3 Poems
Nadir I
At night they went,
not muffling their footfalls,
to wake us one by one
and draw our blood.
At first I resisted, because
I resisted everything.
My voice was my sharp. They served us coloring pages (to rip) and Honey Maid graham
crackers (to crumble). Someone changed the linens,
I don’t remember who. Someone prescribed the snow, the pages,
the radio, the crumbling. I don’t remember who.
There were a lot of us.
We were a choir of little waxy paper cups.
At first I resisted because
I resisted everything. I cited every law I understood.
My voice was matted and ripped.
The nurse spoke French.
Ça va aller, she said.
We were a choir of little waxy paper cups.
We made hats out of them,
before we crumbled them,
and fairy houses,
before we unseamed them with our fingernails.
We made paper chains.
On Sundays we would crayon long lines
on construction paper and crease it,
wet it with saliva and bend it
back and forth
back and forth
back and forth
til it tore clean.
Glass Sheets
— after michael m. weinstein
halo
limelight
second supper
hands & hair & skin kept tight
the taut wrist of a jukebox’s flash
& music crept into my mouth.
heat lightning brow
all winter bound
& bundled—book in motel drawer.
return to address sender
self a post card
gender stamped
all pin up pig skin butterfly
& snake oil knuckles
nameless
heathens
saints
the strap on’s lord
who we delivered & desired
who was I but a mountain
without holler
what the silence swore