The Lam, by noraa kaplan

The Lam

by noraa kaplan

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This album comes with a free .pdf of my illustrated chapbook, The Lam. Buyers will be able to listen to two versions of each poem: a normal one, and a dramatic reading with an affected accent. The purchase also comes with three bonus tracks—readings of two unreleased poems, "Perverse Experience Boundary" and "Lie In It," and a ~cover~ of a Sylvia Plath poem.

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1.	untitled (tanka) 00:12	lyrics
i don’t know their names the lilac-color blossoms but i smell them strong even through the damp facemask i breathe into heavily
2.	Red Herring 01:18	lyrics
i sneak in a smell— a smell of myself. do a line off my finger, a line of skin twist my neck like a garlic knot to sop up the sweat of my shaved pits. who am i kidding? they are unshaved. unshaved, and unshowered. i smell myself to see if i’m still there. to sense of self to self-evidence my body is my self, in a sense. the good, the bad, and the fragrant. the aromatic, autonomic nervous system. i go with my gut where my gut wants to go for i’ve got a pungent hunch about the great body autonomy caper so sure, i’ll take a whiff whether or not it passes the smell test i’ll waft and wax and wane: like the moon, i’m made of cheese. my body throws me off the scent but it’s the scene of the crime so reflexively, i return to it howling at the fucking moon i go missing once a month. i’ve stopped looking for my face but when i find it i go crazy
3.	Aid & Abet 00:33	lyrics
there is nothing so mutually exclusive as a relationship between one person and another we are a fugitive you harbor me in your arms you look so cute on the lam and i am most wanted elope from the facility run away with me i’ll be your sinner in secret when the lights go out if we are guilty (we are) we are guilty in the second degree there’s nothing excluding you from me
4.	Contract 01:05	lyrics
apparently some people believe all the promises they are made have parents who gave them their word and made good on it a christian tried to tell me my god is satan because i don’t believe anyone’s promises not even hers an echo is the daughter of a voice a matrilineal descent but i am my father’s daughter and diluvian doubts all swirl down the drain the arc of the universe is long but it bends towards total fucking abandonment everything falling apart a rainbow shoots an arrow through my heart from under a bush, a bowshot away and any compact we may make is just shrink or circumcision her contractions have started she is going to deliver and my father cuts the cord
5.	The Heat 00:42	lyrics
I hate it here. The humid doggone days of summer as unapologetic as ants. They call the heat oppressive for a reason. It’s times like these the grass isn’t even greener, just dead and preferable to the flies. I linger at the freezer, take a little too long to fish out those toaster waffles from the box. One time I told my therapist summer is transphobic, she did not know what to say to that. Is it “queer” to drag the seasons for making me ugly? I wipe the sweat from my neck and make a problematic joke.
6.	Lifeline [ALT] 01:58	lyrics
I hung up on you in a shower too hot for my own good, cried into a bar of soap while you dialed my number and drilled it thanklessly into the counter. I did not appreciate the harsh vibration of your concern. O ingrate, let the liquids down the drain there drown— I ought to have shown some respect to you. After all, you’re a volunteer! You told me your name like I needed to know but I forgot it instead. You put up with my blubbering, my incoherent tale and asked me the questions they told you to ask— What’s going on? Where are you? Are you alone right now? Are you gay? How old are you? You patiently kept the ingrate in line when I interrupted and whined about getting raped and feeling dirty. You expertly told me to breathe and unwind, that you’re an ally but I hung you up, high and dry, shouted something about needing to shower him out of me. With no other choice, it was no wonder why you called 911. The next lady wasn’t nice at all, she told me to give up my address the easy way or they’d track and trace the call. She informed me I was lying when I said I wasn’t armed; the other lady told her that the ingrate had self-harmed. The officers stroked their unholstered guns like great big cocks. Well, really, what did you expect? Where do guns go but people’s faces? The fire trucks, the ambulance, the backup arrived all because of hanging up on you. O volunteer, why was I so rude? O ally, so ungrateful too? O lady, I apologize to you.
7.	Curfew 00:36	lyrics
Good girls, good as gone too squeamish to hit the sack they turn themselves inside-out while outside ears are split by the women keeping mum who hold the mic to the speaker in the name of feedback. Winded, they’ve been outspoken or at least spoken for plucking shallow, respectable breath from their soft-spoken throats kneeling meekly for their inheritance. In honor of their victims, they let the dead speak for themselves.
8.	Dazzle Camouflage 00:57	lyrics
the brilliant filaments of my busy face push through like play-doh caving in on itself the dizzying array rearranges itself to face me and i uncover a .jpeg artifact time-stamped, pixelated in front-facing flash a screen capture of eyes bloodshot red eyes like you’ve never seen before i watch my movements on the screen like the slapstick sight gag with the mirror and the choreographed double stick out my tongue at “myself” if that’s your real name make sudden movements to test the reaction time of those little phosphorescent lamps red, blue, and green which dangle like anglerfish in a kind of precarity i instinctively understand but fail to condone
9.	Bilocation 02:17	lyrics
Return to me, return to me, Shulamit, return to me, return to me, and we will gaze upon you. And what will we see in you, Shulamit? A dance between two camps. — Song of Songs 7:1 my head is split into two camps one is a jubilation of death a triumphal arc cut from the same cloth as judith, jael, and joan where all sins are forgiven through rivulets of blood where jack and jill both are ripped to red ribbons that flag from harlots’ windows where every man must stir at the knowledge of his name for a jawbone of an ass can make his liver lie down my ass says he can go no further without someone to eat and like manna from heaven this camp gives to me the ecstasy of i told you so the testament of pleasure and torture in full bloom the other camp is not peace or quiet piety it is the thundering, undeniable rapture of a babbling brook baby animal videos on my feed i sleep with one eye open here out of respect for all the living things who make room for me and my violent fantasies so natural and so new today i stopped to tell a bee thank you for your service and it wasn’t a meme birdcall wakes me here where i cry all the time for every thing that hurts and every wonder of whispering that makes this world renew its borrowing of me for one more day a blade in its meadow a miracle for whom living does not come naturally now, with a bit of luck i’m wide awake and dreaming fully now and fully then thirsting and wroth for the skins of men who took from me my brothers but also quenched by torrential creeks made humble, bittersweet in the miraculous need of all things for each other
10.	Desire Path 00:28	lyrics
i take the shortcut cut through the grass the unmowed green straight snaking path unplanned but real but not concrete a bunch of cut corners and obstinate trampling this is desire treading and retreading against law and design in hopes of saving a little time

about

You can read my new illustrated chapbook, The Lam, here for free:
issuu.com/noraakaplan/docs/the_lam

This is my first time making an album of readings to accompany my poems. I decided to record two versions of each poem: one in my everyday voice, and one in an affected, theatrical pseudo-British accent that helps bring out some of the soundwork of these pieces. Having a sound component to these poems has made them feel a lot more immediate to me, and it's my hope that they can provide the reader/listener with some intimacy in these isolating times.

Purchase of this album comes with a free .pdf download of the chapbook, and gets you access to both versions of each poem, as well as three bonus tracks :-)

Thank you to my friend Elaine Kahn and to my Poetry Field School classmates for listening to my poetry c: