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