Walking down Haight from Buena Vista. Charlie’s doing his usual. Escorting me toward Divis to get a treat. One of his regular stops. Suddenly a skater’s bombing down that steep bit right before the light. Nose in the air. Doing some trick—I don’t know the fuckin name of it. He was going too fast. The instant I saw him I didn’t feel good about it. He continues straight into oncoming traffic. A walking lady is hit. A Subaru slams. Everything stops. People gather round quick. Some chick looks to her friend: “What just happened?” “That skater hit her.” A Muni driver gets out—it all happened right in front of his 7. She’s in the fetal position. Moaning, ghastly, rhythmic, like an animal. Like oooooo ooooooooo ooooooo. I wait for the light, cross at the walk. Charlie missed the whole thing and tugs me the other way to his next snack. Without intending to, almost trance-like, I find myself heading toward the commotion/stillness. She looks older, I can’t tell. Her face is buried in her hair. Similar to my natural color, a kinda mousy light brown. Thinner. Everyone surrounds her, an ambulance is being called, there’s nothing I can do to contribute, until I see the dude grab his skate outside the circle. No one is looking to him. He’s looking to the sky. Poor guy’s in shock. Saying to no one and everyone at once: “Fuck. Maybe we should get her to sit up.” No one heard him, no one acknowledged. He was shorter. Whitish dude with darker features. Baggy clothes. Physiognomy registered as neither attractive nor particularly sharp. He looked at me. I looked back, stared into him, jaw tight, and said under my breath, but loud enough so he could hear it: “Piece of shit” while walking away. Dunno where it came from, but it came up. Calm, upright, but absolutely heated inside. Not proud of it. She’s unconscious. The one whose whispers cut.
Tag: prose
snakes
“
Thoughts were snakes shooting through high grasses. Now you see them, now you don’t. As you walk in the high grasses, you must take a stick and beat the ground. Scare up the snakes, pursue them to the edge of the field into the open and see them, exorcise them. You must perform this ritual now. In the middle of the night, alone with pen and paper, you sound out the snakey thoughts. You write one of those letters that’s never meant to be sent, isn’t addressed to anyone. No one’s eyes are meant to see this. This is a private ritual. The writer, the reader are trying to get as close together as possible. They are coming together, sealed in a word on a page where you’re trying to make the shooting thoughts come out in the pen. Shoot them down your arm, through your fingers, and out the end of your pen. Make them visible. You know it’s primitive: filling up a page so you can empty your mind. But you’re doing what you must: trying to let go. You’re starting by addressing yourself:”
-Constance DeJong
Modern Love
Maybe 5 minutes?
Re-taping the nearly flying away A4 page on the green street light base. A voice from behind. What are you advertising? I thought I was in trouble. Uhhhh, it’s a call for poetry submissions… Are you a poet? You’re too young. You don’t have the fire in your eyes! I stared. He stared. Studying me, he seemed to question himself as the words left his mouth. HA! I almost thought. No, no—I publish. Ahhh. Here it comes. At first hesitant, too inquisitive. Who’s your favorite poet? Alejandra Pizarnik. Alejandro? Alejandra. Pizarnik. From Argentina. Hmmm. But what about: names names names names. I barely kept up. But could complete a couple titles on the tip of his tongue. We began to like each other. Animation increased. Comfort rose. He caught his dad reading in secret the Henry Miller he scolded him for reading. I just read Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. Ah, yeah, but the one—Tropic of Cancer—he hated. Jane Janette! Jane Janette? From France. Existentialist. Janette? Janette. Genet. Jean Genet. Never heard of him. He was born a criminal, but man! He didn’t study, you don’t want to study, under these people in English departments who got turned down by publishers. That one guy at USF. I went to USF. You know that one guy? No, I wasn’t in Creative Writing. Took poetry with Zapruder though, and music history with Thiam. You see, I went to the MoMa recently, a friend gave me a ticket, very expensive, and this woman was trying to guide me and interpret the art for me, are you kidding me?! What could she tell me?! Yeah… you gotta get it straight. Genet read two pages of Proust and scoffed: I can do better than that! Ha! He was an antisemite, but the writing, it’s different. I brought up Knut Hamsun, Growth of the Soil, his eyes lit up: NATURE! Yes! Yes! You know di Parma? Diane? Yeah. Yes! Incredible! She just died. Yeah, recently, huh? Yes. Thomas Gunn? Uh, no. You don’t know Thom Gunn!? No, no… sounds somewhat familiar, but… not ringing a bell. Ahhhhh—you must read him. I saw him on Haight and Cole, at that cafe, back when it used to be something. Now, it’s nothing, just runaways, after that one girl—the mayor of Chicago’s daughter—came here and made street life cool. Once, back in the day, I saw the Hells Angels and Hare Krishnas on Haight get in a fight. Guess who won? The whites of his eyes, laughing in interrogation. My face grimaced back, I knew it wasn’t: Er, the Hells Angels…? Nope! The Hare Krishnas scared ’em outta there. Those massive bald guys! You know that woman who writes the stuff they sell even in the supermarkets? At Safeway and what not? She lives right here. She asked the city for 12 parking permits! 12 cars! Her books are trash. Ah, pop stuff? Yeah, pop. She lives in Paris half the year—you don’t want to hear about her. Charlie pawing at my calf to go. Names names name name. It became harder and harder to keep up. The accent stirring away. Trying, nodding, ah yeah… I’m from Ethiopia. Ahh, super cool. He looked at me like I hadn’t a clue about Ethiopia—I don’t. Where do you live? Right around the corner… Okay! Come find me at Cafe Oasis, I’m there most nights, I live here above the laundromat. Okay, I’ll find you. I need a notepad next time I see you… Yes yes yes. I’ll give you some books. I began to walk up the block as he turned to my puny sign and held out his pointer finger: SUBMIT YOUR POEMS: spectrapoets.org ❤ I shouted from behind, I’ll give you a copy! He smiled.
little phantom trip
“
Someone has invented this sinister plan: a return to the archaic gaze, a going toward the expectation figured by two blue eyes in the black dust. Silence is temptation and promise. Finale of my initiation. Beginning of every end. It’s of myself I speak. It happens to be necessary to go only once to see if just once again you’ll be granted the vision. We die of fatigue here. We’d rather not move. We’re exhausted. Each bone and each limb recalls its archaic sufferings. We suffer and crawl, dance, we drag ourselves. Someone has promised. It’s of myself I speak. Someone can’t take it anymore.”
-Alejandra Pizarnik
The Galloping Hour
{ }
“
Words do not say the same things they do in prose; the poem no longer aspires to say, only to be. Poetry places communication in brackets in the same way that eroticism brackets reproduction.”
-Octavio Paz
The Double Flame
‘how she tormented neurons’
“
absurd parentheses, with footnotes, so convoluted, so contrived, and others quiet, almost severe, that barely provoke a raised eyebrow, or a tremor of the lips, footnotes you’ll never forget, every time you remember them you aspire to repose, claim the extreme unction, the ultimate step forward, toward the abyss.”
-Hilda Hilst
The Obscene Madame D
➟
“
I transformed myself independently of my consciousness and when I opened my eyes the poison was circulating through my blood irremediably, its power already ancient.”
-Clarice Lispector
Obsession (“Obsessão”)
✿
“
… I’m more tree than woman. My limbs are old, mean branches. Occasionally a lost flower blossoms on my hand, but quickly withers and drops to the ground.”
-Sabrina Orah Mark
Wild Milk
🕳️
“
Boy writes on air the way my old neighbour Gene Crimmins says Mozart played piano, like every word was meant to arrive, parcel packed and shipped from a place beyond his own busy mind. Not on paper and writing pad or typewriter, but thin air, the invisible stuff, that great act-of-faith stuff that you might not even know existed did it not sometimes bend into wind and blow against your face. Notes, reflections, diary entries, all written on thin air, with his extended right forefinger swishing and slashing, writing letters and sentences into nothingness, as though he has to get it all out of his head but he needs the story to vanish into space as well, forever dipping his finger into his eternal glass well of invisible ink. Words don’t go so well inside. Always better out than in.”
-Trent Dalton
Boy Swallows Universe
heart of glass
A teary night. Heartbroken morning. Put on some tea and sat. Forced myself out the apartment. Biked to the studio. On my way, I noticed a smashed vase in the gutter. Like broken bubbles. The sun hit those curves and even the sharp edges reflected softness into my eyes. It was just a brief glimpse. Thought about stopping to take a photo, to capture the feeling—shattered. With puffy eyes that glistened like all those pieces. But I was late, so I sped past and thought I’d return later. I practiced. Got coffee with some others. Listened to them. We spoke in and out the night before. Removed myself from it. That thisness. And then, as I smiled and waved goodbye, I decided to bike back to that glossy mess and take a photograph, but by the time I returned, it had been swept away. Only one shard remained.
ericaavey.com 