1. |
Music Box
00:59
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It was very small,
at first. Then, we looked
into it and saw
our mothers' faces
in the gold filigree,
fish-mouthed, weeping
at what we had done.
Then, a wave of tinny violins
overtook us like giant white
naked bats. The kitchen
got smaller and smaller, the sound
got bigger and bigger, music filled the room,
a handful of falling icicles
trickling to a halt—
no more music, then.
It swallowed all our whole
eyes; we were left
unblinking, slicing
carrots mid-chop,
upset buttermilk carton
and bloody fingers.
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2. |
Electric Blanket
00:50
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Do any of us know
the utter loving kindness
of copper wires?
They give such warmth,
ask only in return
that they be coiled up
properly in storage.
People are not
always
like that.
In a fugue state I felt angel mutts licking my sore back with their halos
I giggled, swooned,
hoped, in this moment where all was right,
the house might burn down and the cough drops might choke me to death.
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3. |
Diana
00:35
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shot someone today with a rubber suction cup dart in archery class then
trekked red paint footprints like the ten of diamonds five peas to each
diamond all over the top of abe lincoln at mount rushmore my dogs went
with me too sniffed the paint as tho i had real-life shot the guy with a sharp
arrow in the belly then danced around in his blood like making wine i'll admit
i wanted to he was being a real asshole tho abe lincoln's all right by me
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4. |
||||
Do not just blast it away. We’ll need it in
the coming months. Everything
will crumble, ash explosions fluttering
dollar bills from out the molten
sky will be our currency.
Better than this rain. Do not just
chuck it from the wall plug-in, putz
its cord across the room, hissing, canny.
Like an old ham
radio, I’ll need it sooner or later,
to see if anyone is still out there
after the gates creak open
and my nostrils fill with head-aching
sea water. I can’t swim, not for that long.
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5. |
Return to Earth
01:19
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Ask yourself at dawn
how faces can fade from memory easily
as a human body
deteriorates, eaten
by cells multiplying as they feed.
There are people gone
or dead or fucked off somewhere;
thinking of them too hard
is like looking at the sun,
blurs their faces
so you can’t see
their long noses, the ways their eyes are set, or hear
their pitchy/resounding voices.
They are blank
skin-colored ovals
who may have said worthwhile things.
Ask their memories
which of those things you might have missed,
but you can’t think how they might answer
(crinkling foreheads, whale…
before each pause)
then Roger Daltrey’s face,
coming up through iron-pinned sand,
struggles to keep
metal grains from its open mouth
and a voice talks at you and says,
“This.
This.
This.”
From the ceramics of Koie Ryoji
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6. |
Age of Light
00:39
|
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What did this Venus, with hair like vapor,
what did she think would happen in the mirror?
A terrible combustion: cloudless body
hewn in a plaster mask, cold moon buoyed
out to a people-less, thoughtless ocean
absent of will. She is no more vain
to look at herself than to keep herself
alive by eating, and now there aren't even ashes.
From the photography of Man Ray
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7. |
SCREAM
01:10
|
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In the awful heat that bakes the flesh of the ground into dry red dirt that is et by panting wild dogs, in the awful setting sun the street lights wink on an awful warning. Across, the neighbors' yards are nothing but dust and scurrying animals—squirrels, why squirrels, the squirrels must be sleeping, these are larger, no hair on their feverish bodies, small-dog-size, aquatic paws replaced by hands—HANDS—it can't be right. They are grabbing humanoid, long, squirming tails like monkeys—they are not supposed to be here. This is illegal. They scurry. They swarm. They look over. One forms words with wormy toothless lips, not English, not language, something older, something dead, my own mouth sticks itself in a tight ring, a letter O, a silent howl.
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8. |
Free Association
01:21
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Trees: Good.
God: Damn dog. Mad god.
Hell: All Montagues. Especially that one.
Vindication: Of the rights of whoever wants ‘em.
Vindictive: Everyone.
Strangers: Your personality is showing, mine is not.
Tension headaches: My face hurts from oversmiling.
Eat: Or don’t.
Eye roll: Delicious. Delicacy. Indecent.
Iambic: Inhale slowly, exhale heavy sigh.
Paint: Pointillism.
Rock stars: Always wear capes.
Husband: He’s working, he’ll get here soon.
Solve for X: Can’t be helped.
Chromosomes: Determine fate.
Dress: Flourish of colored perfume.
Boots: Still kick, guard your shins.
South: Compass rose, night blooming jasmine.
Police blotter: Check the airwaves for dead friends.
Free fall: You’re a hypnogogic jerk.
Talking: Nonsense through sleepy teeth.
Mother: I’ll name her Inconsistent. She’ll grow tall as an oak.
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9. |
Christ the Redeemer
00:39
|
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When his father's eye opens over him
waxing him in cool light over the river,
even us faithless are stunned.
Whatever happens at last,
I hope he can escape
the old blood staining his robes,
the loneliness no one told him
was part of being human.
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10. |
Leda
01:21
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I
My fly's zipper
caught pubic hair
uprooted it
pinched the follicle
wings beat like hooves
punched my chest
beak punctured hymen
oh it was glorious
rough and tumble
and a spatter of blood
I was given a great gift.
Why do you say it
in such a mocking tone?
I don't,
at least
not yet.
II
A blue eye, a blue, blue eye, blue for want of brown.
My Castor dropped his spoon, it clattered like magazine fire
(startled me) and now he is a man. I washed Pollux carefully
until he outgrew the sink, the tub, the yard, they are growing, growing (terrifying)
and eclipse my view of the sky, everything now dark blue and too opaque.
They're too big for their forgotten mother, all I have left
are these ostrich egg shells.
Stupid Leda—
women are only mothers,
wives,
sisters of men.
That's all right, Zeus. You'll die too.
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11. |
||||
Wet boots, size 16
drag the purple corpse
without struggle up the hill.
"This your boy?"
The badge sparkles. Annie,
7, peeks her strawberry
cheeks and hair,
is shushed back inside.
A note: To my father
I leave my mangled body,
a box full of stars.
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12. |
What Audubon Saw
00:42
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In the gold-green leaves
of the New Jersey Sumac
there are more than moths
and spiders. The vociferous
goatsucking whippoorwill
lurks on the lichened branches.
The bird seems benign
with its whisker feathers
and widish beak, but what
has terrified children
for thousands of years
is the nightcry shriek,
the rambling cooing refrains
sounding like a man
being beaten to death
for stealing.
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13. |
||||
So yes we know our teachers are dying,
and we are dying, our tribes are dwindling,
kids I’m looking at you
giving you these little
bright bulbs to string around
my tomb stone like a barbed wire
but only to blink my spirit
into the dark world rather
than keep things out
or in.
So as I was thinking
this lofty human bullshit
the grubworm came
jiggling like a jazz vibraphone,
heat-seeking missile
stop-motion flopping
toward my molded boot
close in shape and size
to the lovable and noble
roley-poley bug, but a gross
antagonistic daguerreotype
to squish, to retch, to swoon, to kill it. I killed it.
So when I said words are a swarm of black flies
thickening the sick
orange of that street light (as in, that one),
this is what I meant:
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14. |
Night Music in Five Acts
01:21
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I
It's just the cold white
of your naked back lumpy
with vertebrae when the moon
comes in. It lights the yard's tree green
from underneath. Show. Explain.
II
And why can't I sleep, oh yeah, that letter
I fear from what feels
like ages ago.
Dumb shit
why didn't I lock the front door?
III
I did put my hand on that head stone.
It glowed eyeless pink when I took my hand away.
I was there
it was night
and it was night.
IV
Who cares
about the war on, the riots,
or what year it is,
we've all been
the shrimp,
the cloud, the boat,
the cormorant, the bebop xylophone, the estuary,
the clown wig. Right?
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15. |
Landscape
00:58
|
|||
Today it looks dark, no sun
all the trees are sickly
from the windows the smell of food
like night, but paraphrased.
Nothing is missing
not a stitch of clothing
or a blade of grass
is out of place.
This is how things are:
Inside the fence
children play ball
on a court choked with weeds,
glass, tire tracks.
Every day they parade
to the big industrial school building.
Every day they come back out.
Wade through rusted
beer bottle caps
to get to the one
hole in the chain-link
a crack in the armor
people cross sometimes
to wound the anxious city.
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16. |
Spawn
01:05
|
|||
everything smelled of mossy wood
at the stream behind my house
I scooped fistfuls of baked mud
the hollows spoke
of the markings of animals
foxes, bird dogs
but we couldn't find any
so imagined them
chocolate ice cream smeared around your mouth,
grotesque harlequin
and I pretended I had gotten
too much mustard on my clothes to wear them
we took them off
when it rained
I was small but I felt something
sticky between my legs
when I put my toes in the cool wet leaves
my tiny nipples stood erect
I cut my foot
on a sliver of green glass
behind a wall of earth
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17. |
The Infant in the Rushes
01:03
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Why
did the baby water moccasin float in
on a palm-sized river,
flick its tongue to sniff
our toast and bacon,
through the crack between
the foundation and door?
Will it poison us?
It broke the shell of its tiny egg
with one tooth, and now
it can't tell the difference
between floor and ceiling
(when all you see is up,
up's direction matters
only a little). Down the back stairs
the basement flooded again,
water the color of red clay
up to your waist
even after zoos of insects
bounced on the current
out the open hatch.
The water moccasin ate the insects.
He enjoyed them very much.
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18. |
Smile
00:37
|
|||
Tongue a wide mushed beefsteak,
yellow ivorychipped teeth
spaced for the black keys,
too many orthodontists
and their incompetent hygienists
smelled my poppyseed breath and tried to cut
the skin flaps in my gums like I was the fucking
Elephant Man.
I am so incredibly proud
to have this fuzzy crooked smile
that spits in their mouths and makes my lips
split even wider, Cheshire moon.
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19. |
Bloodletting
00:27
|
|||
Sorry my love,
I was mending
one of your shirts,
the yellow one,
and I know
the splatter looks
like a drop of mascara
from a weepy eye—
it is only
where I pricked my finger
and stupidly let blood spill.
|
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20. |
||||
Mary’s puffy crow's feet
have been crying about the world
again, she misled us all.
How in the hell
did that painter jot her down so fast,
before she could get her makeup on
like normal?
I’ve seen those Hollywood epics
with their false street preachers rubbed in bone dust
on every damned corner,
I’ve seen their ladies with the lovely hair
all done up—the quiet,
rosacea'd one smiling moronically at God
with clean, clear eyes is not Mary. These are Mary’s
glum dark bleary eyes like unfortunate
sky-cataracts, her filthy horned hands.
(Cyprus Icon)
|
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21. |
The Bank Robber
00:47
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They ran out of my favorite
blue ballpoint pens
at the bank today.
I can't steal them anymore.
Where else will I get them?
Any excuse to go in:
the crisp smell
of fresh ink on paper,
the biscuits for my dog
and lollipops for my nephews,
the jingle of the chains
attaching the harder-to-come-by red pens.
And of course, every time I go
through the revolving door
I can pretend I have money.
But now they're out of my favorite
blue ballpoint pens
I can't pretend anymore.
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22. |
Eurydice
01:12
|
|||
Last night you were
in danger of rolling off the edge
of the bed, which is very uncommon,
usually you're hogging my side.
You were in danger of rolling off the edge
of the world, into some abyss.
No amount of yelling
or trying to roll you
limp like a big full sack back over
brought you from the crater's lip,
the crater that was nothing. It was only
when I said the word no.
softly and held out my hand—do you remember—?
that you took it and nuzzled safe
back to me.
It was
as simple
as that.
Would you
have done
the same?
Are we
the same?
Are you
there?
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23. |
Red Sky at Night
00:43
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Some moons
look different.
Some are more green.
Some almost make a sound.
I sat on top of a rock
and looked over, all I could see
was darkness.
But I could hear the ground heaving
and that is what I wanted,
to lie flat on it and let it be under me.
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Al Russell North Carolina
Al Russell is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of New Hampshire. She is a poetry editor at Outlook Springs literary journal. She is also an ordained minister of the Church of the Subgenius. She lives in North Carolina.
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