as promised, here’s the section of my new work-in-progress, prison-house, which I read at the release party:
__________
I hear a good many things about my life;
the best I can do is repeat them.
I am told that my parents, concerned
with poisoning me, bottled food to feed me.
I am told that once, at the beach, I refused
to return home as a cohesive unit, denying
familiar bonds. I am told, at a certain point,
I refused to return home whatsoever.
I am told that I loved someone and that
someone once loved me and we lived together
for many years in several different apartments.
I am told that a good many things about my life,
denying familiar bonds, refused to return home
at all for many years in several different apartments.
__________
traitorous cancer, serpent denying self
bad-bad train bound for nowhere good
inexhaustible nothing/something
lying on the dark dark green sheets,
twisting and twisting, waiting
for the whistle to get blown
for something something to get not-
foggy, to get a fucking job already,
to get fucked every which way
on the roof, in a building, in a car
or in a noose, or in the proverbial
lie of an originary truth, small thing
eating words and crawling, small
thing, a loved and not-loved thing,
small thing, reading fast, never
really learning to walk upright,
small thing crawling, small thing still.
as a small thing, I was held,
remembered strange stories
in the night, words confusing
to a small thing,
disappearing immediately,
reappear later, interrupt
creeping into the stairwell to sleep,
my lip gushing blood I lay, blanketless,
on the carpet, I remembered the strange stories,
felt nothing was right, felt something
__________
To get on the stairs,
I would have had
to have been in one
of many apartments
with someone who
I loved who supposedly
loved me, and that
supposition, apparently,
would have been false.
__________
unspeakable disaster, me and not me
unspeakable disaster, warm and heaving
in the bathroom, seeming to die
unspeakable disaster sleepless and seamless
and shirtless and full of glitches,
things unsaid unspeakable disaster
got me on my knees, unspeakable
disaster forgetting and remembering
Unspeakable
disaster,
I’d call
on the dead
for remembering,
but the dead,
like me,
don’t remember
a thing.
Unspeakable disaster, tell me sometime
I knew nothing truly, not that nothing
of nothing but nothing-nothing,
the small thing. small thing lost to me,
muddy in the garden watering roses
with Mom, diaper-clad, pulling
the cat’s tail like a personal handle,
cutting a thigh open on a Chevrolet seat,
eating chocolate cake, feeling scared
at night, loving Daddy so much,
privileging disaster.
Tell me
there are no
limit-points,
that it’s all
a part
of the same,
that I need
only press my ear
into the silence,
that it
will speak to me.
words flash past my face.
I’m kneeling on the bedroom
floor, looking up at god,
considering dead letters.
cards coming up in the hands
of my mother, her long red nails
against pale cardboard.
aardvark. tarantula. lemur.
animals I will never meet.
I’m strong, made strong
by freshly ground fruit
and vegetables, denial,
and devout abstinence,
but I’m weak as I try,
as I try to picture
the things before me,
fail, can’t put anything
between the aardvark’s
A & K, can only think
of noah and his ark,
my future exclusions
__________
this is interval one.
no spaces between the intervals
but more intervals.
no intervals between intervals
merely cuts, empty spaces
no knowledge of interval one
until interval ten,
no knowledge then either
interval outside of intervals,
ending interval systems:
hunters have found a body
in the desert. unidentifiable
at the time. heavily decomposed.
aardvark, tarantula, lemur,
coming home to roost
many years later in several
different apartments, aardvark
in the living room,
the subway rushing by
outside, making static on the TV,
shrouding the hard-shelled beast
in darkness, aardvark in Venezuela
where mother and sister worried
the house’d burn, made clothes
by hand, constantly fearful lemur,
intangible, tarantula, unmentionable.
__________
he could be anyone.
the man who watches
you cry,comforts,
the kindest old fool
on the block.
he might be crouched
with the aardvarks
in the flickering light,
under worrisome noise.
he might have prayed
for these outcomes,
and it would be the prayers,
not the outcomes,
that could give you nightmares.
You might have forgotten about him.
I have forgotten about all of them.
forgetting is our human duty.
one must forget, and live on.
__________
