on · no · evil · star

> broken eggs crooked back and all.
> yes. and it left me in tears.
> i have, apparently, a previously unnoticed arthritic neck which has too little of a curve, too much curve in my lower spine, resulting in a displaced right hip which causes acute pain and and and and. i wanted to cry. i felt like he told me i had cancer.

a taste of a thousand men on my tongue, in my mouth
still i am not fed
laying in bed, staring at his body after a rouse of
anything not love
i reminded myself of the fleeting of moments
remember. remember i was here
new smells overwhelm and then strangers leave
residue
about thirty kinds.
later i bury my face in the cigarette smoke settled skin cells
unfamiliar products that
i'll inhale away from last night's fabric.
(hints of me in there too).
i story that moment that was dog-eared
recalling with my own hands what it felt like
to be choked by a touch and whispered lust words
that preceded the destination of folly
my arrival provoked yours.

and we made a mus icc video:

so i made it available to buy paperback like

and copyrighted it and everything

here

http://www.lulu.com/browse/book_view.php?fCID=2108039

so, i wrote a book
or rather.
i have a manuscript in pdf form.

it's a book of poems and shorts titled "bruised hip hue" hoping to be born into the chapbook world.

the sub headings are:

unrequited locations, (airports among them).

a stained body.

letters and johns.

a brief satiation.

if you want a digital copy, i want you to have one.
just gimme your email address.

I have known love and love has won.

I burned my fingers on the sun.

I’ve been imprisoned on the moon.

I have learned what truth denies.

I drank the teardrops from her eyes.

I surrendered much too soon.

I never heard the warning voice.

I never knew I had a choice.

Though I never wanted to return.

But I have sailed upon the boat

That flew when there was room to float.

And I drank out of the magic urn.

And I have slept inside the shade

encircled by the love we made.

And I have kissed the face of dreams.

And I have ridden on the glow

that warms the sky with a rainbow.

And I have waded in its golden streams.

And I have danced between the stars

with music sung by sweet guitars.

I’ve done some things that can’t be done.

And I have smiled inside the storm

reaching higher to keep warm.

I’ve known love and love has won.

I burned my fingers on the sun.

i don't know how to do this.
i just moved from a city where things happen so much faster.
patience is something i am learning to cultivate.

it's like the night of the storms: they don't teach tornados on the west coast. afraid, i have to guess. i beg toward nothing in particular: settle me. perhaps i ought to know. perhaps. i'm setting goals and stretching my daytime legs. i won't stand on anymore bar counters. less loose, fewer losses.

your face, the way people smell and you adapt. i don't know anyone.

a visit from a chicago lover looms. he makes speak in imitation after hearing his cantor; accent. all weekend ends seven days from now.

accents like staccato cries in orgasms i don't understand. i really don't. i'm learning how to reachieve them in every city i visit. mostly polish men lately. a few hang up calls.

where do you like to be?
how do people look at you that aren't michelle?

my favourite book is called "kafka was the rage" by anatole broyard. i have stopped buying copies for lovers. i don't even have one for myself anymore.

my incisor broke. and ten minutes later i pissed off my dentist via text message. i ruined his weekend, he told me. his her didn't think she i was funny coy.

time to get serious. when i'm back tomorrow. days become dedicated to search more than of for men and things to watch on cable television. i need shelby p. i need to learn the roads. to cultivate income. i think i can show more than english to people. i have a few publication options. need to make take slides.

my mom turned sixty and cried when i walked into the room. i came from these people. parented by this land. i took in gin like water to relax.

we don't have a rhythm. i worried i've failed prematurely. i guarantee i've been stellar. i'm trying to unlearn this new awkward. i know a lot of words saved best for use in not sentences but competitions.

will: take this, perhaps: chance.


i'll wait,

michelle :: let's get a pinata and fill it with scrabble tiles and many mini bourbons.

"yes. i need them very much.
if you ever say them, i'll never let you take them back."

i'm afraid of our sexual act
time what space
mal modifies
total genital finality
monument construction to moment
act of loss
unconditional expenditure
sons of gods,
sites for ceremonies

fires brew out
places never mentioned
paralysis here
count
things we lost after
our bodies met

marry me with
an octopus leg ring

tornado warning howls
can't tell worse
sirens or news people
injury banter
this is the new(s)
southern.
ask if you can tell whether the noise stopped
got used to it and now
well.

degradation destruction we must experience
phone talk
late learning sessions
put stars next to the items
i don't know
or can't tell
there're too many, a hundred
constellate my list.
blanket like human starch
toweled
taste the sweat we made
we're dressed now
instead i open the window
it's over my bed
i'm over my bed
invite the storm,
in.

(while my friends are wearing parkas, i'm in short shorts. it's warm).

i walked home from the car repair place today in the sun.

when we hear the train go by, next door chicagoan eloise says, "train says so."

1707 litton is my house. my housah.

recovering from many of my items being stolen out of my chicago apartment my last night there. enjoying the sun, the solitude. however, missing the action.

Author: Masgrau-Peya, Elisenda

Article Excerpt
IN HIS INTRODUCTION TO THE LOCATION OF CULTURE, Homi Bhabha defines the "unhomed" as the condition of "extra-territorial and cross cultural initiations," one that is intrinsic to the colonial and the postcolonial world as well as to femininity (9). It is not a question of being "homeless," Bhabha makes clear, but a question of being outside of "home," of being forced to renegotiate one's place in the world. For Bhabha, "unhomeness" is most readily identified in the experience of migrants and postcolonial people, for whom geographic or cultural dislocation are defining traits either because they have been uprooted from former places of identification or because a familiar place has undergone radical change as a result of its colonial past or present.

At the beginning of "The World and the Home," a related and in many ways complementary essay, Bhabha announces that "in the house of fiction you can hear, today, the deep stirrings of the unhomely" (445). The term "unhomely" comes from Freud's essay "The Uncanny," where he reflects upon the uneasy sense of the unfamiliar within the familiar, the unhomely within the home. In this essay, Freud pays attention to the way the word homely, meaning "belonging to the house, not strange, familiar, intimate" is also defined by what seems to be its apparent opposite "concealed, kept from sight, withheld from others." In this slippage between homely and unhomely, what is supposedly outside the home seems to be inhabiting it all along and reappears only with the return of the repressed. In his reading of Heidegger, Mark Wigley argues that the familiar, the homely, the house are produced precisely by masking the unfamiliar, so that the house always veils a fundamental unfamiliarity. For Heidegger, the uncanny is the sense of "'not being at home in the home,' an alienation from the house experienced within it" (qtd. in Wigley 110). Further, Heidegger argues that it is only by being positioned outside of home that the home and the structures on which it relies can be perceived; "home," he writes, "is precisely the place where the essence of home is most concealed" (qtd. in Wigley 114).

Reading Bhabha's sentence with Heidegger and Wigley in mind would seem to suggest that the expression of this sense of "not being at home in the home" and, hence, the capacity to expose the structures on which home relies is a characteristic of the literature produced by unhomed people. In this article, I suggest a reading of Katherine Mansfield's "Prelude" and Barbara Hanrahan's The Scent of Eucalyptus as voicing what I have called a "poetics of the unhomed." I begin by drawing attention to the many coincidences between Mansfield's and Hanrahan's lives, with particular attention to their complex relationships to the places in which they lived. Then I examine the ways in which the house is portrayed in "Prelude" and The Scent of Eucalyptus and I suggest that Mansfield and Hanrahan problematize any automatic approach to them as "home."

Barbara Hanrahan was an avid, interested reader of Mansfield's short stories and she repeatedly expressed the admiration she felt for her predecessor in interviews, letters and personal writings. She frequently mentioned Mansfield when questioned by interviewers about her literary preferences, (1) and in her diaries she repeatedly expressed a feeling of awe for Mansfield's literary achievements and recorded her constant readings and rereadings of Mansfield's work and of material on her life. (2) Indeed, Mansfield was a source of inspiration that she herself acknowledged when she stated that the character of Charlie in The Frangipani Gardens was based on Mansfield's Ole Underwood, and that the setting of The Peach Groves was based on Mansfield's New Zealand. Beyond these specific connections, there are general echoes of Mansfield in Hanrahan's interest in childhood, in her attention to detail, even in the disturbing subtexts of her writings.

In reading Mansfield's literature and private writings, Hanrahan was always moved by a sense of community with her, and in her diaries she variously refers to her as a literary friend and a spiritual companion. Mansfield appears almost as a ghostly presence in Hanrahan's diaries, and the way in which Hanrahan writes about her suggests that she thought of her as being part, in some strange way, of her private circle of acquaintances. She speaks of Mansfield as being "more truly my friend[s] than anyone I know." She claims to belong in the same London scene that she did: "that properly bohemian cup-of-tea world," and she mourns her death as she mourns her grandmother's: "Oh darling Nan--you are here no more. I can't really believe it--Katherine Mansfield is gone, too. You are both so real. This past is more real than now" (Diaries 68).

Hanrahan and Mansfield led, in many ways, strangely parallel lives. Both were brought up in a former colony of the South Pacific and sailed to the metropolis in the early years of their youth. Mansfield abandoned Wellington for London in early 1910 after having already completed three years of her schooling there, studying at Queen's College from 1903 to 1906. Hanrahan first went to London to study art, staying in Europe for eighteen months between 1963 and 1964. After a short interlude in Adelaide she returned to London in 1965 and lived between London and Adelaide for as long as her health allowed her to do so.

Both women led somewhat nomadic lifestyles, Hanrahan traveling back and forth between London and Adelaide and Mansfield dividing her time between England and the continent, spending her summers with John Middleton Murry in England and her winters in warmer parts of Southern Europe because of her tuberculosis. She would spend the last years of her life literally roaming around Europe in search of a cure. Also, both women suffered long, terminal illnesses: Mansfield was diagnosed as tubercular in 1917 and Hanrahan was found to have a cancerous tumor in her spine in 1984, which caused her body to deteriorate and eventually left her paraplegic.

In their lives away from home, neither Mansfield nor Hanrahan pursued a typical feminine life of domestic involvement...

this tegan and sara song. it makes me think of someone i oughtn't.

I won't regret saying this
This thing that I'm saying
Is it better than keeping my mouth shut
That goes without saying
Call, break it off
Call, break my own heart
Maybe I would have been something you'd be good at
Maybe you would have been something I'd be good at
But now we'll never know
I won't be sad
But in case I go there
Everyday, to make myself feel bad
There's a chance that I'll start to wonder if this was the thing to do
I won't be out long
But I still think it better if
You take your time coming over here
I think that's for the best
Call, break it off
Call, break my own heart
Maybe I would have been something you'd be good at
Maybe you would have been something I'd be good at
But now we'll never know
I won't be sad
But in case I go there
Everyday, to make myself feel bad
There's a chance that I'll start to wonder if this was the thing to do
I'll start to wonder if this was the thing to do

i nearly forgot.


i met sara and the other michelle at the lakeview whole foods last weds before taking off to the karl blau mt eerie show. we went outside so sara could smoke and i could watch her and john smoke. they sat. i paced. we chittered.

i saw an opportunity.

i walked up to the wet cement. tape around it and saw horses keeping us out. "wet so late?" i went in. i made impressions of each of my cowboy boot soles. i knelt and wrote my name. M - I - C - H - E -L (at this point a man walked up to me and asked "why are you doing that?) L - E. I finished while he yelled at me before standing up to respond.

I wanted to, and have never had the opportunity, I told him.

BUT THIS IS PUBLIC PROPERTY!! EVERYONE PAYS FOR THIS!! DON'T YOU PAY TAXES!?! (sizes me up) OH NO YOU PROBABLY DON'T!!

I told him it was not a bad thing, just a name in a sidewalk like all other sidewalks have. I was gentle with my responses to him, and smiled the whole time. (Sometimes laughing).

PLEASE TELL ME WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS!!??

I asked him if he'd ever been young.

OF COURSE I'VE BEEN YOUNG BUT... I SHOULD JUST CALL THE POLICE.

I asked him if he wanted my name. He said yes, but didn't wait for it before continuing to yell, not calling the cops.

HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF I PAINTED OR DREW ALL OVER YOUR COAT!? THIS IS MY SIDEWALK! ITS EVERYONES SIDEWALK.

I told him it was my sidewalk too, then. I added that the marks on the sidewalk don't hazard anyone (no one will trip) and I was not writing anything offensive. I told him I wouldn't mind if he did anything to my coat. It's just a thing.

THEN YOU WONT MIND IF I TAKE IT.

i emptied my pockets, took it off and handed it to him. I told him now he had something that belonged personally to me, and i had only knicked a public property, and that i was getting cold. I tried to make a point about public vs private / personal property. He was irate and just didn't understand.

I asked if he wanted me to fix what i had done.

he said YES.

i wiped my name out a little bit. the mud was cold. he insisted the boot prints go too, and i told him i didn't think it mattered.

he told me i was costing the city a ton of money. i told him the city probably wasn't going to do anything. he started jiving about something else that happened down the street.

i told him if he really needed my coat, i wouldn't be that put out. yes i was cold but the coat was just a thing. don't you see? just like the sidewalk is just a thing? i don't think it is going to disrupt the quality of life around here because it is just a thing. aren't experiences more important to you?

YES BUT THAT IS MY SIDEWALK, THE PEOPLE'S SIDEWALK...

but we dont need it to live.

sara walked up to us and told me it was time to go. she took my coat out of the guy's hand as he scoffed and continued his walking commute. i thanked him politely for the debate.

he was wearing thick glasses and carrying a briefcase (i think).

i would like to meet him again.

alan jackson
silverchair
local h
deftones
violent femmes

beck (seattle the night princess di died, royal albert hall in london 2003)
bb king
dr john
double trouble
junior brown (seattle, michigan)
page and plant
bob dylan
joni mitchell
van morrison
ani difranco
modest mouse
neko case
doobie brothers
ccr
willie nelson
merle haggard
ray price
madison
capt fathom
karl blau
kimya dawson
the flaming lips (danced onstage with them in germany)
tool
u2
cake
saul williams
dolly parton
porter wagoner
marty stuart
carrie akre
goodness
kill hannah
alice in chains
velvet revolver
the pharmacy
the catch
air
the trucks
calvin johnson
the microphones/mt eerie
cat power (seattle, chicago)
sonic youth (seattle, chicago)
mastadon
gza
yoko ono
clipse
iron and wine
stephen malkmus
de la soul
of montreal
jamie lidell
santana
roger waters
tortoise
built to spill
tricky
pj harvey
beth gibbons
prince
offspring
radiohead
far rad
bone poney
shooter jennings
duda mana
joanna newsom
la scala

i'm back in chicago.

airplanes hurt my ears so so so bad. i cannot descend.

stepping, on.. one foot on the airplane, the last still in the hallway... one in my past, one stepping into my future. and i thought travelling a vehicle into the future (this time i did not kiss my hand and touch the outside of the plane. exhaustion bled my desire for luck). propelling into the unknown, almost unwilling, faster than walking proactive pursuant. i often remain in bed. this, is another creature.

drinks last night with sharon hayes and anwar. overcome by grief first sip into my belgian ale. that beer overcame the hangover i had been tender with all day.

in this video, you begin by saying (and further add to your constructed character), "you know what i really love about music?" i didn't answer and you didn't hesitate for one, we understood. you talk about the genius of the harmonica addition in that song so loud over the juke.

"there can be kiss-and-tell even in great literature."

when i watch this video (which i save for myself), it erases an early morning mid sentence walk away from me as you locked the door behind you. i've almost forgotten. because i think about what you love about music. and i revere those thoughts and that moment.

on the airplane i was thinking of an "e" word that you could use about us.
i wanted to demand but i could not locate the right e word.

exile
emloy
exact
engage me.
no, none of those really suit what i desired to say.

in new jersey, (where my mobile phone charger remains), we listened to "greetings from asbury park, NJ." robert said springsteen lives in colts neck, nj. under where i wrote that, anwar wrote "NUTS ACK, IN." that would be appropriate. everything is balls in indiana. the boss, an appropriate soundtrack in new jersey. i tried then to figure out considerations i was having about things i thought i desired. i thought about states i had not been in, men i had not been with (and being with them in the company of men i have sort of been with).

mary queen of arkansas / its not too early for dreaming / the sky is grown with cloud seed sown / and a bastard's love can be redeeming

springsteen seemed to know so many times over what he was born to do. (i never inherited a feeling of responsibility). fuck fuck fuck fuck. one young he born before me these words the next an older album.

it's hard to be a saint in the city.


you, freshly shorn. a person who is less than lore. you were real once in my hea/b/ed. you told me i was beautiful, and then left my city.

you showed up with a friend. she took up time with sara. i took you to the bedroom, completely taken. "another go..." you said. i could see you through your pants; i layed my head and my hands on your chest. you explained to be how each of my fingers were your grandchildren. you took all of yours off while i remained clothed. tiny touches of my mouth down your left side, you layed on your right. when it got bright, we looked up. sara was pointing a flashlight into a hand mirror your friend was using to spotlight our eyes. i covered you and we kept from room to room, looking for a shower that had a curtain intact.

the floor that leads to my bed
is covered with glass.
broken, i tread atop it
practice, for dancing with you.

kenny (my not-boyfriend) is opening for interpol / liars tonight.
it is all sold out.

but

i will be seeing my friends the trucks
who are in town on tour from bellingham.

tomorrow i am flying to new yorkkkkk

"what is it about legs? or what is it about breasts? or the small of a back? what is it about anything? one day there will be no difference between anything. it'll all be the exact same thing. one day you'll look in the dictionary and there will be only one word and you'll just have to make do."

page forty three.

i want this out in the world more.

i got it onine while browsing so its already pretty public.

but i put it up for you because i think y'all need to hear

ike and tina turner's version of

http://www.sciumbato.com/WholeLottaLove.mp3