What aches to hear.
The affliction of this moment is the speed of its demands––no, not even a moment, a recognizable now, but a storm of futures hailing hard against the roof, and faster. I still breathe, but breath is shattered. That which I might listen through is thick or I have slipped from wherever that other sound was, into some other frequency. Cold now, and afraid. That when you call, I will not hear.
Keeping on.
Like the flecked bark of bent birch, so long scarred that scars and skin have blended, old wounds match birthmarks now, and this seems right–– to mirror fate and accident, deliberate and unknown. Once, to see it would break my heart. And did, I think. I can’t remember how. Only that at some point I knew it to be a thing of too many shards to be considered whole by any stretch, no matter how careful the mending. Not that I was so careful with the mending. But here she is anyway––of a piece, in a manner of speaking, nodding along with the head over the tattered skins of arms, as the head remarks: How fitting, for any occasion.
And the problem of meaning to make it.
If I were really up to something, you would think I would have an answer to the question of where any of this starts, but no. It’s just this ledge again, and gravity, and my desperate grip. Meaning not to forget to remember, I stretch the web of impressions, meaning to stick somewhere. But whatever I am made of mostly slides, and sliding, what tends to stick to me is never quite the stated destination, but everything beneath its arcing aim. What tends to stick rarely unsticks and I do not forget it. And yet, I still mean to reach what I hope to remember.
At the cliff from which this land begins to slide.
Harpooned by grief, time comes to cut the line
of this dogged continuance and admit the map
language won’t translate. Birds enter water
after fish and we stop to absorb the impact
of what they are doing out there, almost
all of it unknown. We would circle and bow
if we could reach them. Now, we think, is time
to map another language for where has never
been a destination, taking boats that take on
water to pull us into her countenance, that we
will know that we have only ever been a
people of unmarked territories, our names
unwritten where they still against the gums
of uncut teeth.
Noon light with concrete.
Still, the sky, even absent of its messengers seems to wait, remembering flight and us beneath it and the everlasting concrete, within blinking gaze of shuttered blinds where we could not put our words to work, where I looked for dreams in sleep between these buildings and us within their walls and our voices and the birds with us calling back and the cats who would crouch to attack the winged singers and later learn with talons in furred backs to accept their gentle weight, keeping company close when it comes, even here.
And its disappearance.
It is fashionable to have a single mind. It matches the single head. The presence of multiple heads tends to suggest the storybook monster. One possessed of multiple minds has to learn to keep them contained if they are going to get by. As I do, as does anyone I know with this condition. The only problem is the turbulence. The incessant wave keeps knocking the minds against each other. Without this constant friction, I think one of mine might manage to grow some edge I could point to, and with. Then I could announce to the world, Look at me and my cutting edge! But no such announcement seems forthcoming in this lifetime. The constant wave and its tides turn my minds over one another until whatever they are is nothing that anyone would mistake for sharp.
Except for the weight of this form.
When you found me, I had been waiting, writing, for some time. Writing, I had been waiting behind that wall where the things that pulse at my neck are not what I tell because they are not the sort of thing that, as the saying goes, are up for discussion. One learns, as so many have, not to draw attention to what pulses, beats, flushes in speech or laughter, passion, or tears. My face gives me away. My troubling body gives me away, pouring me through the crack in this voice. I meant to be a formed thing, smoothed and polished for an admiring public, as instructed. The purpose of my upbringing, as far as I could tell, was for this, but in this I have utterly failed. I am instead a porous constellation of trembling orifices, dripping with overflow, and all of it is always too much, and as long as I have been, I cannot remember being otherwise. Perhaps there was a time when it was not too much, when I was a child not yet girl, not yet future woman, not yet in training. But it seems that the knowledge of girl came hand in hand with the knowledge of self and I cannot retrieve my prehistory so long as I am one, even if I would like to lay down the heavy weight of being anyone in particular. The atmospheric particle, absorbing, can collect moisture while continuing to float in the company of other atmospheric particles, until it is time to be rain.
Notes from the grandmothers.
Hold in the mind the feathered whisper of something almost touched, but not. Resist the urge to offer up a salve to stop the itch. And let her volume erupt, and stay while she splits her seams, threatening to tear each hemisphere from the other. Don’t bind. Don’t apply ice to stop the swelling. What do you expect can be born otherwise? These are wonders. It’s when these terrible discomforts leave, and the mind rests sated and full of itself that the subject is really in trouble.
The warmup.
Not sure what when I am waking
I am doing, waking thinking, what
am I doing here? with the what that
I am needing not enough still and yet
going on: up anyway, out again. I have to
gather my what for an hour with my coffee
just being here in this bed with this book, these
books that I may be a semblance of passing for ready
when I leave.
Beyond words, in dreamland.
In one dream, I am warmly welcomed by a sizable group of friendly people. Various sounds and gestures indicate that I am being invited to introduce myself to the assembled. An expectant hush. My turn. It does not occur to me to use any language I know, since none of these are like what I have been hearing. So instead of words, I stand there waving, opening my face wide, making certain gestures of love and gratitude before I bow slightly to indicate that I have finished my introduction. I am received with warm murmurs and a few confused nods. Only later do I think, I wish I had said something.
