Rachelle Wrote Poems & I Wrote This
a response for & after Rachelle Escamilla
She moves me through time & I’m bolted down. Hinged, framed, red-knobbed in a Pittsburgh doorway. Where are we tonight? Here in Pittsburgh Yes! I am here. In the Pittsburgh where we met. I am seven years late to these stories. I am here. Here. Here is a picture for you to see: of me / slapping parking meters / w a / flat-handed thwack! / here’s a picture / our fingers together / like your zipper / and then not--Well, not the me kind of you, but the reader you. The indefinite you. The indefinite yinz. Now back to the sex stories & exclamation points, please & thanks!
Pittsburgh is the place she tells me & men thirty--yes?!--is the time of day--!!! Oh, & then!: horned! pubis! vulgarity! raise yourself to my liking! you come! my my my my my Mister. And my own Pittsburgh & her Pittsburgh & the indefinite yinzer’s Pittsburgh are all bright, watercolor blood-blurs warping a page beautifully.
two times a day I / pass the apartment on Bayard and rub my body / against the Obama poster, Obama Biden, Bayard, / Banana muffins--Bananas everywhere! At the Warhol. & the Obama poster. Posters everywhere! Do you remember your / body in her hands, her hard hands that are dull / brown callous and scrape your penis until we can’ / take it no more?
In the room with silver pillows you can see yourself so many times thwacked & thwacked & You’ve never had hands like hers! / They taste like onions and can grip tomatoes. They / peel like onions/burnt almond body. Silver flashes like a run past a parking meter & another & another & another. In this room there is one window & we bat the pillows up! up! up! I stare at myselves. I am beneath / you, remember?
I am soft now, watch me touch these / bodies, look! I am soft now, softest when I touch / parking meters. In the room with the silver me & silver yinzes, I sit on the brick sill. Outside the museum window, I recognize Art. A retrospective spreads across the city. Some pieces have permits. Sometimes this Artist sends cease and desist letters. Sometimes he is named Street. His hands are always white.
I wonder if he still peels gloves of wheat paste from his wrists. Sticky Fingers. More bananas. Downstairs, Warhol’s album art is displayed & down-downstairs, it’s for sale. w a / flat-handed thwack! Once, at least one someone slipped on a banana peel, got hurt for a joke & another someone drew a body into a punchline. Gravity can be funny when it favors you. Here. Here is a picture for you to see: I always leave the room just before the balloons deflate.
They found a cyst today and it was round and bobbing on / the monitor, it leaned on my ovary like your head on my shoulder. Cystina. Cystina! A joke she wrote herself. And the beauty of a body. The beauty of recognizing a drooping you to write to.
Here. Here is a picture for you to see: Rachelle, collecting ABCDEFs, collecting herself, & I picture her smiling, placing each round sound exactly where it pleases her, & only there. She fits one upon the other, presses them, like the stacks of plastic chips in the velvet-lined case on the night she taught me how to play poker, how to tell a table—This is what I want!—&, by the end of the night, how to open her arms, laughing, & draw it all in toward her body.
Pittsburgh is the place she tells me & men thirty--yes?!--is the time of day--!!! Oh, & then!: horned! pubis! vulgarity! raise yourself to my liking! you come! my my my my my Mister. And my own Pittsburgh & her Pittsburgh & the indefinite yinzer’s Pittsburgh are all bright, watercolor blood-blurs warping a page beautifully.
two times a day I / pass the apartment on Bayard and rub my body / against the Obama poster, Obama Biden, Bayard, / Banana muffins--Bananas everywhere! At the Warhol. & the Obama poster. Posters everywhere! Do you remember your / body in her hands, her hard hands that are dull / brown callous and scrape your penis until we can’ / take it no more?
In the room with silver pillows you can see yourself so many times thwacked & thwacked & You’ve never had hands like hers! / They taste like onions and can grip tomatoes. They / peel like onions/burnt almond body. Silver flashes like a run past a parking meter & another & another & another. In this room there is one window & we bat the pillows up! up! up! I stare at myselves. I am beneath / you, remember?
I am soft now, watch me touch these / bodies, look! I am soft now, softest when I touch / parking meters. In the room with the silver me & silver yinzes, I sit on the brick sill. Outside the museum window, I recognize Art. A retrospective spreads across the city. Some pieces have permits. Sometimes this Artist sends cease and desist letters. Sometimes he is named Street. His hands are always white.
I wonder if he still peels gloves of wheat paste from his wrists. Sticky Fingers. More bananas. Downstairs, Warhol’s album art is displayed & down-downstairs, it’s for sale. w a / flat-handed thwack! Once, at least one someone slipped on a banana peel, got hurt for a joke & another someone drew a body into a punchline. Gravity can be funny when it favors you. Here. Here is a picture for you to see: I always leave the room just before the balloons deflate.
They found a cyst today and it was round and bobbing on / the monitor, it leaned on my ovary like your head on my shoulder. Cystina. Cystina! A joke she wrote herself. And the beauty of a body. The beauty of recognizing a drooping you to write to.
Here. Here is a picture for you to see: Rachelle, collecting ABCDEFs, collecting herself, & I picture her smiling, placing each round sound exactly where it pleases her, & only there. She fits one upon the other, presses them, like the stacks of plastic chips in the velvet-lined case on the night she taught me how to play poker, how to tell a table—This is what I want!—&, by the end of the night, how to open her arms, laughing, & draw it all in toward her body.