 |
| Brenda Shaughnessy [Sylvia Plachy] |
from Brenda
Shaughnessy’s Our Andromeda:
This
Person-Sized Sky with Bruise
simultaneously
orange and violet
(though
my eyes are closed), is
either
my inner color (that covered mirror)
or
simply dusk.
An
opaline sheet
pulled
because the night is ashamed
to
come in front of everyone,
blacking
out in joy.
Too
shy to spill its milk on the stained
tablecloth
of strangers
as
I have. When it’s finally dark
outside,
it’s finally
loose
inside and the doubleness
of
things seems too true to be good:
my
way and
the highway.
Night.
It has two hands
I
can use. Its fingers in a plum
too
ripe not to split.
I
had to split it. It was so much
itself
— bloody flesh,
wild
purple skin. A fistful
so
lush it was almost imaginary,
smelling
of love, it didn’t matter whose.
Card
O: The Fool
Yes,
you, fool. You don’t fool
me,
you fraud. I’m
the fool.
I
don’t care. I run without
pants
in winter, cock
tucked
into my asshole
for
warmth and a fun feeling.
It
looks good, right? I take
my
feet in my hands
and
fringe the public scaffold
with
my skunked stuff. Sexual
and
digestive. It’s so funny.
Are
you embarrassed?
Why?
You didn’t do
anything
but like it.
Foolish
reader, can’t like
what
you like.
Like
what you want to like.
Do
what you want to like
to
do. Don’t do what you don’t
want
to like to do.
Vanity
To
think that, in my sorrow,
I
thought it was permissible to flick
myself
away like a fly from the full-length
mirror
on opening night. Curled the hot
hair
around my crowded face,
warming
up the audience for a flop.
I
thought I’d be bought something,
by
one who admired me. Some lost meal,
hours
of fat drink check, a copselike rope
of
rubies for my waist. But no. I’m selfsame:
a
wordsmith wearing too much paint,
my
inking irons heavy in the rain.
The
night is an imperfect story
for
us all. It leaves things out.
The
witch’s song can’t prove itself
beautiful
enough to sing at dawn
for
the enchanted child
in
an ordinary story about the night.
No
small favor, no laughing matter.
Pass
the meat through a slot
in
the chamber. This whole self
can
be as silent as a chain saw rusted
on
the broken fever of my song’s rain,
my
night’s story, my ink iron’s brains.
In
spite of the spot-checking,
the
self-seeking, the meticulous soul-smithing,
I
am still me, lacking.
Like
murders in books, but with reverse
precision.
how anyone becomes herself
is
a mystery. A miracle. A myth.
No comments:
Post a Comment