The Excelano Project Official Blog

The End

Chloe Wayne — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:05:07 +0000

to my best friend:

i know one day you will unlearn the algebra of his face. on nights when insomnia jackknifes its way across your eyelids, you will unfeel the cold in its blade.

its been three years. you’ve been trying to find a wrinkle of rainbow in your bruises, a rainbow you swear he put there back when he’d look at you that way. eyes clinging, he is chewing gum.

and sometimes your footsteps lose themselves in translation, but i know you’ll leave him. i know you’ll find your eyes again. you used to sing from the green melting into your pupils, there were mockingbirds there. you marooned them on a question mark two years ago. they’re silent, but i hear them smiling. breasts bursting like banana trees on fire and a song in undertow. they haven’t died yet.

Allergy

Melissa Pavri — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:27:31 +0000

i think your skin is
born of bumblebees
not the kind that sting
the kind that comb
elbow through mess just to prove that
something can come of chaos
hover hum between flailing and dying
and find honey in the wingspan
of the air between our noses
it baffles me
how a swarm of laughter can silence
every qualm my hands have ever had
how the cacophony of your breath
can drum my thoughts into
the hexagon of your smile
i wish i understood the allergy of distance
the cloud caught truth
that you cant outgrow giants
or mothers scorn
or six hours airborne
wish i could ease with will
the hive that swells lip and flesh
to the knot of stories in our knees
that cant seem to come undone
the ones that fret like fire and
slither like steam
through the thicket of today
they are the seed of you
make my tongue sound spring
and lose the lisp of winter
why is it that women must be linguists
i pray they forget how to spell
long enough to learn the names
of the boys in their back pockets

Her Story Is Strange

Lauren Yates — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 18:00:19 +0000

There’s something about the post-punk silence of nighttime that makes me doubt my soul. That makes me define things in terms of what they follow instead of what they are. Someday, I hope my life will be as interesting as a rock-and-roll portrayal of history. Something to be envied. Something to be admired for its brilliant art direction and cinematography, but panned for its lackluster script. In simpler terms, something boring but pretty. But I’ll only be in it for the costumes. And the one critic who will understand and say, “Her story is strange. At night she levitates above her bed. She’s over the age of sixteen, but she’s still not a witch yet. Kudos for not succumbing to clichés.”

One Night

Alysia Harris — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:41:30 +0000

The night fought with itself
like a thing that fights
in the night.
It could not see who it fought in the dark.
All it could see was it was dark,
Could see the skin of the dark.

The night fought the moon with a night stick
in the dark
One night, two moons ago.

Two moons ago, one night
the moon fought the dark.
It was a pale moon.
The moon looked like a moon
full of rocks.
The moon loved the night
It threw itself at the night.
The moon got its rocks off.

The moon hated the night.
Threw rocks at the night.
It was a Palestinian Moon.
A big pale Palestinian moon.
The night was not.
The night was black.
The night was a nigger.
A nigger named Night.
A muslim named Moon.

So basically there were two men in the night
under the moon fighting love…

But men love fighting, so were they really men?
Fine.
Two women in the night
Under the moon fighting love.
Women love to fight.
Especially over lovers
Especially about love.
Two women in the night under the moon fighting about love.

It was a love tap
It was a love punch.
It was a punch, love.
Run in the morning.
No, I stick to the Night.
It was a love slap.
His hand felt like a night stick.
He hits what he loves.
So long as he doesn’t leave what he loves.
Men don’t love love.
Men fight things they don’t love.

So it was two men in the night fighting love
And men love a good fight
and never leave a good fight.
Two women hating the fight.
But loving the men.
And women never leave a good man.
So there was hate and love one night under the moon
Two moons ago.

Band-aid

Marion Smallwood — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:57:52 +0000

Bless you.
Thank you for forgetting
to cover your mouth.
I heard you sneeze
all the smoke from your teeth.
It sounded like
cigarettes drowning in jukeboxes
so I knew to leave.

You told me you stopped smoking.

But I wonder now,
what was in all that gray?
I can only guess
there was a coat,
a sock, a pair of books
and a ‘we have nothing in common anymore’.
I don’t breathe much these days.

Avoid me like beestings.
Please don’t look at me,
my hands are raining earthquakes.
I’m kidding,
try and pull a touch or two out of them
before I get wise enough to shove them back
in my pocket.
I will
because I can’t get your stench out my eyes,
you’re making them feel like mildew.
But maybe that was my fault,
it was snowing
when I introduced my face to the sky.
Sop me up with the storm coming,
pinch me to a wall and blow me down,
don’t let me go,
I’ll choke you ‘til you’re brown in the face.

I thought of you
right before the morning,
it felt like ripping.
I woke up melting,
my knees crack so oddly now.

My tattoo upside-down is your name.
I thought somewhere in the middle we tried.
By the way,
this isn’t a poem
it’s a band-aid.

Winter

Justin Ching — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:58:03 +0000

A winter’s night,
Haven’t seen you in awhile,
Apologize if I’m having trouble making eye contact,
But you’re the same kind of gorgeous I remember,
And I’m not ready for that yet,
The weather still reminds me of the excuses we made to play Eskimo beneath bed your sheets,
When our noses were the best kissers this side of the north pole,
Not like those reckless things below,
American lips,
Too much tongue,
And not enough substance,
We used to arc flight paths across the heartland,
Lie upside down and flip them into the widest smiles from California to Manhattan,

You’re not as warm as you used to be,
And I chose a crowded restaurant where everyone knows me,
So I won’t make a scene this time ‘round.
Whether on a stage or a familiar place,
I’m always best when people are watching,
But there’s only been one person,
I’ve never been afraid to see me for who I am, naked,
And it’s been far too long,
How many times can I drive you home,
Watch the front door close stoplight red,
And wonder would you let me run it if no one’s around,

When I got home, I went to play basketball,
Because it’s the only thing I’m worse at than you,
And I need to feel good about us again,

It snowed on the walk back,
And I swore the sky was trying to romance me,
Sierra Leone mine diamonds from the stratosphere,
Have you ever tried to catch a dying star on your tongue,
It tastes nothing like forever,
More like innocence,
The dust of the February wind dancing halos under each lonely lamp post,
Until the earth is a blank slate again,

But I know now we can’t start over,
Because we don’t stick right anymore,
Love is not always white as wedding gowns,
Sometimes you have to get your hands dirty,
Like New Orleans jazz and the hurricane season,
The grit of brass band parades when the muck is up to your knees
Believe we can rebuild a home out of anything,
Take me back to Dixieland, I’m cold.

Identity

Marion Smallwood — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 08:03:48 +0000

i am
fading
awkwardly
along
the edges
like
kindergarten
breath
stuck to
window-shaped
nothing.

your
fingerprint
is in the
middle
of me,
sopping up
everything
like
a brand new
rag.

i am
still
sort of
foggy
and worn,
awkward
and
melting.

just
finish
already
and

rub me
off

clean.

Shiver

Melissa Pavri — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:21:54 +0000

there is a shiver of stars
beneath the blue moon of climax
quiet as creed but present as prayer
i wonder if men know the light year
between trust and comfort
the false skip of stone from ear to Jupiter
a sliver of sex shouldering a galaxy
the tales of fancy that twist from wishbone thighs
are two lips shy of honest
but faces feign belief as often as young men sin
women blush like plums
and burst for no good reason
they see the pulp of pleasure in the navel of orange
and the forgiving flesh of mango
beg two eager open hands
too young to know the meaning of defeat
a mother who can teach her son
to peel a fruit with thoughtful fingers
a son who knows a woman is an orchid
with a silk ribbon of tender between her petals
a woman who knows how to fish
the pearl from her oyster without a man
these are the artists of the earth
who paint salvation with their tongues
and mushroom bliss by fingerwidth
but there are still those
who don’t know how to use the brush
float marooned in a sea of wet paint waiting
for the selfish stroke of another
this is for the women who do not rattle
who snake selfless from rapture
for fear of waking the world
for the women who pinch constellations to shine their teeth
and grin only because the moon is telling them to
there is no shame in spilling secret
there is no shame in breaking
in wanting the sea and the sun in the same pant
the orgasm of life was born for the woman
for the pomp of passion
and the want of circumstance
there is no shame in a parade of pansies
cracking at the same supple axis for a bud of joy
and wrestling with the static of thoughtful faces
let them weep magenta
and turn in unison from the December sky

Irony in Retrospect

Lauren Yates — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:50:21 +0000

When I was a little girl, I said to my grandfather:
“I know my mind isn’t ripe yet, but can we copyright it anyway?
Someday my ideas will be good enough to steal.”

Parade

Alysia Harris — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:29:30 +0000

…counts old money its years in rooms and imported price
no future/slave in sight…

Separating sea and segregation is a thin
diet of road
where during the day I guarantee
each house sits
bloated, white wedding dress.
Longed after but not
touched the houses
crystallize.
And the afternoon, inside an iron
maiden, sobs its age.

Time changes sex.
And when night
is at its most masculine,
stroking its mountain beard
full of star lice,
the antebellum guards stand
watch, platoons of porches
stifling laugh lines
in their floor boards.

For you, love and slavery are the same beautiful.
Only a virgin’s imagination has dreamt the sordid adulteries
spreading hand to mouth
in the spaces
between a light switch.

[What an Old Southern trick! Secrets sausaged between who we are
and what we’ve done.
Secrets only
the help can whisper ]

In my cab, a man with powdered sugar English
shows me the southern hospitality only middle easterners know.
He hears in my voice a twinge of distain for the Anglicized
name he slave-labors in. Mansur,
I too know the sound of
distance. He sees draped
around my neck
the rags of my best friend
and Home [previously unwelcome] bullies its way through his throat traffic.

“You speak Arabic?”

“You are my family.”

I think Home few times in life.
But to call today familiar
would be too white of a lie.
It is mine.
Down to the hopeless toes, five peninsulas praying to God-rock.
It is mine.
Every confederate-refugee-thick-tongued-lowland-skin-covered inch of it.
It is mine the way
baby teeth were

mine… an interesting word for possession.
They mined the banks of the river
all the way to the Big House
looking for their bones.
A fortune
promised in the break.

…Swamp seek
Knee deep
Air boat
Lynch rope…

And somewhere
nearly far
enough away
people are spoons, salvaging the nothingness
and serving it over rice.
Everyone is a hunger
pain’s earthquake further from whole
closer to gaps with
another beginning to stomach ache.
Another land before time
that could have been mine and was almost
theirs
but today is standing in its aftershock
philosophizing over rubble.

One Home
3 generations still digging underneath it.
Betting everything on the dog fight between poverty and pride.
I overheard them
talking triggers and Patois
in kitchens, stranding
history
on the gutter islands of our palettes.
Je ne sais pas le mot pour la mienne.
Is it a presidential palace
dipping against
the skyline, looking nothing like a tango?
Mish arfa al kalima lii baytii, lii 3latii.
Is it the skinny neck of a desert, guillotined between
some people and no place?
Is it swamps and Spanish moss with Corinthian capitals whispering about wealth?
Is it strip malls so suburban it’s sickening?
I’ve walked in rooms black women were raped in.
Then went shopping.
I don’t know the word for home.
Is it anything
close to bastard?