Author: foxtongue

I am lost

Each Sound
by Dorianne Laux

Beginnings are brutal, like this accident
of stars colliding, mute explosions
of colorful gases, the mist and dust
that would become our bodies
hurling through black holes, rising,
muck ridden, from pits of tar and clay.
Back then it was easy to have teeth,
claw our ways into the trees — it was
accepted, the monkeys loved us, sat
on their red asses clapping and laughing.
We’ve forgotten the luxury of dumbness,
how once we crouched naked on an outcrop
of rock, the moon huge and untouched
above us, speechless. Now we talk
about everything, incessantly,
our moans and grunts turned on a spit
into warm vowels and elegant consonants.
We say plethora, demitasse, ozone and love.
We think we know what each sound means.
There are times when something so joyous
or so horrible happens our only response
is an intake of breath, and then
we’re back at the truth of it,
that ball of life expanding
and exploding on impact, our heads,
our chest, filled with that first
unspeakable light.

-::-

There was a kiss that tasted like reëntry, the sky hitting the brakes with a roar, that blazing, intimate acceptance of a spacecraft into atmosphere, every unlikely angle, one head tilting to another, a scorched, soft light jet-stream wish to return home. History made and slammed back like a shotgun round. A promise on the wing, the ground salted, memories buried. The cast lines up, takes a bow, walks off stage, and leaves their shadows behind as the curtain falls, and it tasted like hello as well as goodbye. My apartment is choked with memories, my neighborhood is a cemetery, same as the highway south, much like my life.

He asked for my writing once, to permanently tattoo, something short, beautiful, meaningful. “Between our hands, we could have made fire”. To the death, he said, to the guttering of the sun. (The next one, he gave me nothing I have not been able to give back.) In the archives, our shared love, deliberate and valiant, a blazing comet made of fiercely bared skin, and the small delicate jewelry we wore in our ears, drops of garnet dipped in silver, lost but unforgotten. I send him a message just after midnight, from a number he doesn’t know: I am still wearing your name at the base of my breath.

with me through victories and every time I stumble

We are all china barely mended,
clumsily glued together
just waiting
for the hot water and lemon
to seep through our seams.
– Toby Barlow

He walked from the apartment in the direction he always did, like a recording of the life we used to have, and with a pause and a wave, that achingly familiar wave, a chapter of my life slipped behind a corner and shut, as firmly and finally as anything ever is. Goodbye like a relationship on fast forward, my cheeks so hot it looked and felt like sunburn, my hand still splayed on the chilly glass of the balcony’s sliding door. I was supposed to be finished crying for him, but he is moving away, back south, family matters, a phone call from his mother, an inherited house, and his name remains holy. He hurt me terribly, but he is not a terrible person. We were in love once. Probably are still. The worst thing about losing my wallet was losing his letters. Sometimes that is all that matters.

Once upon a time we were beautiful, a miracle, stronger together than the sun, living incarnations of joy, swimming lions against the storm. I named him, the power of sharp teeth, the domesticity of myth, and he crawled into my heart to sleep, safe and warm, and so, more importantly, to wake. When he betrayed us, it was like he’d chewed his way out. Such a surprise to discover him there still, even after so much pain.

In it to win. We talked a little about it this evening, what we used to be. The french man on the bus who gave us a speech about how nice it was to see people in love, the girls at the sandwich shop who openly cried when informed that we’d broken up. He claimed his responsibility and apologized once again, forgiveness, that tricky thing, welling up like clean water through the barren places he left behind. “Of course,” I said, “it is so very good to see you.” I only wish he’d been by sooner, when I’d asked him to, after I took both of his hands and said, “Life is too short to stay afraid of me or of hurting me.” But instead he put it off, and now it is too late, another piece of home flaking away, he has to leave.

“You are beautiful,” he said, “Thank you for everything. For being you. You are amazing. For bringing me back to the light.” He will be gone by the time I return from my trip, so I will think of him when my plane takes off, maybe picture him behind the wheel of the moving truck, marveling at the beauty of the drive, solid as my faith, as our understanding of each other, as he drives toward his chosen exile, an endless, sunny suburb with his family, as both deathless and lifeless as only California can be.

reading this hurts less than living it

a principle source of gravity

The bus travels over the Lion’s Gate Bridge and I think, unbidden, of last year, a trip up a mountain, falling down in snow, the beginnings of what turned out to be love. Inside the suddenly knotted fist in my chest, I feel a spike of cold, hateful self betrayal, and my throat pointlessly closes up. “Limbic system,” I recite in my head, “amygdala, the hippocampal neurons that are associated with emotions and memory. Stress response. Low order post-trauma. Fight, flight or engage. Possibly vestigial dopamine, triggering a surge of adrenaline and noradrenaline into the bloodstream.” The words are clinical, chosen for distance, for a way to codify and distract my complicated grief. I want this banished, but the only person that can break the spell keeps me bound. They hide. They give nothing. “A bodily state of anxiety”, I think. “The deadly effects of adrenaline during emotional suffering may be due to a direct attack of adrenaline on the heart.”

What would you do if you only had minutes to live?

Filmography 2011, by Gen Ip

  • Films in order of appearance: http://filmography2011.tumblr.com/
  • The Making of Filmography 2010: An Interview with Vancouver artist Gen Ip.
  • Filmography 2010. (I cannot even begin to accurately unpack just how glad I am that she made another one this year. These make me so happy.)

    • Listen to the song. Read the comic. Kiss some stranger.

    The newest breath-taking treasure from The Secret Knots is Music For Stray Days, a special collaboration with The Impossible Girl AKA Kim Boekbinder!

    The song in the comic, (featuring the violin strings of none other than our favourite fey, Meredith Yayanos), is available to download as a pay-what-you-want.