girl on the tracks
unflinching, she laughs, plucks a string
from the hem of her skirt
a fidgety delinquent nods at the bench-end,
the trellis of his ribs apparent through cotton.
iridescent silence. scuffling of track rats
carrying sweet-n-low packets toward invisible holes.
she: too fond of the pre-train electricity
that statics through the third rail
the rumble before coming
remembers a puckered mouth, lies hot
as glassblower’s breath
remembers him wheezing, ready
let me start over.
if she could flinch she would.
a boy trembles at the far end
of a bench, familiar in his quivering
his breathing spasmodic arias,
pardonable disturbance of the 4 a.m. silence
in her mind she names him Craig
paints him lethal, volatile, emptied of honor
through the holes in his arms
remembers him swallowing her,
how the dark shivered with electricity,
her muscles contracting in a jitterbug of ions
how she could lay for hours without one
imperfect thought
she could tell you some things about color.
how the frequency of lavender makes turquoise run sour
if the music’s too loud. how plaid turns angry
if wool’s involved and the clock disagrees.
it’s not home she’s going for. home is hideous ribbons
and polite highwire dinners. home is sheets
that can and will be used against you in a court of law,
ruffled pillows that muffle whispers and bedsprings
she could paint you a picture,
semichild bending in a surreal shadow of herself
waiting
jointed at the middle,
she will not break.
the colors keep her there, memory of yellow
through fog of fatherwant / whispers and fingers
practicing scales on his back & major chord minor chord
the sin of omission a lesser sin than a lie
lemonsoup light / morning / a flurry of sheets & she
near-woman
stands
again . she says / let her tell you
blue
were she skin at all she’d bruise
but not, not her,
raised to know what tongues are for
quiet quiet now
now lipstick now pigtails
now quiet step down creaking stairs
now gather book book notebook pen
gather bag (rustle/hush) gather lunchmeat gather bread
fumble keys stop gathercoatgathermittensgatherbookbag go
go & she breathes now like a girl
a girl counts sidewalk squares skips sidewalk cracks
break your mother’s
going going / gone she is
curled inside the melonrind edge of her
not-skin she is not
so tearable now / torn she is
healing ragged places with crazy glue
and hallucinogens / splinting bone with fragments
of the one true cross she will walk
on that fracture halfway to Harlem
now semichild waits on the F the D the V the B
anything downtown, anything to carry her
and the snakes in her veins away she has never felt
anything so soft as her own face right now
finally she can see the trails all movement leaves
she hums behind pupils small villages
could swim in / I watch thinking
eyes like diamonds, clearly once coal
she sways at the track-edge, crouches
to run fingers over raised warning bumps,
perches like a swimmer waiting to dive
let me start over
pink frosted lipstick, brittle sugar
she is the distance between him and her between
she and I between palm and knee between poet
and story / we are static,
a snapshot of escape and grace, the moment the lock gives
and day breaks jaded and dazed,
bright pamphlet on the tracks announcing
Ask and ye shall receive.
Cheryl Dodds - Eye Music
I - Persephone in the Field
II - Debris of Dreams
III - Are You Listening?
IV - Monologues for an Apocalypse
Ace Boggess - Abuse Cycle
Julie Bonaduce - The Company Of
Gary Whitehead - Tableaux
Alan Catlin - in the pitch of citrus
Contributors
Spring Supplement 2002 Issue
Winter 2002 Issue
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