friday/forest of telephone poles

i've been invited to read this Friday for the launch party of the new Girls with Glasses literary journal, reading series, and workshop founded by Kayla Sargeson and Deena November.
(You do not have to be a girl or wearing glasses to come.)

poetry from Stacey Waite and Renée Alberts
music by Nadina's Cube

Friday, November 6
10 pm
$5 suggested donation
Remedy
5121 Butler Street, Lawrenceville (map)
412.781.6771
. . .

This is an older poem that's been sorta reincarnated, but we still go for walks, and she's coming on Friday, and so should you.

. . .

We have satellites for situations such as these.
Selective silence, sterile eyes
from she-who-listens-to-stones-speak.
No penance or replacement
for the leaking roof
she held over my head
under the flood
in the basement.

There are no enemies,
there are friends,
and there are strangers.
So i sit in a roomful of footfalls,
where the tarot reader's counting cards
with his heart up his sleeve. He sees
i cut Hawai'i off my head
but left Alaska fastened
around my neck.
He's got a quiet grin
and a triggerspin
and a warning.
Then he leaves his spell on my coffee table
amidst dented cans and ashes.

I recommend you find a place where you can put as many holes
in the walls as you want and no one
will come patch up the plaster.
Carpet pile waves in tides pulled past
by paths that cross it.
Dave swore he saw sand dunes drift across the walls,
but i hallucinate a whitewash,
so out among the cinders he left in the garage,
i hang my hair on a branch
and hope something hollowboned
will build its nest
in this whole forest
of telephone poles.
Stapled to each the face of a different friend
with a caption that says MISSING and a number
to call to adjust to the numbness as,
one feature at a time, she erases my face
and replaces my name with aphasia.

I gathered it all up and stuffed it in my pockets:
shocks and struts and fits and starts,
skeleton keys to our skeleton closets,
every quark and rock--
then the bottom fell out of my cardboard heart.
Something became somebody's property.
Now i forward her mail
and the eyes have walls.
I guess i wasn't there
to hear that tree fall.