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Marie Anzalone


what I write

My mouth says good morning.
My fingers type good morning.
My hands write good morning.
 
and what I mean by good morning
could not be interred in a hundred years' writing
by all the best novelists in Europe and North America.
 
you might as well try to fit a quasar inside of a light pen.
 
When I say good morning, I mean that this day
I awoke smiling because your feet walk in my world
I placed my hand upon my heart and imagined it, yours.
 
I drew breath and thought I tasted you in my air
I ran my hands down my sides using your fingertips
I touched between my thighs and was warmed by your heat.
 
I remembered dreaming pink roses and wanted to paint them
in oils, in dewy soft understated brilliance, for you.
 
As with so many other things I could find to tell you, if I tried.
How inevitable annihilation is less scary if some part of you,
would remember me; how golden light and morning mist make me want
to be lost in a forest primeval, with you.
 
How sometimes I am so certain you are there, I feel your weight
shift off the mattress when I return to this world. And how
none of this is anything I could ever actually say to you.
 
So instead, I simply write, with a fond mental caress:
good morning, my friend.

smoked tortillas and revueltos

Breakfast should be profound, he said
     emphasizing with gestures that embraced me,
 and the whole of the room, a laugh rumbling;
              but you my friend, knew that already.
 
and then she brought the tortillas
       in a small woven basket, hand embroidered,
  emanating the scent of wood smoke, and I asked him,
well, what does this mean, then, us two here?
 
He paused to savor the aromas of chili and fire
  Take these revueltos, he said at last, motioning to his plate
     and think about how you got here TODAY;
and how they came to you, here, with me, in this place, this day.

          
and I was struck by a coincidence so strong
    that I almost fell from the memory of all things unsaid
          Destiny, I whispered
is but the minding of small details of the journey.
 
[The scenery passed by, unhurried, as it always does here]
 
and he handed me a tortilla from his plate,
    laden with rich offerings- eggs and piquins
           tomato and smoked maize, and responded:
why else did you come here, but to find me today,
      so I could feed you tortillas from my plate?


We Paint the Sky

for EP, may you live your dream
 
We paint.
We paint because we see.
We paint because we feel, hear, smell and taste more.
We paint because 250 generations of oppression;
    the sight of machine guns pointed at our knees
         and the smokestacks of crematoriums
 has never been enough to silence the voice of a free man
                       or woman.
 
We paint.
    In colors, and tones, and in clay.
       In voice and word and prayer and deed.
      We paint in synch, we paint outside the lines;
we paint each other, and our selves.
           We paint what we feel, we write what we see.
         We paint because to stop painting
is to permit ourselves to die.
 
We paint the walls that encircle our bodies,
     we paint the doors that permit us entrance
              into sacred spaces,
   we paint the births of genius and
the death of innocents.
             We paint bones. We paint the sky.
 We paint ourselves into corners,
                 we paint our minds free of traps.
 
We paint because we love too much,
   and we are too much present with the nature of things.
        And when our hearts feel broken enough
   from grief and the despair of not knowing
            we paint our emotions in bitter crimson
slashed with electric blue.
 
And when we sing with joy, we paint that, too... golden tones
     and golden notes and golden words dripping honey.
  We paint our anger into black swords to pierce our enemies
and we paint our desire into the shape of the spaces
          of those who would fill our hearts.
              We paint our wishes for the world
            on the feathers cast by doves
                  and let them fly into the morning breeze
           every dawn.
 
We paint because there have always been those
         who would hold us down and break our spirits
between the rocks of conformity
             and we've learned to just say "fuck it,"
  there is no guarantee of anything
  in this life so get busy living it.
          The road of most resistance starts
at the doorsteps of our hearts,
     and we have painted every bleeding foot
                       along the way.
 
And still still, there is more to describe-
     we paint because drawing breath is an agony
and exhaling an exstasy
      and somewhere in the space in-between
                we think we once found a truth;
 and the eternal part of us desires
                  to share this truth at all costs
 
only it's never quite how we pictured it,
          and it's never quite received the way we want
and the paint drips with our own blood
                the handles of our brushes are our own bones
our own tears become the words to our most beautiful love songs
             and we know we'll never get it right before we die-
getting up every morning and facing our own limited truth
        is a courage so divine
             most men quell and women stay enslaved in silence.
 
As transgressors we are punished for our audacity
         and we are shunned by our families-
                     our excesses are weighed in pounds of flesh,
and those who love us most for our art
                 also hate us for what we do to ourselves
                               to hold on it
 
and yet... with every last breath we draw in this life,
           we somehow look out into the world
and pick up our brushes
             sharpen our tools,
                  and with bent and broken spirits,
faltering hands, and despairing minds...
 
... we put pen to paper, brush to canvas...
           and we paint.

Picture

Go to page 2 of Marie Anzalone's poetry
Marie Anlalone's Profile

Off Track

Thank you no-
I am NOT
20 years old, with a
tight little size 2
body, barely there ass
and virgin opening.
 
MY hands
can trace heaven's gates
on all your parts;
they could make you faint,
and there is a little
more of me
to enjoy, especially
up top
where you claim
to like it.
 
I have ALSO spent
those 20 years
learning
how
to rock your
narrow prissy world
sideways
and completely
off track.
 
It is all natural,
and the shame is...
if you asked me
that question-
you will
never get a chance
to appreciate
any of it.

like that

   Like that, then-
wrap my body three times around
     and then the dust will swallow me
whole, like ground corn
    piquant and trusting in the smoke
 
but then there was you, once-
   your tongue maybe tasted of pears
ripe and sweet
     like a shattered high note
and a lazy piece of satin
        marked territorial boundaries.
 
 We stood as the ground shifted
     and we saw the view from below
through tiled floors
     and concrete stairs,
 our feet burning holes in the foundation
    while you whispered of dreams.
 
But I think I imagined it all, too-
   call it the vision of a being devoured
 by a poem; my core, my heart
    intact but my thin onion skin
 
peeled in layers. Like that.
   Liquid heat, and static cold
 you met me there, in the thin space
   indescribable, but known
to those who have been.
 
and if you really were there,
   and you decide to sneak back
again, I tell you-
   another kiss, like that;
  and I will give up to you
    all of my dreams, and set them
in your waiting hands.
 
   Gently. Firmly. Intuitively.
       Just like that.

formless

para DP, whose style inspired this
 
formless, formless...
we fall freely
into one direction or another:
suborbital spin,
probability functions-
 
we come from stardust
formless
until awakened
by a stellar orgasm
 
and dust coalesces to dust
ashes to ashes
we were thus formed
 
of nothing
 
perhaps we are lonely
because our cells' DNA's atoms' quarks'
electronic forces
remember being formless:
a thought before thought.
 
time before time.
 
out of chaos, more chaos
this thing, then
called love
 
and all we have ever had
to give each other, as fellow humans-
 
is, after all, stardust
imbued with the essence
of trying to impose
an order. any order
 
on that which is empty
and open and
formless;
 
yet so potential
so filled with probability
so rife with possibility
 
within our beings
between our beings
around our beings.
 
Maybe then
if you make someone explode
tonight-
 
you'll catch falling stars
and set them, ablaze, in your hearts
 
and your souls will forget,
just for the barest instant
the loneliness
 
of formless.


Picture

                            Washed by Rain

el sol llora para nosotros esta tarde
[the sun weeps for us this afternoon]
 
and all the laundresses in the land could haul these muddied shirts
     up to the washing place, and scrub them on the rocks until their knuckles bleed
         yet still not remove those stains we put on them today.
 
a blouse, just the width of a man’s spread fingers, palm flat, as if to strike a blow,
     the blow we do not dare turn on the ones holding rifles
                  to our machete wielding forms and figures.
 
Figures, then, silhouetted in flames, and another blouse, split up the front, in slices
         newly embroidered with a fresh application of fine scarlet along the jagged seam,
                       its owner’s unborn prize taken as a token of our passing.
 
Dios nos perdona manana, por lo que hicimos hoy
[God forgive us tomorrow for what we did today]
 

I wrap these images and sounds and places now in silence so deep
         three generations will not make me speak, ever, of the burning chapel smell
                   because the mind slips sideways when a man beholds the crookedness.
 
I learned today a knife carves arms like cornstalks, splits abdominals like a gourd skin
     into this, the land of maize and trees, were we led by los locuras-
        as men asked to do murderers's deeds, for our state long after it abandoned us-
 
and I keep a remnant of a charred anciano’s shirt, solely for remembrance
       that you never know what you can do until demanded by a uniformed soldado           
            holding a torch to your home and a knife to her throat.
 
Their work here is done, and the ashes settle into the afternoon sky
          soon the seasonal evening rains will wash the hallowed ground clean
               because when survival is tantamount, you no longer care that your side is right.
 
solo cuida lo que permita que exista un otro dia.
[you only care for what lets you exist another day]
 
I will ask my wife to take these pants to the laundry stone to fade the stains-
    and pray they never think that we support the guerilla here, but will tell my children
            about the place I know they can run to, just in case.
 
There is now a field of loose dirt in what used to be the neighbor’s town
          and there are probably none who will ever think to look there, again-
               for any trace of the living.

Go to page 2 of Marie Anzalone's poetry

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