...and pardon'd the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;....
—Prospero
What I have waited for, what has waited in me
so many years has finally come to pass—
his magic drizzled back into the salty soil, all
the island, gypsum, not white-sand, not snow
melting the beach pure, not me repenting on
my knees, am I the good or bad daughter, father—
which? I should have been a tourist here, able
to detach the mad-stirrings, I should have been
able to spill my dreams into the froth. Instead,
I was a lost angel, neither girl nor beast—
never what they wanted. Caliban used me
by making me his slave; my father, no better turned
me into whatever spirit moved him. The mystery
of light and wing, I was a green wall of birds, far
too much sugar, far too much heat. I was sacrificed
by lightning, neon drawn to neon-girl, I was a gift
of his own making. Now I flit among the bones
of him, that was a time he stopped, an hourglass
that turned the cell floor into beads of gold. Sunshine
sped us forward, good wombs can also bear
mad daughters. Would I might never become a bird
or sugar-bat at his devices, would I stand here smoothing
his carcass for the influences of nature? I have no
grudge or grumblings, though I've been held captive here
by the same wild madness that has set me free.
"She willed me her clothes. She called me a frump."
Maxine Kumin
I wasn't the stitches that ran across her back.
I wasn't the frayed collar, the heel that betrayed
her confidences. Her silk slips burnished our skin.
One by one she gave each piece to me.
One by one they seared us like sin. It's October.
Without that awful rowing towards God, without
my friend. She scattered tarot cards like leafs.
She was crazy thin. She pushed the buttered squash
like vowels around her plate. Bring us back, September,
return her to us—unravel each purl of sun. Shrug,
wrap our shoulders in September. Each pair
of trousers, each cashmere scarf thick with our laughter.
Days, I would pick up the phone, untangle the cord
and talk about a poem. I still hear her words tumble
forth, spread like a wine stain on my best cloth.
for Frida Kahlo
"Porque estoy muy sola"
I
I crawl on my stomach,
crossing the sea of chipped linoleum—
scales flaking off my back.
Not the scales of truth or justice:
serpent's scales, the scales of a fish
that tempt sailors.
"Snake child" they call me.
I wag my ass at them—
the sky, the color of paint
under my nails.
I wag my ass at the moon
grab my cheeks
invite them in.
They will say I curse spit,
talk like a gypsy, fuck like a sailor:
the honey of my ass
a calla lily for their pleasure.
They will say I honk and bray like
a goose, my donkey buttocks
under them while we ride the moon.
II
I was fucked by a steel shaft, my first lover,
a may-pole that shattered my pelvis, spilled
my eggs, and left me broken on the curb.
They didn't shoot me like the dog which
became my destiny, didn't kill me before
I became rabid, before I frothed and barked.
I learned to crawl, learned to break eggs on my
breasts to feel the coolness of the unborn, smeared
yolks on my nipples to comfort my empty shell.
The sailors are kind to me though,
kinder than Him.
Sometimes I paint ivy, I paint brambles and roses
on my skin, and he tells me: "It is the Demerol—
Addict"— he calls me crazy.
Those lovely, lonely men who use my ass
but are kind—say I have been "away,"
have had a sea change.
III
I paint a flower around my navel,
imagine myself a woman
without scars,
without this name "Pierre".
One sailor, a boy really, who I tell
about my babies, my unborn, never-to-be
daughters, lets me cry sometimes.
He puts his tongue in my belly and tells me
how sweet my daughters will taste, how my
belly will swell with them, how the flower
I have painted around my navel will grow.
Imagine me able to run, and I can!
I run through the woods, haunted with dead,
leering faces watch me through branches,
skulls follow me. I am beautiful in fact,
a deer, the swiftest and the fairest.
Arrows have captured me though, all those
thrusting arrows, the poisoned barbed tongues.
And the moon
wags back down at me, shows me His
ass, his spread cheeks
while I spit up at Him.
He is my large crude
canvas, created by me out of my morphine,
My crawling paintbrush.
He may teach me how to bark, to bray, to spit.
But as He is my invention,
I am his.
Laurie Byro's short stories and poetry have appeared in The Literary Review, Triggerfish, Snakeskin, Redactions, Triggerfish, Chaminade Review, Chronogram, Grasslimb, Re:al Journal, The New Jersey Journal of Poets, Red Rock Review, The Paterson Literary Review, and the 7th Quarry (Wales) among others. Her chapbook, The Bird Artists, was published in 2009 and Mayor Vince Barra proclaimed Laurie the "Official Poet Laureate of Allendale, New Jersey." Her work draws on myth and fairytale and her experiences of foreign places in the years she worked as a travel agent. Laurie is head of circulation at a library in New Jersey where she facilitates a poetry circle.
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