By Isabella Marie Garcia
a cento of cardiac arrestment
she has given me a poisoned heart—
severed the artery,
torn like a pantyhose run.
the blood gushing forth,
the white hand raised to the breast,
fresh and crisp with blood.
the shape of her breasts,
flattened by gravity.
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age. a wild horse of a woman,
just an ordinary woman breathing
a pink mist in the air.
your plaster cage with desire—
the big bones and the little bones,
a cavity that needed filling.
my foolish affection
sticking in my throat.
laugh lines dripping
the garden’s dew;
a dusting of lilacs—
powder sooting your blood,
vague, romantic impressions.
beautifully brutal, brutally honest.
your plaster cage with desire—
a pit overgrown with weeds,
the withering garden.
the light was pink…
there’s batter in your heart;
it pounds both our ribs,
like dried peach halves.
her heart beating on my skin,
i said goodbye
to my body.
my love it kills me slowly,
this shaking
keeps me steady.
simple ferocious
love.
—
on encountering carlos alfonzo’s late paintings
of knees scraping a
against the floor
praying and pissing bellies big
pregnant with remorse
they are black
with deep reds of pain
i am a proud baby and mother
all at once
there is motion and reverence
reverence in motion
—
in being asked [journal entries written on black mountain soil at warren wilson college]
In being asked: What does the ideal home look like for you? Envision that home with as much detail as you can. Is it moving? Is it still? What does it smell like? Where? What does the space and / or community look like? Who is there with you?
I write: the ideal home is gardenias plucked from a flowering bush, it’s seeing la playita de una distancia, it’s the friends gathered around the termite-ravaged coffee table, it’s the soft buzz of cosquis on my back as i am caressed by desired arms, it is cariño and bendiciones and rosy pink and un beso en el cuello.
In being asked: What do you bring to this community and how will you bring certain qualities back to your community?
I write: i want to be known for speaking what i want out in the world, and not being afraid to get what i want, of operating as a solo vessel as a teenager, of knowing where myself ends and community begins, how long can a community tolerate a rupture? of the power being granted from below, of truth-telling, of all the intersections i carry in this body, of consent that isn’t binary, of making communities truly inclusive, of risk-taking.
In being asked: How do you like to be cared for from a distance?
I write: i’ve never been asked that before. and this is even more of a hitter being that my only serious relationship in life was long distance. now from los angeles to miami, i weigh two years of knowing you and three hour time zones in my palms, of meeting you at the wrong time and right place, of meeting for lunch in your home city the summer after we met in may, of the oaxacan-style mole and wow i can’t believe i’m really here, of five hour phone calls speckled across months, of driving up to new smyrna beach to see you in residence at new atlantic center for the arts, of being asked to spend the night, purely platonic at the time because in hindsight, there was someone back in los angeles, of the phone call on your layover to your first international residency i sent you and where you were accepted, where you detail the breakup of you and that someone, of care packages in the mail across seasons, from a handbound book to a valentine’s day card, to seeing you again on this same black mountain soil, on a different campus due to helene’s wrath, but again. i speak my mind as we walk back from doing laundry and am affirmed in my gut, that returning here, despite all odds, was the best risk i could have taken.
to say all this, is to trace a consistency with you that answers this original question. to be cared for is to keep in touch, for your actions to speak the loudest amongst words, and to want to care. in this, you remind me of the butterflies you still feel, of your gratitude, of nothing changing except now knowing what we both feel is at the right time and right place, coast to coast. i wrote in my journal: do you look for me when i’m not in the room? and now i know the answer.
__
APHRO A DIT
In Emulation of Campbell McGrath’s “Shannon”
Of wisdom, splendid columns of light
I look up,
my crown of thorns in my hands.
The jagged thorns are cutting
my soft flesh into slits of red,
What would some sacrifice to love
This flesh of mine?
I don’t understand love
or the meaning of devotion.
A temple rose
In worship of me,
a temple whose columns I’m leaning against,
can crush and be crushed,
Samson’s hands
molding the stone’s powder
into a statue bearing my resemblance.
Why do you love me, Samson?
Your dear Delilah
who cut your hair,
stole your trust,
forced you to move on.
I am no better than her.
I lie in paralysis all day.
I’m supposed to represent desire
when I want nothing but solitude.
I’m meant to be the embodiment
of love and of sex and heat of the moments,
but I only flush at the sun’s rays.
There will be poets and poetesses
who represent my deification better.
Mere mortals who perish,
who rise up and fall down.
I’ll sit in my temple.
Let the thorns greet my flesh and pretend to represent
a heart that leaks
and looks on at the rain, the migrant rain.
__
Maybe Your Generation Was Punker Than Mine: A Braided Poem
You had an urge to escape into the dark, troubled night
while we had the record shops of Caroline Music and Good Vibrations
with Terri Holt at the helm, making daylight shine with punk social hubs,
but they tried to take away bands and musicians away from us,
with the three killings of The Miami Showband,
deliberately targeted in a war that raged on for far too long.
The latter forced our youth to seek comfort in each other
as a way to mute the bombs and gunfire in the distance
here comes the drumming and the mixing of all neighborhoods
in The Belfast Festival, where Jimi Hendrix played a riff or two
and The Pound with its soothing seediness as punk’s finest gathered to play.
You are lost in the memory of a scene that is not too familiar
We are here to speak about a time when punk equaled peace
when the divide seemed the greatest, the union of all classes came at the stage.
Rocking bodies telling you they shared your teenage angst,
What’s with these Teenage Kicks? I’m gonna “call her on the telephone”
worth the wait you say, who wants to hear about the war anyway?
The Casbah had The Undertones and later on
The Clash would come a-knocking, trying to get in on the scene
violent were these streets, peaceful was the community engaging
in punky programming. How long must we sing this song?
You are too adult to get it, even though you were still living
in these times and experiencing these moments, just like the bands
who gave a voice to a generation losing their adolescence.
To the bodyguard who let me in to these lackluster bars and pubs,
the Trident in Bangor and the Rock Club in Antrim, I was jealous
Of what these walls got to see, of who leant against them in drunken
dazed stupor. There is a gleam in the lights that descend on the musicians,
of The Starjets and Stiff Little Fingers, twiddling their magic away
on the strings of their instruments and of our hearts.
Punk in other countries spoke of throwing grenades and swiping tires
—
Lilith’s Universe
lilith
the fallen bride of creation
abandoning her destiny for ruins
ruined from belonging to the heavens
ruined from belonging to the earth
the mangled, dirt infested cloths of her gowns
lace’s white comfort, now hidden by grime
cotton and linen that are soft between one’s fingers, but are now the crackled remains of what
was once perfect
gowns hung in exposure of her sins
the sin of failing to conform to the standards of the perfect woman
but what if lilith was not meant for the heavens or earth?
what if her destiny was not to be perfect?
what if her destiny was to show us the failure of expectations?
expecting a woman to be perfect with only the rib of her fabricated husband to guide her
heternormativity without a question
without her choice
bones crack
they are weak and fragile and disintegrate
they are not perfect,
and neither are we
i imagine lilith’s children as the fallen angels of expectations
seeking to find a home other than earth that will
adopt them in as they are
mangled and battered but worthy of love
we are her children demons deserving of love
Author’s Note
This poem was debuted at the FIU Honors College‘s “Poetry Art Community” event
at Margulies Collection on 6 April, 2018. Written in response to Anselm Kiefer’s Die Walküren (The Valkyries), 2016, glass, metal, fabric, shellac, plaster, lead, dried plants, and ashes, 115 3/8
× 220 1/2 × 90 15/16 in. On view at The Margulies Collection, Miami, Florida.