Sixfold Poetry Fall 2013

  that I am bleeding ovaries, that

  I talk to my children in dreams

  where I am running through ferns

  to discover them inside me someday.

  That I had sex, too, and practiced

  speaking of this pastoral body.

  I find some space of yours

  in a splash of blood; your sister

  peed on you—my sister’s head hit

  the coffee table spinning

  and I was soaked. It seemed like

  pomegranates exploded into rain

  and she was dripping. I laughed

  at my father when he cried and sat

  with my mother over her cottage cheese

  and disorders, watched her slam a feeble

  fist into the glass atop the kitchen table

  because I wouldn’t use a fork

  to eat my sushi. I am a part

  of this Freudian demeanor—the long hair

  down my spine like man-o-war tendrils

  ready to shock or choke any toucher,

  the glasses that keep me one wall

  from my meeting Baudrillard—

  this poetry is a matrix of movers

  and your speaker is some

  anthropomorphic women

  trapped on the page like

  the woman in the yellow

  hedges of insomnia, crazed

  she didn’t have the audacity to jump.

  February 29th

  It was early. I was standing

  on the platform at 72nd street

  waiting for the 1 train to arrive. I was

  reading about meeting the things

  that scare you. The book was

  blue with a black trim

  and the first page had a pleasurable texture

  and was patterned in an interlocking chain

  that made it look like wrapping paper

  one might use

  to wrap a bottle of scotch

  for a grandfather

  or journal for a

  nascent father.

  The train flew in

  and a man standing

  too close to the platform edge let himself

  fall in front of it. He twisted

  to lie back against

  the face of the train for a moment

  so he could hold a new perspective

  and then tumbled under

  as the train lurched into

  the stillness of the emergency.

  All women on the platform

  started screaming. I

  started screaming. I started screaming

  from some place inside

  that doesn’t even discern

  the why of it. I felt

  a shock of silver

  shoot down

  through my organs

  as if my body set off a flash

  and my memory

  snapped a picture of the feeling

  to store in the place that

  registers the viscerals.

  I kept looking around hoping

  to see someone I knew to share

  in the fear of it all

  and when nobody registered

  I hugged my book against

  my breast so tightly that

  my fingers were cold

  when I released. I heard

  the conductor’s voice

  over the loud speaker indicate

  there were delays on

  the 1 train and that

  the express train,

  whose doors were open

  across the platform,

  would run local. I walked into

  an almost empty car

  and a woman with sunglasses on

  and green hospital scrubs

  hugged me into her arms

  and rubbed my back. She

  sat me down. She kept

  repeating “It’s okay. Calm

  down. It’s okay.” The train

  was there as

  a sitting room. His

  body seemed

  to collapse

  into the moment of its death

  as if it knew relief

  was coming. There was

  no fear in his posture, nor

  steadfastness in his spine. He

  fell like a limp fish. His coat

  was olive and beige and

  his blue jeans looked flaccid like water.

  I did not look into the woman’s eyes

  who consoled me. I did not ask

 

  her name. I said “I need to go up

  to the street,” and I walked

  towards the stairs. I had been waiting

  at the end of the platform

  for the back of the train

  so had to walk

  the length of the suicide

  in order to exit. People

  were crowded around where

  the man was under the train wheels

  trying to peer into his life.

  All of the people exited the train.

  They wore blank expressions

  through the doors and did not know

  the reason for the abrupt end

  to their journey. Nobody was

  in control. Some new commuters

  were walking onto the platform.

  The express train left. I walked

  onto the street and called Matt

  right away. I was sobbing and hiccupping

  among the suits. I told him

  I loved him and then

  walked the 12 blocks up to work.

  Sam Pittman

  Growth Memory

  A cluster of hungry cells on my chest racks a bill

  Fit to pay for a martyr's resurrection. Conjecture

  Alone could prove my innocence. Hive mind of the body.

  My body is not my body when the hill is still raised

  In my skin's memory. I'm poised, aching to pick

  At phantom cancer, wanting to have hoed this row myself

  But knowing one must unthink such ambition. To myself

  I've mailed a letter, no return address. What works is to pick

  A font I've never used. Anyway, I was raised

  On shirtless pleas in cardboard California, where a body

  Is worth what it can sell. But forgetting's all conjecture.

  Besides, I'm in the mirror when the envelope arrives. It's a bill.

  Another Stupid Question

  Did the doctors sedate her or had she drugged herself?

  The toaster starts talking in tongues and even I know

  to risk a burnt ear to listen. The papers mention battle

  but when the woman, a learned dropout, comes to,

  she'll see signs meaning bottle. Had she read more

  Agatha than Emily she would have said I imagined it,

  said I was seeing things. Her monument in the closet,

  a box the color of potatoes, or so many crushed insects,

  or her memory the sound of a cannon traced in midair.

  The lines “said I imagined it, / said I was seeing things” are borrowed from Agatha Christie’s Three Act Tragedy: “What does Mrs. Dacres say?” “Says I imagined it. Says I was ‘seeing things.’”

  Imaginary Vigil for My Mother

  In the city they go on about marriage.

  The three-walled studio, a hollow darkroom

  Where the same negative outlives each new bite

  Of the shutter. 1: Tawny couch with hemp blankets.

  2: Tented blankets of hemp over tawny couch. 3: Hemp

  Blanketed, couch tawny. A swingtop full of vodka

  Prisming the light before it reaches the urn.

  She made sure to say this and that was vulgar.

  If she knew I lived in the city and went on

 
About marriage, went on about marriage, went

 

  On and on about marrying another man, surely,

  Surely, this or that bottle would be close to empty.

  Daily Burial

  I am the urn

  itself. As I wane

  my cells eat

  me up. Deep

  belly pocket

  hordes my body

  in long quiet

  vigil. Hunger of

  phagocyte

  army sucking

  poison for good.

  What prayer

  stops intent

  burn or flood

  in dark empty

  porcelain neck?

  Flick of fast

  dream ghost

  from in my

  boiling bellies.

  Again the rote

  swallow, sweep.

  Again, blind

  mouth, again.

  A Brother’s Love

  We’ll see what holds your interest.

  I’ll lock the front, you the back,

  making sure to leave no hair,

 

  pubic, otherwise, or prints.

  Take the pillow, whatever

  you want to call it, to rest

 

  the feet, the head: we don’t want

  you overworked. Remember

  the betting system? For all

 

  we know this never happened.

  When everyone leaves, you can

  clean the room so it’s ready.

  Alex Linden

  Family Tree Says:

  Our ancestors cannot be touched. They sleep

            with lights blaring. Their bodies

  become centripetal, moving always toward

            their houses of death. The snap

  of their flat shoes against wood mimics

            each floating moment:

  a horse gives birth to twins and vibrates

            feverishly. Her body’s cadence sends

  my grandfather into a panic: his truck careens

            into a ditch. He quits downing brown

  liquor in the afternoon.

           What I’m trying to say is that

  clocks sync predictably.

  My mother grew in the country, in

            the country’s country, embedded in a field

  of corn or a mine. In the aching farm

           house the dogs could not quit mouthing

  their versions of truth.

  Look: either this is true or it isn’t.

           

  One day a man entered my mother’s house, axe

            in hand, copper-handed, hands like glass

  or a spider unwinding. The German Shepherd sank

            into him from behind.

  In that moment she wasn’t a dog.

  Family Tree says: apparitions become real

           once they are spoken of.

            This man became my father

  or a ghost or both. He became

            a transient I knew in Tempe, Arizona. The hot

  crackle of that state melted his shoes. He became

            a transient I knew in Dallas or Oklahoma and

  he spoke with a lilt. He became so transient

            that in his disappearance clocks whined

  and refused to be wound. Lights moved as animals; blue

           ness became obsolete. The ground under

  my feet soared upward like a chime and I

            only knew concrete things: pendulums click trochaic, loop

  always back to simple paths.

  The Blues of In-Between

  A woman flicks

  a pinch of hair between her lips

  every 28 seconds.

  I am counting the interval

  and I can’t stop.

  On the bus I am trying to decode family signs

  but there is no clicking, no machinery.

  Finally, in a deafening moment

  something prompts a recollection:

  father throws tennis shoes onto the ruddy porch

  (thank God sister isn’t too heavy to carry).

  I can punch the wall if a person deserves punching.

  (Keep the doors locked and we might be fine).

  Our tires are slashed in the theatre parking lot.

  (Mother says mother but won’t finish the word).

  On the bus I anticipate

  this hair-eating woman like a downbeat.

  I know her like myself

  if I were to misplace my teeth.

  She grinds those exposed bones like a ritual.

  Her daughter is eight, obese, she’s

  combed her own hair into two neat pigtails.

  She offers her doll to everyone.

  This bus is going to:

  a. Disneyland

  b. The neighborhoods we grew up in (we’re too good for them now).

  c. the white and violent blocks we assume

               will stress fracture our feet.

  In another world, mother brushes her teeth

  an hour per day.

  She says People are judged by the shape of their mouths,

  as a woman you must accept this in order to move up, and out.

  Body Murmur

  What luck to live

  next to a harpist,

  to learn through symbiosis

  the callus behind the nail

  and the trail of the fingers,

  brush of nylon or wire.

  I was so busy counting the specks

  of dust in the atmosphere

  which attach to a droplet

  and freeze in their descent

  that I forgot to call it snow

  and lost the concept of any name,

  of any drifting through my window.

  Yet even after winter’s release

  I begged for a moment whose atoms

  could not materialize,

  and when I knew you, those bending

  strings across my ribcage, had gone

  I got going on myself,

  yet held this hereditary

  pathogen, some incalculable integer,

  and it pulsed forth a blood-born

  murmur, rushed from your chest

  toward a stethoscope, through my window,

  through my chest.

  Trading Sacrifices

  1.

  As a child I watch her stop traffic.

  May brings indelicate heat.

  The ground cracks into a puzzle.

  We walk hand in hand

  through the parking lot

  of a grocery store named Smitty’s.

  The butcher is in love with my mother,

  he is getting a divorce.

  I think about this as he meticulously cuts meat.

  I see words as shapes, hear names and picture foods.

  His name, David, is pepperoni.

  I am some type of pasta

  and Diana is cantaloupe.

  We are playing this game in the parking lot

  and David turns to wave goodbye.

  Distracted, I do not see the car barrel toward me.

  My wrist becomes a rope.

  I turn in time to see her shoulder jam

  into the side of a stranger’s car.

  2.

  At twenty-four I watch her fall.

  I am driving across the Great Plains.

  Last night after I heard she swallowed a bottle of pills

  I lapped whiskey from the bottle.

  The only time I cry is when I think of the Mormons

  who touched oil to my head, a gift from a friend.

  I do
think of this, and the car nearly flies

  from the road.

  I clutch the can in my hand and it is her shoulder.

  It cuts my palm.

  From this moment forward I can’t remember

  much of the drive, except the barrels of hay

  rising up from each hill like roughened knuckles,

  drumming the beats of our collision.

  Retroverted Uterus

  When the baby came all

  pale and thin flecks

  of cotton floated through

  the air and I told the girl

  all of my names. I asked

  my husband to fill his

  hands with the drifting

  cotton but he said

  its texture, like that of

  chalk, would render him

  weak and queasy.

  I recalled, then, the time

  I almost fell in love

  with someone else:

  the next day

  I puked until my stomach

  bruised, until I could

  feel my abdomen growing

  taut and southward, pushing

  my uterus into its compliant

  position—crowding it

  up against my spine. When

  I explained my situation

  to the male gynecologist

  he told me I should quit

  sit-ups and nausea and focus

  more on cardio, and my child.

  Even still, sometimes when I hold

  my daughter I feel my uterus

  nudging along my vertebrae

  and for the life of me

  I cannot decide if it’s a threat

  or a dance.

  Creating Distances and Asteroids

  She leapt too soon.

  In Amsterdam I pretended her death.

  I slept not alone but scattered across the hotel.

  I left notes: bobby pins, straws,

  a man and a pink bra.

  I pretended as the plane touched down.

  I worried about papers to grade.

  She wouldn’t set foot on a plane,

  didn’t trust the churning

  in the air and under her feet.

  Did I admire suicide until my mother

  tried it on?

  In the weeks after her scattered pills

  I imagined her carrying oyster shells,

  shucking them bare-handed, loving

  a pearl, loving a cut finger—but no,

  that was me in New Orleans eating