Eli Smith Art

“How Many Minutes?” by Eli Smith

“Globe Home” by Eli Smith

  I.                 I can’t breathe in the dark

the left lung won’t inflate

the stomach won’t empty

a twist of tonsils

trying this grounding exercise

only feeling further away

closeness is too

close farness is too

away I sweep the sheets

with my tongue, the gullet

swallow, swallow, swallow

  II.               sit, quiet, write

my body in the classroom

where I left it

too soon might get carried

to lost and found

trying to memorize lessons

in the liver, in the gut-memory

intestines digest numbers

I never learned long-division from the

neck up

  III.             I am a collection

of lobes dragging this limp-sock

body behind me gets caught

on sharp edges and torn

in the bristle bushes on the way

home I soak it in warm water

try to smooth the tears

like putting stitches in clay

  IV.            I keep dreaming I am

back in that place I never need

to go back to

want to tell my mind

you don’t double dip in

hell, don’t want that back

the place is sticky strings off

got stuck in the lobes

hair-like follicles

can’t comb it out

can’t leave it there

god, don’t make me

go back

 I can’t breathe in

  the fruit on the tree is poison

but the fear of starvation is more terrifying than the fear

of slow death malnutrition:

the wrong kind of sustenance.

the illusion of fullness

as what is supposed to save you

to save you suffocates you.

the institution looks for a reason

to damn all of body, any scratch

a mark, an imperfection

calls for annihilation.

she hides the scratch, its infection

spreads but the body cannot live without

the body without the body.

  she built a house on a grove of flowers that floods

nightly, she hesitates to move

and thrashes in the dark waters wishing

she could take a boat from there.

no one left her a boat and remember

the flowers still bloom in the morning, and nothing

and nothing has ever been so beautiful.

  her bruised cheek cradled by her lover’s hand

“it’s just us against the world”

against the world

she and her

liberal arts dropout

and that’s why I sleep with you

  we didn’t make it

but it’s ok, here,

in the grid. no one ever

gave us a direction start in.

  the girls you love are the punks, half-grew up

on the streets, got so much history

chewed and spat out of them

  got so much biography written in

their lungs, gotta hold a breath in, sometimes

to make it through the intersection

  the girls say things like

              you deserve better

say things like

              you’re gonna get hurt

  the butches with jimmy-rigged

hairdos, fingers coiled so tight in

their pockets like they forgot every secret

handshake they shared with the girls

they were always too afraid to tender,

open

  we learn the throes of daytime fists

just as we learn, from grasping,

what it means to find

fragments of galaxy

  in the guardrail of bone behind her

smile, under her tongue

the shell of her ear

a crooked finger to her thighs

  oh, you taste like lamplights

in the late summer, a broken flip-flop

so eager to get home

  we don’t have enough time

to go out for breakfast, so

we’ll skip therapy and find blessings

in over-sweetened IHop pancakes

  we’re scared when we say it:

and that’s how I know

now: the dampness

at the base of the ballpit.

went sticking your hands

down there

  it’s sticky and unknown.

two girls with scraped knees

and too many words

turning to gumballs

too close to the windpipe

  you said shame

tastes like iron and barbells

and we don’t know the point

when these things cross the quivering gate:

the potency, the shaking

the chocolate cake

  we’re at this point

now: they can’t fix us

cause we’re not here to get fixed.

Fucking around with photo editors.

it’s a hat

a leaf

can be a hat

a slice of bread; perhaps even a mouse

could be a hat

but if someone’s wearing a toupee

you don’t say, “nice hat”

well, i guess you could if you wanted

to be an asshole

my grandpa ate too many clouds that year

we warned him but he continued to crunch

on softness that bled evenly to fear

clouds would be his favorite things to munch

we made him many bits of gourmet food

we made him cherry flavored macaroons

but nothing seemed to improve his mood

but stormy water flavored of monsoons

his meals of clouds soon made his stomach swell

by then he took to bed for many days

and though we cooked the things to make him well

his mind was in the clouds; he would not stay

on days of clouds I look up at the storm

and wonder if they’ll make my belly warm

she knows the recipe for things that heal

she cooks rosemary meals

she smiles sage and stitches parachute pants.

her eucalyptus touches caress congested chests

and she takes baths in the moonlight, under

a large open window, she gathers

her daughters on the bed.

they sleep beside her

and notice the moonlight caught in her hair.

Mother Witch tells us, faeries.

she tells us, salamanders are always smiling

and she tells us to look.

she arranged a table of crystal

prayers near the deathbed

of the mother of Mother Witch,

let her daughters hold the cold, glowing gems

and look into the warm, beating candles.

Mother Witch says, this is grief

this is my raw heart;

the kind you find under overturned rocks

in the soil of your garden

in the coolness of your clay.

Mother Witch cooks rosemary meals

she holds warm eggs to her cheek

she knows how to cry

in the main room of our home.

she says, never

wipe away your tears.

take them

to the garden

and grow them

man-made canyons collect rations

bookstacks whose contents include

fables of fortune built on bodies

books, story, surreal recollections of swallowing tales

the gaps in their thighs are man-made canyons

she is a town in the hills

in the town all the homes touch, murmur familiar

this grass is ours, and our grass is theirs

the body has not been canyon

the heart still touches ribcage

the throat is nesting ground of mother

stretch marks on the ass cross-strike, like lightning

this glass – never broken, but liquid; old chapel windows

lightning strokes the sand and fizzles

lightning strokes the sand and whispers glass

not man-made panes, this glass

solidified lightning

storyteller

is her body

is never cracked, but liquid

is canyon

creation

all mother

all home

cry

see tears like golden eggs

ooze

from the faux fur coat

of eyelashes

and hear the deep

throated sobs

let men see the other men, cry

like megaphones, cry

like monsoons, cry

like mice cry

cry like glitter cries

like noose

with nothing to catch

the tears, no

mason jars, no

bathtubs, no

tupperware to

wet their jerseys, and polo’s, and

dresses

my father holds

my hand still, sometimes,

always

timidly

we hold the contact

until we remember

our manners

and let go

a teaspoon of acknowledgement

her silence, spilled into words made her own

a modern identity carved out of ancient stone

an easy step for the educated, not for the long oppressed

Eurocentric standards choose to veil their words

so that nothing but her lips are covered

and globalize their works -

imported from throats, to be kept in university libraries

pay full tuition to read, but don’t take it seriously

diversity is optional, not required

to reach literary, one must tiptoe past a tradition of illiteracy

but to read literary correctly, one must tiptoe into tradition

illiterate is a chokehold of non-identity

but colonialism is a blanket of silence that smothers the voices of mothers

for identifying as poet

can have the same connotations as identifying as ‘feminist’

it is a political identity of nonsilence

a cultural entity of public appearance

for not all activism is a loud collective of individuals

sometimes - it starts in a whisper, and the whisper passes on

growing in feelings and intensity until it is

louder than a state refusing to be wrong

Poetry, definition:

the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.

Feminism, definition:

literary work in which special intensity is given to the expression of feelings and ideas by the use of distinctive style and rhythm.