Cocoon
Table of Contents Wire Walker Birth Intermission Walden Hill i I’m scared of Looking Walden Hill ii Your Jealousy Walden Hill iii They Call it the Coolidge Effect Walden Hill iv Body is a Quilted Thing Walden Hill v Fenestra This is Beginning Wayward Mind Walden Hill vi My cousin is Home from Japan Walden Hill vii Death
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19 20 21 22 24 25 26 27 28 29 31 32 34 35 36
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Wire Walker My brother’s bones stick out in all directions. Fast lacy fingertips, Architect hands, These nimble limbs will go somewhere dangerous He reads his horoscope one day: Your personality means that you will most likely pursue a plethora of intensity. He must not have been graced with an extra glance of flesh so that he would not carry any baggage just the bones of notebooks in a thin-skinned backpack banging against his spine’s track as he sets off like a walking stick to cross viaduct after viaduct after viaduct balancing thinly. And his mother, who asks anyways,
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How are you supposed to relate to your sons? There is no way to know that until they are born, must have thought as she coddled a boy child for the first time My dear son, You are all a freckle-bitten white-skinned hueso. Because how do you hug a wily sheet of wire, how does your palm at the end of an embracing arm cup shoulder blade sharp wingtips? My brother’s bones In all directions Those nimble limbs will go
Birth
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Our mother wakes us gently at three in the morning to tell the news. She’s gone to the hospital. We have all been waiting, even in our sleep. She’s been waiting for eight months now, or nine, seven and a half—when did she decide to keep? Our sister has gone, gone to the hospital to have a baby. Her stoppage is over, but we will wait through her labor. We take a walk in the hospital parking lot—it helps to gnaw away the hours. Our feet walk circles in the sunrise, thoughts circling soles through the snow, contemplating the novelty of this new word, newborn. It will be a newborn baby soon, even though its heart started out looking like a fish’s, then a frog’s, a snake’s, a turtle’s heart, before it finally settled into its human shape. Unaltered human heart.
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Our own hearts had stalled when she said, I guess I’m having a baby! But we understood—at least one of us was conceived in the same way. You guys, our mother would chastise, surprise is a much nicer word than accident! In the virgin light of morning we forget the comments we shielded from her: What, doesn’t she know how babies are made? We scoff collectively at the story about a biology teacher who taught the conditions that must align perfectly—egg, sperm, uterus, ejaculation, the lining inside, so that, Basically, he concluded, it is extremely unlikely to get pregnant. The odds are simply against it—about one out of every hundred. Everything is a gentle laughing off—teeth reflecting teeth, almost identically—even as we swallow the despondent saran wrap around our inner organs, which says plastically, you are separate now, she is separate from you; sister still, but—
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Maybe she became separate that day she started marching around with her umbilicus in the lead, talking to her bulbous belly. Pepito, she would say, speaking to her stomach. Her little pip held its heart in its stomach in the beginning. That organ does not always live in the designated chest cavity.
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When finally we force ourselves back into the clinical cave of the birthing room, we are all wishing our hearts would stop clutching. We clutch at our birthmarks as she screams at the doilies, Don’t ever get pregnant! A few hours or a few minutes later a circlet begins at her opening. And in a moment, which for her lasts forever, our sister is on the bed and the oddly colored Pip is out of her. Scissors snip the blushing cord and the Pip becomes somebody separate. There she is, our sister, and there he is, little Pepito, and still we hold our breath as the nurse says, Ten fingers, ten toes. His heart, a Lilliputian thrumming, begins its lifetime of altering.
Intermission
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Walden Hill
i
I guess I grew up a bit sheltered. A family friend called our home in the mountains Walden Hill. It was nice to finally exercise the ability to lose my womb and wander hysterically— an apple falling a little further from the tree
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I’m Scared of Looking at people’s faces when I walk
home alone every day. All I see is strangers, and I am looking for some kind of family. I learn a little trick that I call, buy yourself some flowers, a pretty bouquet to distract from all of this aloneness. There are daffodils piled by the bodega one day in Spring, and they set me to thinking about the homemade ceramic vase my mother sent me with a hand-written note. Treat yourself to some flowers, it said, love Mama. I am busy remembering the way the two of us used to joke about little girls who were named after their mother’s favorite bloom. Imagine if your mother’s favorite was Forsythia!? Or Geranium? Hydrangea! All I am thinking about is the pile of daffodils by the bodega. They are such hopeful narcissisms of Spring, I am thinking, so pale and yet so yellow. And then there is this man in front of me, demanding a dollar for his departure. I scurry away with a deadpan face and the wrong bouquet, stuffing away my change. I don’t mean to not give him the dollar, I just am taken aback by the way that he asks. He follows me at a rapid gate, jumps in front of me, just long enough to say: You know Lady, God made a mistake when he made you.
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Walden Hill
ii
the absence of family yields an opening for self that I am not quite ready to fill. it’s nice to ignore the issue, fill in the fissure by falling in love with somebody else instead
the boy who fills me says that all good things end with time, which I deny
he asks in bed if I would like to hear something soothing holds his watch tocking to my ear
time waits at the window, knowing that eventually the old cold will silk up new things
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Your Jealousy
it makes me a black eyed bender— blending in with the polished bar its brass bangles a glisten that is not me you’ve rendered me mute pebble in the maw of my mouth I sit silent the raucous laughter of you three exchanging absurdities sliding over me “I would like the edamame starter, please,” you say. “What’s edamame?” they say. “I’ll eda-your-mame!” you say.
“pftpftpft…” says the silence shoved under my tongue
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me all eyes grasping the side-mirror’s gilding—
me chewing my cracked chaps— broken mouth not the nubile you imagine; thin lips sipping silently
you’ve drawn me as a fine line of charcoal: black satin I am your cast-iron consort only you do no reigning just sling your honey-green eyes threatening to break because my cobblestone teeth needle your delicate disposition
nevermind my cherub cheeks my hips my thighs elephant eyes so soft not drawn tight you’ve imagined me to be strained silk and in doing so stuck stones in my jaw
“You gonna get the Paradise Martini?”
“Nah, try the silky sake— not even sticky.” “p f t” “Check it out! It says, silk in a bottle!” “p f t” “Yeah, last time I got sake it was wayee sticky… How ‘bout some milky silky!” “ p f ” “ p ” “ ”
“Sounds paradisical…! Paradisi- whah? That a word?” “Paradisic? Parasitic!” “pfft pfft pfft…” pebble in our parley
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Walden Hill
iii
I’m looking for a way to tell him that we’re losing light with the seasons— and there’s one out in the bathroom too we’re relying on the last desire left— it’s a good thing our bodies have never needed each other more I’m embracing his in the half light but still hankering— appetite drives us to do unimaginable things I like your face, I’m told one day, it is filled with something you don’t want to say. what can’t be said gets somatized munch munch munch, my fingernails are gnawing on my knees, still hungry for more— the facts inside me must be incriminating— a tendency toward red like a single plump tomato begging to be picked by a brand new set of hands
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They Call it the ‘Coolidge Effect’. The continuous seek-
ing of novelty, of new company. There is an old story: President Coolidge and his wife are being shown a farm. Mrs. Coolidge, passing the chicken coop, notices how often the rooster mates with his hens, the amount of vigor with which it occurs. About a dozen times a day, boasts the tour guide, strutting his puffed chest. You, says Mrs. Coolidge with a little lip, should show that to the President. When Mr. President sees the rooster mounting one of the hens, he slyly asks the guide if it is always the same hen. Oh no, says the tour guide, a different one every time. The President struts past, You, he mutters, should show that to the First Lady. Now we have scientists attributing our age-old patterns of infidelity to the chemical imbalances of the body. But still they call it the Coolidge Effect, relate it back to this cute little story. That is not good enough for me. I want a real reason, something substantial, an exact equation. I want to explain my own rooster behavior, but the closest I can come is this: endorphins plus dopamine plus appetite and losing light may lead to infidelity.
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Walden Hill
iv
guilt is tempting, an irresistible iridescence stop hit the bars instead, load up that ship of forgetting—
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Body is a Quilted Thing Yes I would like you to open up each of your sewn squares. No I do not want to do the opening—I will find shrapnel there, sown by your last catastrophe
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Walden Hill
v
one day I awake with these teastained teeth aching— shrug— the daily dose of glass I’ve been chewing must be getting to them somewhere in the blackadder alley a dog is barking, I’ve been to the bar too many times, turned into a rusted tincan of hope left too long in the brightlights the thing is, these live-wire years I am always craving the peach’s pit as much as its skin— the old comfort of my own bones
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Fenestra You know, when a bird hits a window it leaves a print there whisper there itself at its last moment so it is that this girl breaks her bones in a moment of her lover’s mother appearing in the doorway bearing a bowl of his favorite spaghetti green plastic spaghetti bowl mother’s love envy in the glance from a girl who flew the coop before her mother could nudge her out of the nest gently she’s careening in the kitchen now the toaster insulting her with a stagnant staring she draws in her knees, tries to tuck them under her wings while she’s gnawing gnawing gnawing on everything her mother ever gave her—
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bracelet scarf sweater tiger’s eye ring game of clothing in cloth stone metal memories rusted artifacts carving the envy of empty hands she hoists herself to the window— the courage her mother gave her, but no bird whisper there the glass transparent flat if only she looked back she’d see the faint outline of her body she’s left on the kitchen floor there whisper there a print with tile grout for windowpanes broken bones as she hit that unstained glass
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This is Beginning to feel Sisyphean.
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Wayward Mind Trying to make this place a home. Or Trying to make the place feel like home that is what the inside of my head looks like— too real to resemble the inside of your head where they say the gods live— gods with a lower-case and an s at the end They trounce around up there in your attic head over and over again leaving me Either way you lost the bets, the promises—
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and over again leaving— and then you changed them too and that is when I caught a glimpse of your sign that read NOT FOR SALE
and my
heart sank back to the wayward kind— we who are just bro ken
at the
childs
lower case c an s end
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Walden Hill
vi
time to retreat to my own marrow, protein of my own maim and name time to peel back the cocoon that coddles this wingmeat my jargon this soul substance my saliva time to stop swallowing my shovel-fulls of spit out pits— shovels full of words so let me slip out of this skin, leave the mourning to the knots and have-nots of my bones
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My Cousin is Home from Japan where they do not entertain in the family home. She tells me she learned how to cry noiselessly in public there. The days stacked up in which she didn’t speak to anybody, and only in her own language during phone calls home to her family once a week. She started talking to herself, every once in a while. Now she speaks with erudition, even though her native language lilts with lack of practice. She tells me how she survived pneumonia during her six-month stay there. Lying in bed she was sure she would die alone, stranded on an island of foreign symbols. I admire her bravery in leaving and in staying away and then in returning again, gracefully. I admire her for losing her language, and then finding it again. I wonder if I could ever possibly learn this from her, gracefully.
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Walden Hill
vii
someday maybe I will grow into a trochee— abstracting utterances from the muzzle of an udder with one effortless squeeze but for now I am feeding from my own teet— this distillery, this cumulus of intimare to put in and emotio to put out and again until I can put in and put out and move out of my melodrama— this long theatrical song
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Death
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The idea emerges before the concrete. Everyone says it ends like this, but you never thought— Not yet. Your father’s hair was always grey, his stomach slipping slightly over his belt, but surely he’s not old enough to— Now he is knee-deep in blueprints for an excavation of his wet buried pipes. His heart: they would like to open it up. You are afraid to say, Surely we all need to have our hearts opened, in order to die. Only maybe without metal clamps holding the sides of the sternum up separately, maybe without that particular panel of skeleton sawed in half. Maybe just not so exposed.
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You decide out loud to yourself, If my father dies with an open heart next week, I will read all of his books, from the mystery novels to the histories. The idea helps to distract you from lucubrating the idea of death. You plunder the Dictionary he gave you, unbury the word lucubrate. It is just far enough away from the word that you cannot replace it with, accept.
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A week later there are stitches on his chest—thread and a mountain chain of flesh. They end where an old scar, stretching the length of his stomach, begins. Yep, he says, Neck to pecker! He forgets not to laugh at his own joke, even though it makes his heart clutch, clutch-clutch, but at least it does not stall. You know that you would not have made it through the week of not knowing without the promise—from the novels to the histories. You know that you would have ended up lucubrating the possibility. You know that you would have ended up remembering—
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the liver spots on your grandfather’s hands— your mother slipping on a pair of tennis-shoes in the middle of the night, just in case, she says, just in case the tar in his loincloth should fall upon her feet, the contagious hospital disease in his intestines, your flip-flops to her tennis-shoes, flipping his body, your grandfather—her father, wiping him clean of feces, his face screaming but not his voice because the breathing machine that keeps his heart pumping is drying up his throat, esophagus of ash, breath from a flammable tank, oxygen to the heart, heart trickling, thrumming ceasing, the altering coming to a halt, the heart driving his last breath followed by last breath followed by last breath followed by