The last exercise: really long and slightly nonsensical

Go blind today already, king of rhythm, because today is the day it all dies, not music but something deeper– the beat, the heartbeat in us all. They dressed on the beach, the rhythm-killers, this morning while we were sleeping, crawled without color over a colorful land. Now we are drained of it. Maybe you can come back on a day of the wind and blow through us, the more you move your hands the more we might remember you, remember what it felt like to be bodies in synch below the surface. Or maybe we’ll have forgotten you, as we tend to do (I’m sorry). Oh misfit king, without you we are migratory animals unable to form a flock–moving in no direction. My voice grows louder–do you hear how loud?–because the background noise is fading. That empire where you are–blind king, open your eyes. It is a hall of mirrors. The future is blue without you and you’re still dreaming that it is night and this is the same world you know. Across the rooftops the killers are coming, you can’t hear or feel them, they’re coming. Soon you’ll have no name left for us to remember you by, soon we’ll have just vague dreams of something larger than us, some loose sky which shook itself free of its hooks and came down around us for a moment. We’ll no longer know how to gravitate towards each other without your pull, the guide of your humdrum thumpthump. Don’t run. They’re here and there’s nowhere to go. The incident of your death is already in the air. It’s just you and me now. It’s just you and me now. To hold out would be futile, but I will help you barricade the doors (I think they’ll come in through the windows). “I don’t remember this being the way it ended,” you say. “After today you’ll never notice the breathing of someone who lies beside you in the moonlight. You’ll never be able to sing songs to your child.” Other women may have been more upset by this but I am helping to stuff cotton balls in your ears. Don’t open yourself–they will come in through your mouth. The assassins are coming, they can’t be seen or heard or felt, but from your eyes leaks something other than blood or tears and this is the sign that they are coming. “Even without me,” you say, “life is something, life is everything.” I am taking on the lake of time signatures pouring out of you. As if the wall of well had been split open. I hold your 4/4s and your 6/8s in my hands and try to shove them back down your throat. “This is a testimony to the presence of God,” you say. You are being swallowed up now. We seek the shelter of a windowless room to hold everything in but it’s too late. The rhythm-killers are here. They are inside of us. You could walk into this room and see or hear nothing but the tragedy is still lingering in the air, broken up, fragmented. Without you we are houses without windows, we are forever inside ourselves, we cannot get out.

How to Eat Denver

All I know of Denver is food, so you will be eating until you cry. First I’ll take to the Indian restaurant where the waiter is in love with me. You will ask for extra hot and he will say “oh really” the way he always does. Then up Colorado down 17th to St. Mark’s where the coffee tastes like skipped high school classes and the chairs outside are uncomfortable, like calculus. Then down 13th and a right on Grant where we will mourn where Watercourse used to be– I have written poems and poems about 13th and Grant, but you can’t read them, they’re too much me and no you. Up to the cheddar cheese place, Chedd’s I think, I can’t eat there anymore because it makes me sick, but I want you to. Just so you know, we will be eating breakfast food all the time. Each meal is a new day.

Line from someone else’s favorite piece

Your seven sweaters, they are all arms.
I think of you like that goddess,
your embrace is as big as the world.

Seven sweaters, and each one a different color,
one green for your veins
(I like to trace them with my tongue),
one brown for the topography of the bottoms of your feet,
one is red, and this is for the skin of your ears.

Seven sweaters, you wear them
like they are new faces,
I think of you like that goddess,
you are faceless as the earth.

Revised piece– two pieces into one

New Flavors

Sometimes I stood between avocados and lemons
and wondered, which skin is more forgiving?
I placed
my hands among your green skins, loved
the bump-bump-bump of hide,
the swell and give of you.
I thought often of your green flesh
and the secret heart which
sleeps within you.
Often I rested my hands there

and fell into brightness.

Outside the grocery store,
someone is waiting—
what does the waiting taste like?

Revised piece- remove line breaks

Note: I did it this way, then re-inserted line breaks, so both versions are present.

How to Eat Your Feelings
You will know hunger the way we all know hunger, a stretching feeling, a green uneasy feeling. You will reach for what is in front of you, what is always in front of you, you will forever be reaching out—your body and mine, we are not so different; my hunger is more simple, and less about devouring.

I will grow to know your bones the way we all know bones, the angles of them. You will hold onto your ribs as if they were the sterns of ships and will sail you to your heart.

You will speak of emptiness as if you know it, as if it were inside you—as if you had been born from it, rather than it born from you. You will read me poems about men
who eat their hearts in the desert and you will smile and say, yes.

Your heart and mine— we are not so different. My hunger is more simple, and less about devouring.

How to Eat Your Feelings
You will know hunger the way
we all know hunger, a stretching feeling,
a green uneasy feeling.
You will reach for what is in front of you,
what is always in front of you, you will forever
be reaching out—
your body and mine, we are not so different;
my hunger is more simple, and less about devouring.
I will grow to know your bones
the way we all know bones, the angles of them.
You will hold onto your ribs as if
they were the sterns of ships and will sail you to your heart.
You will speak of emptiness
as if you know it, as if it were inside you—
as if you had been born from it,
rather than it born from you.
You will read me poems about men
who eat their hearts in the desert
and you will smile and say, yes.
Your heart and mine— we are not so different.
My hunger is more simple, and less about devouring.

Revised Piece- cut in half

It Will All Come Together in Quietness and in Time

She wakes up hungry for the sharpsourness of onions.
Her mouth is dry and yearning. Her lips are cracking; her tongue explores the way the flesh has split open to reveal something pink and soft and new beneath.
In a moment she will get up and he will find her by the stove, eyes leaking, sucking onion juice from her fingers. She will have cut one open and eaten it raw. He will not kiss her good morning.
For now though she is content to lie awake in bed, learning this new longing which has crept over her in the night.
—
She shakes him awake two weeks later. Says, hey, do you think that Chinese place is still open?
He throws his arm over his eyes, as if there is some light that is offending him, and says, do you know what time it is?
I’m hungry, she says. She puts her face to his hairline, mouths at his hair in desperation. Please.
He pushes her away and rolls over.

—

She can feel her body growing. She is not fat but she is solid, appreciable. He used to like her that way—but he does not like it now. She can tell that the stretching of her skin disgusts him. He turns away from her as she undresses at night.
Have you ever heard of Baloney-Os? she asks. He doesn’t respond, but she continues anyway: They’re Oreo cookies with the cream scraped out and baloney in its place.
She is standing in front of the mirror. She places her hands over her stomach, looks at it consideringly. At least I don’t eat that, she says, right?
He looks at her blankly. He says, I love you.
Actually, she says, baloney sounds kind of good right now. Do we have any?

—

He moves out when he finds her in the bathroom at 3 in the morning, furtively eating avocado dipped in spicy mustard.
I can’t look at you, he says.
So don’t, she says.

—

So it is almost spring and she is alone. For weeks after he leaves, she eats bananas obsessively. Something about the peeling away.
She carries the baby low inside her. It is unfurling the way a flower does in the mornings. She watches plants fighting their way through a crust of snow and thinks, that is inside me.
It is a new feeling. Not a yearning; something else, something more strange, and more welcoming.

Revised Piece- change tenses

The Warning Signs Have All Been Bright

He first saw her in the vegetable aisle, standing by the avocados. He stood next to her, sorting through the lemons, holding them carefully in his hand and feeling the weight.
Her hands were among the avocados; he was drawn to the pale among the green. She wore a ring his sister used to wear all the time, a puzzle ring, 6 bands all intertwining.
He said, “I guess you like to put things back together, huh?”
She smiled at him, self-consciously. She had a softness to her that would probably fade in time; her beauty was maybe the product of youth and too many days spent in the sun, but he liked the faint flush of her cheeks, the unadorned look of her.
“Actually, I like taking them apart more,” she said.
Before he could respond, she was called away by a small boy. She withdrew her hands from the avocado bin and said, “Have a good day.”
“Yeah,” he said. He did not turn to watch her go.

He was in town taking care of his sister, who was dying. He watched the slow and inexorable eating away of the body that used to rock him to sleep—watched it, and found that he had nothing to say.

He tried to be helpful. He cooked her meals, and sat in the bathroom with her when she was racked with nausea and clinging to the toilet bowl.
Some mornings, she said, “You don’t have to be here for this.”
He never answered her. The answer would have been yes, I do, but sometimes he didn’t even have the strength to say that.

He went swimming in the afternoons, when his sister was sleeping. He liked to lower himself into the pool. He liked the feeling of being weightless.
A week after the meeting of avocados and lemons, he saw her at the pool.
He was submerged. He had been swimming laps but was clinging to the edge of the pool, his palms against the hot cement and the rest of him immersed in cool water. He had let himself slide under the surface; he had opened his eyes.
She was hazy above him in her red lifeguard’s suit. Her outlines were smears of color through the water.
He surfaced. She ws smiling at him, a new smile, a smile that curled inside him.
“It’s free swim,” she said. “We have to take down your lane. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said, with a shrug. “I was done anyways.”
She backed up so he could haul himself out. He stood in front of her, dripping. It was hot but cloudy, a steamy day.
“What did you need lemons for?” she asked.
It was a strange question, an intimate question. She didn’t speak to him like she was a stranger.
“Lemonade,” he said.
It wasn’t exactly true. He squeezed fresh lemons for his sister’s tea, in the morning, every morning, before she woke up. It was the only thing she could really stomach, and he liked using the juicer, he liked the squeezing.
“I’m Nate,” he said. He hesitated, then held out his hand. He was aware of the sweat gathering in his hairline, of the chlorine smell coming off him in waves.
She tilted her head. “Julie,” she said. She took his hand.

He was almost 29. He felt his age mostly in the evenings, when he sat with his sister and watched TV. He was almost 29 and he had done nothing in his life.
“You’re just taking care of me to avoid having to get a job,” his sister said one night, as they watched America’s Next Top Model. Her feet were in his lap. He massaged them, feeling the bones of her ankles, the dryness of her heels.
“You’re absolutely right,” he deadpanned. He was appalled by the sharpness of her toenails, considering finding some nail clippers.
“You should be a hospice nurse,” she said. “You seem to like watching people die.”
She laughed, horribly. He put her foot down, gently, on the couch beside her.
“It’s not really funny,” he said.
“It is, though,” she said, and kept laughing.

He saw Julie more often at the pool, once he knew to look for her. She smiled at him and waved when she saw him. She sometimes came to talk to him, and when she did he saw her friends, giggling, pointedly not looking in their direction.
The summer grew hotter and drier. The heat was oppressive and the pool was more crowded every time Nate went.
Julie had a boyfriend—he thought. He saw her with him sometimes, saw the way he slung his arm around her waist, with a casual possessiveness. Nate wasn’t sure why he cared, or even if he did, really, or if he was just bored and seeking some sort of distraction.
She was a good distraction. Her tan lines were charming.
“Is Nate short for something?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “Just Nate.”
She sat beside him at a picnic table. Her thigh stretched out lean and tan beside his own. She leaned close to him; he could smell the chlorine and sunscreen on her skin.
“My real name’s Juliet,” she said into his ear.
He looked at her. She didn’t move away, but lingered, so that he could feel the rhythm of her breath sweeping across his neck. He tried to look without turning his head, tried not to place his mouth too much in the proximity of hers.
She broke the moment and sat back. “I guess I’m still looking for my Romeo,” she said, and stood to go.
He stood up with her. “How old are you?” he asked.
She grinned. “How old are you?” she asked, and walked away.

But she ran after him.
He was in the parking lot, beginning the walk home, and she came after him, all red and bright in the sunlight.
She caught him by the arm. “Take me out to dinner,” she said, a little breathlessly.
He began to say, “I can’t.” He began to say, “I shouldn’t.”
Instead though, he found himself opening his mouth and saying, “Okay.”

Revised Piece- backwards

5. When you are old, when your body has been split open with the force of years, you stand in the ocean for the first time. You think about sinking. The salt water rises around you. You open your mouth.

4. In college you drank too much wine and followed a boy up to his room. You didn’t know his name. His smell confused you: oranges and spice. He placed his hands on your shoulders and guided you to your knees. He said, open your mouth.

3. When you were in high school, your uncle died, a violent death, the details of which you are never be able to face. (Not for years.) At his wake you stood by the trays of funeral food and asked the caterer things like, do you avoid color? Is it appropriate to serve bacon at a funeral? Your mother fussed over you and told you to eat, so you picked something up. She watched until you opened your mouth.

2. At 8 your sister betrayed you. She spent the afternoon peeling grapes and putting them into kleenex boxes. She tied a blindfold over your eyes and led you by the hand. You followed in darkness. The grapes felt slimy in your small fingers, and you shuddered with horror. She told you to open your mouth.

1. You were born blue and still with an umbilical cord around your neck. Your father had his back turned; your mother will closed her eyes. Later your mother cradled you to her chest and tried to weep, but her eyes were too dry, so instead she laughed. She slowly unbuttoned her hospital-issue nightgown. You opened your mouth.

Revised Piece- chop off beginning/end AND change POV

On Rhythm
I.


Feet between me and the air, feet between me and the ground,
I have too many feet, he said, I have too many feet.
Oh darling he said. I’m so sorry but
distance is bodies and distance is feet.

II.

You
    have no feet,
you have no glorious stories of feet.

We are learning the rhythm of leaving without you.
(This is the rhythm of leaving without you.)

Revised Piece- form changed

Aguacate

My hands among your green skins, I loved
the bump-bump-bump of hide,
the swell and give of you,
thought often of your green flesh
and the secret heart which
sleeps within you.
Often I rested my hands there

and fell into brightness.