good @
Only want 2 go where we never been without leaving our homes
Occupied without occupations
Believe in books from a time we didn’t live in that break belief into fractions
And All we are left with is long division
Down the middle
The heart is a riddle
Perspectives a weapon
Out of shape
Exercising ego till it looks like confidence
Confined 2 where our pasts have been
Late 2 a meeting with our futures
Instruments out of tune creating our own time signatures
Out of key
But open 2 becoming our own favorite songs
Dreams sound better when unexplained
Clouds look nicer when you’re not flying through them
Facial features feature our parents’ flaws
Microscope your every breath
Look closer
How many lives do you see?
How many lives do you live in a day?
Paralyzed by the thought of who we will be when we are not here
Is being ahead of your time choosing 2 be a non-factor in thee now
Juggling questions like the answers are up 2 us
Gravitating 2 a place with less of it
Look at me looking at you when looking @ me
How do we look?
We ignore each other because we don’t have anything left 2 say after hello
Unsure of what beauty is anymore
We look in mirrors 4 a story we’ve never seen before
Ask stars questions we are the answers 2
We are flowers beautiful without ever seeing a picture of ourselves
Watered by the moments we love ourselves
Caught in
We love we
we love us nots
What is more beautiful than we?
We are hellos we’ve never met
Faith without church
Fear unlearned
Life without worlds
poetry without words
8
poems about birchwood are bullshit
unless forests of mercantilists burn
tied to tree trunks, skin smoldering
trail of dental records, inheritance
in flames motherfuckers
kicked in the nuts postulating posturing
tweed tenure track post-poetry imposters,
we want poems that dance around the ear,
machete and tech 9 pressed against the temple
poems that will kill someone / tonight—demigods
false idols, crack Donald’s Hall of mirrors
no horses head genocide just assholes
squeezing gates of definition tighter. they
never get fucked. they only give department head:)
Chorus Page 1
