From Threads

This is a poem from a chapbook I made over the summer. The formatting got screwed up so the spacing is not like the original.
-Jayinee

Beleghata

I lived in a house
where the flowers bloomed
like chinese characters
outside the window.
Nightly,
the branches snuck in, scratched my cheek
while I slept they fondled my hair through
and through the bars there was rainwater
dripping lightly into the cool airy room.

I lived in a house
where the whapwhap of cotton
yards beaten against wet ground
woke me to the window
in the gleaming morning
where the
dappled
powdery
sunlight
flickered on the acid burning
brightly on the red cement.

I lived in a house
where autism blossomed
in pairs of awkward joints
they were all knees and elbows,
those boys,
their mother with her teeth
and her widow's thin white than
knotted about her swelling knuckles.
when they died the room was quiet
like the crazy chained to the window.

I lived in a house
where wives and daughters
with green eyes meowed at
the one daughter whose madness
was to love
and be loved
without clothes
with screams
so they kept her locked away
until one day, she up and died.

I lived in a house
where the crumbling stone wall
bore peeling manifestos
of Marxist-Leninist sentiments:
INQUILAB ZINDABAD!
The revolution lives on through fists
pumping, teeth
breaking
blood trickling slowly from his head
like the steady dissolution of memory.

I lived in a house
where a woman with black plum skin
lined my white little feet
in red red ink from a green glass jar
pulled out a bamboo mat
rough and dyed
the fan in a lazy whir
lulling me to sleep on the floor in the depths
of a dog howling in pain or love.

Poem with a segment of a gil gentile comic

-tom

excerpt from "pieces of memory"

one of many parts of a short story i wrote, now in finery 5.

*

Vivian dreams.

…

..

.

I’m

a thousand ways of repeating the same apology,

doing the same thing

an infinite loop of regret

with feathers

bursting from my shoulder blades

sharp and delicate fragments of white

disintegrate as though made of ash

the gray ends of gold-red sex

as I fall

into my grandmother’s garden, the

uneven hills of dirt hiding cabbage, narcissus, peonies, orchids,

oranges, snakes with glittering eyes –

My grandmother strokes my hair, and

she smells like the plums that hang heavy in the air, deep purple like organs in the sunlight

their insides golden and wet.
She has both her arms, the left arm amputated during the war hanging whole and unblemished

the skin as white as milk.
I wonder if we’re both dead.

She smiles, revealing even gold teeth, and says,

Don’t run.

Everything turns dark, and I’m breathing

alone.

….

..

.

Vivian wakes up gasping.

The room smells like plums.

-CVN

scooters, vacation, fall

Vast and Red

It is like a moor!

the loneliness cried.

This body cannot die.

put my rockish cenotaph

down in soily peat bog

so that I may live

forever.

What is the color

of closing blank eyes

and a lifetime passing by

without seeing this

very small girl

hiding.

The sense of the gruesome

is well developed

in some children

more than others.

Blame eyeyes.

She sees infinity

when she closes

her eyes

in tiny

dots

red.

-Jayinee

in non bedroom, non bath

- tom

A Barrage Now

On Later Falling Apart

In one apartment light streams

warm and blue, through a moon.

Lapis smoke swirls and spreads

like the memory of a distant sound

while the TV picks up the lost pieces.

Outside, a galaxy sizzles like a fried egg

picked out the emptiness

before chewing its nebulous albumin.

I would like to fall deep into

its gaseous lips, silky oil slick

blooming hot and thick.

On what did Atlas stand, then,

when the dust sparkled to stars

and oaks shot up through cracks

in reasoning and eggshells.

Route 41

The bus is hissing like a flat tire

“What?” an old beaver man.

“Not this route, sir.”

Vibrating lights, backseat like horror

story of two lovers

miles apart.

Lurches ahead, this great beast

the liquors left over in my gut

lurch, launching me forward

into a hollow time—

Only ten minutes passed

since the empty bus is popped

into a loony bin.

Windows like picture frames

holding the strangest family portrait

of strangers who drop fly-like

along.

the sensitivity in everyone's eyes!

In Silver Yarn (Mash up of Camille Guthrie's "In Captivity")

I drifted along past buildings

like a blank piece of paper

knees swallowed up by scenery

snouts disappear into wild grasses.

We see hanged faces and ravaged dolls

everyone thinks of a different radiant.

Raven catches a shiny fleck

yellow white red blue squares.

Be careful. This is very heavy.

Action of a bird landing

Action of light on a hat

Spikelet of laziness and love.

Fix here you expectant spheres!

With ears like a full bathtub,

the why stuck like sequins about your face,

hair like a cloudy day.

See here my heart,

he smells like a virgin—

with a bellybutton like a luminescent watch

and blood like melted crayons.

ch - chu - check it out.

-tom]

http://www.josephceravolo.com