Abe Louise Young

Refuge

Refuge lives in books I read while sucking chocolate and Tabasco sauce,
hidden behind a shower curtain in a claw foot tub,
in books that scrub me clean like a boar-bristle brush,
in books of loofah, steel-wire, Brillo books;

Refuge lives in books that name rape rape,
refuge lives in books that name rape love,
refuge lives in books that name both rape and love a reason
to repair the people who are broken with new books;

refuge lives in books I can read only with my fingers,
books I can read only with my feet, books of my lover’s limbs
delivered vibrationally to me, amber, gold, saffron,
books like a head of garlic sewn into a dress,

books on the cuisine of every continent,
the hairstyles of tribal healers, books on the rituals
of girl and boyhood, books with a warrant for my arrest,
books I have to drop my story for, become a speechless animal;

refuge lives in books that are balconies, beer bottles, bric-a-brac,
books hanging from the antler rack of a deer on the wall of a bar,
in books I turn on myself like white-hot irons,
books in the shape of a tumor lodged in a breast;

refuge lives in a book which doesn’t begin or end,
a book that is scrolling from my mother’s vagina,
where I continue writing over my mother’s handwriting
and sometimes erase my mother’s words,

and sometimes I find a thousand-year old woman
puttering irritably in a kitchen beneath them;
refuge is a garden of discarded lynchings,
a box of birds I can unlock, a bird, a box,

a body coming clean as my daughter turns the pages,
as I surrender to the iris of her eyes.

Resistance

When his scrotum
and penis
are tucked
between
closed thighs,
rendering
their bearer
a silhouette
of prepubescent
girlhood,

then her breasts
get flattened
into armpits,
compressed
so that her chest
is pectoral,
heroic, flat —
its so much
more satisfying
to read literature
(especially
Greek
tragedy)
out loud
that way.

Poem for Ryokan

One room
on the flank of a hill, empty as the inside
of a bell, bed on the floor, table, dreams
in a set of drawers.
One pen, one chair
one robe, one bowl, one pair of scissors—
but forgive me.
I forget
I’ve been practicing the wrong numeral.

It’s not immaterial: two of each item,
two forks, two cups, two pillows,
though I use only one.

As a home is circular,
a question draws an answer,

so I may live with you, float on the water,
tuck my knees behind yours,
whenever we’re ready.
Whoever you are.

Unstealing Anniversary

I shoplifted everyday for twenty years
until my first and only arrest: in Saks Fifth Avenue,
where cameras read the fine print on your heart implant.
Decades of small merchandise had attached to my torso
while my fingers were hidden, twiddling in anti-
gravity magnetism inside a sleeve or pocket.
I was bursting with nurturance for sentient objects.
All the stuffed animals so sadly abandoned
at night, all the coral, amethysts, geode jewelry
displayed with no privacy on glass...
I wanted to protect things, give them dignity.

My specialty was confusing the salesgirl
with enigmatic grins and countertop romance
while objects gunned down my shirtsleeves.
Come home with me, and live again!
I’ll take you out of the plastic packaging,
talk to you, give you a bath, be your friend.
After a week in the concrete Cook County cell,
my habit had to end.
I repeated, as a mantra, the words of my friend:

When you are stealing,
you are not
open to the gifts
the universe
has prepared for you.

                 Currently, I crave
botanical nubs where leaves and buds sprout
off of stems, or bulbs let loose roots down into dirt.
I promise myself I won't dig up the past, nor will I
unplant agave & aloe from the university
landscaping & plant them in my front yard,
mulched now with leather purses and
that shredded marsupial coat whose secrets delivered
merchandise right to the hem. I won't cut
entire branches, just excess edges, just
the trailing vine leaning out to make contact with air.
My pockets are already rich with snips

of yellow rose, juniper bush, & linden
to initiate climbing, imagine into a lattice
behind which no one can see me
imitate life; dip in rooting compound
so spoors surge out of the smallest pore.
Without stealing, my body fills
with whorls of greenery, strange honesty,
love & plucked slight twigs of quince—

Faith

I wake up in the Holy Roman Empire,
giving birth to a pile of sticks.

You must begin your song with the Muses,
and end it

with the Muses, too.
I ask the baby, Are you going

to make things of beauty,
or buy the visions

of others?
Are you Greek or Roman, little monkey?

•

I write a book thick as a cake
of seed

and lay it on a raised pan
shimmering and hard

in the backyard
No one will read it here

hidden, not lovely
old tires in the gully

tree limbs knit with dead vines
The pages etched by mold, then moss

but certain birds do come
The cake gets pecked

The birds do their work
and I do mine

Emily said
Let the poems be eaten

two by two; my lovely open head
is gone so

I won’t know by who—

Torn Screens

My mother is home with one breast, almost
sleep-walking. Three decades of mercury,
burning batteries, falling ash & all the plastic mysteries
compacted into garbage bags–

            Trash incinerators
downriver are still stitching torn stockings of smoke
to the skyline, long legs of fire.
A boat’s a hat on house;
    a slab’s covered with underwear,

a cardinal pecks at a nest; the bag of birdseed molds,
& shudders to the other side
of the laundry room by sheer gyrations
of maggots.
        Sorry–
I know nothing; can’t laugh back.

We sit inside, eat General Tsao’s Chicken dripping
with syrup. Talk feral cats. Her sternum’s purple
& black. Her teeth are good, the crowns
are hanging on, though someone stole
her eyelashes.

Better have a baby
quick. Crazy laugh. And then she cries: her voice
is two tones deeper, dry, with the rattle of a hammer
dropped a long way down
the well.

Twenty years ago we caught rabbits
in the swamp that’s since turned iridescent green,
roped off with caution tape.
There’s an oil slick beautifying the lake.

The porch is falling down
    & once was screened
against mosquitoes but the screens got torn & now
are curtains sliced open in a swag,
night theater.

I kiss her cheek, she holds my hand.
We radiate together.

Jazz Funeral / Living in Wartime

            Faubourg St. John

Smashed Colt 40’s glitter the path of the Big Easy funeral parade.
STOP signs shiver, whammed with wood as the dead boy’s brothers

jump and hit them, pummel the metal—a red note sounds pure and high, then
the stop sign goes skidding to asphalt, broken, satisfied.

Glass litters the street down Esplanade, past Terranova’s, past the Race Track,
and the bayou, to the Park. Eyes say, Stay back, white girl, don’t join the second line.

I nod back and clap. Yes, sir. Yes, ma’am. An old woman in hot pants
starts the dance under a raggedy pink lace umbrella: tuxedo trumpet

and walking bass wail. The dead boy’s uncles hoist his picture on poles
trailing long yellow ribbons, Granddad drives slowly behind in a lowrider

pumping brass-hop: When the Saints Go Marching In,
half static. Two sisters twist & break a crepe myrtle branch from my yard,

tiny hot pink flowers shower down on the hot crowd. Wind smells like whiskey and incense. Life sucks a bittersweet nectar out of the street.

His life was lived, now dance. Dance goodbye, show Death your sexiest dress,
kiss grief off, don’t cry. They’re walking to lay this baby down with his dog tags and

favorite brownies in the Pauper’s Cemetery. The hidden moon’s carved with a sharp stylus; collard green seeds taste like batteries. Bullets breed & clack, mass up like wasp

eggs, brass cocoons, larvae. Dance, dance, while the music rolls—Tomorrow, mothers in two counties will bury an egg at the foot of the garden.

How I Got My Scholarship

Winner of the Academy of American Poets Anne Bradstreet Prize

I went to visit the Founder of the School on Wednesday;
the bus driver named Hot Dog dropped me off.

Nobody knew if Hot Dog had one foot or two—one red, jumbo
shoe worked the brake, anything else was hidden

beneath the bucket seat. He’s mutilated, Edgar whispered as we rode.
I wouldn’t look boys in the eye: I wore a cotton pinafore

with buttons down the back. The Founder lived in a Victorian
with her Collections under glass globes: tiny things with wings

or a hundred crystal sides; tightly-folded paper violets,
Pygmy fingernails. The night before, I’d dreamed about a very heavy book

that was a mayonnaise sandwich; I was figuring out how to eat it.
I’m not sure I’m smart, but I’m sure hungry, ma’am!

I woke up in a panic, certain I had peed the bed. Butter
sizzled on the griddle, and a flea bit the inside of my thigh.

Whatever you write has to have a heaping portion of delight
if its going to go anywhere, dear, the Founder said as I perched on a divan.

Anywhere was so far away: my poem could char at the tip of a volcano,
or be hand-delivered to the President at his breakfast table?

The Founder’s skirt was striped silky pink and white, and her pantyhose
shimmered like the dark, paper-thin membranes the caterpillar in my class

wrapped himself up in to undergo Transformation.
I wrapped myself like that, like a log in sheets at night—

Are you a mummy? or a cocoon? My brothers snuck in, snickering,
poked me with a stick. I tried to stop breathing. Am I dead or am I growing?

Her bosom was mesmerizing, glowing like garden lights under lace.
She talked and I nodded and nodded.

I read once that by keeping your legs crossed and your eyes as wide
as they could be, a girl could look intelligent.

She offered me butter cookies and set a clock that opened
from a little leather box like a crab, ticked like claws tapping together.

We drilled Vocabulary. Voracious. Matriculate. Petrify. Insight.
The first two Wednesdays I didn’t eat

because No, Thank You sounded smart, crisp, and polite.
Yes, Please was clearly more spoiled and greedy.

But she kept laying out little plates of different treats and looked displeased
until I took a bite; then she leaned close in, smiled like we had a secret.

Now write me a story, she said, held out a fountain pen, and left the room.
It almost fell over in my hand, it was so heavy.

I looked around, then wrote about two girls who got baked
into a cake the size of a bed, it had curtains and pillows and all.

The girls were petrified and thought they might asphyxiate, until they got the
insight that they could eat their way out. Now they would be sure to matriculate!

I finished just as the clock hands grabbed for five.
At the bottom I signed in cursive with a flourish, a curlicue,

and a period after my name. She was coming back in a minute,
then her long black car would drive me home.

Delight, I whispered to myself. Voraciousness. Delight.
Everything I do is right.

Houses Only of Entrance

Published in The Massachusetts Review and online at Verse Daily

‘I will eat both the male
and the female fruit.’

I hear the trilling and the drone.
Succulence clefting open, a rush to pin the sound.

I am alone on the branch.
It splits off from the tree at a violent angle.

I sway, fill with scents, multiply, my breasts swell—
the trunk steadies, abides.

The grass beneath is clean, divided,
two sides easily defined.

Whoever tends this garden thrives on certainty,
self-denial, declaration.

The fathers’ beards part strictly down the middle.
It is human, it is in all the books:

choose obedience, or be left behind.
But what of those who do not choose?

And do not fall? Neither man nor wife.
And at the same time both: not promised,

not withheld. I have seen them. I will find them.
They who build houses only of entrances;

circular, open-thatched, divine,
where animals drift freely in and out.

Dark seeds thud down,
tart citrus and pollen mingle, combine,

three, then four on my tongue.
I will not choose.

My balance stick attracts bees,
amorous resins, premonition.

"The world is full of paper—write to me."

—Agha Shahid Ali

Abe Louise Young
512 653 6539