Sandras Cisneros: Poem 3

Night Madness Poem


There's a poem in my head
like too many cups of coffee.
A pea under twenty eiderdowns.
A sadness in my heart like stone.
A telephone. And always my
Night madness that outs like bats
across this Texas sky.


I'm the crazy lady they warned you about.
The she of rumor talked about -
and worse, who talks.


It's no secret.
I'm here. Under a circle of light.
The light always on, resisting a glass,
an easy cigar. The kind


who reels the twilight sky.
Swoop circling.
I'm witch woman high
on tobacco and holy water.


I'm a woman delighted with her disasters.
They give me something to do.
A profession of sorts.
Keeps me industrious
And of some servicable use.


In dreams the origami of the brain
Opens like a fist, a pomegranate,
an expensive geometry.


Not true.
I haven't a clue
Why I'm rumpled tonight.


Choose your weapon.
Mine--the telephone, my tongue.
Both black as a gun.


I have the magic of words,
the power to charm and kill at will.
To kill myself or to aim haphazardly.
And kill you.

Forgetting Why

Smell her eyelashes
and forget where the minute went
tossing legs that close tightly
over and over
pushing away the wandering pain
of numbness.

Confusion wrapped in
overreaction or
slow revelation
that hurts so sharp
that wandering toward it
feels like seppuku.

Kill her
quickly so that she
gets what she deserves–
awkward facial expressions
without time to
say goodbye, show remorse
or relinquish her last day of mediocre sins.

Things I learned from Tutoring...

This is an excerpt from the notes I am using to help my student understand her reading homework:

"Sexual intercourse is the richest encounter possible, and out of this encounter a new being is created. The creative encounter is similar to sexual intercourse in its encounter, partial withdrawal pattern. The two opposites become united as in the creative encounter. It is this continuous experience of encounter and re-encounter that is significant in terms of creativity. The process is what is important. It brings change to both the subjective and the objective poles. The particular forms resulting from the creative process are symbol and myth, which reveal the relationship between conscious and unconscious experience."

Yeowsa...lol.

"Slowly, So Slowly, Slowly"

Trident

Don’t call me woman

Unless you say I am

Your woman

In only the best way possible

That I am yours

Because you

Understand and

Respect me.

Don’t wait for me to make up my mind

When I have asked you three times

For your opinion

I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t

Want it.

Is it a contradiction

To want a man

Who is a man?

Who knows how to take care

And let me take the lead

As well?

Passing back and forth

Awaiting the other’s response

In a timely manner

Passing back and forth

Finding the clench in the eyes.

I don’t want to go forth

When the past is so close

Sitting in the dents of my shoes

Like the deterring bubble gum that it is.

Don’t call me woman

Unless you want me to be

Your woman

And you mean it

In the best way

You can.

J. McIntyre

An Observed Sidewalk Kiss

Dance on Pavement

They were only going for a drive

or to the store

but he grabbed her with a ferocity

that seemed rough

but was instead a wanting so strong

that he needed to reach out

and take her

in his arms and kiss her neck in the middle of

the sidewalk

working up to her lips as

they both smiled.

As they went to their respective sides of the truck

(she drove)

He said:

Oh, I have chocolate on my shirt.

J. McIntyre

When Time Shifts Quickly...

Veracity

She walks upstairs

and finds her friend

in his Japanese hotel room.

Her things are strewn everywhere

and she is 24 hours late for her plane.

Dresses and shoes

books and pages

run into her hands (push, push) and back out

with nowhere to go.

Now, she is in California

more of her things strewn around.

They will not fit back into the bags she has brought

even though she has bought nothing

aside from coffee and food.

24 hours late again.

Her belongings multiply in cities.

She gets lonely and these objects become bigger than she is.

They soak up disappointment and fear

lust and confusion

like spilt milk on an end table.

Back in Japan, she can only get the news in English.

Wanting to hear anything besides her (static, static) mother tongue

she walks back down the stairs, finds the dining room

and sits down with him

as he gets up to leave.

J. McIntyre

New Jon Sands Poem

The Fishermen
for J.V. C.H. A.F. E.H. E.M.

Sometimes you dance slow
with your best friend,
while a woman you love
differently than you love Etta James

sings At Last into a karaoke machine
like she wrote it in the bathroom.
Sometimes every person you know is drunk enough
it becomes a new definition for sober.

There is a bar on the west side of Brooklyn
the fishermen call home,
(or they used to, when Brooklyn had fishermen)
like a siren carrying them back to their whiskey.

Sometimes there is tonight, and we are six people.
If we made footsteps that never disappeared,
can you imagine the lines we would have carved out to get here?
There are people who have called us their homes.

Tonight, there is family in the oxygen.
Sometimes, two people is its own person.
It has a lifespan, it gets hungry, it too, can lie underneath its sheets
and wonder how it can still feel alone—

Sometimes it is more.
There is a phone booth in the bar that seats one,
as six of us scramble inside,
we crawl up the walls until even our drinks fit,

and our bodies are rediscovering what it is to be possible.
It is one night when the clocks on a bar in Brooklyn
begin to spill backwards, then stop.
The bartender—still as a stalagmite,

and the perfect pour stays perfect.
The couple at the corner table held like
popsicle sticks in a freezer—
the ovvvvvvvv from I lovvve you suspended in the air

like a vibrating chandelier.
And we, with our slow dances
we with our songs
we with our smiles—
which on any other day are the downswing on a jump rope.

We are the last to go.
We are the last to go.
We are the last to go.