excerpt: the manifesto

if there is one thing i should
never be allowed to do,
it is Speak.
for when i speak,
i enjoy it too much.
i let the words melt around my
tongue like caramel sweets and
i throw down the cellophane,
singing "take that, Mother Earth!"
i savor the words in my mouth
like love letters in my coat pocket,
dissolving into Sound and ocean.
the words crawl through me as worms,
creepy crawlies wiggling their little legs
all over my tongue and my teeth and up
the back of my throat they come, warriors
charging to their deaths, their last little
writhing deaths under the flaming Eye
of the magnifying glass.


the words spill out:

Forthright.

Audacious.

Curtains.




Elucidate.





Sweden.

Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Day)

We are hungry here, in our small dark village with the sun watching over us. It is a great fiery bird, soaring over the day.

Ibi, my husband, looks up and says the same bird flies over everybody in the world. All the strange villages far away are watched by the great bird.

I tell him that he is crazy and the pale villages have invented their own birds to fly above them, and poisons to stop the plants from growing. But when I talk about the pale villages, Ibi looks away like he is looking at mountains or clouds, and he smiles and talks crazy.

"Someday, Ibina," he says, "we will go to a big pale place and learn about pavement and we will not be hungry."

He calls me Ibina when he is like that. I think Ibi dreams of pavement.

I tell him he is a crazy little boy, and he talks too loud, and he should not waste all his time with the strange Dr. Johnson, building their cloud-metal bird.

But he smiles, and I am not so angry. I don't even mind that he calls me Ibina. I know he only wants a better day for us tomorrow.