Alizon Kiel
16
And there was the summer that wouldn’t sleep
When the day pushed up against my eyelids poking in little tents pitched in some high hill that was not my mind and not the summer and not the open window or the shirt stuck to my skin
There was a bottle that I painted over and over until it turned gray with blue flecks and pink flecks and speckles of bleeding red and how I loved orange
Friends were afraid of me and I loved the moon and soon my breath would float before me heavy held as rain
Heavy-held-rain was self-same-rain the anti-climax that wouldn’t come and so stuck to my room to hang an awning that I had a certain thought was green
And it would not let me sleep
Blue purple pushing sky green and pops of turquoise made donuts in my eyes and coronas that pretended it was day even in the dark
My tasks that tasked me and have-to-dos that had no to-do and catalysts fell silent as soon as I cornered them in a corner where I hung a pair of blue jeans torn away that I had covered in paint with my bare hands when the brushes had broken and the sides of acrylic paint tubes popped and colors bled from their sides calling me to a summer
And that was the summer that wouldn’t sleep
The Window Seat
There are films where the shadows pass over the buildings in motions accelerating the day to an afternoon to an end
I was like those buildings were they freckled in fine amber and flecks of garnet stone
Slept in cheeks as warmed as baked bread still sitting beneath a napkin checked blue still checked white
All day clothed in speeding film and the story of my life yet through the day passing over me, I was still – as still as houses
Red Rover
The line that narrowed to one end
Where the boy on the far side seemed small tapered and fine
She had rough hands with round calluses
Nails like gradient cones in fine brown mud and poorly painted splotches
She was pretty AND could fall out of a good tree with autumn leaves
I wore heavy shoes
Socks that sagged and some scars weighing in under a knee
We held hands in tangible variety in a palatable lack of still
Fingers curling around in the other’s palm
Writhing little grass snakes
Not poison but bite
“Red Rover, Red Rover….”
Bahay ng mga Patay
Thank you Lina Warren for helping this poem speak Tagalog
Most of my family is dead
My son said to me
As we were leaving the cemetery
As we were heading to our home
It made sense to me
Later
Sitting at the table
Kicking off my shoes
My socks in places needing to sweep
My feet touching the earth
Grounding me where I am
That’s why I think a lot about shoes and socks and sweeping away
Pulling up to the typewriter
With sticky keys
xxxxxxxxx
Circa 1935
Underwood
Xxxxxxx
It made sense
To my eyes
To my ears
To my nose
I could taste it
We were home
Bahay ng mga patay
The house of the dead
Our family pictures
Many much older than a hundred years
My minds eye knows them well
My mind has different eyes
I keep their letters and I read them
Once as whiles keep them living
And I read and hear their voices
And I smell birthday cakes and tears
Cased in acid free covers now
They can still be read aloud
Allowed to be
Delaying disintegration for one more generation
Reliving Rebreathing Resperating through tree circles that count the years yet go around and around and around
Makatulog sa bahay ng mga patay
To sleep in the house of the dead
My son is not afraid of the dark
Here I say
In the dark spaces are all the things our eyes have been mistrained to miss
In the dark spaces is our family who need us to breathe
In the dark space is a world of spirits
I keep the window open for them
To exist in the corners of our eyes
My son is not afraid of the dark
He is afraid of being alone
I am never alone
I feel them around me
I seek their guidance
They hold my arm to pass down the hall
I say prayers to their God
I speak of them often
Speech as resurrection
Prayers travel and whisp into the darkness and speak to the spirit and the dark people waiting
Nakatira kami sa bahay ng mga patay
We live in the house of the dead
Toothpicks
Toothpicks are thin wooden creatures
they are the poking kind the falling kind the needed kind the cleaning kind the after dinner kind the symbol
A million toothpicks fall and there is someone in this world that counts them as they fall the world closing in and quiet numbers tumbling in wrinkles in ridges maybe purple maybe gray
We are those that draw upside down
our whole lives like that - drawing upside down as much as drawing breath or water or walking with a curved stick pulling you somewhere maybe purple maybe gray
And maybe today is the day that we find water and maybe today is the day that we find drink and maybe today is a day we wear arms of charcoal wear foreheads acrylic wear forearms a-twist
Maybe today is a day like a million toothpicks falling and there is someone in this world who counts them all
the witching rod
I’ve gone to search to find to seek to overturn to dig to speak to ask questions
Where is she?
I’ve reached for two roads forked like forever and one road was red clay and the other gray stone
I stood in the river bed of dry cloth cotton and called up into the arms of the grand old tree
Where is she?
Then someone I knew fell ill from the old tree that bore no fruit
And we struggled to wail together and cried and hindered the peace
Where is she?
Then we went to find the healer-told
Told his house was made of clay his face as cold as stone his clothes as air as cotton and he seemed not to breathe
Where is she?
I believed in bedlam then and chaos cold and crushed me down to fine green under fine gray and hate held my breath
And I was red as clay as hindered as peace
Told true to stand and question
Where is she?
purple flowers and red bricks
We are not fools you and I
Those are rows of flowers near our house
Those of them are purple those of them are snuck beside by bricks as bright as red
As red along the walk as both do sit beside as seems the world as seems it’s grown too bright
So eyes say mouths are closed today within a place that awakens as more
As more of dreams too loud as more of rows that kiss then flush purple then blush red
It seems you’ve seen them all again in her red-lined lips and the lavender snuck behind her ear
We are not fools you and I
And your heart is as swollen as more than purple flowers and red bricks can say
The Ghost
A bread crumb trail, little drops of blood led from the dark bedroom to the kitchen
Red heel to toe slowly to the kitchen sink
A foot clearly lighting on drops of blood from the hand to the mouth from the dark bedroom to the kitchen
Red heel to toe
Red heel to toe
She held tightly her hand
Her lips were dotted too
She had briefly suckled her wounds and some scratches on her palm
She held tightly her hand
She said, “I am not writing about my life. I have written far too much already.”
As she used her left hand to turn the faucet to the right the water ran cool
Her eyes unwavering watched down the drain
Forgetting why she was, she flipped the switch above the sink with her right hand
It left a mark
She made a face and sighed
She watched the funnel of red go down fading into dark space
Dropping her head low
She reached and wrapped the white hand towel with yellow flower stitching
Wrapped it around her right hand
Tightly held her hand against her chest
Pushed the brown trash bag from the kitchen to the door in little foot thrusts taking too much time
She remembered today what the man told her
“You don’t need them... Why can’t you remember things your own way from your own perspective... your perspective today? Who cares if you edit out the painful stuff? Maybe you should. Maybe you overwrite what’s happened. Maybe you have the past you want to have. Maybe you are someone who could stand a little white wash. Maybe you get to stop punishing yourself for someone you haven’t been... stop punishing yourself for someone who may not have ever been. It doesn’t have to be what she wrote down.”
She thought “Maybe I couldn’t see myself for the trees. Trees with their big rings... my past is huge... and distracting.”
Bad memories, painful, the most disgusting she’d been, the lowest she’d been, the most broken, the small, the agonizing, longing for everything, grasping nothing
She dry heaved in anger every time she opened one
Even in a deep tub under the bed pushed back back into pitch and darkness
The compulsion was stronger than dry heaves and stronger than her plaintive cries in the bathroom
She kept them
She read them again and again
Every one - from hearts glossed and pink, from flowers on to angels and cherubs, on to purpleness, on to blackness, on to leather strapped neat
No matter how much she had written that she longed to disappear
She had still cataloged every moment, written every pang and wrote herself back into existence in smudged charcoal and illegible scrawl
She could read the pain even when she could not read the words
She stood looking over the plastic tub holding the brown garbage bag
Let it float to the ground
Breathed heavily
Fell to her knees
Removing the lid
Hearing the stale air release
“Maybe I could not see myself for the trees.”
She reached in and pulled out the hearts and glossy pink and the broken silver lock
Took a second to look, ran her fingers over the “My Diary” in soft silver letters... And then...
She
Wrenched
Jigsawed and split
Her arm seizing twisting cleaving dividing
Tore off the cover
Ripped through pages
Pages after pages
Smashing them
Bending them
Twisting them
Mangling
Each pink purple blue green page
Book after book
Destructing destroying
Mangled
Twisted
Frantic
Turns as frantic
As frantic as tied to merry-go-rounds in the park, the kids screaming
No more angels
No more neat leather
No more purple
No more black
No more pages! No more pages!
“NO MORE PAGES!”
She screamed
She did not heave
She screamed
She dismembered her body of work
Blind with her fury
Destroying them
Destroying them all
She cried
She cried
She shredded bare hands
She shredded bare hands to paper cuts
She stung in drops of joy
Strangling pages
Screaming
Screaming
Bleeding through...
So many pages
So many, pages
So, many,
Pages...
...And then...
Having torn them all...
Looking at her hand
She drew her finger to her mouth...
And then, having torn them all...
She gave up the ghost
Alizon Kiel
CR 2010
