Eyes of October’s Irish Sea – all temperatures at
once.
I was too young for a love like that but her vocals
carved a gorge. Today I accept the bottomless well: I
may not see the love I think I need during this
collection of breaths I call a life.
◯
In my early twenties I lived in a dirty tenement in
Hell’s Kitchen. Single handedly populated the
ground floor’s karaoke bar with musician friends.
Every week I nagged Mary Hanley to do “Nothing
Compares 2 U.” It never wore. No matter what
drunken hookups or brawls brewed, everyone
silenced when Mary inhabited Sinéad. Mary – wisp
of fairy Goth-daughter, smeared Merlot lipstick, too-
thick eyeliner, torn fishnets. When she sang that
song she was an angel.
Sinéad refused to perform sexuality and allure.
Karen Finley asked me, How do you relate to that? I
said, With the same admiration I hold for mountain
climbers & others who achieve what I will never. I
stand on my little bound feet, mirror-check several
times a day, ensure this dress lays properly over my
silhouette, my hair curls according to my will. I do
not know whether femininity was born in me like
the propensity for freckles, or beaten into me
like the lie that screamed at the inner walls of my
skull this morning when I secured the door shut
behind my new man. He can’t get away from you fast
enough.
◯
I would be an awkward colt with a shaved head. In
my feedbag gather a thousand grains that taste like
the Stanley Steemer carpet cleaning tech telling me
he wants to rub my pretty toes. He’d knelt on the
floor to show me where old glass chips buried
in the padding. Men’s desires: gardens I tend. Fat red
bell peppers slice open, reveal flat white seeds.
◯
After Norman’s death, my grandmother lamented in
my arms, What is a woman’s life if there is no
husband to need her?
I pen achievable action plans every day. I need
written-out structures. Else l hack at my arms with
shards of funhouse mirrors.
◯
My mother was – is – weak in her constitution. I grit
sand on her soft pink tongue, never turn pearl. She
hardly breathes around me, much less sings her
violin’s long plaintive cries. Mine drowns hers. When
I was young she locked me where walls would
absorb my sound. This is common in addict
households. She feared kicking the wasp nest of my
father’s habit, doused her daughter in pesticides
instead. Her eyes reside at the geographic center of a
billowing white tent.
This is what I inherit from my family: lemming-like
desires to numb. I never called it that. I called it
pleasure, rocketed to the one place I didn’t have to
think about how small my world had become. How,
in that cold corner of Michigan, in a whole week the
only human voice I heard was my own addict
husband’s.
◯
I’m not for this public. They’re not for me. I fantasize
about the year 2183, a century from my death.
Advanced humans unclasp their UV protection suits
to kiss into each other’s mouths potable water
infused with my microchipped poetry. That’s how I
want them to transmit me, via love to which nothing
compares.
◯
I harbor the harmed. No longer a fighter, nor a
brawler. I fought for the better part of my life. No
one’s lot improved for it, least of all mine. I shelter
the damned, as Sinéad did. Good days come one at a
time.
Noble life is to sit, quiet. Let your death take its time.
Wade in the sea. Watch sunlight on its ripple.
