My knees were hung with tin triangular medals / to cure all forms of hysterical disease. — Carolyn Kizer

[1997. Kansas City. Figlio Italian Restaurant, Small group dinner for an iconic poet before her poetry reading. I am in attendance.]

The poet sits down at the table. She puts on her earrings. Clip-ons. She explains that they fall off. She removes them every time she goes outside so she won’t lose them. She tells her dinner companions that the earrings are expensive, not like the turquoise found in Mexico. These earrings are better, she says, because they are from Europe. The food comes. The poet complains that her companions aren’t eating enough. She insists everyone have some of her fish, cutting off a large piece for the person sitting to her left. She puts it on his plate. He eats it. She passes her squid around the table, too, for all to pick at. She orders a bottle of wine. She drinks several glasses and tells her companions about the time another iconic poet tried to rape her. She laughs as she tells the story. It’s the second time today she’s told it. The table orders more wine.

We are told that the birds with the faces of women are horribly foul and loathsome. They steal food and they smell. I am half partridge. You can tell by my graying legs and thick skin. I go by the name Stormswift. I go by the name Swiftwing. I have no name.

The internal structure of the bird is elegant. Crop. Proventriculus. Gizzard. Pancreas. Intestine. Ceca. Cloaca. Vent. These organs hang like baubles from a charm bracelet.

I used to think internal organs were ugly. Now I think they’re the most beautiful thing we never see.

When there is no movement, there is only a series of incidents that temporarily interrupts the system like electroconvulsive shocks to the brain. When there is a movement, someone else decides what it will be and won’t, who will be part of it and who won’t. The movement becomes a system whose structure mirrors that of the larger system it is attempting to reform or overthrow. The movement is the pill swallowed to counteract the effects of another pill.

What is individual consciousness when the oppressor is inside everyone else’s mind?

When I envision it, I see him handling my body as if it were a corpse. I am floating above, looking down on the ruin.

When encountered in society, Nietzsche says, intelligent women lose their intellectual amiability and throw a harsh light on themselves, their tactics, and their objective of a public victory. The same women “become female again” and “rediscover their intellectual charm” in a dialogue for two. Charm is a bauble easily broken from the chain. Charm is the cheap way into discourse, nothing more than a token from a strip mall jewelry store.

It was as if I had been cloned, but one of me was all body and the other was no body. The part of me that was body could not move my body. The part of me that was no body had no body with which to move.

My body is not ready to emerge. Where others see rain, I see snow. Where others see spring, I see winter. Let me sleep a moment longer in the arms of Hades, my keeper.

I long to be as clear as the urine of a well-hydrated man.

I am in the field. Do not talk to me about the neighboring highway.

When did I misplace myself, what year? Where is my garland of intestines? My skin sack? Who is using my brain as a doorstop?

If my life were a video game, then I would have just leveled up from the pajamas level to the nearly presentable leisurewear level.

Look up. Today’s clouds are the sky’s continents.

Dizziness. Exhaustion. Problems with word recall. General brain fog. This is what I get for leaving the house.

I love my body in the long shadows of evening light.

God and Satan both appeared in my dreams last night. God was being aloof, and Satan was pretending to be God.

God is a slight wind through a cracked door.

Mannose-binding lectin deficiency impairs the body’s ability to utilize the immunoglobulins it creates, as well as those imported through infusions. That’s because mannose-binding lectin is what both earmarks and breaks through the hard casing of bacterial, fungal, viral, and protozoan pathogens. You can bring in all the fighters you want, but if you can’t penetrate the source of the problem, those fighters will be reduced to witnesses. Or worse, they will wander, aimless, unaware that the pathogen is even present.

The bird flew through me and emerged as a clot of blood.

There are no shades of gray because gray is a tone, not a shade.

My medical conditions are not a death sentence. They’re a life sentence.

Today, I stooped to a new low. I used a Facebook sticker as a weapon. Do not follow me into that darkness.

Contrary to popular belief, Roman vomitoriums were not places designated for vomiting. They were a means for quick escape. Large crowds could pass through the amphitheater’s vomitorium and into open space.

There’s always something dead crowding something living, like the mouse lying motionless beside two owlets. Like the clapper rail beside the mouse. Like the squirrel beside the clapper rail.

The more I want to speak, the more my mouth burns.

“At least he didn’t rape me.” That is the kind of logic many survivors of rape and child sexual abuse employ when someone revictimizes them in ways that fall short of outright rape. “At least he only did x and not y” is our way of creating a sense of empowerment and protection in the moment and not allowing the person who has hurt us to strip us of who we are. We feel that as long as it could have been worse, we can still move forward. We can become whole again, or at least we can live with the hope of becoming whole.

I am committed to the fight, not to the spats.

A poet I’ve known for years said her abuse is buried so deep she can’t imagine touching it. I don’t want to live like that, with a splinter that’s made its way to my heart. My voice keeps the splinter from going deeper.

This is not the time for easy conversations.

Conversation is the only route to understanding and even then, who knows.

Before language, my body was a verb.

Maybe a poet friends us on Facebook because they want to market their latest collection, or because their friend’s friend friended us. We might not even be acquainted with anyone beyond that first-level friend, the rest being nothing more than piggy-backed apparent connections which spread out and out from that one person. In this case, a true network is not forming. Instead we are seeing a proliferation of non-networks—collections of strangers that have the appearance of connectivity. And those strangers now have unprecedented access to us. We are no longer invisible to them, either.

I have eighty-four friends on Facebook. I have known sixty-eight of them for years or even decades. Twenty-five of them are kindred spirits. Sixteen of them are among my closest friends. I have school and work ties to twelve of them. I have the same rare disease as six of them. I will love seven of them until the day I die, and I am unwavering in my commitment to them. I have connections with each of them that extend well beyond Facebook: We are bound by shared experience and shared purpose. I know who they are. I trust them. They are neither strangers nor strangers who appear to be friends.

Theorists such as Robin Dunbar posit that our brains don’t allow us to manage more than about one hundred fifty close or relatively close relationships. We just don’t have the ability, even with established and emerging technologies, to increase the mental and emotional requirements to closely follow, and to emotionally and intellectually engage with, more than one hundred to one hundred fifty other people.

Only I can see my list of friends on Facebook. Many people make that list public, but I won’t. I don’t want to give anyone using Facebook—even someone I don’t know at all—the ability to peruse my friends list, message or send friend requests to my friends based on their connection with me, or otherwise create the impression of being something other than they are, which is a stranger.

What happens when we have more than one hundred fifty close or relatively close relationships, even on social media? Robin Dunbar says we can neither closely follow nor emotionally and intellectually engage with our connections. I argue that something else—something more important—happens as well, which is that we give rise to virtual communities which are unsafe, ones in which the bloated network’s intrinsic dysregulation leads to infractions that take on many forms, including denigration, harassment, manipulation, coercion, assault, and even rape. All the while, those who commit the infractions walk among us, glad-handing the network’s other participants, both buttressed and seemingly protected by his or her connection with those members. The perpetrator’s continued acceptance by the network seems, in itself, like a vote of confidence in the perpetrator and also a motion of no confidence against the victim. Who wants to stand up against someone so many seem to stand with? For half a decade, I did not stand up. Even now, I am not standing. Though I am no longer crouching, I’ve only half-risen. If you can’t see me, look down: I’m the one on my knees.

Just as you’ve destroyed your life, here in this / small corner, so you’ve wasted it through all the world. — C. P. Cavafy

Just as your life has been destroyed, here in this / small corner, so it has been wasted through all the world. — M Ross Henry

I am at risk of becoming the apath, the element within a broken system that enables the system to continue by tacitly accepting and supporting the role and work of the sociopath. Though I was a victim several years ago, I alone am responsible for the ongoing, relentless process of compromising myself in order to carve out a role in the system. To continue on the same path would have required becoming the very element that is essential for feeding the system’s engine, as the sociopath cannot do his or her work without a throng of apaths to actively support and further that work (or to passively look away as that work is being done). I will not victimize others indirectly. I will not shave myself off in pieces, leave gaping silences out of fear, or turn a blind eye to the truth.

I want to be as spare as an empty table, to be white and plastic and to cast off light as if it’s nothing.

Antibodies are one component of the immune system that is designed to identify and destroy pathogens, but that doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, the pathogens are not recognized as a threat. Sometimes the self is seen as the threat and attacked instead of the pathogens. Sometimes the threat is known, identified, but the antibodies cannot work together or with other parts of the immune system in order to overcome that threat. These are the lessons my body as taught me, that the disease process within me mirrors the disease process in our external systems, the systems created and advanced by mankind.

I am the apath. Spend a day as the apath and you are the apath. Spend a moment as the apath and you are the apath. A decade. A lifetime. A year.

I’ve always seen the dust on surfaces.

In the literary community, the commitment should not be to safer and more inclusive spaces. It should be to safe and inclusive spaces.

Pardon me while I cough up this wandering womb.

A dry rice cake is stuck inside my dry throat. My body imitates the dry cask model of waste disposal.

Browsing the dictionary: closet, cloven, corset, cove, cover. Do you know how many words are a variation on cover? A fungus called covered smut enters through the seed and affects the plant systemically. Passed during copulation, covering disease leads to paralysis and death in horses. The outer garment worn to conceal untidy clothes is called a coverslut, which in itself is another form of cover known as a cover-up. Cover up, coverslut, before you are covered in smut. Will you ever recover from this covering disease? Will you waste away with ease, with ease?

I think the abuser becomes part of the abused more than the abused becomes part of the abuser. With the former, there is a form of chimerism in play. With the latter? I have no idea what is in play. I can’t enter the mind or body of the abuser, other than through my role as the abused.

He appears in paintings. Once, I saw him slumped over the red wool gathered under the arms of Saint John the Baptist. He was just another animal in the wilderness that rises from the dark and returns to the dark. His skin did not cast off light.

Music interspersed with static. A static that brambles the mind. I am tired of being on hold.

The music, the static, a form of reprogramming. A piano, faint, in the background. It’s easy to play only the white keys.

The music sounds like it’s coming through water. Like a dream of the Titanic.

Finally an answer, then a transfer to the wrong line. More music. More static.

The music is the song of the abuser, dancing underwater, his suit clinging to his body like kelp.

And coral is a dead dress that tears the skin.

This hold music. Please hold. Just hold. Hold on. Hold me.

Now the word hold is foreign. The music behind the static has shifted to something more hopeful. The music is walking onto the shore, shaking off its water.

Trying to make a phone call to the South is like trying to call another era. Where is the telegraph when I need it?

And when they finally answer, their speech is heavy and slow, as if they’ve been up all night drinking. How can such an outdated processor function in today’s age of quick thought and quicker response times?

I spread molasses on my tongue to match their speech, using my long-suppressed Oklahoma drawl to my advantage. I lace my sentences with phrases they might like. I say “bless your heart” and find myself meaning it.

The indoctrination is working. The static begins to sing.

I ask them to show me the water. They take me to the cove. They ask to be alone with me. The water is static.

I ask them to show me the field. They take me to thick brush.

Their thoughts open like magnolia blossoms.

We talk of Tennessee, its sibilance, the snakes suffocating its midsection.

Tennessee is a single closet where I hid from the man who was made of hands.

We do not talk of Carolina. Sweet Carolina. The South and I will get to that in time. First, I must remove the thorns and bring up the salt I have swallowed.

They ask if I was the first. The first what, I reply. The first to swallow the water, or the first to purge it?

They ask for the name of the person I’ve called to speak with, not knowing the name has already been uttered beneath static. It is in the cove, in the thick brush. I arrange burs into small groups. I label each group: the ones that pricked; the ones that drew blood; the ones that tangled my hair.

A dream of partridges flies through the moment. I tell them the name is Daedalus, master craftsman. I wait for Icarus to fall.

Avoid the cove. Avoid the thick brush. I am being as clear as I can be. I am speaking with partridges in my mouth.

A Greek crime mars the pastoral.

Now he has a name, but is it Daedalus or Icarus?

I am wearing the dress of dead coral. I have a funeral to attend.

I ply the needle until I am stitched into this garment. I am the fixed place, the fixed time, the in-and-out motion of metal. I am the point and the empty head. I will wear my brittle gown to the ball.

—

The line “A Greek crime mars the pastoral” is from Wunderkammer, by Cynthia Cruz.

The last section is in response to Friedrich Nietzsche’s observation that “Women … speak like creatures who have for millennia sat at the loom, or plied the needle, or been childish with children.”

I have all these memories, but I don’t know if they are of the life I had or the life I wanted.

I’m so nice to people these days, they have trouble understanding why they don’t like me.

We feed words to the air, not to each other.

The dangerous poem is the one that maims, not the one that describes the maiming.

The people who tell you to forgive and forget? They’re the ones who stand to benefit from your doing so.

Too many people are writing about boring things.

No power without sociopathy.

Show me the figurative language in the office memo and I’ll show you the employee who’s shown the door for wasting that much time crafting an office memo.

The book of faces. The book of names. The book of facades. The book of shames. The book of fables. The book of famines. The book of sames. The book of lames. The book of dames. The book of games. The book of games. The book of games.

I am done saying too little. I’ve said too little for too long. I’ll probably say too much until I figure out how to not say too little without saying too much. (Even that sentence was too much about too little. Are you taking notes on my nothings?) Bear with me or don’t. (Don’t bare with me. I know that’s how it sounded, but it’s not what I wrote. I’m the one who feels naked and vulnerable in this status message, not you, so grin a bear it, even if barely.)

Don’t say I got this way on my own. I’ll give you the names of my makers. They’re all right here in this book of the face. This book of the farce. This scrolling book of names a Rolodex of shames. They are never far, never far, until they share space with grubs, like the first man who made me, not Adam but his descendant. He was bright as the sun. That’s why they called him Ray. Now I’ve named. Now I’ve named. Now I’ve named the first name.