EXCERPTS FROM "DON'T FEAR THE NIGHT DUENDE"

Rocky came pounding down the stairs, “Come on, guys, everybody come on, I’m about to start!” She had a Pabst can in one meaty little fist, and two crammed into the other. She spied Rhoda. “Holy shit. Fucker!” And tumbled her like a baby tiger.

Rhoda gripped her glass but the last precious swallows of vodka slipped away as Rocky took her to the floor. Rocky’s red face was up in her’s. She looked like an angry baby. “Rhoda—fuck you, man, fuck you.” Then she put her face close to Rhoda’s as if to kiss her but like she didn’t know how. Breathing heavy, she just put her open lips near Rhoda’s cheek.

Rocky jumped off Rhoda and sat with her hands between her knees, panting and looking at the wall, then back at Rhoda. “Who said that? My gear? No—it was a friend of a friend, I think. Someone who cased the place, it was at Murder’s someone took it from Murder’s.”

“Sorry, Rocky.” She sat up.

“You’re a fucker, Rhoda.”

“Go play.”

The air was dense with spirits. Mirrors and purple lights filled the black painted stage. Boarded up window were at the other end where the sound guy’s perch. Skate ramps arced up in the dark and small golden lights lit up the ceiling of pressed tin.

Soon Rhoda was drunk in a corner where she liked it. Her phone vibrated and she pulled it out, nearly throwing it—she should get rid of it.

Will: [the place where you were in the bed is read I panted it with polish I got from the walgreens] Will was in California—far far away. But he knew she was from Cleveland. He was a carnie. She’d have to be out of town by the time he got here, because he would find her. She wanted to toss the phone out.

Rocky worked on stage, while the crowd, standing in black, nodded and smiled imperceptibly: the sound was called hate, but it made them all feel good. Rhoda knew it was not hate, but love. A fierce Kali love, a love at the mother destroying the rapist, a love to burn through all impurities, of the pizza job, the smug customers, the middle-class con, the clothes on our backs made by children somewhere else on this round planet. The Earth herself raging. Noise is a birth pain. Noise is the last straw.

THE SHOW

Murder pulled her into the show room, his fingers lightly on her wrist, her pulse, like they were kids, and she felt the rush of old friends recognizing her. Rhoda swallowed. Clenched and closed—she didn’t like her heart feeling like this. All closed up in a green fear vice. Heart is like sex. Sex is like voice. From the throat—is it clear? Unblocked? Unstruck sound? Unstuck. Is it blue and open? Pouring out? Faint or full? But when Murder saw Rochelle was still setting up, he pulled Rhoda down into the basement.

“Come on, man, I don’t want to go into that asbestos place.”

“No it’s ok now,” he assured her on their way down, “they’ve spray-painted it gold.”

Somehow, they always ended up in the basement. Hazy, she was happy to be floating alone in this crowd that knew her, connecting with smiles and too loud for small talk. They would want her to describe where she’d been. It couldn’t be done that way.

MIDSUMMER SESTINA

The lover leaps up at the Moon in play,

but falls back to the ground, laughing, I didn’t mean it Moon

and Earth. The Moon sits still as a cat

satiated, but never truly still at all.

Wind whispers yesterday through black trees,

in another language.

Later Kathleen drew with her hands the face of the Moon.

Her hands leftover from petting the cat,

who had swallowed the perfect globe—swallowed us all.

Kathleen washed her hands on the trees,

and the Moon read her own face in another language.

Kathleen was just playing.

I loved you like a cat

loves her tiny brood, all

wound up under fairy-trees.

I love you in cat language.

We played another kind of playing,

under friendly Moons.

Striking Midnight can’t catch us all:

not the smallest schools of fish, not remember’s trees,

not the smallest family in the last corner of the world, or their secret language,

not the smallest vocalist, not the smallest play.

Mother Midnight can’t touch the face of the Moon,

after all, who makes her own fate like a cat.

Don’t forget to ask the trees.

You’ll remember woody language.

Only they can say who played

the night of the Spider New Moon,

when some lost soul cried like a cat,

and we couldn’t get home at all.

We met at the beginning of language.

I saw your mouth and wanted to play,

and we did play, gasping on milk of the Moon.

Our house was made from the belly of willing cats.

So call off your war against all,

and let’s return to the trees.

Lover, come back to Moon language;

come let us play like cats;
please stop forgetting that we were all once trees.

8080808080808080808080808080808080808080808080808080808080808080aaaaaahhhhhhhh

I walked into the kitchen to get you, I walked into the kitchen to feel free, I walked into the kitchen with fear wrapped around me. I said this word in my mouth: it’s metal, it’s a truck, it’s a toy. I want to peel it from my mouth and place it in your palm. I want to give it away. I remembered something back from four years ago when it was hot like it’s supposed to be here in June at the edge of Ohio. Something in the way the trees shivered with cool desire. With us. And we breathed. I followed you out of the kitchen, still not quite there. Unveil your heart’s heat, I said, to feel free, cold metal fear fall from me/us, fall clanging to the floor. Stomp it out. White fire. Quit the rides that aren’t cheap. Take time out of shadows. Feel me. Remember over and over again that first comes love, then fear, then love again. Even past the madman tears in the fabric, past the vast cruelty: Love is (though often hiding within the whispering grip of maya). Love is the Alpha, the Omega; Love is the (sweet none) Synthesis.

CALL IT

If it’s rugged could you call it. A bird cage. The sun beat like it wasn’t new. The dusty hawks stood still. Red-Tailed. With shoulders. Fat bee and bee things kicked up in our ears and (under our skirts). The sun shocked our skin that was and wasn’t new. Secret corners bore mammals with backs curled up escape. At last responsibility—vanquished. Vanished. Banished mammals with useless stink glands. Feathering. Drugged on rugged cage. I held my daughter at angles—telling her animal names. Pulling her close from dusty stone eyes. Hawks and turkeys. Tiny waterfall so ornamental by rugged hawk cages. The animals turn to the wall and rest, relieved. At last, the animals say,—Nature vanquished.