After the fall of Adam and Eve,
Adam made a spinet
out of the wood of Eve’s broken-up heart. He carved it
with the animals of the earth. It sounded
like a small piano. Adam said,
I love so many things
besides you.
After his death, Eve remade the spinet
into a harpsichord. It played in minor keys,
like a small piano. Eve said,
everything immitates everything
else.
- Adina Schoem
While You're Away I Keep My Hair Short and My Nails Long
1.
"children your mother is dead."
2.
two years after he made this statement i think i am beginning to understand. for instance, yesterday i did not say " i miss j." but "i am so scared.".
3.
once upon a time there lived a family named The Family of the Raft; this is their story. mostly routine The Family led lives unlike yours or mine only in the way that they lived on a raft on a fast rushing river lined on both banks by lush green trees. sometimes i think this river looks like the mississippi river, but maybe i haven't seen enough rivers. otherwise they worked, went to school, fought, ate spaghetti dinners... all absentmindedly marking the time, unknowingly counting down the days until their mother dies. it was a car accident on the way home from work, two state patrolmen come to say. uniform in their dress, mannerisms, formal in their condolences they mark the end of this 10 year period of content .....
4.
sometimes mistakes happen. i mean they happen all the time. i look at your picture and i think how did it get so far? the troubling thing is when mistakes happen over and over again.
5.
things on the raft are all fucked up. I mean that they are inconsistent. time passes at a rate not measured evenly and the children grow into themselves earlier than they should. it’s so hard when you hear …. it’s so hard when your parents are crazy and dead.
by the way, things off of the raft are not so good either. the river keeps racing toward it’s inevitable end, which happens to be a rather large waterfall. so I guess what I am saying is the family of the raft is racing toward a rather large waterfall.
6.
do you remember when you were a child? or maybe do you have your own children? because now i want to talk about our instincts. children are tiny mirrors walking around, reflecting their social familiars but that is not how i remember things at all. i remember that time of my life being all inside of me, secret and magical. the memories are all about the trembling, hazy place behind my eyes where nothing made any sense and that was beautiful. and only accessible by other children.
7.
fall-story, then winter-story. It has been years since all hell has broken loose and routine is the constant leaping dipping soaring dives of the life on the Raft. some famously celebrated holiday nears and one day, he returns. Father returs with a gift for their loss, a gift for their Mother, all packaged up with a bow in a box. “it’s beautiful” he qualifies. oh how the Children mourn at this moment!
8.
love songs for the dark.
1.leader of the pack-the shangri-la’s
2.me + mrs jones-billy paul
3.return of the mac-mark Morrison
4.way too good-figurine
5.thin line-the pretenders
6.mary’s song-aisler’s set
7.just my imagination-the temptations
8.have you seen her-the chi-lites
9.i miss you-klymaxx
10.mi novio es un zombi-alaska
9.
father opens the jewelry box.
he opens it and it is so beyond beautiful that i can’t, i mean i don’t have the words. here, i’ll try:
light so bright you want to cover your eyes but you don’t. then when you don’t you realize that there was no need to shield your eyes because there is no pain there is no pain there is something that hurts in all the very best way that i can only call the funniest, the corniest the best: it’s love. and it is like standing in the bell of a brass instrument and the tremors rippling your hair but it’s something else because it is in your eyes, your fucking eyes! their father looks down, he looks down with tears magnifying fractals of love and he announces: “Children, Your Mother Is Dead.”
the sun (our kiss)
turning, with eyes focused, then not
on points all around her-the main object
the sun.
the insane pull of her, i'm blushing
excuses are made + all of the energy
(fake, silent, damned up energy)
has little lightning bolts crashing between us.
madness and tears, here has come the moment!
crescendo!
brass + cymbals a metal cacophony
in my ears, heart
hurting, my breath comes frantically, our eyes meet.
and what joy.
and what joy is mine.
oh my darling, the essence of you is these things and more:
sweet honey musk + sweat, truth (a pure form!) + a warmth combined
of coming home, downy hair + your mama's arms.
white light in my eyes, my nose, ears, my soul + hot sand rushes over me.
the storm around us a frenzy now
my arms have never made a journey such as this
weary, they travel over and through and around time,
all dimensions, the stars.
reach for me + we can capture the infinite between us.
electric currents in our tangled fingers, tangled hair
+ closer, closer...
the inevitable collision + an explosion behind my eyes
so great i'm gone.
your mouth on mine +
Here We Are.
10.
the children, their father, the waterfall and raft, the eternal soul, the river and all of the lush green around are not rushing toward their eventual end. time stops. and that is okay
p.s.
but what happened to the family of the raft after their escape? please, do they live happily ever after? please!
“i am so scared..”
-Michelle Rodriguez
Secrets
happen in cars that hide off the back-route
- Lindsay Ryan
Finder's Song
Little relic, the cutmarks on you
up a rough ditch where dry sylph-weeds reach high
one happened to my father when a startling crow
flew black as his heart was yellow with her hair
above the windshield he gasped and she knew
about his wife and let it happen the corn husks
when one happened to me
in Caleb's front seat I bowed to his corduroy lap
his glass pipe's cherry light wheezed I choked
cataracts of steam so god couldn't see
when one happened to this girl I knew
some man took her in his car and heaved her
deep into the ground and it swallowed
just like your heart had swallowed
what happened to you wherever it was
are surprising. Your stranded mouse-brown body
lays in my hand, flattens into the way lost things know.
I found you because I'm the finder
of lace and coils, the one who sweeps the filigree flakes
when the y flake off the face and fall. I find
all the dust-choked little girl pieces
that have become abandoned, over the years:
I'm the only one who goes looking. I found you
this time, you who spent all that time growing
from a goosedown skull, you, the beloved,
smelling of birch soap, the day they snipped you.
You still haven't forgot, and what
of the day when you do? I'll bring
the scissor, who'll remember,
who couldn't forget something soft as you.
- Niina Pollari