dedicated, with love and reverence, to leslie scalapino
Patti was a punk
Red tights or was it a red dress
Visionary Indian angels revealing pyramids the writing in the sky
Bird slows it down eyes follow line
Of bird
This is the play
Dangling our feet
Dinosaur Hill
I am also on the beach
She is on the bench
And yes, the cat is eating –
We went
Feet dangling
Along bottom of ocean
Wet trench and blue
Seal to skyline
Oh, no. I’m starting to write like
Not much, but I’ll read it anyway
The best place you’ll ever be
Is where you are right now
I laugh and think of dennis
The table the talk the wine –
Remember flying there was a full moon when she was
In costa and I was there it was then it is
Now and both
Became we sat turned the curtains
closed.
This is long long longing
For spirit rest
In an ocean an Indian angel
Never rests
Before dawn
Becomes mollusk again, enters a fiction of
Unseen I land
Now before before
Comes staggering in
To coastline goldmines
This reminded me of
Dennis
And I just got
A book of rosmarie
and
three by three
back to doubledness,
I even heard someone say something
About it
Inspired by the act of living
Itself
The ladders led me to her (unica) I started to climb
The ways hands interact with water
then pulling
the body through the body the
Tides and moon co-incided I just
Wanted to stay and the simultaneity
Of action and this
Is our play
Performing the painting
Producing all that
Is happening words are
Weighted objects
The crickets it must be almost summer she was
Talking and performing
We mention the space between self and removal from self
Patti is still eating
But that’s not the end.
That’s the first act, right?
It’s not a literal curtain. It could be your eyelid,
you know? It could be a curtain…
Talk, talk.
Chamber of hands. Body as if actual thing. Containment,
New line of vision,
straight to the heart.
This is our play.
Sorry.
Keep going.
(silence.) (laughing)
Another talk with alice…
and that’s the difficulty with words. Words are
weighted objects.
ENTER CONSTELLATIONS:
At this moment, the play begins.
(we scribble furiously)
there were children here.
“I love how everything happens”
dialogue monologue silence ?
like
here, like:wish-hope
or
weighting room
or
the line, lara,
I still see your face
Seeing shadows #2 (ACT 2)(TO ACT)
How do you do that? About Bernadette. Right now. What did he say?
Who the fuck is Bernadette?
Queen
“The day may never come from me”
What came then
Comes, goes,
Stays and stays and now
oh well the lips suddenly
on the cheek
movement toward to right
He said something about sly?
YES!
-mountains- rally up. To inside.
(yeah)
This time is this winding down of silence of several, anyway,
Bernadette said we should
Stay
Exactly
Half-way
In contact
everyone looks better in the dark
keep thinking hello, or of sneaking out, I’m not sure which
Mirror or light eventually
Remember
a coming to or hiding out?
Getting out of town again
Yes the dark green candle
greencandlegreencandlegreencandlegreencandlegreencandle
why the repeat
The record
He was bright green he was yelling
Not in a way not that way he was just reaching his voice to our eyes
they called us outlaws
pure crystal
we cheer our glasses meet
and now the breaking of glass
it is beautiful the glass
the red spilling
the floor again
we laugh
ENTER THE MEN:
I never told you I had a map to chart his territory
O.K., the street or bed later
(his voice is fading he’s in the room. He is
repeating I told you he is repeating he is a
stranger he is stopping and starting there is
a tension building occurring this is strange/r)
WILMUR TIMEOUT (intermission)
(ACT III)(THREE ACTS)
We were the purveyors and the provenance
Of the magic we spoke
With tongues unbound
The earth drank it up
The ocean breathes it back to us
Silver surfers swimming on tables plentiful
Before long what we saw gave way to
A landscape of conversion,
We were only calculating the changes
(lines and fingertips)
Which we admired even as what we were was changed
Touching the surface of something
Much deeper nothing but the shape of
Underwater,
and a slight visual shift in
surface tension
Fill in the blanks,
That’s just my head heart giving space
To all of the things
I am feeling
We’ll take a little airplane and the old bags
And very little money
It’s uncertain we’ll arrive, but in any case
Wondering about wonder
Greener Smoother Younger
Wild hills rise and pass,
Extinguishing sun poised a moment
On grass tips.
Wild GreenWind Born
Allegra Beth Chabay & Kati Knox both graduated from the MFA Poetry program at Mills College in 2009. Through their mentor Leslie Scalapino, they forged a writing partnership that continues to inspire their lives and friendship. Their poems work towards expanding form, exploding convention, and opening the channels in the mind to further and heighten consciousness and self-awareness. The poem writes itself, and re-writes itself, through direct experience with life. Never excluding the life of the mind, dreams, and most certainly the inner landscapes of the self.