(Cacophony previously appeared in Yellow Medicine Review, Winter 2023)
For Romeo Romero
“The images of these wounds hung in the gallery of his mind like exhibits in a museum of a slaughterhouse.”
— J.G. Ballard, “Crash”
This fight is post-Indian:
the hope of stories, white ravens
and Cheyenne War Dogs.
A knife held to my throat
no will to deny the urge
to step forward;
vocabulary lost to obscurity,
threat of language death.
wind raspy, carried by the heat,
drought dust,
prairie blossom pollen,
and
lightning fires.
Cry myself,
down slick centers
until my voice fragments
into gravel, a grenade,
static, resonance
of a larynx
wrapped in barbed wire.[1]
Literary ancestors
battle demons
swarming in legions
army ants en masse
attack a promise
I want to take back
but can’t;
and the promise
I wish you had made
but won’t. And so it goes.
I’ve been a heart for hire.[2]
Learned to stop chasing things
we should run from,[3]
an abomination, a villain,
again and again,
blank stares in return,
cold, dark shark eyes
her tongue hooked
on rows and rows
of serifs.[4]
Ties that bind, nowhere to hide,
shred my mannequin skin
off at the seams.
Truncated memories:
soft light
in the sundown rain gloom;
dolphins in the under tow;
starfish hobbled by nature;
to forgive myself, I point to
the earth as witness:[5]
What is this?
Need? Desire?
I cannot be one of the ghosts you inherit
to which you so desperately
cling,
Nor can I receive your wounds,[6]
scarred lived lives over.
This body was not designed
to bear life --
Am I instead
meant to carry grief?[7]
Franklin 118,
a paradise
of misfit toys,
inverted saints,
and broken granite chess pieces,
protective salt circles,
devils club charms,
thrones of maps and mirrors,[8]
songs few can hear.
respite from the downtown crowds,
a sea of bad decisions
and past lives.
And a memory of I,
Out of body:
a carbon copy
of someone else,
a shell in a game
I always lose,
distant, looking down,
light and shadow
dance along power cables,
mimicking imaginary animals
as they scurry back and forth
in their old anarchy
to the horizon line.[9]
Heart beats heavy,
ghosts in the esophagus[10]
with jack hammers
I lay on the ground,
my skull broken open,
brains spilled out
crows with keratin disorders
feast on the buffet
of gray matter
picked over.
Those that fail to learn from history
are doomed to repeat it,
the same can be said for us who dream the future
but are powerless
to change its course.
Will we be remembered
for our mistakes
the way humpbacks are identified
by their flukes?
Winter is about finding the strength
to leave the year behind you.
[1] Inspired by Joy Harjo’s “Are You Still There”
[2] Hooray for the Riff Raff, “Hungry Ghosts”
[3] CHVRCHES, “Tether”
[4] Rena Priest, “Creeping Out of Orbit”
[5] Ada Limon, “Notes on the Below”
[6] Inspired by Natalie Diaz’s “Beauty of Busted Fruit”
[7] Ada Limon, “The Vulture & The Body”
[8] Ada Limon, “High Water”
[9] Sylvia Plath, “The Colossus”
[10] Ada Limon, “Late Summer After a Panic Attack”
For Romeo Romero
“The images of these wounds hung in the gallery of his mind like exhibits in a museum of a slaughterhouse.”
— J.G. Ballard, “Crash”
This fight is post-Indian:
the hope of stories, white ravens
and Cheyenne War Dogs.
A knife held to my throat
no will to deny the urge
to step forward;
vocabulary lost to obscurity,
threat of language death.
wind raspy, carried by the heat,
drought dust,
prairie blossom pollen,
and
lightning fires.
Cry myself,
down slick centers
until my voice fragments
into gravel, a grenade,
static, resonance
of a larynx
wrapped in barbed wire.[1]
Literary ancestors
battle demons
swarming in legions
army ants en masse
attack a promise
I want to take back
but can’t;
and the promise
I wish you had made
but won’t. And so it goes.
I’ve been a heart for hire.[2]
Learned to stop chasing things
we should run from,[3]
an abomination, a villain,
again and again,
blank stares in return,
cold, dark shark eyes
her tongue hooked
on rows and rows
of serifs.[4]
Ties that bind, nowhere to hide,
shred my mannequin skin
off at the seams.
Truncated memories:
soft light
in the sundown rain gloom;
dolphins in the under tow;
starfish hobbled by nature;
to forgive myself, I point to
the earth as witness:[5]
What is this?
Need? Desire?
I cannot be one of the ghosts you inherit
to which you so desperately
cling,
Nor can I receive your wounds,[6]
scarred lived lives over.
This body was not designed
to bear life --
Am I instead
meant to carry grief?[7]
Franklin 118,
a paradise
of misfit toys,
inverted saints,
and broken granite chess pieces,
protective salt circles,
devils club charms,
thrones of maps and mirrors,[8]
songs few can hear.
respite from the downtown crowds,
a sea of bad decisions
and past lives.
And a memory of I,
Out of body:
a carbon copy
of someone else,
a shell in a game
I always lose,
distant, looking down,
light and shadow
dance along power cables,
mimicking imaginary animals
as they scurry back and forth
in their old anarchy
to the horizon line.[9]
Heart beats heavy,
ghosts in the esophagus[10]
with jack hammers
I lay on the ground,
my skull broken open,
brains spilled out
crows with keratin disorders
feast on the buffet
of gray matter
picked over.
Those that fail to learn from history
are doomed to repeat it,
the same can be said for us who dream the future
but are powerless
to change its course.
Will we be remembered
for our mistakes
the way humpbacks are identified
by their flukes?
Winter is about finding the strength
to leave the year behind you.
[1] Inspired by Joy Harjo’s “Are You Still There”
[2] Hooray for the Riff Raff, “Hungry Ghosts”
[3] CHVRCHES, “Tether”
[4] Rena Priest, “Creeping Out of Orbit”
[5] Ada Limon, “Notes on the Below”
[6] Inspired by Natalie Diaz’s “Beauty of Busted Fruit”
[7] Ada Limon, “The Vulture & The Body”
[8] Ada Limon, “High Water”
[9] Sylvia Plath, “The Colossus”
[10] Ada Limon, “Late Summer After a Panic Attack”