Recently, some cool poets visited our city of Asheville, NC from Baltimore, Knoxville and Oakland. We convinced them to stop by the studio on their way out of town and record some work. Here is number two in Grace Davis. Listen and read…
There’s a sandstorm in the valley
in my lifetime immaculate.
The Physics of Fluttering:
doves and cruelty, I confess
I am poisonous.
In fluttering, I wear
A crown of gold hair
and I did well in school, and I didn’t disappoint.
They say you should call it,
Beside yourself. I am beside myself.
I did not mean for it this way,
but wings are hard to fashion
out of dirt.
*
They went to the beach and stayed there forever. This is how I imagine life ending. This is what I want to believe.
To weep
into baskets
of folded cloth.
My own noose
of time passing.
*
I talk about children often and think too, of my childhood, how I observe theirs. They don’t believe me. In childhood, I embraced two snakes pilfering their love in return for new company. I fed them with love and watched them writhe in the garden. Those snakes are my eyes and I am eager.
A small child speaks to me. “Plateau volcanoes are most exciting because their lava remains molten for one thousand years.” Have you seen a ship sink? Have you seen my sinking ship? Do you feel what immediacy looks like?
*
And it’s like I’m a secular Genie In dreams I sit with you at the edge Of ice cliffs and the glacial sprawl expands in the field below us Our asses lit by candlelight in the homes beneath the ice
*
yellow flower, obsidian butterfly
we talk about the flowers we wanted
on our bodies.
white flowers, you can only find
white flowers in December
you can only find butterflies
every twenty four hours
I have questions, do butterflies
do butterflies engage
engage in sexual relations?
I mean, are they intimate?
The answer on one side is yes,
and on the other side yes,
but when? And is fly loving
comfortable? and is it okay
to think about this, when
I think of them
As angels?
*
A man has supper with
The Devil, talking
while here I surround
only with angels
one coral
one pink
one gray
and green
the rest only
clear flying
*
Dear
When I try to
find your name,
it tells me “poem”
and I say “yes”
“Poem”
*
NO ONE CAN TELL ME
ABOUT FEELING
We rotate once
around the sun
one rotation
without your voice
and though
I am unhappy
I am stronger for it
–
There is a painting
that exists, in old time,
one of a woman balancing
a golden horn and knife
In her gaze, I saw myself
and thought, yes
I want the balance of blade
and plenty, I want bounty
and I want wealth
In my head, I have a mother
and she’s sitting next to me,
she is young and I am too,
we are both these young bodies
very evenly understanding
and comforting to each other
We are these moral comforts,
unprovoked comfort,
I love her
I say,
I love you,
I love you,
I love you,
I love you,
I love you,
I love you,
I love you,
I love you
and the words
disappear altogether
I touch my mother’s face,
she has the soft skin,
In my head, I have soft skin too, and
and I find myself flushed with roses
and soft skin, my body doesn’t exist
I don’t have a body because we are together
and in my head that is how
it was meant to be
*
She works as an orthodontist’s assistant full time. On the weekends, in a cave. A part time job, she knows the difference between heavy handed rocks and free will.
If only you could write only, writing only of how your nights end. Five thousand years ago, I stood well known only by children and how I made them memorize cherry blossom trees & by how they held their knives, dormant at table. A man yells on the radio, a child yells “disgust,” and an older woman in her jogging gear kneels in tears by the graves of nuns.
My hands smell like Dove™ soap and I read haikus, yes I think haikus, while seated on the bathtub seat, the one used when your legs are tired or your spine didn’t straighten or your hair falls out. You use it when you are in pain. I don’t know too much about reading, I don’t read, instead sit and make up words for these pictures I see. My body is covered in flea bites. I am sitting on the seat because I am in pain.
________________
Catch the rest of our Writers On Tour in the upcoming month. Damn fine bunch.
