like a scrim
of white lace over
black velvet. Even in today's
snow, almost gone, wild light.
The dark leaks up, like a body
floating to the surface even
weighted with bracelets of
stone. In the first frame I must
have ballroom post traumatic
stress syndrome. I need to tell
someone. I've had enough of
horror. A tone, a look, a word
and it's too much. Or course
I can't reveal the culprit and
I'm not sure he isn't right.
He stared one night until I
wanted to run into the street
in my dance shoes weeping
and then when I flubbed last
night, gave me a wicked snarl
when I said what did I do wrong.
He slammed me around like
he was whipping whoever he
whips. Maybe his dog and
sneered "I can't tell you, it's a
secret," a knife slashing any calm.
So I stumbled, panicked. So
when a kind man asks me to dance,
I'm falling over my words. One
sneer and my confidence melts.
I can't put it that clearly but
who doesn't become what they're
called: stupid, frigid, slut. But it's
no use. What I tell him slides
from my skin. Just keep quiet and
dance I tell myself. Then, without
warning I'm in a new part of the
dream, leaving Café Lena who's
been dead for years, planning a
poetry event. It wasn't clear, the
details. Then after I couldn't sleep,
have just dosed off, an alarm rings.
It's blackness, what else would it be
after the day of ebony tulips
the size of Chattanooga takes
over the street I'm on. The
announcement, very cold, very
calm says in 15 seconds the
taping of poems begins in
silence. There are no lights.
My poems are across the room.
Somewhere, in a back pack
maybe, who knows, in the car,
I don't know them by heart.
I can't get out from under the
violet quilts, almost wrote
violent quilts—there'd be noise.
I wanted to cancel this and now
I am going to make a mess of
things, ruin everything
