13.
Wish You Were Here
Wish You Were Here
Dad,
I wish you were here during this time of pandemic.
You’d put on your solemn, retired-doctor face and tell me to wash my hands like you showed me. Surgeons wash their hands by lathering up to the elbows. I haven’t forgotten how.
Remember
that box of 100 disposable latex gloves you gave me? You’d pull them on before
working around the house (you loved fixing things)—and we grownup kids made fun
of you, saying you thought you were performing surgery when you revived the
broken fridge—I’ll wear them now, I swear.
And
you’d ask me to check on my siblings every week—as oldest, it’s my duty—I
promise I won’t reply (like I used to)—Why is it MY job?—Well, somebody’s got
to keep this family together.
If
you were here, I’d want to give you a big hug. And when we stopped ourselves
from embracing for fear of the virus—it would kill me,
although
each day in the year since your passing kills me softly,
although
I look on the bright side like you taught me, and, at least, crying doesn’t attract
the virus.
~Eileen Murphy~
*
~Eileen Murphy~
*
12.
“If things go
upside down....”
The
virus rolls out
of
bed
early,
slips
into bloodstained
swim
trunks,
adjusts
its
“Make America Great”
shower
cap,
chugs
a
can
of
Red Bull--
make
that Jim Beam—
(gargling
instead
of
brushing
teeth--)
&
skips taking
a
shower.
It
grins
as
it grabs
the
machete
leaning
on the wall
next
to the door,
&
tests
the
blade
by
slicing through
a
brick
of
newspapers,
a
pile
of
stained
white
hotel
towels,
and
a romance novel
featuring
a
half-dressed
buxom
woman
and
a tall,
tan
old
man.
*
11.
Orchidvirus
*
10.
Coronahaiku
1.
No
rain, it’s a drought.
Sky
is cloudless; birds don't sing.
Folks
ill from virus.
I
take off my mask.
My
lungs breathe in the humid
Florida
spring air.
My
lawn turns yellow.
The
soil looks like dried pebbles.
People
stay at home.
Quarantine
lasts weeks.
The
air is clean, and the days
Are
quiet as death.
2.
Now
that the gym’s closed,
My
only joy is eating
Little
Debbie cakes.
No
face mask / but thanks!
I’ll
stay home with my cell phone
and
new computer.
This
is my Spring Break.
A
trip to the beach canceled,
I
pace my front yard
Video
chatting
With
my friend who lives in Rome.
Yes,
so far, she lives.
*
9.
9.
The
sounds I make when I’m not well are the sounds I make when I’m covered
in snow. With large birds in my hair. In
a tiny forrest. Where I’m transcribing
documents that were written by ghosts with feathers and dust.
I
am writing this from a seance.
With
my hair full of grief and a handful of stems.
And I’m covered with ants. And
I’m dropping fish over the breakwater and laughing.
With
gum in my hair and my hands full of fish.
Because I’m trying to grow my heart here, it’s so tiny. Ants are tiny too.
This
is a period-piece in which I cry in the snow
like
a sack full of birds.
This
is a note written in the voice of a very wild animal.
~Sara Lefsyk~
*
8.
Remember
when you called me from that seance?
I was standing outside the library of miniature dresses vomiting butter
and screaming at the top of my lungs
with
a note from my pen-pal pinned to my chest.
Or it was late-night in the asylum and we were wearing the dress of
altered states.
I
had on the face of an animal over the mask of a girl. Today I am mostly a small pod with a
bigger pod someplace inside, I said.
But
my stablemate was at the edge of a valley creating stars and renaming
constellations. “My frame of reference
is a system of cosmology,” she
explained, “sometimes, I can’t tell the stars from other people’s faces.”
She
stands disguised between the eve of lemons, clutching a misidentified bird
stomach. She is sacrificing various
small birds and even smaller animals to the fern of self-abuse.
With
her hair full of gum and her heart full of moths, she is a cemetery of
antiseptic gestures. “I am playing a
game called Think Life Is Coming,” she says, with her mouth full of ants and
her hands full of fish,
“I
am using the voice of everything.”
~Sara Lefsyk~
*
7.
Thank you for recording over that film of me with
a documentary about a doll falling out of a tree.
In a film about loss, if my heart is open, then it is wounded
and my name is a garden carved out with a knife. In a film about memory, if the
door is closed, then my heart is a needle dropped into the sea.
I was rolling around in some flowers with vomit in my hair.
I was wounded in the sand in a scene from a postcard.
If my second-heart was hovering above me, then I was locked
in the prayer-room, licking the deadbolt and prey-whispering in the voice of my
penpal.
Once, when I dreamt that I was an animal drowning in the sea,
I woke up tearing out my hair and biting holes through the sheets, haunted by
the odd shapes of fish inside my own godless hover.
Once, when I worshipped a very sad saint, I let my tears drop
into the light sockets. Inside the
memory of my half-opened heart, I was lifted onto the shoreline of my dreams.
~Sara Lefsyk~
*
6.
[mod clock
breakdown]
in
the sky––
another
dog-phenomenon
without
a name
the
shape of spilled fluid
is
one transformation
awaiting
phase change
or
insectile greed
broken
clock
is
the name
of
my familiar
what
was thought
high
incantation
turned
out to be
a
drunk slurring
the
periodic table
the
organ’s mod rhythms
are
as outdated
as
a tin-foil miniskirt
faster
than cancer
every
sky ends
[quotidian
crash]
utilitarian
fantasies
toss
a few dozen
flying
machines
into
the air and
wait
for them
to
come down
take
these new pills
and
calm down
the
sketchbooks
are
scattered
black
roots decaying
but
the ancient cities
could
be rebuilt with
access
to the right
heavy
metals
the
name of some
local
deity
is
hissed like a curse
the
control module
has
been jammed
by
fragments
4.
Giallo Red
After
Suspiria (1977 version)
Susie
in virgin white
crushed
blue velvet rooms
the
night, pelting rain, you can taste it
lacquer
reds,
so neon, so bloody
black
stockings, white slip on a clothesline
acid
yellow, a glint of knives
blue,
the color of a scream
a
peacock glows gaudy as
you
enter
the final labyrinth
you
enter the dance---
you
could die from it, you’re so
pure,
so pure against the red
brocade,
the vines, the irises.
flowers
carry sickness here.
The
last of the night-blooms
with
all of its poisons,
waits
for you here
~Sarah
Nichols~
*
3.
The Motionless
Daughter (Suzy)
After
Suspiria (2018)
My
horror is
beautiful:
It
awakens, my
motionless
daughters,
the
feet which
dance
by themselves.
I
speak the language of darkness.
Old,
old, a collapse of
women
and
painted
gods.
My
body, that nurse of
monsters,
a
house so
hidden
only
I
see
it
bleed
This
is a found poem. Source: Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny,” in Psychological
Writings and Letters. Sander L. Gilman, ed. Alix Strachey, trans. New York:
Continuum. 1995, 121-153. Print.
~Sarah Nichols~
*
2.
The Fairy Spirit of the Amaryllis
The Fairy Spirit of the Amaryllis
*
1.
Nice
Girls Negotiate With Terrorists
Nice girls believe the world
will not hear our cries,
so we carry the burdens
of ourselves and our sisters.
Nice girls sit in the sun,
our parceled out gift,
payment for our silence.
will not hear our cries,
so we carry the burdens
of ourselves and our sisters.
Nice girls sit in the sun,
our parceled out gift,
payment for our silence.
We work the 9-5 shift,
giving terrorists a piece of us each day;
backs broken from the burdens
they refuse to carry.
giving terrorists a piece of us each day;
backs broken from the burdens
they refuse to carry.
Shift managers and supervisors
demand and take,
take and demand,
without remorse
because they can.
demand and take,
take and demand,
without remorse
because they can.
No one notices mistakes of
program managers, though
mistakes are condemned
when committed by those
hanging on the bottom rung
of the corporate ladder.
program managers, though
mistakes are condemned
when committed by those
hanging on the bottom rung
of the corporate ladder.
