& resonance
why not make a map of us, then––?
all reflection & non-linear equations,
light upon light to play on a practice
of not sleeping but holding
as marrowed minerals in bones
whisper another kind of living
light only the trembling know.
& sun flares in atmosphere
I am supposed to get to the point
––apparently, by the logic
of the algorithm
but I am
only ever able to teach
at an angle, on a curve, following
an penumbra’s long arc across unwritten skies.
whale music
to know
to be able to
to taste
to feel
only this how
i am because we are
& need know only this
& how machine will disagree
does not make it less true
but only more like the living
and less like the thing
whose badge of being
is of efficiency
& departure from
the dirt & blood
& flow of living
earth as she
remains
still
here
an offering
beyond product
or production
in echo
beyond
any other sound
however loud however
bleeding it leaves us in our ears
where we swim deep underwater & still here & here & here to hear us––
tho bleeding it leaves us in our ears however loud
however any other sound beyond in echo
still our offering here remaining
in dirt & bloodied waters
beneath you
this place at this time
maybe it’s a story about being a body in this world
in an age of destruction on the verge of
remembering her collective life
despite the current bluster
i cannot be alone
in having have felt it creeping all of mine
while regularly and inexplicably injured
by the force worked so aggressively to stifle
that still, small voice that has always been
all i ever wanted to hear until nodding
in response to this thing
David Wagoner wrote, which I paraphrase
regularly in my thoughts
as Here is the place where you are,
and you must treat it like
a powerful stranger.
so here we go again––
Hello, strange stranger, you are
all of us now, and i can’t keep from
dreaming some possible arrival
even here
even now
ideas for an educational panel of inquiry
Here’s a talk i am going to give
in theory anyway called
teach like an animal
& its genesis is in understanding
that i failed in my intention
of becoming someone who
knew things well enough
to tell them with authority
the more i look the more
convinced i become that
there is a lie at the center
of the whole idea of knowing
and it is congenital with the myth
of the preeminence of self, and
i want my panel to include
shapeshifting nature &
the pride of ancestors refusing
to be erased, whose voices echo
in the shimmering electric currents
coursing though the cells which
make my body of my mother’s
and the mothers before her.
I grew up reading a single
line about an all-knowing God
on loop, and even this God
said only i am that i am
in response to demands for
explanation but knew how to
show up–for the stutterers
and the dispossessed, the wretched
and the women, who consistently
challenged the important somebodies
when asked for announcements, when
asked to show face, who turned to sashay
away revealing only the back parts
in graceful admonishment of the
asking mouth’s presumption
of being filled in a single
gulp of word and then
done.
in flight
Hello, i
am still here
flying through sky
into riverbed, into body in river
in bed into ocean ––either way
disinclined to make points, only pointing,
ever to erosion and becoming and I tend
to erode the best intentions of anyone who tries
to name me as a fixed point & sometimes when
i take this skin shirt out for air i am reminded
to dress in layers after going into places
where so many are so eager to use
their ready points as points
of contact when these
only make me bleed
& then I am back
to being current––
again
of our dendritic sensibilities
what sort of creature is this
i
?
bound to the dark
fascia of time & energy
in the image of a constant
unfolding possibility
and why does she still
hear so many here
claiming intelligence
as a thing to be grown
outside the source
code of genetic material
that makes the material
of our bodies essential
and essentially made
of stuff so similar to
what still grows in the soil
or flies, or swims, to be
fished, felled, uprooted
to death by agendas
of progress fueled
by forgetting our bodies
already know unchecked
growth as cancer
& we know where its
progress inevitably
ends & know that
with treatment in
time we can reverse
these growths we can
prevent we can protect
the living if we will––
questions of direction
how do i go?
only by revelation
only behind a veil
only through a glass, darkly
only by messenger
only dream vision
only the back parts,
sashaying away
with a wink
reminding
not to forget
not
to forget
is there anyone
who will remember?
turn it over
and turn it again
for everything is in it
this is how you teach
a stone to talk you listen
to the river that smoothed
it
& hold
hearing what ripples through here
like the roar of many waters
what thunders through empty space
courses through me when i am least
myself, having lost it all until
the eye blinks from an empty
vessel, waiting
for what reverberates through
each cell across generations
responding to a constant call
ancestral fires shining in the
eyes of newborn suns
& the last cries swallowed
by rising tides of another time
come to surface in the voices
of the daughters who raise
them the silence before their
echo is long, but their sound
is longer
before dawn
so often these are opposite to fixing
a way of saying, i will meet you
in the land of grief that we may
put hands in that soil together
& look around
& tend to what grows & also dies
especially the underground
invisibles
while others announce
their comings & goings
with great fanfare between
stints of weeping into the
pools of their own reflections
where meanwhile
we know life here & death
& stay with the work
to make it good.
