marion in september
september 29th, 2000

my work in progress has finally given itself order, but it needs to be 
workshoped yet, and run through a few spell-checkers. i'm going to submit 
this to mockingbird (etsu's student publication) so any feedback would be 
most appreciated. ;) (oh, and yes, i'm actually using *gasp* capital 
letters.)

Marion in September
by devon koren

The morning breaks, parts the mist like a comb,
fine-toothed, I can feel the
scratch of it upon my back -
the sound of the sole on wet pavement.
I switch the headlights off, kill the ignition.
The night surrenders beneath the tentacles of dawn.
I shoulder my napsack dreams, my notebook hinges,
and walk through walls, where brick yields to flesh,
and mortar to blood
(and blood is the mortar between us.)

Between us is sheets, and two ghosts.

I make love to my history. I carry it within me,
the seed of this town.
It's a woman's job, that covered bridge with the flecked
red paint just off
Warrensburg Road
that once proposed to me in my youth.
The same carpenter mended us both;
(Old McLean, with his dairy calendar in the toolshed)
we are made from the same wood.

The sky pours itself out.
Rain can sometimes be as healing as tears.
A folded umbrella, an outstretched hand -
palm facing upwards, as if I could
taste the salt of this town in
Johnny's convience franchise waiting tables and
Billy's industrial park
shortening lifelines, taking limbs hostage,
draining all the hopes/dreams/prayers,
processing them,
and spitting them out like smog to the atmosphere.
Sometimes, you can get just a taste of it
in the rain.

{Can I get away with this? I don't even know
what I can get away with anymore.}

Fine and precise,
my exhaustion has limits.
Sometimes my yawns fall asleep at the wheel.

Allen, I don't know what I can give you.
I don't know how to repay or repent -
If I could have lived with you on the terrace,
with the moon and the beautiful stranger
and the girl with the horse's head -
if you could have strung me up on
trapeze wire
and set me into orbit, like an angel -

Allen, we stand here,
with our hands on either side of the canyon,
but I can't touch you - our love is too steep
and there are two ghosts between us.
You don't come to me - I only have empty
lines and margins -
you have to place the poetry in me
if I'm to germanate into a dream of you.

Allen, it's all too much - I don't even know
what my natural resources are.
The tabloids tell me you've turned
vegetarian and are voting green.
How dare you let me be the conservative one?
I stand here with fists -
only fists -
and a candle
(a lot of good a candle's gonna do)

We're an open-faced family, Allen.
You, me, and the comet between us.
And my blood is composed of the paint of
the underground railroad
in hopes that my daughter's grandchildren
might add me to the list of their
genetic monuments to freedom.
(I'll free you, Allen, with your queer shoulder
against the rest of the world.)

It's just my vantage point, that the world is tilted,
that I can never do anything straight.
I'm wrestling my dichotimies to the floor.
I have my apathy in a chokehold.
And even though you're nearsighted and psychopathic,
I love you anyway.

I move in retrograde cycles -
Three steps forwards, two steps back.
I try to fall asleep in the car,
but Tom's guitar is too busily scolding me
for living like a refugee.
I don't have to live like a refugee,
though I shave my legs with a dull razor
behind the wooden stalls of public restrooms.
The doors of the bapistry are no longer guilded, but
decorated with grafiti that is busy arguing the case of grafiti.

(Everybody's busy but me.)

And everybody's serious but us, Allen.
Or everone's mad, and we're the only ones taking things seriously.