Truth

Terrance Hayes - { Black Confederate Ghost Story }

Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick - { Worst of It }

Jay Sefton - { I’ll Have a White Zinfandel }

Jeff Boyle - { Apostrophe }{ The Thing Is }{ Domesticity }{ Constantly Approaching Zero }

Reesa Grushka - { Horses }{ Prayer }{ Constellations }

Liz Howort - { Words on Which I Float }

Bernadette McComish - { The Gospel of Donna }

Sarah Heller - { Leaving Egypt }{ Ars Novelica }{ Company }

Untruth

Jeff Friedman - { Willhem of Hands }{ Power Point }{ Pillar of Salt }{ Home Magic }

Syreeta McFadden - { Wingman }

David Ebenbach - { First Flowers }{ The Four Seasons Club }

We Don't Know and They
Won't Tell Us

Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick - { What Man Made }{ Francine Hates Antique Stores for Their Bowls of Lemons }{ How a Home is Made }

Ronda Muir - { Names from History }

John Findura - { Adrienne, I Heard You Were Trapped }{ My Fascination With Mercedes }{ Recharging the Batteries }

Michelle Campagna - { Salt }{ History of an American Face }{ Firebird }{ Satellite }

 

“And how confused is anything that comes/ from a womb and has to fly.”
                                   
                                                                 ––Rilke

 

If a bird, I would know
to return horizon.
A seahorse swims up
and lends me her wings. 

 

I. 

I have been damp for years, peering out the window, scanning the sky for rain clouds.  I started shaking as a child, when my body needed an exit.  I was afraid of bodies because I’d seen them abandon, seen them step into the next room and sink into a puddle.

 

EPITAPH: WAVE

Known to swell and curl,
a lucent climb toward, then
searing under: back to abyss,
to the horror of swallow. 

 

EPITAPH: VESSEL

She was a vessel,
and I her seasick child.
A crown of kelp
turned her tsunami. 

 

EPITAPH: TSUNAMI

My father stated facts:
magnitude, hazard zones. 
I stated denial:
tsunamis don’t have names.

II.

One day my father spoke to me about my mother’s body.  My mother did not shake because she was afraid.  She seized because of her brain cloud.  One day my father told me about my mother.  He told me the risks of her imminent brain surgery; two risks that gripped my imagination and turned me out of a child.

One: my mother may no longer be able to speak.  She may lose language. 

Two: my mother may no longer be able to feel her body.  She may lose sensation.

 

III.

This was the year I began to write; this was the year I began to run. 

I wrote tablets.  I wrote words down to keep them still.  My father said, “we might learn sign language,” and I looked at my hands.

 

EPITAPH: HIPPOCAMPUS

A seahorse, an atlas.
Will be remembered for
spatial remedies and remnants
of

 

I ran to exit my mind.  I saw my breath and feared the clouds.  I was afraid of walking through a crowded room without feeling my body—a phantom knocking into tables; a mute who cannot apologize.  I pinched myself everywhere: my arms, thighs, cheeks.  I saw the colors turn up and said, look, I am land.

 

IV.

EPITAPH: HEMORRHAGE

The blood-drops
Were stopped—
The surgeon scissoring
A brain-cloud.

 

After her surgery my mother could speak.  She could feel her body.

I lay next to her and she could feel me.  She could say her words.  Her voice brought me to the water’s edge.  She watched the tide and said, it’s over now.  I told myself to stop drowning.  I swallowed hard and fear circled through me, water coursing through a leaf. 

 

 

V.

EPITAPH: NIDUS

Naturally, there was no sleeping
in the nest of vessels.
This was no nest,
and she no bird.

 

On occasion, I would cry too hard over something silly, or laugh too hard over something dull.  My body wanted to flee, to squeeze fear dry.

To lose language is to drown, to walk mouth-open into the ocean, the saline-rush in your ears.

There are other kinds of waves.  If you lose sensation you will hear blood coursing without swelling in your ears; your substance greeting the water unaware. 

 

If I shake myself out of fear I realize I have lost nothing.  There, my full mother on the shore.  There, her body.  There, her voice.  But my throat is salty, my head wet.  I lost a child in the ocean.  She hatched out of me, seeking an exit.  She ran into high tide, shivering. 

I am drawn to the ocean.  I run my hands over ancient algae, wondering how it lives in such salt.  I run my fingers over the fleshy bumps, searching for a code. 

 

 

VI.

One night I was an exit: all language, seduction.  After the overflow, an earthquake.  I shook language, sense out.  I shook until I quaked out of myself, a shriveled child. 

One night I became water.  I was fear, the blue verve.

 

 

VII.

I stood in the middle of my mother and she turned me to tides.  She taught me the song of crash, recede, crash, recede.  She taught me to pump my heart in time with the current. 

But the order of the ocean falls into frenzy.  Her song turned to mirror fish swimming against themselves—a shattered dash of face and fin.  Our currents crossed; she was another.  She was a pulse apart, a warped wave. 

I swam away from the mirrored mess and pumped my heart against phantasma.  I collapsed into the dunes and a tree grasped me between her thighs.  I shook and she shook, her leaves possessed with violet.  She spoke wind, the words of shift.

The tree asked, what are you afraid of? I said nothing, but my body answered, quaking, bellowing me into a sound.  She gripped and asked, what are you afraid of? I threw a fistful of sand at the wind.  I was done with questions.  I was done with gravity. 

 

 

VIII.

Questions walked into me at all hours.  I would not answer, but the questions persisted.  An old fisherman on the boardwalk turned his hooded head and cackled, what are you afraid of? I stared in horror and he laughed: fish aint gonna bite!

I dreamt of a figure with a fish head.  The figure moaned, look into fear.  In the morning I told my father I was afraid of drowning.  Don’t be ridiculous, he said, you know how to swim. 

 

 

IX.

One day I finally said yes.  I dove into the blue.  The wave did not devour me.  I cannot devour myself, after all.  The mist asked, how will your body betray you?

I poured fear over my face.   

When I learned the word inevitable I asked, how can we be certain something will happen? How can we be so certain? And it wasn’t death I twirled in my curls, staring hard at nothing.  I was sending betrayal into a spiral that leaked from my brain.  I was circling betrayal, asking my organs if they would turn me out of myself.

 

 

X.

 

When waves rush to my ears, I hold on.  My arms arch over driftwood, my ribs kissing  shards.

 

DRIFTWOOD:
In the southern sky, pure as the palm
of a  consecrated hand, the bright shining M— 
that stands for Mothers…

 

DRIFTWOOD:
Look, I’m alive.  On what? Neither childhood nor
the future grows less…More being than I’ll ever
need springs up in my heart.

 

DRIFTWOOD:
And so we keep on going and try to realize it,
try to hold it in our simple hands, in
our overcrowded eyes, and in our speechless heart.

 

 

 

 

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