But(t): An Ars(e) Poetica Nobody knew, when I used to say but, in my head it was always butt. Nobody could hear the extra T but me, heehee. I was the countess of controversy. Hovering over my objection or exception was a big round girl butt in my own gum pink thought bubble. Which made butter richer, and buttery almost impossible to utter, and butterflies, imagine. I got good at other ilicitries, other felicities, hiding the small naughtiness of my meaning in others, breasting a morass of words, cocksure I’d emerge from the spurge and pussy willows, like a bushtit on the wing, no bumbler in Bangkok, nor from a penal colony on the banks of Titicaca. No, I came from eating cumquats and shitakes, to fly once around Uranus, rev the hummer, caulk the poopdeck with diphthongs, and make, attentive to copula and tittle, an identity, from such peccadilloes, tittering and vagile. Las cartas de vidas alternativas 1. Cada día la ciudad quiere que la mandibular abra de la bisagra y yo entre lo. Canto las canciones de Broadway y pulo los dientes. Por la noche monto sus escalas brillantes, esperando que la ciudad sueñe. 2. Hermana, el desierto es mucho mas que yo soñé. En cada piedra un cuenco de agua, una flauta de madera, una lagartija descansan. Las nubes forman mis miedos y dispersan en el próximo país. 3. Vivo entre las montanas y tomo mi pequeñez como una pastilla, cuando me despierto. Siempre quiero que la nieve y la piedra me desdibujen, la única parte que se mueve. Nunca voy estar estafada por la consecuencia mañosa. 4. Claros o secretos o embrujados los pueblos caen en su lugar, como las esquinas del rompecabezas. Todas las piezas del cielo tienen el mismo aspecto. Deseo que los fragmentos de nubes encajen pero no puedo hacerlo. 5. El lugar es como si nunca lo salí, la tienda de neón en la esquina, el colegio, mi casa es un acuario lleno de tulipanes. Yo temo mi boca es un tulipán, llena de polvo. Postcards from Her Alternate Lives 1. Each day the city unhinges its jaw and I climb inside. I sing show tunes and polish its teeth. At night, I ride its lit scales into glittered, showstopping dreams. 2. Sister, the desert is more even than I dreamed. On each rock rests a bowl of water, a wooden flute, a lizard. The clouds swoop into the shape of my fears, then blow off into the next county. 3. I live between mountains and take my smallness, like a pill, on waking. Always I'll be only one more moving part, blurred in snow and stone. I'll never fall for the slick con of consequence. 4, Bright, or secret, or ghosted, towns fall into place like the corner pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. All the sky pieces look the same. I can't fit the fragments of clouds together. 5. This place is as I never left it: the neon sub shop on the corner, the junior high. My house is an aquarium filled with tulips. My mouth is a tulip filled with dust. - Catherine Pierce |
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