Metal making love to metal in a
distant but familiar place. The
calling of a feast I was not privy to.

Yet somehow, these echoes persist
in their fragile lives, filling the
empty spaces of this heart
as stuffing does a turkey.

This heart, the organ I think with.

The one that recalls every beating
it took in the name of survival.

The one that always strives to
forgive, but never forgets,
because it is also a muscle.

It remembers.

The last gift I clearly remember my
mother giving my father was a
set of silver handled kitchen knives.

And if I ever found courage to cut the
silence between us with my tongue,
I believe she would say the last
gift my father gave to her was my
youngest sister, who is like one of
a set of silver handled kitchen knives.

Teeth forever showing in my presence,
a serrated smile that slices into me
without causing me to crumble
at the sharpness of her mind, as I
do at the sharpness of intentions
behind the extension of knives as gifts.

Since the day my parents cut
the nostalgia loose from my
childhood like burnt crust, I have
dropped crumbs of myself
everywhere I made travel.

In the ears of women. A bowl of chili
cooked in a nearby soup kitchen. The
palms of a God begging the world for
recognition or a dime of every dollar.

Anywhere except the basket
where I was bred and baked.

Because my left foot always wants to leave,
and my right foot correct turns wrong,
they could never agree to walk in
straight lines, so I lost my way home.

Found myself sitting at a table
full of surrogates who carried
me in closeness for the holiday
like a son of shared blood.

They were unawares to my hemophilia.
Had no knowledge my family was fine
china not to be removed from the curio,
did not recognize my meekness as shock
at seeing meals shared between people.

Supper was a solitary endeavor where
I came from. It was separating the
foods on your plate like parents into
different rooms to protect the taste of each.

It was discussing politics with a television
resting idly on cable news. It was
swallowing your pride because you
had not yet learned to cook.

But time has passed through me like heat.
The yeast within my voice has risen,
and friends have been fed by my words.

I have grown, only to see much
of what was with me, still is.

I still dine with a television. I still avoid
cooking whenever possible since some
pots are better left unstirred. I still
separate my foods with restraining orders.

The shame of it all is that a meal will
never satisfy when one fears becoming
what they eat, and so I am left with this.

A stomach full of holes fit to sheath the
knives my father forgot to take with him.

By habit, I sleep atop my belly at night
and drive them deeper into myself.
My silence, an accessory to the crime.

Not to say there was ever a crime,
just that there were victims.

Not to say I am one of them, just that
I would like to avoid making more.

And so, whenever I find myself in that place,
I take that youngest sister, who is like
one of a set of silver-handled kitchen knives,
and bring her head gently into my gut
where I have fashioned a groove for her.

Tell her to be still in what she is, since
she is a blade, and life cannot always
be trusted with a gift such as hers.

Just look to me as proof.
We came from the same set.
Four forged with the mettle to love.

The spring semester auditions for The Excelano Project will be Sunday, January 22 from 8-10pm at the Kelly Writers House. Please bring 3-4 minutes of original material to read for us. It doesn’t have to be memorized.

Please bring copies of your poetry to leave with us (even if it’s memorized).

My toes tip toward the drain
The water streams down into the dark
A place for forgotten things.
We couldn’t forget that dark void,
Though we tried
We all walked around it
But my mother would ask questions of the empty,
Yelling across the space as if she hoped to be an echo
We only heard echoes.
I don’t remember that year,
Only a faint ringing in my ears
My mother would ask questions of the empty
The dips of her skin coupling her mouth making parenthesis to indicate she only asked in a whisper
So that my brothers and I would only think it a lullaby
Or song jumbling through her thoughts
Lining her day with a murmur
I think we knew.

My father would love that he’s become something of a song.
He played instruments like chess
Would pull me into his chest
His bass humming through me
My memory of his voice is a shout out the front door
He had glasses round like a question, tortoise-shelled,
Weeping from slender earpieces.
They were as heavy as I imagine his thoughts to be.
I imagine what his thoughts would be sometimes.
How he would hum his lips while thinking of me.
I only rarely think about the crook of his elbow,
Where my hand would be on a softly lit day,
I in a white dress and
He waist deep in memories.
I only rarely think of that.
I more often think about what his face looked like,
Find that I remember the half-finished drawing I made of him better than his actual face,
The drawing only his round glasses, his brow folded in thought, his eyes not looking at me.

I used to whisper my own questions.
At night in my bed, with my ceiling as a canvas for thought
I knew every dip of shadow,
How the blind-stripes would chase across its surface
As my worries dovetailed with my prayers.
I asked
Let everything work out.
I don’t really know why that’s what I asked for,
When it obviously had not.
Let everything work out.
What did I mean?
My dark ceiling taught me that an entity can be the same even as light and shadow fall across it
And that God will always be listening if you think he is.
I’ve decided now
That if I am ok with how life turns me
Then everything will always work out.

I am standing in the bathtub
Crying.
And If I don’t say anything, nothing will echo.
If I don’t talk in the morning, my words won’t settle
Around my feet
And If I don’t speak his name, then it will never fall like the leaves have been recently.

Because I come from a winding road of women
who still collect the tragedies of love in their hands
like the doorknobs they’ve turned upon one another,

You are still the children of your mothers,
On bad days, you are your best friend’s anonymous hero. On good ones, you are your own.
You are descendants of explorers who once cupped moondust in their palms
and felt a pulse louder than their own.
You are ancestors of future prodigies who will save this world from what we are doing to it.
They will forgive us for our crimes and ask more of their own children.

You are who you were before you stopped wanting to be.
Before you settled for less than what you deserved
but told yourself it was the best you could get.
Remember the way you spoke your name when you were still proud of the person it labeled.
Remember your second grade birthday cake, and ask yourself why everything nowadays is tasteless.
Find the colors of your dreams before they greyed in the dustbowls of your eyes.
Find your first heart, the one you grew a couple sizes too good for,
and put it back on your sleeve where it’s meant to be.

Because you are beautiful, beauty yet to behold itself,
like the first ring of “middle c” in a deaf man’s ear after signing his last breath,
like the hallelujah chorus of a godless but holy nation
who doesn’t need a heaven to tell it right from wrong.
Perhaps forgiveness for our enemies grows inside bombs and crumbled buildings.
Perhaps every man’s secret is stored in the chest of a woman he loves,
because our secrets are the same.

So let us praise each other’s deepest shames,
Let the sunlight slap your scars in the face and remind them
that nothing on your body is undeserving of warmth.
Your body is a miracle waiting to change someone’s life.
You have the backbone of Demeter,
the heel of Achilles that doesn’t cover itself with armour,
but lets vulnerability breathe properly.
You have the eyes of God herself
and the palms of an Empire who knows its future because it knows its history.

So get excited for Monday mornings.
Spin proudly, across broad street in red heels and a rippling yellow dress.
Rush hour will forget why it was ever in a hurry.
The 65 year old man on the corner will ask you where you’ve been all his life.
and you will say – “I’ve been busy asking myself what I’m doing with my life.”
Your life is a handpicked continuation of someone else’s that didn’t make it this far.

So take a moment, feel the patch of skin behind your ear,
inside your forearm, between your first and second toe —
Yes, there are tender places where we have all been spared of callouses
from walking too far, too late at night with people who wanted too much from us.

We are young in all the same parts —
untouchable, infinite,
our palms are still pink as the sidewalk chalk we used to spell our names backwards with
And there were once days we didn’t mind so much the backwards —
when you still believed that if you cut a doll’s hair, it would grow back
that if you ate too many sunflower seeds, they would blossom in your belly.

That was before everyone started asking each other
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Who says we ever stop growing?
And why must we be something besides what we are now?

I’ve come to the conclusion that my best days are reincarnations of my childhood.
When I decided I wanted to be a teacher, waitress, professional sumo wrestler
and President of the United States between the beginning and end of recess.
When I was forgetful enough never to run out of first times.
And there are second chances everywhere, so there will always be first times.

9:00-11:00 pm

Harrison Auditorium (Penn Museum)
3260 South Street
Philadelphia, PA

Tickets are $8 on the walk, $9 online, and $10 at the door.

Online tickets are available at http://www.excelanoproject.ticketleap.com/opiate-utopia

A group rate of $7 per person will be available for groups of 6 or more. Please e-mail group rate requests to excelano.project@gmail.com.

Ticket sales on Locust Walk will begin on Monday, November 28.

I look into it and see nothing,
aside from white space, that is.

II.
The pages are blank of confessions
like a virgin’s heart to their
spouse the night of the honeymoon.

And like said virgin’s body,
they are so very inviting.

Inviting, the way a guitarist’s
forearms are to the sharp
wit of a needle, saying
make of me what I wish.

III.
I discover an urge to recreate the
world along two dimensions and
simplify things a bit. I know depth
need not be the literal to be reality.

IV.
I write my name inside of it,
a first act of self-correction.

V.
The ink bleeds a little bit,
as if it is rising
from the paper itself.

VI.
I impulsively listen to The Wind Cries Mary.

VII.
I realize that art and pain
have never been more
intimate than in a tattoo.

This is without doubt
something to aspire to.

VIII.
I write a poem about my lack
of composure affront the sharp
wit of a needle, sewing my fate.

IX.
I look into myself and see nothing,
aside from white space, that is.

X.
I look into my book,
and see two dimensions,
working as three.

I made it what I wished.

whenever, wherever, whatever

You moved like ink.
I remained stationary,
waiting for a word, a mark, a stain,
a stinging tentacle, or perhaps, a slap.
Fingers testing my temple
so I prayed the pain away.
You wrote me a sonnet of solace
in the Braille of bruises.

whenever, wherever, whatever

It didn’t matter. Your story’s setting, that is.
I am your paper thin confidante.
Make a letter out of me, signed with
backhand typeface. Send the world out to see.
Me? I’m content with warning: you can
hear the canvas cries when his fingers paint.

whenever, wherever, whatever