For Immediate Release - November, 2001

Snow Instruction

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Where did the speedgirls go

melancholy bullet girls who twinned my face

Collapsed but sweet

Face

cute gangsters

Zipping down, according to these instructions:

--// Keep each white grain in sight until it melts in the pump.

--// Standby while hearts stamp or clamp snow.

--// Make steam out of exhausted breath.

At dawn their blue and black stripes slid out of the village.

With extreme blur. speedgirls began training.

One by one. dropping down the chute, eyes shut.

(( I felt threads because the girls were snow. Afterall. ))

((From each nest. in the surreal cloud of our girl-home.))

(( A hug of speed makes nausea pee pee.))

o yearning in wads

I slid down ramparts.

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Sweet --//

melancholy bullets

Soaring ---

Blue waves ---

glimmering ice webs thousands

Gulfs edged with cracked powder.

((A black body glove

rubbered at the tips))

Mine equals fat and oily. Her racer blubber.

Tastiness so pure & juiced up

Until the moment

They break

Into a trot

Shambles, tearing

Downhill.

She makes it to a village. --// snow

Collapses there.

I hold her dripping mittens.

Breath from her belly steams the room.

What's the difference, Speedgirl, between what you do, and what we all do,

secretly, together—she winces & sez—

"A girl is a small idol nested in the body. Gnarled & coiling her teeth—"

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I got off before girls started

Getting their sex change operations.

I didn't look back. I got off

With my organs intact. I got off alot.

I got offered a sex change operation.

And I got one or two, then gave up

Everything but breathing.

I tried the lacey pants but they itched.

What is a girl, anyway?

Outside

the heat of the village is

(anything) so

Approximate.

Where the Boys Are

Poor Gino. Physically, he’s big in the wrong way, it comes across as sloppy and insecure. He’ll get serious for a minute, then say Firgeddaboutit. He really says that. He doesn’t have a lot on the ball. In real life Gino runs a pizza parlor on Fillmore Street. Every time I walk by his parlor, I see Gino leaning out the dutch door, scanning the street like a hawk. Like a clod. Being a part of his fantasy life was awkward for me. Most likely he just wanted to get laid, but he was so inaccurate. Whenever the other instructors talked about Gino, they left little pauses around his name, like silent quotes.

He quit showing up after awhile. One instructor after another glided into his place until our haplessness was extinguished. Gino's personal embarrassment became my universal bead of sweat tossed by gold chains.

That oceanic music! It was totally my favorite. Dino dug it too, twitching his butt to Donna Summer's liquid moans in front of the whole class while we, his students, kept our heads low and poured sweat into the white towels. Once in awhile Dino would walk among us, laying on hid hands while sweat dripped from the tip of my nose. "Hit the pavement, damnit!" Hey Dino, I'm used to hitting the pavement, even pretend pavement. Throb. It's my way of chasing a girl, but not being one. Never inside that red frame.

Dino, Gino. The secret was, Ralph was also Italian. He had the shoulders of a weight-lifter and the waist of a ballerina. No one could do stretches like Ralph. I felt the breadth of his sinuous professionalism.

But Ralph paid for everything in cash. I noticed, because I'm like that. Last count: thirteen hundred and sixty dollars in twenties. Oh Ralph, why couldn't you get over yourself? I didn't want your phone call from jail. What was I going to say? The ghost is always comfortable. In the past, where you used to be. Hardcore.

The screen says it has a penis. My hand traced is a turkey. For the same reason that the behavior of wildlife in captivity may tell you more about captivity than wildlife, it's hard to test a lover in the petri dish of the internet. To get a better sense of the lover's real vulnerabilities you need to meet him in San Jose, harvest some of his cock cells and inject the cock cells into the flanks of special immune-deficient mice. Like a table lamp, Ed was bright for a while, then he burnt out. He turned off his desire, casually, like you would a dripping faucet. Intensity followed by erasure. He transformed himself into a stream of silvery liquid, absorbed my punches and projectiles by molding himself around them, leaving holes where he once was. Deep inside my womb the Defense Department has installed a nuclear bomb. He doesn't answer my calls, deletes my emails, I float about silent, gravity-free, an alien pod seeking a host somebody love me. I spend 2000 years frozen underwater staring, waiting, dreaming of fat little fairies. The shadows do not introduce themselves. I'm a black dress and he's black Dockers and a brown shirt. The jet of his urine spells out apocalyptic messages in its expiring arc. I've got to get rid of him, I need a psychic snowplow to blow him away. My words are brittle, their connections weak, like clay apples they cannot reproduce themselves, cannot seed. Forensics performed on a water-damaged corpse sitting in a 127-year-old plot are considered more reliable than the documentary record. Interior horizons gaping open. My cunt cries out for a crust of bread, my cunt cries out for a bunch of flowers. I disintegrate, spew off molecules, pee them away. The molecules never get smaller, some of them just leave. Ed said we were never real, so here I am in San Francisco, this unreal thing, continuing. I back-up every message that Ed has ever sent me, then delete them from my hard drive. To further clear his dark vibrations I burn a sage stick, bitter smoke curling in six directions North South Ed as in id East West Ed as in past tense Heaven Earth Ed as in dead. Still my computer feels dangerous, Ed-ness suspended about the modem, invisible, lethal. Even the pattern on my desktop reminds me of him, pinpricks on a lavender background, a field of pinpricks in regular rows like tombstones in the Arlington Cemetery. Each pinprick's a dead kiss, a hole where snow seeps through.

coming midway through the dilemma saying “would you say something different or say something about the sphinx, the rivers or heavens.”

coming midway through the heavens when the river and the heavens haven’t been invented - where words have not rained on the land that came before the dirt that was toiled, poked, prodded and gorged of its kidneys and other outgrowths.

coming before, but a little after an airplane had landed in the middle of the desert or semi-desert, on the surface range next to the great dead river.

the passenger noticed skin of some kind had been used to create the earth and plasma from WW2 was used to reanimate most of those who were living. most of what was left was leftovers from the flood or as some called it “the plague” or a misguided message.

the signs read: do not drink the water or step on the cracks - if you do you will go straight to the forgotten land at the end of an inqmar bergman film - spending an endless quantity of time struggling to escape through cheap video reproductions that have started to delaminate into a hellish void.

on the plane were the sixty-six sexless ones, those pretending to be food servers serving food, the automatic copilot and the commander in chief, not yet in control of the naming quality that comes with the job.

where singing: “hail hail hail oh little star of the brand new names, we salute you . . .”

each of the sexless ones' destiny was to quench the sins or skins of the survivors, who didn’t know they were survivors as most thought it was just another day where the emergency broadcast system displayed the same message - “please stand by for a message from the local authorities. we will soon be - in due course - dependent on the proper authorities and location of conclusion, a reflection of your area. please stand by for a message from the local authorities. we will soon be - in due course - dependent on the proper authorities and location of delusion a reflection of your area.”

it was known by someone that the sixty-six sexless ones would have to have sex with the survivors to assist in procreation - which meant that the sexed ones might have a stamp with a likeness of one of them delivered to their door by one of their own kind.

A Performance to Undo

Hat sees hatself as a he. Flushed with last night’s drink, hat turns on a burned-out charm to shake uns hand. Un sees hat as trouble. Un puts hat to uns back mind because hat already swims uns pulse—the dog paddle, panting pink tongue and wet hair.

One, go down the manhole. Entire quilts of it tossed.

Hat knows hatself as one of the curly squirrels—quick, unpredictable, athletic. Stinks of cautious dirt stance. A thief on the high wire. Sniffs furiously up a tree length. Gnaws at patience. Naked to a cat’s stare and plays it up in a beady glimmer. Stupid was a clever aesthetic. Squirrel rhymes with girl in the blue bulge eye overslept and smudged in a dream of raw chicken in soot, beheaded card players, wings suspended by strings, perfect sisters.

Two, twist yourself as accorded.

Holy mothers and mantras. Meditation. Then sings off-key to little man music. Bare ass baseball buddies hoot to school beats. Drunken show-off nostalgia pit. Hard-ons shrivel under the pressure of mis-adoration. Little kid curled up in a false halo alternately disproves itself in sparks of inattentive compassion.

Three, drawer shut. Your vocal cue.

Hats golden-haired lady longing is a light before turned on. An impossibility as hat cuddles the more possible and passable un for the moment. Skin to skin heated but kept undercover. When they sleep, hat dreams of dying. The long plunge of an elevator through night-shaft. After an ascent hat had barely noticed.

Four, say which corner conflict rattled.

“Ridiculous, ridiculous, infuriating,” un thinks. Un knows not to want hat the way un does. Hat knows not to think of wanting or un wanting. Hat is apart. Will advance but not be taken. Will woo but not accept. Never out of a longing past the fantastic immediate puppet jab. A dodger and distracter. “A selfish manipulative bastard,” un admits. And hat asks for hugs un can’t withhold.

Five, that is what all of it flashed will motion.

Bare or in boots. Red woolen long-john jammies. Un massages hats feet and thanks hat for it. Hat says yes to double bed and body. No to any merge. No kiss to sacrifice hats spiritual height. Never a stone in grip, in stomach, the way un knows eye-to-eye.

Six, you disallow a pomegranate.

Sometimes un careens into play. Damned admiration hat reels in. A disposable kite iron. Un knows of girls hat makes chase hat. Un speaks smooth counter tops of jealousies, claims full clam for unrequited avalanche. Sips tea to the dregs when hat will bus a saucer. Bike off to bars after hug. Hugs while hat averts eyes to some alluring empty in the street—the next place hats presence makes semi-real and easily exchanged for the space after. A three-second fish memory wiggles over fathom, to up heave heavily, to sometimes be sounded—maybe even sung again in the teeth, in the chest prick.

Seven, clip out your pose. Fake a one page flip book.

Hat asks if un recently saw a dead squirrel. It could be used in hats installation of raw chickens around a campfire halloween bizarre. But does without.

Eight, the he and she left you stranded as they were invented.

Once in a while un sees unself as a she. But mostly un sees a she in hat and a he that eludes them both. Un queers the cocoon. Hat can run in any direction, and it will be the same un. Hat is uns choice un didn’t choose. Or uns illegitimate satellite falls to be hats nucleus aflame and unpinpointable. A snake you only see in afterimage. As a tiger un will strike and devour hat if only uns sure of slithering out of earshot. A skin discarded resembles broken. Dagger in the flank most gloried is a foul portal. The only un kind.

Nine, your gestures were made zeros ago.

Temporary Manifesto

I don’t stand by my words—I swim among them, looking over their heads and diving between their legs. I am a whirl of mismatching pieces. Why should words be any more static than the self? Where is word except in mental movement—in relationships made and broken continually, awkwardly, messily, generatively? I am a piece of a mismatched whirl. Why should words tread water in one place?—that’s just shark bait. Even if I stood, the sea floor would move beneath me. This has been written but is not writing.

Damaged Type

She kept (a) small
secret cloisonné box in which
she kept the pieces she had
in her hands which

she herself had b/roken (spoken)
of/f

to say
here    there    is    only here     now
or save here,    savior, savor      the edges of the alphabet are always in
                    flight        away

failing light
falling
was a tree

a-zure boy in the middle coaxing
ooh ah

tree/night sky/her back

alone    a lunar landscape    e-s-cape
sashay sway sweetness swirl swish swollen surge            her (hu/shed)
            tongue

“shhhh” she says “hear”

a loon, raven flocked ravenous beauty strange bird call
in(g) white
this silent equivalent

white
stars against black sky

again the cry
to
yoU
Valentine
velocity of heart’s ventricles torn a part torn
open to expect
a shun
all ready for the sea
to end (this all, this alpha and omega)
with a harsher sound

silent “e”
motion

said

A Letter “C”: A Sail to Catch the Wind With

Cause and effect, raison d’être
source, rock, cradle, cup

if language sometimes fails us, dark
slipping humor of our tongues
begin
with “C”, see an ocean to sail upon      CCCCCCCC
flat slap of black waves on a boatside
nearly capsized    a drift
without     a raft
innuendo   duende

each slight shift slides a door shut
on one word, cuts us
loose to navigate another course
to set forth

cranium, cello, clasp, abacus

at times we have the power to name
precisely what we want     (touch me here)
exactly what we mean        (and here)
yet we reduce ourselves
to silhouettes                (touch me)
the simplest line
more readily understood, more easily read

Notes are chords which sing
into trebled silence into mute bass

we are held by
we are held together by
nothing

crest, clavicle, cancer, castaway

white streams between jet letters
the hollow in a handshake’s palm
the space between bones
we move from

There is a lantern in the dusk of your eye
Shattered, hulled, and gathered

Even Elbows can be Erotic
A Poem for “E” and its Silences

Elaborate, eliminate
do you know
each
bone

in a body can you

cradle it
   name it
shin   collar   ankle   cheek
thigh hip      back    breast
   each elegant construction    one of two

hundred

a pear pared
down to the core
soft as a peach
a pair

Lachrymal, a tear drop
fragile face

bones

phalanges carpus metacarpus extend
to touch
each one

ease
of movement muscled in pulled by tendons
tender-
ly
erased

elle-the feminine pronoun(c)e(d)
bow
shot from either
shoulder

bent at the waste

Perec wrote “A Void” without the letter “ “

Pull this part of sp / ch away
what can it
say
what can b/ said sad
cut off
left a scar
e/radicate e/mancipate
cut off
left a
etymology engrail endgame
cut off
l/e/ft
without a tail to t/e/ll to grow back
cut

Slip not Gone: Poem in “G”

There are silences
hear
no one speaks
of sounds
no one sees

A pitch first then a picture:

There once was a gate built of letters.
There once was a manner of words.
Never was a consonant town.
And all the walls came tumbling down.

           All vowels are bowls
to hold                                a dream where moonlight falls through skylight & fills
                        goblets set to catch the champagne stars
           emotion
here in this
language gauged
gagged
           with intent

somewhere    meaning    fled    left        music
                          to fit in this
                     hushed artery of light

her golden neck
laced with the yellow of hair curling crown-colored, fair (rainless one)

           slipknot of a silver not
           choker pulled tight
           to the gullet
                                  dark Anne Boleyn begged to be
beheaded with a sword-- a throat too slight for guillotines, a chosen grace
in egressing the stage
         Never
                     to grow old
        the alchemist of transfiguration unpeeled a mask thick & cool as the
skin of grapefruit
Never
           again    to guess
at the Braille of misspelt cells

bitter pith, pink flesh
undressed

a g/lance to the chest

pin-
points
this heart a hand (of cards)

(a queen) held tight (a knight)

a full deck
unfurled
a missing piece (from war)
in reason grasped and swept away
from elegy (from morning what is lost in night)
a masquerade of jewels

such is the color of emerald & her eyes akin

here- a stifled gnome jigs
grasps in his gnarled fist a garland

                                          asphodel
                               bluebell           clematis
                        daffodil                       elderberry
                                  freesia   gardenia

Grow this
ravaged and
gathered crop of
blossoms

and with it sustain seven mute mouths
which yearn for

completion.

K... To Hold or Retain in One’s Possession

“Name a part of your body that you love”	“my hands”
“tell me why”	“they are medieval”

are they	mothers
stained	grandmothers
glass	spectrums

sisters	white doves
daughters	folded into cathedrals

tawny swallows	bathed in dusk

and here now your hands	catch light between
their fingers	trickle luminous

effervescence	of crystal refraction
laced between my	ivory curtains

to you	one hand held out
to touch your back	the small of it turning

a cut glass globe	spun from a string
swung from the casing	a window lit
by

morning sun	fluttering through it

they are woven	with my own
hands
cut through with prisms	a gesture embroidered

weary knuckles	as this orb revolves
set free by	the dance of fingertips

seeding the chamber	with kaleidoscopic
intention	to hold as tenderly

as a bird	this movement in air
to keep this brilliance	safe

two currents	convergent



at one sound

M	ake/Believe The Museum

There is a bone
that breaks
in/t(wo)oo a w/hole
that fills with light
a blue
circle of it

There is a moon
seen through
that monocle
suspended
infinite
cerulean

Here, there is paint
canvas
this misimpression
of dimension
sprung from
a smooth face

The Miraculous Stair Case
In the Loretto Chapel
two women bend
low‹a stone murmur
cold and hard
on kneecaps
beneath
the twist of stairs

“built by God”
a wandering
wood worker
lends his heart, his hands
his wooden pegs
his thirty three steps
his 360°
turns

then
soon disappears

Mouth
Mulberry Plum
slight shreds of skin where you have bitten it

We find our churches
where we will.

O
ut of the Sea

in possibility and wonder
you surface again

the epoxy of reason
binding tight these flown loose words

this work is one
of voices--

now rooted
in a vowel

encompassed in an out breath-- the lungs expand
to hold

that
one obdurate star
which shines and keeps on shining
near the half slung moon
* /
in
another
story of sound
and sorrow
an Odyssey of memory and metaphor
you find your home

without you
there would be no loveliness no joy

the winds flee before you and the storm clouds
sweet flowers embroider the earth as you walk

Mother of Eros
whose tree is myrtle, whose bird is dove or sometimes swan or sparrow

in the marrow of your bones

allow us discourse

to pursue
this course
in buoyancy

and not in darkness

Dietmar was super-clairvoyant. He saw me through time, back before I was married, to the early days of San Francisco when acid and disco and bath-house sex were my whole life, and he saw or felt all I had forgotten or tried to. With two fingers he plucked my dick and examined it, its tiny imperfections, all the men it had been into, and the way it had run my life. All in all, I’m a healthy sort-he sensed no major calamity. He was right-about the dick thing.

"It’s no hazard," he said.

"Well, I’m no Forrest Tucker," I said, uncomfortable. I tried to cross my legs but he kept one hand under my balls.

"You are ashamed," he told me. "Your body is not what it used to be when you were young and when you were a drunk."

"I gave up drinking and then-and only then!-did everything give out." I grabbed his cock and held it in one hand, then the other, trying to "read" him as he had read me. But nothing. For all my imagination this cock told me only that it was erecting itself in this one moment, now, in my wet palm, my stubby wet fingers, one of them sporting a wedding ring at a crucial joint. Dietmar grunted as the gold of my ring touched the vein under the head of his penis, he moved forward, I smelled his scent as he pressed his head into my neck. "Who is Forrest Tucker?" he asked.

I could hardly explain it to him-I barely remembered Forrest Tucker myself, the affable, slow-burning actor from F Troop-until I recalled that Tucker had played Auntie Mame’s Southern suitor in the Rosalind Russell movie. Then he seemed to recognize the name. "Not so pretty a man," Dietmar said.

"He’s just a shorthand for a-He was famous in Hollywood for having the biggest cock in town."

"Which you don’t have."

"Which I don’t have."

"That’s okay, my Forrest Tucker," he said. I felt all the heat in my body bolt into his hands, where he held my cock, divining its history. "You are a man and, like every man, you have your own secrets."

I pulled away his uniform from his shoulders, felt his skin through his white cotton T-shirt, felt a scar there, thick and veiny like Harry Potter’s lightning bolt. Felt it through the material. My eyebrows raised. "I was attacked by a heavy metal fan," he explained. "Don’t ask."

"Was he from New Zealand perhaps, that’s the land where they hate the bloody queers."

"No," said Dietmar. "Not from New Zealand."

"I’m going to come in your hands," I confessed.

"Just wait a minute if you can, Mr. Tucker."

His pants fell down to his shoes-those sharply polished black shoes, like a dancer’s. His bare legs, lightly dusted with blond hair, and what looked like large bite marks on both legs, from calf to ankle. He squeezed my cock and all its history splattered over his legs. I felt his very breath on my face. My history of pain and lying and longing now written on his skin.

"You’re very close to the general idea of what a man is," he told me, "an American. and that’s what makes you unforgettable, that’s why you make me cry, you are completely generic like all men here in America."

"Who bit your legs, Dietmar?"

"Pack of dogs."

"What music do you like?" "Electro . . . Kraftwerk . . . Mahler."

"Have you got any bad habits?" "Liar."

"Are you good with children?" "Yes."

home(s)

she is between , one

a dollhouse/( ) for now

across an ocean

family she hasn’t lived

for several years

not unarranged

& yet to go

be at with them

which of course

could be ( )

with anyone

left

the night after you

everything you behind

piled up in front

a matter of sorting

this from that

until

in want of air

turned & again

past the newstand

tracing papers handed

over right

room

noone lives in this

the second time i heard

no for watching headlines

that day

it was necessary to go

to the living of somebody else

to imagine them

sitting around the table

in that so familiar

shouting at the telephone

watching me in my

they never saw

but for a photograph

unframed

Using the checklist,
and the mirror,
I will speak to you directly
(get the gauze)

I will speak to you directly

(get the gauze get the)

I will speak to you directly,
and it will sound like this:
‘Heyyyyyyyyyyyy!’

(get the gauze get the head erect)

I’d like to do this one on ‘he’

(feel yourself)

that place on your face where you put the finger.

(feel yourself or hear yourself)

I’d like to do this one on ‘he’

(feel yourself or hear yourself grinding your teeth)

‘Heeeeeeeeeeeeee!’

Let me help you forward!

(being asked to behave like that!)

—From the simple to the complex.

(uncomfortable in your mouth)

From the simple to the complex,
all we’re doing is going ‘Ha!’

(uncomfortable in your mouth, being asked to behave like that)

That doesn’t have to overwhelm anybody!

And while I continue to speak with you

(keep the chest in)
(the chest in, and everything in it)

While I continue to speak with you,
I want you to continue to breathe.

(the tension of the tongue, the freedom of the tongue)

One allowing breath: begin.

And when you’re finished

(being asked to behave like that:
good/bad, happy/sad, loud/soft)

When you’re finished

(being asked to present them, comparing and competing!)

When you’re finished,
I want you to come back,
rich, full, resonant, etc.

(one allowing breath: begin)

(one allowing breath: begin!)

*for K A R I

	For Immediate Release guest-edited by kari edwards
Volume II, Number 5 May 1, 2002