1. |
0
00:49
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—it occured to
me
the other day
a year has passed
since the last time
you had me
since i had you last
inside me
you kiss me from across time
you’ve changed mouths with me
when you see what sticks to my tongue
you laugh and lick my tears
a taste you can’t place
a place you can’t taste
inside the pursed lips
the lightless cavern of the canines
'see you in hell' you whisper
'see you again'
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2. |
1
01:30
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First they killed the dog.
He had his doubts, you see
that the cyanide would do the trick
so he gave her a capsule to bite down on
and then the dog died.
Hitler was “inconsolable.”
April 29th
a Sunday
he heard it on the radio
Mussolini shot
strung up by his heels
only to be cut down
to land in the gutter
where the people could spit
and piss and shoot at
whatever was left
whatever he was as a man
he died as a dog
but he did not die alone.
She was with him
till the bitter end
faithful in fidelity
her Caesar’s liability
Claretta, the mistress
would write in her diary
wait all day for his blackshirt voice
in her powder-pink phone
and for the good of the fasci
let him overcome her
her body
swung next to his
one thing you could say for her
a passerby said
she did have nice legs.
Indignant and underground
Hitler wed Eva Braun
for he could not forsake Berlin
nor let their sex be spectacle for the Jews
he dictated instead
a last will and testament
then the newlyweds retired
to their respective beds.
But his was empty
without Blondi
the German Shepherd
he put to death
to put death
to the test.
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3. |
2
00:31
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'you ready to give up, bitch?'
his fist, my face
hardening hands
nails dug into palm like graves
knuckles buried alive in skull
when someone throws a punch
he consents to the pain
even when no one fights back
his hands hurt him too
i wake up that morning
to his fists in my temple
and forehead, and jaw
and my head aches like a hangover
the light of day seems so cruel
crueler even than him
for being indiscriminate
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4. |
3
01:15
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my grandmother sits in a darkened room
the hush pierced by giggles and toddlers
waiting for their lives to begin
when a technicolor picture is painted onscreen
and the room is filled with the sound of music
you wait little girl on an empty stage
for fate to turn the light on
your life little girl is an empty page
that men will want to write on
to write on
someone’s life
or just on someone’s body
to thread a string of numbers
with a needle through their forearm
sew a needle pulling thread
a pen pushing ink
into the arms of Auschwitz
indelible in dignity
written on their bodies
never to be erased
never to be forgotten
her water breaks in the cinema
nine months the tough old nurse waits
goes dutifully into labor
gave birth to my father
a beautiful Jewish boy
on the 30th of April
twenty years to the day
after Adolf offed himself
but when the job was done
she held him in her hands and said
she wants to know how it ends
what would become
of Maria, and the children
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5. |
4
01:50
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she wrote SLUT upon her breasts
in her own blood
she was of course the dominant
the blood and the breasts her sub’s
i sat next to Lucy, my partner
drinking eagerly in this anatomy lesson
in blood play with fire
cupping her breasts
pierced by beveled needles
we quit this gross clinic
at the center of New York City
in the wee hazy hours of 4/20
a hundred and thirty years to the day
since a mother gave birth to a son
that should have died, some say
in fateful infancy
infirm and sickly like her first
her second and her third
but Adolf went forth instead
from his mother’s wound
and along his way
Lucy took me
to the basement where they lived
whereupon we went to bed
and got to work
kisses intermittent
with slaps to the face
so i’d never know what’s coming
i swallowed it all
the piss they gave me
and preferring their ass to air
they let me drown
later they told me
they were nervous to perform
this service for me, the pressure on
with just one night together
with just one life to lead
i was so numb and borderline
it never came to me
how hard it was to summon their love
for pain to hurt me
i regret that most of all
taking things so literally
believing what we made believe
there is no one so selfish as a masochist
nor so selfless as a sadist
the blood of the bottom
the blood of the top
run together in bed
bleed through sheets of paper
those beasts with two backs
struggling not against each other
but sleep, the common enemy
of lovers not wanting
to leave
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6. |
5
01:12
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i come to
in the shower
sitting blurry in the tub
i am bleeding still
the water is running
from the shower
and my eyes
i see a razor
i want to stop
the bleeding
i want to slit
but she drips in
collects in a pool around my legs
and doesn’t let go
he led me to his showers
to clean me off
but she stood for me
when i could not stand to move
i’m still at my parents’
where i’m always in danger
i came here to celebrate in lieu
of joining my father and his parents
for his birthday dinner
i made up some excuse
i call my friend, the poet
she answers on the second ring
brings me to my apartment
and full of grace and grumpiness
fills me with choral yawning
and chamomile tea
too late, in the night
at twenty-four years old
i run away from home
a kinder transport
i have never known
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7. |
6
01:37
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the man made doors for a living
and lived with his dying father
he came over three times
i never came once
he lived the high life
had a tattoo on his arm
of the miller wordmark
brought over what was left
of a thirty rack for the two of us
it never occurred to me to say no
it never came up
when i say it occured to me
i mean it happened
to me, it seems
things either happen
or they don’t
but some things do
sometimes
happen to someone else
he just so happened
to be someone else
it was fine at first
we’d chat and fool around
then he’d start to
you know
rape me
i didn’t know that
it never occured to me
that he was getting raped
he as in me
a man inside my body
somebody besides me
and when he’d leave
i’d wipe him off my face
and everything would be ok
only i
would wonder
where the time had gone
it went to him
both of them
had my body
all i had was the feeling
i was missing
something
so i had him over again
and again
to see if i could find it
what i missed
while i played holy ghost
unicorn, third
was a fizzy memory
of miller high life
or something that tasted like it
and violence i’ve forgotten how
to forget
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8. |
7
01:05
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Back in the bunker
under Berlin,
Adolf and Eva
are being brought up
to the garden
to be burned.
If anybody knew
how to burn a body
it surely
would be a Nazi
but Hitler’s faith in fire
was too strong.
The method was cruder
than his crematoria
those assembly lines of ash
douse the bodies in gasoline
and light a match
but the fallacy was the same.
He thought that fire left no trace
the charred remains, the fragments
would vanish in a puff of smoke
and leave no evidence.
But masses cannot be destroyed
or created, for that matter
only translated into energy
or reformed—splitting atoms
into little boys, halved like Berlin
or sheltered together
in adamantine Anschluss
fused, and refused.
They knew him by his teeth
his canines and incisors
bore the burden of proof.
A crater in the earth
had given up his body
and given birth.
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9. |
8
02:47
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when i think i’m alone
with my thoughts
and yours
i call your name absently
out loud
and out of habit
a rose and its name
relate the same space
to one’s memory
two links in a chain of roses
relayed by Moses
to you, and to me
'Rose—'
when i call your name, you answer
for the first time all week
i set down our bags and drown in relief
'i was so worried for you'
you got me clean
brought me to McLean
and left me alone
in this body of yours
took your share and folded
inward on yourself
like a latitude line
on an innerworld map
Dissociative Identity Disorder
300.14 (F44.81)
A. Disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states, which may be described in some cultures as an experience of possession. The disruption in identity involves marked discontinuity in sense of self and sense of agency, accompanied by related alterations in affect, behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and/or sensory- motor functioning.
B. Recurrent gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/or traumatic events that are inconsistent with ordinary forgetting.
these are the criteria which we ill-define
the unsettled self we conquer and divide
lines on a map of a body undermined
by minefields and dispossessed masterminds
stolen land, captured ground, territory terrified
tectonic surfaces, only earth left behind
warring ego states, the Ruhr and the Rhine
the secret annexed, the silence occupied
Eric
my persecutor
got raped for me
now he rapes me in return
Rose
my protector
you can’t kill him
but you can be him and burn
some slow magnetism
drew our bodies together
we tried pulling against the force
but it was intractable
our bodies got pushed up as close
as humanly possible, then closer
then his body got absorbed into mine
there was a flash of light
then a darkness that lasted forever
then another flash of light
unpacking our belongings
you insist on switching
and i am taken aback
when you see the sketch we drew of you
you say, “that person wears her body
so different than i do”
then you trace a figure eight
on my thigh and i scream
who
are
you?
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noraa kaplan Providence, Rhode Island
Do you even know
how many people
I want to be?
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