This afternoon I keep thinking of another, one spent walking the halls of my high school, a loop, one big circle, walking laps, seeing people I barely knew but had seen around for a decade crying in public, walking in all these circles and honestly thank the gods I didn’t have a cell phone with the internet then because maybe then my thoughts were just a little quieter in my panic, walking laps, being afraid, feeling some vast wound in my country, knowing that violence was coming but not when or where or from whom, knowing that this violence would beget more, and that wherever there is the sting of mortal fear there are some wicked men to harness it, and September 11th was maybe the last time I prayed to a judeo-christian god I never believed in much but in that moment I was trying, and last night I lit a candle and set out a glass of water and I wrapped a tarot card in string but that wasn’t enough and all my enthusiastic begging for participation in the democratic process was not enough and I was not enough to stop this and how could I because I am so small and I am remembering buildings falling and I remember knowing we were in a time of war that would perhaps not be called war but would take a war’s toll and when my mother was born internment camps had only be gone for a year and a half and I can’t remember what I was thinking two minutes ago but I keep expecting my country to remember its history and I don’t know what to do anymore, I don’t.
July 22, 2016.
The world is hard. I want to be soft. But fuck, I want to be less fragile. Having a hard time of it lately, all made up of bristle bits and hairline fractures and rotten peach bruise feelings that don’t want to get out of bed. The world is so full of problems I don’t know how to fix, and I can’t even take care of my own small and petty needs, obligations, worries. I think about giving up, moving back to my mother’s house, becoming a recluse, walking alone to the water each day and simply staring, watching tides, writing tender little apolitical poems about my own disintegrating heart. I think about starting over in a dozen new careers I don’t have the stamina for, or the capital investment. I try to step back and look at my anger, a wounded animal I spot across a field. I recall the overwhelming certainty of my own death I feel each time I march with a crowd. I think about the people who have wronged me. I think about the people I love, and how infrequently I feel capable of showing them that love. I read the news, both too much and not enough. I resent the fact that people I do not wish to talk to about all of this will speak to me at length, and some voices I would love to hear will be silent, or have been forever silenced. I watch depression turn the sky green in the distance, feel the whipping up of air grown sudden cold. I have no time to hide in bathtubs, no time to drive to safer country. The house is slowly filling up with water, dirty from the broken pipes, from my possessions leaking dye and ink. I am swimming. I pray to old ocean gods. My form is poor and my breath is ragged and the winds blow harsh but I am swimming.
June 23, 2016, written for Mediums at Constellation
when you are seeking protection
from supernatural threats
from demons or from curses
or from ill-intentioned spirits
in many different traditions
you will be guided to make a line of salt
barring the entrance to your home
marking out a protective circle around yourself
resting in a little bowl at your child’s bedside
think now of all the meals you share
the french fry licks of fingers
of watching your mother grate hard cheese
over hot spaghetti
of the eggs your lover cooked you
that were overdone
but seasoned well with sentiment
the rim of your margarita
salt
imagine that every time you sit down to a table
or a park bench or a sidewalk curb
with someone to eat
it adds a grain to the circle of salt
you’ve drawn around yourself
and those you love
making you less vulnerable to the barbs
thrown out at you by the world
and yet somehow also more open to each other
more tender
think now of every tear
every mourning pang
every heartbreak knife twist
every clutch of your hands toward your face
as if to hold back a flood of incomprehensible speech
all transliterated strange by sorrow
salt
made by your body
sliding out of you and down your skin
drawing out lines and circles
think now of every dance floor sweat soak
every bike ride uphill
eyes squinting in the sun
every friend’s cheap furniture
you carried to a third-floor walkup out of love
every kickball game that was more about other bases
but you still kicked hard, ran hard
every time you fucked
even though it was chicago in the summer
all that sweat
salt
imagine that we all, here
are drawing circles for each other with our bodies
making glitter out of salt
by adding to its crystals all our melted lipsticks
all our skinned knees
dyes seeping from all our strongest looks
the blue of the lake
the brown of the whiskey
the black of our ink
all the throbbing colors of our love
glitter out of salt
I want you to feel safe
I want you to feel safe
may our circles protect us
let us keep each other as best we can
shining
april 15, 2016 / sid branca.
(sorry I have gotten so behind on these y’all, travel + migraines + work + life)
when I am dead–when the world outside or inside my body
has brought it to a halt–
when I am dead, my bones will still be queer.
and if I am lucky enough to be buried straight into the ground,
the dirt my body seeps down into will be queer
the little flowers, the worms
the oxygen the plants breathe out
all queer as the day is long
and if tradition gets the better of my wishes,
in all that needless shining weight
the atoms of my coffin will be queer
or the button that my baby brother pushes
to change my body into ash
the button, and the fire, and the smoke
if I should die of old age married
to a kaleidoscope
that our foolish language calls a man
or if I should die somewhere
in the flash point of hatred
watching sacred spaces evaporate
like water on hot stones
a sign on my chest and my jaw working
trying to get one last kiss blown
one last showtune belt out
one last middle finger up
while the world that has given me everything
takes also everything away
either way: hello, for however long,
and to have been once goes on forever.
when I am dead, my bones will still be queer.
the little flowers, the worms.
