September 5-12, 2004: Kristy Bowen and Emma Leavey

Kristy Bowen and Emma Leavey

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Bio (auto)

Kristy Bowen’s work has appeared in a number of publications, including Small Spiral Notebook, Stirring, and Poems Niederngasse She is the author of two chapbooks, Bloody Mary and The Archaeologist’s Daughter, and a hypertext collection, lattitudes A two-time Pushcart nominee, Bowen was recently awarded first place in The Poetry Center of Chicago’s 10th Annual Juried Reading Competition A poet and text/collage artist, she has read, performed, and exhibited her work at a number of bookstores, libraries, galleries, bars/cafes, and festivals She lives in Chicago, where she edits the online journal Wicked Alice, and is the founder of Dancing Girl Press, devoted to publishing work by women poets More of her work may be seen at: www.angelfire.com/poetry/wickedpen

The following work is Copyright © 2004, and owned by Kristy Bowen and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

glossalalia June still aches in my fillings,  sieves through my skin like the scent of bruised fruit I am a broken spell,  a fever, the fear of red In bars, I lean too close to men with poor intentions, fall prey to whiskey’s sinuous hymn Sometimes the moths, their given names,  actias luna, automeris io, the barbed wire, plums flush as the lining of a heart,  are too much, too many The terrible flowers on my dress,  tea roses culled in a field of pale blue, set off a war, a famine beneath your tongue You are trying to locate my body amid the sheets, by taste, by guessing,  the mattress swollen with rain The syllables shake loose like droplets from a branch They are imperfect, riddled with error The years tear out like pages from a book. Sangria Not red Not exactly More like dawn,  or the illusion of it, hummingbirds, humidity azaleas splitting in your palm In Texas,  the nights are sueded; there is no language for the soft of your hands The bruises ripen on my wrists like plums Nevertheless, I am sly, scarlet-lipped,  gathering light in the folds of my dress, crossing my sevens,  polite and girlish I still dream of the desert, the woman you once kept sleeping in the curve of your body She slices peaches, pulls the hair from her face She is sweetened, and full of rain Even the coyotes have lost the scent of her. Idling Her skin wears thin from all the touching, this movement of fingers over her spine, the pale, pinked danger of her thighs Here, night sharpens itself on rain, and the tattered arabesque of bodies against windows In their houses, beneath kitchen lights and desk lamps, they’re catching,  those slender wings Tendon Filament In the car, she draws a scarab, a spade,  a tiny scythe on his back, imagines lines forming on lonely roads, the world reassembling itself in violins and matchbooks And her, she could burn clean through him. three a.m There is still this terrible blueness, this undressing, straps slipping against her arm, pale sky opening Always the residue of sleeplessness, darkened eyes, the tattered breath She’s a postcard from Jamaica tucked beneath a novel,  snow thickening beneath streetlamps These wants are thin diaries, impulses, synapses, scrawled on a forearm A refrain catches: ditches fill with women warned by mothers, their lips caked with mud And what to make of these arrangements, the thrust, the afternoon’s calamity grown exponentially On corners, in barrooms, the glasses are empty We are missing incandescence, water, something He once told her that our souls are permeable as cells, they divide, infinitive. Blood Moon Spring, and we hum to the grammar of currents, the dilation of minutes My mouth, the argument This flare Last summer Firecrackers You burn a circle in the grass,  a circle in my hand, and I remember grade school pigs curled tight in jars, the drama of rooms with wide open windows You see, this breathing, ragged, persistent, is like the beginnings of dark water seeping over floors, the starved contours of us All through winter, I sit in the empty bathtub for hours Not crying The curtain unravels, slips along its rusted rod You say I am hardened But last night, late, I watched the moon slide over itself like the eye of a cat,  the scrim of the city pulled back I must have told you a hundred times.

I start the climb I start the climb And come to where the water starts Dry in summer, in early spring There is a trickle, a ripple Over sandy stone On both sides rocky slopes Reach closer to the sun To warm their rocky tips, To absorb life So that lower down they can give forth Silver olive, yellow mustard, Red poppy, white almond And something a little bit blue, a little bit pink That thrives quietly under the trees The air is herb-sweet, hill-fresh The breeze brings from the summit The echo of bells And I imagine that some deity of desire, Some pagan god, Lives on here, Herding his flock on the sides of the hills Feeding on nuts and olives, And crushing yellow flowers between his teeth He is alone with his flock and the hills And a feeling that once he was needed He strokes his grey beard And fingers the mouldering flute That hangs from a leather strap Rising, footsore, he beckons his flock And as he turns I pick up his scent on the downdraught And am dizzy with desire But when I look back he is gone And I am left standing in the shade of an olive, Sounding the breeze For primordial notes And straining my nose to catch The pungent reek of goat. The Insect Book The book disappeared across the room Did I put it there, on that round table? Or did it walk, pages like insect legs They make a prickly sound but on carpet they are muffled. Lust It’s hard to know whether you like someone or not when you don’t know them You say things like, “If I see him now, we are meant for each other” And then you do But it makes you uncertain as to whether or not he knows who you are And if he stands in the queue behind you, does it mean he loves you? He sings all the time, and moves his lips down darkened hallways And did that smile mean he loves you? Or was it for someone else, or just himself. Tremor Set in diamond pins that acupuncture my back are small fairy-lights Humming all the time, sensitive to the signals from my skin and soul What are they doing? Such delicate instruments in my flesh body? In voodoo moments, when the circuit is complete, they know and show me It’s that swift movement passing over my shoulders and the lights come on. Mango Stone Composing a soup, a sing-song of mango, coconut milk and spices, the mango may be a little green and sharp, and hard to cut You may not be a virtuoso at cutting up mangos Use a sawing motion Slice with a sharp knife through the flesh, letting the blade scrape the stone so as not to waste any When you have a piece, hold it in the palm of your hand It fits perfectly Its skin is smooth and cool against yours Take your knife and score a cut around the outer edge where the skin seals in the flesh’s orange aria Then, criss-cross cuts and turn it inside out &Mac246; the little cubes pop out at you and you can lop them off, plop! into the kettle to fry with fresh green chili The stone, now, is not bare like bone but damp and slippery with mush of threads It would be a shame to waste them Take the stone in both hands and bite and suck The strings will catch in your teeth, a sticky ring revolves around your mouth Bite the stone and feel the sharp twang then slide your lips, in a rush, from tip to tip, (arpeggios of sourness, scales of juice) and hope that no-one will come into the kitchen right now to find you playing on a mango stone like a harmonica.