Someone In The Family Has To Write A Poetry Collection
I. Acknowledgment To my grandmother, You are still alive in our family house your kindness touching the throat of your most absent-minded grandchild lending her songs grace to swallow their wordiness to make more room for bridges Your morning recital of Pledge of Loyalty and Latin vespers resonate deep within the safety of our midnight truths Your laughter an old prayer book I hug to my breasts. God is playing metal here in the August of my regrets. My poetry a teenager mad at her sensitive skin ceaselessly praying to be wrapped in the December of her mother's embrace and disappear into the New Year of herself. II. Table of Contents You are not alone, but you are..... p. 1-3 You're better off without the persistent roar of your room..... p. 4 It's just a room, let's not think too much or we'd end up alone..... p. 5 She wrote to tell you she's dead a long time ago..... p. 6 Sometimes the family portrait is a birthday cake that cannot wait for the knife..... p. 7 Perhaps this book was written by women who did not report their rape..... p. 8-10 Some of you are men hiding your depression behind ready fists..... p. 11-12 As for me and my house, we deem saint the scent of mosquito coil..... p. 13 The way I dress is not my sister's favorite form of feminism..... p. 14 To be read when PTSD won’t let me get out of bed..... p. 15 If she wanted to support any radical movement, all she would do was admire herself in the mirror..... p. 16 Peace was nowhere in the scene during convalescence..... p. 17 But I'd shoplift Hope if I knew where you're storing it..... p. 18 To the woman wearing her bruises like statement shirts..... p. 19 Courage is a woman in plain clothes, uninvited to a masquerade party..... p. 20 Perhaps I write poems because I wanted no one to police my thoughts..... p. 21-23 Truth is a blue moon caught between her teeth..... p. 24 This page intentionally left blank..... p. 25 III. Bionote I write when the house grows a pair of guilt-driven hands that pull at my hair as if I were held responsible for the prayers in father's annulment paper the nervous laughter that has become the anthem of mother's kitchen my introduction to Leonard Cohen Nobody liked to eat their words here Nobody drank because they were pissed and wanted to write a poem Nobody took themselves so seriously they would forgive what they had not done when they were younger I am someone's daughter someone's sister someone important here in this room that was my grandmother's sick room It was here I penned "I'm So Sad Today I Could Write A Swan Song" under the influence of over the counter drugs for dengue fever it was here I felt my father touch my mother's hand one last time while hallucinating santan flowers they loved me, they loved me never, they loved me...
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AuthorJuly 13. Crab. Moon-child. Mood a barrel of whiskey. Poet of color. Emerging voice. Blue and non-hypoallergenic as mother's laundry soap. Archives
April 2019
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