Maps
By Susan Brennan
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Maps
Down a road past mailboxes inconsolable as newly broken arms;
where a sea of Queen Ann’s lace has devoured the Starlit Farms
and a graveyard of dead mariners and their wives duck
beneath confident stalks of tiger lilies; where tall grass shadows
thatch the pavement’s wavy tangle; where wildflowers atrophy –
I asked myself, how many wrong ways can one person go?
There was an abandoned ice cream stand, with a sign
spelled-with-a-K-where-a-C-should-be
guarded by plastic ice cream cones, the kind
we used to climb like they were little rockets.
I stopped here. Realized the detour I thought I was following
was leading me down this blank, hypnotic line with the strong sense
of “towards” or “forward,” sucking me
into panorama inside panorama, where
after throbbing in a body of speed, after
the atlas sailed out the passenger window
and left the seat empty for sure, I stalled.
Birch shrouded with silkweed wavered like sea witches.
A dazed beetle crawled up the inside of my windshield
seeming to scale distant purple and reddening thunderclouds where
a drive-in screen, like a white whale pinned to the horizon, came into focus.
On its skin, a thirty-foot woman flattened herself on a staircase
and glared in horror across the town, the county, the state, the whole damn country –
across the shaggy shingled roofs of antique stores
which housed shell-boxes and tiny women with shell-skirts
across the backs of gravestones and fieldstone fences
across my knuckles on the steering wheel. Her eyes
two thick silver blisters of – what would you call it – light?
absorbed into an expression of both longing and regret
spilt back, searching the field of cars
parked in neat rows and in the cars
eyes like seeds in a dark soil –
I realized that being this lost has got to be an art;
a deep faith in roads. In spores of milks and honeys,
and families sprouted, cross-pollinated, grafted to each other –
and empty barns, sunken shelters, wild dogs –
being lost is the deepest truth of being here.
Tell me, actress on the mountain of imagination –
Tell me, American highway, scarred by a last clawings
of tractor-trailers, the dragons of consumption –
Tell me, Venus, burning down through the sun-roof window, heat lightning hatched –
Tell me, beetle, trusty scarab, the illusion
of my face like a moon hung over the steering wheel –
Is direction a myth?
And does the goddess of that myth accept poems?
Why was I not afraid when the ghosts of the sailors
and their lovely wives, mother-of-pearl skins, pearled eyes,
when they, in procession, climbed past the trembling
actress on the movie screen stairway
into elephant-head clouds beyond?
Down a road past mailboxes inconsolable as newly broken arms;
where a sea of Queen Ann’s lace has devoured the Starlit Farms
and a graveyard of dead mariners and their wives duck
beneath confident stalks of tiger lilies; where tall grass shadows
thatch the pavement’s wavy tangle; where wildflowers atrophy –
I asked myself, how many wrong ways can one person go?
There was an abandoned ice cream stand, with a sign
spelled-with-a-K-where-a-C-should-be
guarded by plastic ice cream cones, the kind
we used to climb like they were little rockets.
I stopped here. Realized the detour I thought I was following
was leading me down this blank, hypnotic line with the strong sense
of “towards” or “forward,” sucking me
into panorama inside panorama, where
after throbbing in a body of speed, after
the atlas sailed out the passenger window
and left the seat empty for sure, I stalled.
Birch shrouded with silkweed wavered like sea witches.
A dazed beetle crawled up the inside of my windshield
seeming to scale distant purple and reddening thunderclouds where
a drive-in screen, like a white whale pinned to the horizon, came into focus.
On its skin, a thirty-foot woman flattened herself on a staircase
and glared in horror across the town, the county, the state, the whole damn country –
across the shaggy shingled roofs of antique stores
which housed shell-boxes and tiny women with shell-skirts
across the backs of gravestones and fieldstone fences
across my knuckles on the steering wheel. Her eyes
two thick silver blisters of – what would you call it – light?
absorbed into an expression of both longing and regret
spilt back, searching the field of cars
parked in neat rows and in the cars
eyes like seeds in a dark soil –
I realized that being this lost has got to be an art;
a deep faith in roads. In spores of milks and honeys,
and families sprouted, cross-pollinated, grafted to each other –
and empty barns, sunken shelters, wild dogs –
being lost is the deepest truth of being here.
Tell me, actress on the mountain of imagination –
Tell me, American highway, scarred by a last clawings
of tractor-trailers, the dragons of consumption –
Tell me, Venus, burning down through the sun-roof window, heat lightning hatched –
Tell me, beetle, trusty scarab, the illusion
of my face like a moon hung over the steering wheel –
Is direction a myth?
And does the goddess of that myth accept poems?
Why was I not afraid when the ghosts of the sailors
and their lovely wives, mother-of-pearl skins, pearled eyes,
when they, in procession, climbed past the trembling
actress on the movie screen stairway
into elephant-head clouds beyond?
guided thought tape #30
the light produced in the shattering
(inspired by Russian hidden art)
You’ve just checked into the Red Arrow Motel.
Your stomach spins like a pack of blistered squirrels.
The salt-lick of cultural experience clots:
gas station shell-signs blaze on night’s shoreline;
a mountain-range of golden-arch M’s sizzles the highway’s banks;
car-radio Bible-stations fizz, interrupted occasionally
by the Leo Addeo Hawaiian Orchestra
and a tribute to Haircut 2000
and a one hour patch of lucky jazz, horns
that blow your bones ruby
as the moon hunts you through your windshield.
Cut to: you’re in a dark orange room. Brass lamp-light,
hands shaking in the shape of a phantom wheel.
What happened is over. – did it ever happen?
The geometrical blue patterned curtains say “No;”
the bathroom sink, yellow like a conquistador’s gold-leaf fountain, says “Maybe –
I don’t know – I don’t even know you.”
All of your youth-additions – the hopeful drugs,
cool clothes, bad friends, good music –
have abandoned you.
You’re about to spend the rest of the bruised night
scraping yourself against a nubby, pink-flowered bed-spread
while the ghost of the Leo Addeo Hawaiian Orchestra plucks
and stuffs those pink flowers in your ear-vases,
but the neon blood-bath light of the motel bar throbs
in unison with the faucet’s leaking lost nectars
reminding you of the rhythm of your father’s IV drip;
his syncopated death tapped out on a hospital room corroded
into porcelain – first the window, the view, porcelain, bed sheets,
nurses’ shoes, skirts, you get the picture…
Jump cut to: Inside the bar, the Bartender, skin the color of bear’s gums,
assures you he has enough whisky to soak down
any burning building of sorrow.
Bras dangle off a buck head’s antlers.
An iridescent Sailor scrawls a prayer on the bar,
squeals out words with a magic-marker
and you hear your name, and your father’s name,
and the whole bedroom velvet-disaster of every past lover play by play…
Three Cosmos later, you’re dancing in taffeta;
a Girl with tigers photographed on her legs kicks
Moulin Rouge arcs through which the iridescent Sailor skates;
ruby Lumberjacks hash-out the physics of tree-felling;
a Doctor, writhing stethoscope, leans on his elbows, caressing his ears,
proclaiming what a nut-job he is
and that nosebleeds are, as patients fear, the wit slipping asunder…
You have no reason to fall in love with this man.
Although he has unrolled a map of your father’s heart nodes;
like sheet music, you both begin to hum along.
Soon, everyone has hooked themselves to the bar
making vigils over drink glasses like votives;
flickering in watery light, faces, once mesmerized
by a lover, now faded and dusty –
trapped in an unqualified sexuality, a squeezing from inside –
When, loudly and out of context, you speculate on
a roadside body that may or may not have flown
from your bumper – but you can’t trust yourself –
in fact, you never have, and you need to imagine it to have been your father,
in a yellow apron sparkling like a bowl of Cheerios in the middle of the road –
you thought he had died years ago and you just didn’t see him in time –
Cogs of moans release around you.
The Bartender stares and stares at you, pistachios streaming from his eyes.
The Girl with the tigers photographed on her legs hushes, then chokes,
wipes her violet lipstick far across her face if you’re lost and you look
and you will find me time after time…
The Sailor and Lumberjacks softly hula to the Leo Addeo Hawaiian Orchestra.
The Doctor slowly spins his steel-plated self, ignites a compressed sigh,
hunches over you like a shredded tractor trailer tire
and drives and drives –
I will be waiting…
High above the liquor-rack, crashing through the wall,
the full deer’s body carries its mounted head –
bottles smash like a radiant broken angel –
all fall to their knees –
blood cells expand and burst within –
ribbons of wine curl from the Buck’s snout –
People of the Bar! Your lingering has summoned me!
The Stag’s antlers clack and waver
representing all the forests of North America –
The Sailor hovers, lustrous and rainbowonic –
the Buck bends and licks, with his corduroy tongue,
your shoulders, breasts, thighs, cunt, feet –
all with the same cleansing pressure and light bristled chin.
And he whispers, just to you:
Artemis, sweetie, retrieve yourself.
Get you now to the end of the coastline.
You have suffered the nectar of soil,
the uncertainty of water, the forecast of flame.
A man with cuts on his fingers
bends over an orange paperback
and waits on your destiny.
the light produced in the shattering
(inspired by Russian hidden art)
You’ve just checked into the Red Arrow Motel.
Your stomach spins like a pack of blistered squirrels.
The salt-lick of cultural experience clots:
gas station shell-signs blaze on night’s shoreline;
a mountain-range of golden-arch M’s sizzles the highway’s banks;
car-radio Bible-stations fizz, interrupted occasionally
by the Leo Addeo Hawaiian Orchestra
and a tribute to Haircut 2000
and a one hour patch of lucky jazz, horns
that blow your bones ruby
as the moon hunts you through your windshield.
Cut to: you’re in a dark orange room. Brass lamp-light,
hands shaking in the shape of a phantom wheel.
What happened is over. – did it ever happen?
The geometrical blue patterned curtains say “No;”
the bathroom sink, yellow like a conquistador’s gold-leaf fountain, says “Maybe –
I don’t know – I don’t even know you.”
All of your youth-additions – the hopeful drugs,
cool clothes, bad friends, good music –
have abandoned you.
You’re about to spend the rest of the bruised night
scraping yourself against a nubby, pink-flowered bed-spread
while the ghost of the Leo Addeo Hawaiian Orchestra plucks
and stuffs those pink flowers in your ear-vases,
but the neon blood-bath light of the motel bar throbs
in unison with the faucet’s leaking lost nectars
reminding you of the rhythm of your father’s IV drip;
his syncopated death tapped out on a hospital room corroded
into porcelain – first the window, the view, porcelain, bed sheets,
nurses’ shoes, skirts, you get the picture…
Jump cut to: Inside the bar, the Bartender, skin the color of bear’s gums,
assures you he has enough whisky to soak down
any burning building of sorrow.
Bras dangle off a buck head’s antlers.
An iridescent Sailor scrawls a prayer on the bar,
squeals out words with a magic-marker
and you hear your name, and your father’s name,
and the whole bedroom velvet-disaster of every past lover play by play…
Three Cosmos later, you’re dancing in taffeta;
a Girl with tigers photographed on her legs kicks
Moulin Rouge arcs through which the iridescent Sailor skates;
ruby Lumberjacks hash-out the physics of tree-felling;
a Doctor, writhing stethoscope, leans on his elbows, caressing his ears,
proclaiming what a nut-job he is
and that nosebleeds are, as patients fear, the wit slipping asunder…
You have no reason to fall in love with this man.
Although he has unrolled a map of your father’s heart nodes;
like sheet music, you both begin to hum along.
Soon, everyone has hooked themselves to the bar
making vigils over drink glasses like votives;
flickering in watery light, faces, once mesmerized
by a lover, now faded and dusty –
trapped in an unqualified sexuality, a squeezing from inside –
When, loudly and out of context, you speculate on
a roadside body that may or may not have flown
from your bumper – but you can’t trust yourself –
in fact, you never have, and you need to imagine it to have been your father,
in a yellow apron sparkling like a bowl of Cheerios in the middle of the road –
you thought he had died years ago and you just didn’t see him in time –
Cogs of moans release around you.
The Bartender stares and stares at you, pistachios streaming from his eyes.
The Girl with the tigers photographed on her legs hushes, then chokes,
wipes her violet lipstick far across her face if you’re lost and you look
and you will find me time after time…
The Sailor and Lumberjacks softly hula to the Leo Addeo Hawaiian Orchestra.
The Doctor slowly spins his steel-plated self, ignites a compressed sigh,
hunches over you like a shredded tractor trailer tire
and drives and drives –
I will be waiting…
High above the liquor-rack, crashing through the wall,
the full deer’s body carries its mounted head –
bottles smash like a radiant broken angel –
all fall to their knees –
blood cells expand and burst within –
ribbons of wine curl from the Buck’s snout –
People of the Bar! Your lingering has summoned me!
The Stag’s antlers clack and waver
representing all the forests of North America –
The Sailor hovers, lustrous and rainbowonic –
the Buck bends and licks, with his corduroy tongue,
your shoulders, breasts, thighs, cunt, feet –
all with the same cleansing pressure and light bristled chin.
And he whispers, just to you:
Artemis, sweetie, retrieve yourself.
Get you now to the end of the coastline.
You have suffered the nectar of soil,
the uncertainty of water, the forecast of flame.
A man with cuts on his fingers
bends over an orange paperback
and waits on your destiny.
guided thought tape #5,723
these planes, these heavy angels
His eyes are three inches from the keys.
He types your name. Slowly.
This is the South. At the E-Z rent-a-car.
But this is not so easy. The drop off.
He bows full over. The top of his head, a clover shaped bald spot.
But it’s not your lucky day. The clover you’ve found glistens
and scrunches as your account grows difficult.
A late-for-his-flight Japanese business man on his way to Texas swears at you
from the shuttle. The E-Z rep scolds his daughter who’s made a card game
out of lost driver’s licenses and spins on a tall stool like the last cupcake
on the top tier of a stainless steel dessert carousal in a diner circa 1964
the same diner where a young woman traced a green vein on a map,
not unlike the map you’ve mis-folded in your pocket. She splits
the cupcake. She’s your mother. You remember now. She got lost
on a back road, just like you, and stepped into a diner for directions
and a cupcake. Inside, a creamy strawberry center which gestures towards perfection
in the realm of things baked. You want that cupcake.
Instead, you’ve got a headache. And the little girl squeals and smirks “666!” –
which sends her father into a rant because she knows he’s a god-fearing man
and she knows this is the South and who is she to resist?
Cut To:
Inside the shuttle. You and the business man swear in harmony.
The shuttle driver has heard all this before, squalling customers
who suffered fruitless quests hemmed by kudzu, bougainvillea, crepe myrtles.
Green shadows stick on the sky like the smudged finger prints of a US note counterfeiter.
You too tore un-cautiously across the public transit tracks and back
three or four times while workers with tool-belts, groceries, CVS bags
watched as unsurprised as jack-rabbits watch Coke cans roll through the dessert.
You too looped through the gardens of the Carter Center, looked to the squirrels
for a blessing; a blessing on lost tourists returning cars on route to the airport.
Instead, the squirrels advocated “Aren’t you hankering for the solar promise?
The milking of sunshine into gold? Haven’t the painters been practically
screaming this from the roots of their camel-hairs?? Light
is the Mayan code, the bling-bling of the dark chested night,
the miffed Hollywood blonde of the solar system igniting
a behind-the-palms blunt. What’s wrong with you? Yum-yum!!”
Fade Up:
An airport larger than the New England town you hail.
Can it get any better? 3 flights delayed. You’ve since reclined
beneath the glass dome center of a lobby, stare up into the blurry sky
as if you were a neuron on the back of a pirate’s glass eye. The ships
of your desire, the gray gulls of industrial magic, the modern thirsters
of prehistoric fuels are wending their destinies without you.
Your departure dwells in the realm of things endless. From a long row
of payphones, the camo’d bent knees of departing soldiers flex
and roll like one side of an apprehensive caterpillar.
Phone receivers hug ears of the soon to be gone.
An oral and intangible pulse of apocalyptic
promises tug on each cord...
When suddenly –
turtle bones scatter! And next to you, a fisherman from the Congo, so he says,
introduces himself to you.
Only you.
Your temporary neighbors grateful to be insulated
by headphones, magazines, companionship.
You must only call me Mwele!
He insists. The river is full of spirits. If you speak my real name, I will be stolen!
But I don’t know your real name, you insist. But you have spoken it before!
But I have never seen you before! You have cursed yourself!
You try to turn, but you’ve been boxed in by suitcases.
The fisherman from the Congo – Mwele – rattles out his story:
he was initiated at eleven, tied to a metal sword and tossed
down a hole in a cave. After which, he dragged himself to an underground
river full of hungry fish who proceeded to nibble his shin bones.
At this, he yanks off his one long sock, shows you scars between his leg hairs –
At this, your temporary neighbors lean in to calculate the omen of these
hardened tissue runes –
At this, the ghost of a blackbird swoops low, but no one notices –
At this, a growl hatches in his throat –
At this, with a sudden air of possessiveness, you weigh the conversation down to a whisper –
Because you want him to tell you only, he picked you to be the special one –
Shut up and sit down, says your luggage. After everything you put me through
and still I’m at your service. What a life. I wanna hear the Congo tale.
You comply. After all, you’re not one to start an argument with your luggage.
Speak, Mwele! Speak! the stupid temporary neighbors chant.
Mwele, beard slippery and beaded, snail green eyes, net snagged on wooden buttons,
empty basket rotting at his side, hums a low bumpy tune.
As if at an 8th grade girls’ slumber party, everyone (including you) hums along.
Mwele stands atop a suitcase. His voice spreads, greases the molecular
tissue between each body in the lobby, the soldiers’ heads turn in unison as Mwele speaks:
The old world creeps back in, creeps on knees, but proud with eyes blacked out.
The old world ink washes up on the shores of the oceans of ink and the old world whiskey
pours from an eagle’s beak, makes a pillow for the man's whiskey dreams, which he sweats
out on sheets washed by women into the water and down the river into the earth.
What is this ancient whiskey come back to holler me down?
The red eyed goats can sniff up that scent and lick it from the trees.
Stewardesses padded with carry-on’s huddle closer.
The body has betrayed human-kind. The body has betrayed me!
I thoughtlessly went to the river, song-pulse in my heart. My will pounds
silver teeth to amber whiskey! Petrified on the rim of old men’s glasses,
in the bottom of young girls’ mouths, in the choke of soldiers’ throats –
At this, the soldiers shuffle from their booths, in union, they lurch
wide legged, right-left in slow thud-right, thud-left and wind
their long caterpillar around the gathered crowd.
Who unraveled the numb taffeta through your suburban streets?
Who disenfranchised the Polynesian hut?
Who ducked from the murder of rock?
Who zebra’d the ground with electricity?
Who oiled the knuckles of the corn thieves??
Suddenly, in a movement both joyous and tremulous, Mwele opens his chest
as if slipping open a silk pink-lined bathrobe. He rises, his face morphs into –
your mother’s face. Everyone, at once, sees their mother’s face – and you
see into her illumination. A moment you barely remember. She’s cleaning
windows inside, the glass is fuzzy, and then, she wipes,
the clear gold sun floods the room. And you say, do it again.
And she does. Again and again. First the blur. Then the gold.
Each time you remember more gold – stupefying gold!
Gold of the Incans, Mayans, Russians!
Molten gold from Alaska, Mexico City, Australia, Johannesburg!
Mwele rises higher towards the glass dome,
his legs twist into a fin, breasts sprout,
as if a growing girl into womanhood;
they are your mother’s breasts, lush and secret,
untaken by carcinogens, surgery or chemo –
her breasts gush milk
and from her hands, tiers
of cupcakes crumble into the gapping
weeping mouths of passengers-to-be –
and as she opens her mouth
the song of breath escapes, radiates;
the molecular tissue of the lobby air oscillates, honeys;
the gallery of neurons shivering in each body crystallizes;
and you watch your mother burn through the glass dome into the blue skulled sky.
these planes, these heavy angels
His eyes are three inches from the keys.
He types your name. Slowly.
This is the South. At the E-Z rent-a-car.
But this is not so easy. The drop off.
He bows full over. The top of his head, a clover shaped bald spot.
But it’s not your lucky day. The clover you’ve found glistens
and scrunches as your account grows difficult.
A late-for-his-flight Japanese business man on his way to Texas swears at you
from the shuttle. The E-Z rep scolds his daughter who’s made a card game
out of lost driver’s licenses and spins on a tall stool like the last cupcake
on the top tier of a stainless steel dessert carousal in a diner circa 1964
the same diner where a young woman traced a green vein on a map,
not unlike the map you’ve mis-folded in your pocket. She splits
the cupcake. She’s your mother. You remember now. She got lost
on a back road, just like you, and stepped into a diner for directions
and a cupcake. Inside, a creamy strawberry center which gestures towards perfection
in the realm of things baked. You want that cupcake.
Instead, you’ve got a headache. And the little girl squeals and smirks “666!” –
which sends her father into a rant because she knows he’s a god-fearing man
and she knows this is the South and who is she to resist?
Cut To:
Inside the shuttle. You and the business man swear in harmony.
The shuttle driver has heard all this before, squalling customers
who suffered fruitless quests hemmed by kudzu, bougainvillea, crepe myrtles.
Green shadows stick on the sky like the smudged finger prints of a US note counterfeiter.
You too tore un-cautiously across the public transit tracks and back
three or four times while workers with tool-belts, groceries, CVS bags
watched as unsurprised as jack-rabbits watch Coke cans roll through the dessert.
You too looped through the gardens of the Carter Center, looked to the squirrels
for a blessing; a blessing on lost tourists returning cars on route to the airport.
Instead, the squirrels advocated “Aren’t you hankering for the solar promise?
The milking of sunshine into gold? Haven’t the painters been practically
screaming this from the roots of their camel-hairs?? Light
is the Mayan code, the bling-bling of the dark chested night,
the miffed Hollywood blonde of the solar system igniting
a behind-the-palms blunt. What’s wrong with you? Yum-yum!!”
Fade Up:
An airport larger than the New England town you hail.
Can it get any better? 3 flights delayed. You’ve since reclined
beneath the glass dome center of a lobby, stare up into the blurry sky
as if you were a neuron on the back of a pirate’s glass eye. The ships
of your desire, the gray gulls of industrial magic, the modern thirsters
of prehistoric fuels are wending their destinies without you.
Your departure dwells in the realm of things endless. From a long row
of payphones, the camo’d bent knees of departing soldiers flex
and roll like one side of an apprehensive caterpillar.
Phone receivers hug ears of the soon to be gone.
An oral and intangible pulse of apocalyptic
promises tug on each cord...
When suddenly –
turtle bones scatter! And next to you, a fisherman from the Congo, so he says,
introduces himself to you.
Only you.
Your temporary neighbors grateful to be insulated
by headphones, magazines, companionship.
You must only call me Mwele!
He insists. The river is full of spirits. If you speak my real name, I will be stolen!
But I don’t know your real name, you insist. But you have spoken it before!
But I have never seen you before! You have cursed yourself!
You try to turn, but you’ve been boxed in by suitcases.
The fisherman from the Congo – Mwele – rattles out his story:
he was initiated at eleven, tied to a metal sword and tossed
down a hole in a cave. After which, he dragged himself to an underground
river full of hungry fish who proceeded to nibble his shin bones.
At this, he yanks off his one long sock, shows you scars between his leg hairs –
At this, your temporary neighbors lean in to calculate the omen of these
hardened tissue runes –
At this, the ghost of a blackbird swoops low, but no one notices –
At this, a growl hatches in his throat –
At this, with a sudden air of possessiveness, you weigh the conversation down to a whisper –
Because you want him to tell you only, he picked you to be the special one –
Shut up and sit down, says your luggage. After everything you put me through
and still I’m at your service. What a life. I wanna hear the Congo tale.
You comply. After all, you’re not one to start an argument with your luggage.
Speak, Mwele! Speak! the stupid temporary neighbors chant.
Mwele, beard slippery and beaded, snail green eyes, net snagged on wooden buttons,
empty basket rotting at his side, hums a low bumpy tune.
As if at an 8th grade girls’ slumber party, everyone (including you) hums along.
Mwele stands atop a suitcase. His voice spreads, greases the molecular
tissue between each body in the lobby, the soldiers’ heads turn in unison as Mwele speaks:
The old world creeps back in, creeps on knees, but proud with eyes blacked out.
The old world ink washes up on the shores of the oceans of ink and the old world whiskey
pours from an eagle’s beak, makes a pillow for the man's whiskey dreams, which he sweats
out on sheets washed by women into the water and down the river into the earth.
What is this ancient whiskey come back to holler me down?
The red eyed goats can sniff up that scent and lick it from the trees.
Stewardesses padded with carry-on’s huddle closer.
The body has betrayed human-kind. The body has betrayed me!
I thoughtlessly went to the river, song-pulse in my heart. My will pounds
silver teeth to amber whiskey! Petrified on the rim of old men’s glasses,
in the bottom of young girls’ mouths, in the choke of soldiers’ throats –
At this, the soldiers shuffle from their booths, in union, they lurch
wide legged, right-left in slow thud-right, thud-left and wind
their long caterpillar around the gathered crowd.
Who unraveled the numb taffeta through your suburban streets?
Who disenfranchised the Polynesian hut?
Who ducked from the murder of rock?
Who zebra’d the ground with electricity?
Who oiled the knuckles of the corn thieves??
Suddenly, in a movement both joyous and tremulous, Mwele opens his chest
as if slipping open a silk pink-lined bathrobe. He rises, his face morphs into –
your mother’s face. Everyone, at once, sees their mother’s face – and you
see into her illumination. A moment you barely remember. She’s cleaning
windows inside, the glass is fuzzy, and then, she wipes,
the clear gold sun floods the room. And you say, do it again.
And she does. Again and again. First the blur. Then the gold.
Each time you remember more gold – stupefying gold!
Gold of the Incans, Mayans, Russians!
Molten gold from Alaska, Mexico City, Australia, Johannesburg!
Mwele rises higher towards the glass dome,
his legs twist into a fin, breasts sprout,
as if a growing girl into womanhood;
they are your mother’s breasts, lush and secret,
untaken by carcinogens, surgery or chemo –
her breasts gush milk
and from her hands, tiers
of cupcakes crumble into the gapping
weeping mouths of passengers-to-be –
and as she opens her mouth
the song of breath escapes, radiates;
the molecular tissue of the lobby air oscillates, honeys;
the gallery of neurons shivering in each body crystallizes;
and you watch your mother burn through the glass dome into the blue skulled sky.
Susan Brennan’s poems can be found in upcoming chapbook, Blue Sirens (Dancing Girl Press), numinous, (Finishing Line Press), and Drunken Oasis, (Rattapallax Press). She curated poetry programming at Wilco’s Solid Sound Music Festival at MASS MoCA, and is staging her poem with circus artists about Georges Seurat’s last days. She has written film scripts, a 1 million hit plus award winning web-series, and pitched film stories, premiering at Venice and Tribeca Film Festivals. See what she’s up to at www.tinycubesofice.com.