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Sunday, September 25, 2005

lies about suffering & joy

the body departs organ by limb, a simple penance.

the female buddha on fire in the tapestry’s far corner wants the thousand eyes she gave away for the background, opening, returned.

the scored forearms an unlit runway, dying to leave the body a refugee shell, wedged between bookshelf and radiator. your favorite locksmith carries at all times picks the size and tenor of your vertebrae. this also is not magic.

the unfinished history of blood is a biography of one woman speaking without apology in either her diction or tone. it is good to have goals.

bones clatter through the lines coke-white and noisier than necessary, but who’d deny the dead their say, the living our miseries, the flies riding close, geese in tight formation, how sweet the rot, its slow tango, how much joy in the wound, its red skirt flaring.

Friday, September 16, 2005

re-learning to pray

If I were the sort to have panic attacks, which luckily I am not, (once I did start to, several times have on the train but said no very firmly very internally, interiorly, and settled into basic agitation, reasonable anxiety, which was lucky,) if I were that sort I would definitely definitely today have succumbed today on the train with the sniffling kid and the harrumphing throat-clearing suit leaning so close after the news last night, the report on the Flu, not your average nausea chills week in bed flu but H5N1 pandemic potential killer avian flu. In-flu-en-za. Pandemic influenza, not even yet at the tipping point, now only now transferable bird to bird or bird to human but deadly still, settling deep suddenly immediately in the lungs, even in birds the birds they cut open (dead) their lungs filled with fluid and blood. Fluid and blood, the virus woman said, the virus man said on the TV. Said worse than 1918, worse than the Spanish flu, they’re waiting for the tipping point Emily says isn’t it amazing. Isn’t it phenomenal, for the first time in the history of ever we are preparing for a virus that does not yet exist. Waiting for it to evolve. That’s the tipping point, when it makes that hairpin turn onto the evolutionary highway and starts human to human, no bird necessary.

Some things they said. The woman said her uncle now elderly sat in 1918 in the window of the family’s living room forbidden to leave the house for any reason counting hearses. A tally on a pad in his lap. Counting hearses, a special column for his schoolmates. A tally. The man the hospital man saying these showers, this emergency room, this is State-of-the-Art, here we could decontaminate 60 people an hour. And in an emergency (emergency room, disaster) we could move faster. But that’s for the nuclear detonation in a major metropolitan area portion of the show. That’s later. Now, the man says H5N1 we’d run out of coffins in three days. Stadiums full of cots full of the dying. Nothing to be done. First, Asia. First, countries that can’t afford the vaccine we don’t yet quite have perfected. A guy on a plane, the plane contaminated, the airport, the city, New York City, the subway train, here, this train car, but not yet, not yet the tipping point. Not yet a vaccine, or rather we have a vaccine it has to be made by hand inside eggs. Inside eggs! Each vaccine. A little embryo vaccine for maybe a dozen people. New York City! Thirty people in this traincar alone. No need to panic, smart people working hard in labs across the country. Around the world. A tally. 1918. Makes SARS look like the chicken pox. In case of an earthquake, stand against an interior wall away from windows. In case of a nuclear attack, anyone not immediately disintegrated should strip, should scrub down with water and soap, duct tape plastic over the windows and wait. The tipping point. Oh lord, my god, I pray that these things never end. The sand and the seed, the rush of the water, the crash of the heavens. The prayer of men.

*

reluctance

You can have Gertrude Stein’s brain or Cindy Crawford’s face, but not both. Which do you choose? But maybe you don’t appreciate Gertrude Stein’s writing, maybe you don’t find Cindy Crawford beautiful. Then do you choose neither, choose your own brain, your own face? But others find one brilliant, one stunning, mightn’t you be happier if people found you brilliant or stunning, mightn’t your life be easier or at least different? Or do you think you are happy. Do you say, I like my brain. I like my face. Here you’ve been given this extraordinary chance for something altogether else, something altogether new, and you choose neither? The same same? You call that happiness? Satisfaction, maybe. Which is not the same thing. Not at all.

*

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

{soon a new poem or something sensible. meantime...}

Marty McConnell's Aliases

Your movie star name: Popcorn William
Your fashion designer name is Marty Paris
Your socialite name is Little Star New York
Your fly girl / guy name is M McC
Your detective name is Porcupine Maine West
Your barfly name is Cookies Pinot Grigio
Your soap opera name is Margaret
Your rock star name is Licorice Mood
Your star wars name is Marspo McCshh
Your punk rock band name is The Damp Stone

The Amazing Meganame Generator

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Suheir Hammad is hosting this hurricane relief event this Friday, September 9. I'll be reading, along with an array of others playing music, dancing, speaking and sharing space.

Come through if you can:

Refugees for Refugees
hosted by Suheir Hammad

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary
Refugee: Noun.
One that flees; especially: a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution.

Suheir Hammad's Dictionary
Refugee: Noun. Verb. Ism.
ONE LIKE ME.

Friday, September 9
6:30 p.m.


Alwan Center for the Arts
16 Beaver St., NYC
Directions: 4/5 to Bowling Green; R/W to Whitehall; 2/3 to Wall Street; J/M to Broad St.; 1/9 to South Ferry.
Located in the Financial District between Broadway and Broad

$20 ($10 low income)
* monetary contributions will benefit the People's Hurricane Fund
* clothing donations will be given to Malcolm X Grassroots Organization in Brooklyn for transport south

Featuring:
Gamal Chasten
Nigel Parry
Kathleen Chalfant
DJ Rekha
Kouross Esmaeli
Danny Shot
Rashidah Ismaili
Tara Betts
Maysoon Zayid
Una Osato
Henry Chalfant
Lemon
Denise de la Cruz
Negin Farsad
Bahia Munem
Marty McConnell
Rosa Clemente
Omar Hammad
DJ K-Salaam
Rosemari Mealy
Christian Ericson
Dean Obeidalla
Zohra Saed

{because I am terrible at writing in times of overwhelming trauma and disaster but turn to others' work for the words I can't yet find}

Envoy Prayer
by Kate Knapp Johnson

There’s not a corner, in all the world,
without its shallow grave –
mourned, unmourned, each
tucked under a shroud of grass. I know
in all the earth there’s not a plot of ground
where someone is not quietly gathering
an arsenal, mixing nitrates,
inventing a more economical manner
of death – nor one chamber

of the heart that hasn’t been stolen into
and darkened… But the first winds of spring
rise till the dogwood
extends herself in her white-tiered gown;
the stones hold their witness inside
while the finches and jays spill over
the edges of a single hour.

On TV last night, a man was speaking:
“I was running, carrying my son on my shoulders
when the soldiers shot him…why
was I running? It was my home…”
The man’s face was entirely covered
by his hands as if what he had seen
was so clear to him and so terrible
he was ashamed of surviving,
ashamed of being a man… And still

there are flowers like trumpets, flowers like stars –
two girls sail their bright-tailed kite over the schoolyard
while the lilacs snow down –
honey peach, and honey pear, each gift
ravishes, and restores in us
what will also be broken again
and again, without reconciliation. Lord,

do not save us
from this world.
Save us in it.

*

Friday, September 02, 2005

I know people wind up on blogs through various random searches, so with the possibility that someone will end up here who knows of or has work for a New Orleans writer stranded in Houston by hurricane Katrina --

poet in need in Houston: Kalamu ya Salaam

Here is news and a request from Kalamu, who managed to get out of New Orleans with his family, is safe in Houston but absolutely in need of work -- and he doesn't say it, but donations.

For those who don't know him, Kalamu is responsible for some of the most seminal thinking on the black arts movement and on the continued movement and emergence of trends in poetry.

Here's the message from Kalamu.

excuse the brevity and directness, but the situation is this:

like literally at least a million other folk from new orleans, we are now refugees. we left new orleans early sunday morning under mandatory evacuation. my wife, nia, is an x-ray technician who was on call at the veteran's hospital.

we had planned to be at the hospital, however, other arrangements were made early, early sunday morning because the full emergency plan had not been implemented at the hospital and for some reason her name was not on the list for emergency personnel even though she was on call. so at the last minute rather than staying at the veterans hospital we elected to drive to houston to nia's brother's home. with us were nia's daughter and her two small daughters.

arrived in houston 2:30 am the next morning. it was a long, slow trip. it's wednesday morning. it is clear to me that we won't be back in new orleans anytime soon, and new orleans won't be new orleans anytime the remainder ofthis year. i have ten dollars in my pocket. a $500 check i can't cash because it's drawn on a new orleans bank andwhich i did not receive until after the banks were closed on saturday. maybe $50 in the bank.

if you are in a position to help, i have one request: i need work: speaking engagements, lectures, readings, short term residencies, writing assignments. please contact me via email: kalamu@aol.com or kalamuya@yahoo.com

thank you for your consideration.

a luta continue (the struggle continues),

kalamu