“Statute 192, section B of the Wild Imaginations Act”

Hi S.

My apologies for not being in touch---got back on the wagon: found myself banging  way too much ink. I know. Strange for me to say such a thing but it came to a point, that certain day-after shudder, at which I was becoming TOO frank and too Virginia Woolf on speed sans the good writing and whatnot.

In terms of you, though---One of ‘those things’ (such a cop-out phrase)---. I think to write/forget to write/think/forget, ad infinitum. Pretty much that is my brainrightnow (remember that 80’s commercial? The one starring the baffled dad? Think accidental-fro and creepy mustache. Remember now? He asks his scrawny pimple-y kid (straightup-bad-acting-concerned-voice), “Who ‘taughtcha howda do this stuff?!” Kid blurts his retort, (bad-acting-passion/scorn-voice), “From you dad! I learned it by watching you!” Makes me want to look it up on you tube. I think that was the justsaynoto____it was meant to be drugs, that last word. Instead all we kids heard was: YOU! Yeah, YOU: go ‘head! do-drugs-and-blame-your-dad-later. This of course preceeded by two decades the penultimate See dad, look what I’ve become?! “Now tell me you love me even though you’ve never said it not once in ALL my 18 years p.s. I haven’t seen you in 17 of them.” Then a slouchy slurmumble:  "Yessss fuckit whateva’ I’ll go to Excavate All Daddy/Mommy Issues Ranch in Fucking Maliboo-hoo-hoo…when’s the plane leave? Can I shoot up one more time? Where’s the fucking bathroom you traitor-dickheads?" But you must NEVER agree to go until a) You’ve hurled your venti Starbucks  at your mom. (b You’ve fled the room while screeching “Fuck ALLYOUMOTHERFUCKERS!” This while being chased down 8 flights of stairs by your sweating cousin and limping grandma. (I am of course talking about “Intervention”). 

ANYfuckingway. Back to –did I ever get to?-Simon and Garfunkel’s haunting lullaby. Presently it looplooploops—say that out loud. Did you giggle?—It soundtracks all of my parts. “ The  Sound of Silence”…  You know it, I’m sure.

“Hello darkness, my old friend,

I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence..."

One might assume depression  (understandably but arguably) is synonymous with darkness & must then be the entity addressed. I do not interpolate so. I say Darkness is not the necessary inversion of light. But it is not liminal either. In other words, just like any word, it is just a word. Maybe this is an odd thing for a writer to "declare," but my visceral/sentient experience (umbilical-ed as it is to my empirical experience) has taught me different.  Darkness, for me, in the immediate, is, well, OK. It is a place to rest and lay down my fear, all that restless grief. Darkness is the sound of silence, and I think also the sound of god. and ‘god’ is the improbability of one moment leaning into a next moment. If I am leaning into solemn canyons (time) and crossing weird bridges (experience)—shouldn’t I be thankful for what has been given rather than what has been taken?

Anyhow, that is where I am. 3 months of many many days feeling my body both prison and prisoner. But much grace is culled from both silence and pain. Body in fact not the hangman OR the condemned. Rather the body is my old friend; I've come to talk with it again. Of course I ain't feeling like Buddha everygoddamnday. You know me better than that, dog. Don’t worry: I’m not gonna start handing out pamphlets. Some days(ze)…sometimes all that zenny stuff is fallible. smoke and mirrors. your basic mindfuck. But it isn't today at least as I write this. Funny thing too. I’m listening to Sharron Van Etten. You might’ve thought S&G but naw. . ---pain, moment, grace, all that stuff---it leaves me feeling like a stripped down, funny-looking miracle. quick delight like finding a lucky penny and then making up a story about the pocket it fell out of. dream up the sage “antique playa” (most excellent euphemism:  translates to 'old man.' Picked it up from Holder, a character on my show “The Killing” …A Norman Rockwell meets The Notebook. The old man, he owned a penny candy store and loved his wife. Only a few days ago he planted his lucky penny for someone to find. It was his way: all his life, those kids passing through, picking out Mary Janes and wax lips…he lived to make people smile. Surely he died within a week of his bride. Her name was Sarah Beth. They’d been married for 50 plus years; he couldn’t live without her, literally. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy: Broken heart syndrome is real. did you know that? Frank Moore was his name. Frank placed the first penny he made on the pavement for someone to find. His way of saying “This is your day. Pick it up, kid."

And to answer your yes or no question. Have I EVER just answered a question, yes no or otherwise? Everything just gets me thinking! Here’s the Condition my Condition is in: I am-sorry!-SO tired of talking about it. Oh and re your kind visits--- I do not mean to hijack your Tuesdays or yer 1 o'clocks. I’m here. Just tell me what you can/can’t do. I will be---excepting buses or rabid dogs--in touch.

Much love to you and G and RT ex oh ex oh smiley face heart icon. love you to teeny tiny shredded chopped up pieces. ---ACF

Notes on Old-Lady-Alicia and The New Age of Burglary: excerpt from a letter apologizing for a belated birthday card

My Dear Darling,

 Are you suggesting that my handwriting is illegible? I know...I mean my my pen pal, Melissa, has learned to read my chicken scratch. And so can YOU. Even WITH all the cross-outs and refer-back-to's/arrows/ yada. Sometimes the ole' pen can't keep up with me brain. I'm like that super fast kid on the soccer field who clearly has what it takes but can never remember which way to run the ball. 

Oh. Also meant to tell you (yes I am obsessing about the bday card but that goes for all my letters in general. They're bad as goddamn drunk dials except whatever-I-said's on paper, sitting in Dear Whoever's mail pile. Ink proof instead 100 proof--ha!-)...

I wanted to say also, in conclusion, that my darling husband with whom I have co-habitated for 15 (!!!) years and who I've known for 20...HE received a belated card (and I mean by like close to 2 weeks). Thing is is that I'd purchased this cool Astrologically-related card quite some time before Nov. 4 but in my amnesia I forgot (redundancy fetish,yes) about it entirely until the day came...and then I couldn't find the goddamn thing to save me life! When I DID finally find it I was in a really bad way physically and incapable of writing to him with necessary honesty and in with love letter feeling. So. Plus rides are scarce these days (which has begun to suck big donkey dick). I haven't seriously left the house except to bring T walking--or riding his bike--to school. Then Hoarders or Intervention and letters and laundry and cream of wheat. I think I might smell. Later-day I hang out on the playground and watch my boy---favorite time of day-- then home again. 5 days now since I blew this joint and hit up Walmart. Right---WALMART (see, also with the loss of access-to-wheels comes a surprisingly pleasant give-a-shit sluffing: I'll go anywhere). And if I don't hitch a ride earlyish in the day I fade. Man, I should just thrown in the towel and start knitting (yes I know plenty of cool people my age knit but YOU know I am not plenty-of-cool-people-my-age). I'll subscribe to large-print Readers Digest and AARP mags and grumble about the atrocious price of canned peas. I'll dust a lot and leave out stale-candy bowls. Also I'll despise the young couple next door because they have gaudy plastic lawn furniture. Better not get me started on that Ciley Myrus twit. Shameful, absolutely shameful! People Magazine used to be such a respectable publication. And have you seen these little girls who leave their houses? They might be dressed but their bums sure as hell don't know it! (WHERE ARE THEIR MOTHERS!?) Gracious me. The world is going to hell in a hand basket! It's enough to drive one to drink! And then I'll unhook a perfectly good stitch because I'm so flustered. But my mood will shift quickly. I'll put down my knitting and pop a stale peppermint. I'll look up at you, smiling shiny as a thief who makes bank breaking into pre-fab houses. Houses mortgaged by total morons. You know, the "two mutual friends" people who announce on Facebook that they're "OFFFF 2 HAWAII 4 A MONTH SUCKAS! lol!" Their profile pictures unfailingly include obese cats named CandyPie or Kitty-Lou. Maybe a couple of pale, scowling 'tweens tagged as Tyler and Mackailah (the latter spelled 'uniquely' as to suggest, however depressingly unlikely, the possibility of 'Mackailah' herself turning out to be anything but that dull, mumbley-girl slouched in the back row. You know, the girl who's had to correct the pronunciation and/or spelling of her name since she was 6. And the second she turns 18, poor Mackailah will change her very-unique-name to Miley). Anyway. These same "two mutual friends" arrive home a month later (as promised), all John-Bohener-tan, and are stunned to find their houses emptied of any and all electronics---along with the Maytag set, his faux leather 'good jacket,' her knock-off Channel bag, and both kids' new LL Bean winter coats. And, just to punish these fools for being so fucking DUMB? Gone--- every last bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. 

But enough about our kick-ass neo-criminal. I, old lady Alicia, will look up with those big shiny-watery eyes and ask you, in my best tremble-sweet voice (after a final mention of having been driven to drink)...I'll implore you to be-a-dear and fetch me the 'good' scotch from the towel closet (no, not the bottle behind the rubbish basket!). It's kept there, of course, so the grandkids won't get into any mischief. Once I'm settled in (coffee mug filled to the brim) I'll press the television 'clicker' to catch up on my program, General Hospital. Yesterday was Wednesday: I was at bingo chain-smoking with Louise...I might be old as fuck but I know how to use that DVR thingy…”

 -Your Darling Dear

On the Third Anniversary of My Language Sister’s Death

I've narrowed many wild life tunnels without Kobi, my very first language sister, for three long/short years now. We shared a boiling language. We reveled in poems, in books and music and silence. Her writing smoldered; her poems are embedded in my body. Still, most days, I think of her. Precious when I feel the rush of the ink-blood we shared. I yearn for her midnight notes, her brutal dry humor, her raw compassion. I wish more than anything for a letter or a book in the mail; her excitable, crooked handwriting. No pen in the world could keep up with her speeding thought-train. Still I feel a halting shock when I see her picture: she is gone. Gone her biting, knowing smile.

Read a Lorca poem in Kobi's memory. Listen to a Joni Mitchell or Cat Power song. Laugh when you get caught in construction. Write letters when everything goes quiet in the cobalt hours of night. Give yourself with all the might and force you own. It was exactly this kind of blueskied, sun-buttered day when she died.

Mail Payment To
for KL, always

God only knows how many people leave sticky notes for their dead, 
Pens pressed against slump-shouldered memories. 
We crawl into the safety of our sister's slit wrists. 
We soak in that nest of nerves. I scream 

Down the freeway in my criminal lingerie. The horizon 
Lowers its damp standards and I am still how many breaths away 
From your last? I live in blown fog. I trace your face with matches and Hold your poems, their rivet written in the ash of my ire. 

Since then unbrushed teeth and sad mascara, the smudge of sunlight 
Across my unawake, hair looped and stabbed by some sharp debt: 
A paintbrush, a pencil---Sweetheart, expose your wild words. 
Come now, I am a member of the meat packers union, a milkmaid 

Leaking sweet down the street. 
Last night you came in and scattered 
A fistful of teeth: they stood like little tombstones at my dreaming feet. 
Who leaves sticky notes for their dead to read later?

You forgot your wine-stained books, you 
Forgot your blooming daughter. I still wait 
For the mail, your frantic news. 
I still say your name and bury you.

First published in The Café Review, fall 2010.

AF

August 1, 2013

Wednesday’s Child

                         

                        1  

The sea is undulous. Hazard outweighs the bouquet

of bright islands you see ----everything turns

cold and watery. Arch of dawn, its bruised throat---and under the wind’s screech

a Siren’s restive song. Her hair in your mouth.  Boat pushing south.

                    

                        2

Once was Wednesday  I was born

in my parents’ unmarried bed: March in me, and its outrageous moods.

The month of fish and detritus, of snow-drift and holy bodies sloughing

scabs and steeples, trusting the other to taste his grace, drink her pearlblue,

make fastidious work of the birth---Eve’s cast-off pain, Adam’s glistening

tongue. A blood-sting and dankstink. Wednesday’s mute

message (the apple, Eden’s crooked tree). Born to the blind freeze of squall, my father’s

eyes wide.

                That ancient look

 incendiary book and bond

                of tit the pinkslit-mouth

 the dewy breath

                Ides’ baby rooting

                her blind look.

                                3

What sets us all sail: the north wind’s shell-hymn,

Wednesday’s seasick ballerinas and damp gravesides. Brimstone song:

God shoots to kill.  (Still the tumbling prayer, the smoking choir, lilies and blizzards.)

Paddle like hell but sweetheart---he never misses.

Naked Poems

Naked Poems
https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/1/?shva=1#inbox/13db157a93638913

I will be giving a reading at The USM bookstore in Portland, Maine at 7pm on April 9. Honorably, I will be reading alongside former poet laureate of Maine Betsy Sholl. Also reading will be distinguished Maine poets Shana Young and Dawn Potter. Please join us for an evening of riveting, diverse voices. Refreshments will be served. Please see the MWPA website for more information, under "Events." https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/1/?shva=1#inbox/13db157a93638913

On the 50th anniversary of Sylvia Plath's death, and on Living

Today is all stiffening, glistening plow-made labyrinths and chapping whiteout gusts. Can you feel it, the feather weight of my heart? Its hot beat travels against frigid winds. One hears the shrieks of delighted children; one is stalked by a draft at the typewriter, in the incense-fogged kitchen. Our old house creaks and sighs, leans heavily on its ancient foundation. Me? I am scalding black tea swirling honey, I am piles of poems and a black patchouli-scented wrap. I am cotton summer dresses and July daydreams. 

Sylvia Plath? She would be in her 80th year. One can only pay homage in poems and ink, and by Living. Here is one poem that I internalized long long ago. I dedicate it to Kobi, whom I achingly miss: she was also intimate with this severely tender piece. Your words, KL (because words _are_ insular little selves), still buzz and rummage in my ear.

Morning Song 

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.

All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.

Sylvia Plath

Pen Pal

Tall grass slaps and sticks. Up, you know, the sky is ivory. Down

the indelible hurt of feet. All’s well that ends

in theory. Melissa, where did you arrive from and how? I could go

poetic and say your apple cheeks, your humid curls, your filibuster smile and though

these do describe your effect I have dropped or misplaced or drowned

the words for wild, my wild tender friend.      The road to you is protracted and unmapped.

O the savage inkloop

of your hand, your pen like a fever whisper.

                I open the envelope (you licked it) and there your inksong,

 your smudgy secrets. Where did I, do I, put them when I’m done? Your last word is

an infinitesimal death.

Maybe in the freezer. I was like that when I was pregnant

with my son: an absentia so complete and grief-laced as to carry you away, misplaced.

Have I frozen the words for lost, my sister; sister taken? I trace

the baroque loops, the stiff black lines

in your lilac-scented letters. I am your debtor, your loose-limbed dreamer.

I imagine the babble out your northside window

where egrets dip for fish. A beaky congregate

of grey-white feathers beating,  I am lost,

beating at the water. Do you hear their echo?

                I am lost.        I am lost. 

Featuring at 3-2-1 slam this Sunday!

Don't forget! This is going to be a bold, electric event. You won't be sorry you left the warmth of your cave, I promise. Tea time 5thirty, then workshop, and THEN: fantastic poets abound! I'm the feature, sure, but certainly not the only highlight.

Yours,
Kay Alicia

The Coming and Going

                                  

 I

To the lean lime grass, bent in the light—I surrender.

and the rough-throated oak telling me white in the winter ---yes.

The swandip of your neck: arrogance or humiliation?---either.

My own stilted dreams, meat and milk---ether.

We will someday call across the deathroom

for a husband, a lover, and will be met

with tears and halting sighs, remembering

the back room between stacked boxes.
Summer thighs surrender.

II

The salty wash of tongues, our seashell fragrance.

(That was before death.) We grieve ahead—yes.

And that dank back room,

finally together ---fumbling cannibals,

murmured incantations: loadseed

and your midnight sobbing,  my blue

goodwill pills. God, and our letters, look,

written with such greedy care!

Ink and wine and paper. I can’t believe you’re gone, you’re---here.

Alicia Fisher

2012

Published in Ravenous Butterfly's online journal, January 2013

Juried into The Belfast Poetry Fest: YES!! (See first "team" on list).

The selection jury for this year’s Belfast Poetry Festival has met and reviewed submissions, and is pleased to announce the lineup for this year’s festival. In no particular order, the twelve teams presenting at this year’s feature event, “The Poem to Behold,” are as follows:

Alicia Fisher and self

Jefferson Navicky and Carrie Scanga

Lee Sharkey and Joan Braun

Carolyn Gelland and Julieanne Reed

Valerie Lawson and Michael Brown

The Poet Rising Collective

Carol Bachofner and self

Margaret Weston and self

Maryjean Crowe and Elizabeth Garber

Rachel Contreni Flynn and Lucy Ellen Smith

Barbaria Maria and Kathryn Robyn

Elizabeth Tibbetts and Robert Shetterly

"...in case anyone missed it, we’ve changed the format for this year’s event. Rather than a gallery walk, this year’s festival will take place at a single venue and will feature a fast-paced, live multimedia show of poems and images, along with a Pecha-Kucha inspired mix & mingle. The festival draws a devoted crowd of poets and artists from across the state and New England, so, regardless of one’s position in this year’s event—whether showcased or supporting—please treat this as an opportunity to make connections, share ideas, and join a lively dialogue about the presence and the possibilities of art...."

Stay tuned at BelfastPoetry.com 

Looking forward to seeing you all in the fall!

Jacob Fricke

Belfast Poetry Festival Steering Committee

Here's the link: http://www.maineartscene.com/component/option,com_eventlist/Itemid,/did,1545/func,details/

Details to follow. Show on Sept. 13

How We Turn Out

for Melissa Crowe  

                  

                          1

You, October, crest with ache into the month

of Scorpio, a small scattering of Saggitari.

Your brittle signs drop at the everrunning feet

            of my two living children.

In this weather, orange pekoe burns the tongue---spiky

and livid. I can barely lift my head to meet

the bruised tatter of sundown.

            Everything reminds me of sometimes-Sunday’s fist:  nose burst

blood flooded my mouth hot, hot my smeared chin red. Outside

a garden of dead orchids. Run. The taste was citrus: the huge work-fist

of my father and his shining eyes, his sick scream stalking.

            A continuation of fevers, vacuums, thick books, places to hide.

                 

                         2

 A new mother stalks robed and flabby

through her orderless kitchen

and steams things. Copper pots and bad

Investments      haunt her lately.

Soon a lady will come to the door.

She will look like an aristocratic runaway

with her stiff luggage and blank tropical eyes.

But she has cream for dimpled thighs,     and a case of lipsticks.

She     says red.    Run.    “Autumn Red is your best color”    
Her fatpowder pink face crowds the door.

In some other world the lady nods compassion---Sweetie, you look like you 
could use a friend. Instead she bends toward the reds, painful rows of them.

Alicia Fisher, all rights reserved 2012

The LSD Journals excerpt #2

Under the Yellow Tent

South Carolina was a smothered tunnel and we were driving through it. The black roof of the Chevy glittered, caressed by the long girlish fingers of Spanish Moss. We rolled endless miles through sinewy, skinless heat. The day burned: it had to be 103 degrees---the sky was a livid fever, a blue baby born too early. Something clattered and screamed, like silverware in an overheated kitchen.  The air conditioning had stopped working back in Georgia. My forehead was a plate of grease. The sundress I wore, the color of an underipe banana, clung to my ribs and belly. Chip was wearing nothing but cutoffs. His tan arm draped hopefully out the window, but there was no breeze. Only a blanket of damp, unbreathing air. “How far to Edisto?” I groaned. Chip lit a cigarette and told me a few more miles. His voice was hoarse and tired. I made scissors with my index and middle finger, the sign that I wanted a smoke. Thin blue clouds streamed from our mouths and didn’t fly out the permanently cranked-down windows but danced coyly above the dashboard. We stunk of armpits and Camels, two limp and sun-dulled vagabonds in our asthmatic black Chevy. All I could think about was the ocean. I was sick of the south, sick of crackly-looking roadside snakeskin, the endless billboard Jesuses and barbeque shacks. We’d been driving for days and days. I wanted a chilly, bitter beer. I could taste it sliding down my throat, the can’s cold sweat dousing my irate August fever.

Fifteen minutes later the ocean rose up and flashed its salty grey belly: the only thing between us was half a mile and piles of pale, silty dunes. My whole body opened up---I strained to see, as if I were looking into a faraway mirror or a reflective store window. And then I could smell it, haul it into my lungs: the dank, tremulous stink of seaweed; the heavy rind of salt-crusted fish. Soon we were in the parking lot. The car clunked and sighed to a stop, glittering blackly as the pavement. It had been a month since I’d seen the ocean. Chip reminded me to put my flip flops on or my feet would burn to a crisp as soon as they hit the tar. I slipped into my cheap rubber thongs and bolted from the shuddering car. The beachpath was a boiling line of packed sand which lead to a wide, dry expanse of soft sand. I ran straight into the thrilling sea, Chip right behind me. It was the anniversary of his dad’s death, and this was the beach where he and his mom and three siblings had spread the ashes nearly ten years ago. I dove into a wave and stayed under for as long as I could. The salient water pushed me back up: I felt colossal, purified and awake. Chip was next to me, splashing and laughing. We played in the water for a long time, like it was our private backyard pool. I kissed and licked the salt from his lips and felt my 19-year-oldness in a way I hadn’t before: greedy and fleeting, ardently physical. I was a luminous morning glory soon to close under the vigorous complaint of day. We held each other in the immense bowl of the ocean, a tangle of arms and legs---and a restive, sudden grief. Chip whispered my name; I looked into the boiling blur of the horizon where he pointed. At first I couldn’t tell what I was seeing. Slick grey lumps rose and fell in the water, creating a delicate raucous of waves. And then I saw them: dolphins. I knew from the many times Chip had told me that dolphins were his dad’s favorite animal. We were like astounded infants with God still in our bellies as we watched the dipping and rising gyrations of the dolphins, their savage-gentle glide. We watched until they became invisible against the immense grey-white skyline: the place where heaven and earth at once collides and divides. Tears dripped from Chip’s whiskered chin, mixing his human salts with the raw salts of the ocean.  We’d come from Maine to Georgia and down to South Carolina---a crazy mix of brute battles and insatiable all-night love making. He’d wanted me to see the waters that had swallowed the precious detritus of his father.  When the dolphins were gone Chip looked at me for a long time. His eyes were solemn green. Sea birds swooped frantically above us. Children came and went in their bright bathing suits and gigantic goggles. The sky over Edisto was a ragged yellow tent that seemed to be collapsing but would, I was sure, hold up.

Alicia Fisher, all rights reserved

I will give my body to the DJ

I will give my body to the DJ

No matter the saturnine air   I am

            my body is stunning   nuclear

The music is dearlife thislife afterlife beforelife I am the throbbing

            instrument jubilant apocalypse I taste of salt and ash   

                        My feet are blistered vehicles

arms long pale ribbons   ribs strange   harps plucked by the fingers

of mutinous ghosts   I will not stop

            dancing I will not stop being the fastidious pump

the sanguine sting    I am the truculent one   my torso is your circumstance

Sweet demon    it will end like this   in the glowing

                        and prayerful middle  I will know my death

            in the shattered

dark of the notes as they plummet

            drum-pulse  bass-throb  electric-trill  

                         I am the mutiny

           

            O the howling staccato bliss of this    my private sacred symphony






Alicia Fisher, June '12

LAST CALL FOR ALCOHOL!

ACCOLADES FOR TENANTS:

“In language that pulls no punches, Alicia Fisher takes on a complex world where savagery can be found just under the surface.   These poems talk back to grief, and more—they insist on compassion.  If this poet is haunted by ruin, it’s because she cares deeply for each wounded soul, and refuses to let one fall uncounted.  Brilliant language, stunning imagery, precise rhythms—Tenants introduces one sure-footed knock-out of a poet!”   Betsy Sholl, Poet Laureate of Maine, 2005-2011

“Once in a while, and not very often, I come across a poetic voice, a way of saying and seeing things, a way of communicating image and story, emotion and intelligence, that cuts through to my soul, sings to me, and I want to share that news with everyone that I know. Alicia Fisher, a Maine poet, has hit me that way this year.

I have only read her poems online, but soon Finishing Line Press will publish a first collection of her poems, and I look forward to holding that book. I keep going back to her blog, hoping that new poems will have appeared.

She says "It occurs to me that I am in fact nailing my poems in place, keeping them in time and space, keeping them occupied and bleeding."  Gary Lawless, poet and teacher

“Alicia Fisher’s unforgettable voice fearlessly engages the gritty, disturbing aspects of everyday life, this “horror show” filled with beauty and despair. The veil of illusion has been lifted, yet we come away feeling revitalized by her emotional force, wit, and humor.  Each poem jolts the senses, placing us firmly into the scene it describes. In the hands of a less skillful poet, many of these scenes would feel merely gloomy, but the vigor of Fisher’s language reminds us why we move on.” Benjamin Bertram, Associate Professor of English at the University of Southern Maine

Happy holidays to you and you and you!
Yours,
A

For J and N, a million times

Twice

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.—Robert Frost

 

I

Fire

It is courageous, or at least secretly brave, to use the word

love. A word that mouths open on like God or Suicide,

a word that teeth cannot chew wholly through: caustic, mythical, smashed

between dictionary pages on an unlit shelf between James Wright,

his solemn admission: I have wasted my life and Nancy Drew
with her secret rooms, pretty questions, and an uncanny intelligence

   I once believed

I wanted to have if only to chase down devils and men

in long dark coats. And devils in long dark coats disguised as men.

 

 II

Ice

I stood in a field. It was late September and the air smelled

vaguely of fire, or more like the beginning of fire, long

ribbons of smoke twining from chimneys. Light spilled 

like an accident from a hole in the sky.
In that field a girl died, was killed. His thumbs
left a necklace of bruises, delicate purple pearls

around her neck. February, 1998. She was late coming

home. While her father was on the phone with the police

she was raped to silence at the base of a wintering oak.

Her ears became seashells cradling the oceanic roar

of his name. He told the cops later that he whispered

his name in her ear as he drove her body back into the frozen

ground, gripping fistfuls of her long brown hair. Fists filled

with silk, going-cold fire. Then he wrapped the warmth

of himself, those big apehot hands, around the base of her neck.

III

Twice

Three years later I stood in that field, bright September.

The trees dragged their palms

across the needle tips of grass, grass unbending

in the smoky wind. He’d hung her coat on the brittle hook

of a branch. I could not feel her ghost when I touched the smooth bark,

could not feel the violence that had followed her boot prints.

How could the sky could just watch, the oak

just stand there? Later that night when I felt

your breath unraveling like dim smoke from your mouth

I knew you’d come before me. Hard not to imagine you were him

I was her; the ceiling was witness to our fragile hunger, the bed

accomplice to our shy violence. Every last moment shrieking out

of its skin, on fire. She must’ve begged to escape into a snow bank,

to extinguish the horror, to freeze before dying. In this same way I climb

your body, claw my way from that winter crushed

field I saw, didn’t see, in the bloodlight of September,

from the end-roar of his name in her ear, his name from the memory

of myself in that field seeing nothing but making my way

through fallen leaves that crunched like snow to reach

her death that was not mine

but could’ve been.