qarrtsiluni

by Holly Anderson

So    now
I take the car service way out there for what?
To THE Bronx? What is that anyway?
Some wrong turn a Dutchman took?
It’s all gone. None of it is
here: Fulton cobbles dipped in pewter, the shitting,
shrieking gulls
wearing their necklaces of fish guts and dawn-tinted tiaras.
This new joint looks like an airport.
The sweet sweet reek and bladderwrack all gone.   All gone.
Some of those weisenheimers always called out ‘Nice rack, Annie’
my buoyant my
bouncing clouds of joy       Oh!
how the boys enjoyed the chest that some god somewhere
gave me to share
joyfully with all the world. All gone.
A bit of luck for the really young ones now.
A floppy bit of rest for me old market boyos.
Game over.
Nothing left to sell.
Better to bundle these riddled bones and storied skin
mottled blue and tallow yellow, red bursts and pin dots. What the hell happened to the queenly scroll of vellum that men pored over, studied and adored?

so I just watch wonder
and wait now for warmth to find me    again.
Tucked up in a tidy corner with some busted flat, waxed boxes underfoot
and a tower of clean crates at my back.
Dozing.   Nothing left to sell.
I’m happy to sleep. When I sleep I can fly. Not so dramatic that
just    me running    hard
running full-out down a lake road    sun-blistered and so
much hair   where is that hair now?
The way it wagged like a tail   like a curtain   like water tumbling over rocks
my mouth laughing the panting   he is chasing my fine frame wanting me again wanting to worship at my freckled altar
but    I’m always running   hard          and then
and then I’m lifting off     tanned legs bicycling over spruce tops far
far beneath the skittish clouds    and I can read all the
alphabets of pine pitch birds bottle green and blue sky symbols.
Flying             high    where it’s clear and it’s cold as pack ice.
Where it’s polar. Where it’s quiet. It’s so quiet.

Maybe I’m a satellite.

‘AKA Annie’ was inspired by a New York Times article about Gloria Wasserman’s storied life dated Oct. 10, 2010

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Some of Holly Anderson’s recent work can be heard on Peg Simone’s 2010 record Secrets From the Storm (Table of the Elements/Radium). Forthcoming in 2011: ‘The Night She Slept With A Bear,’ a collection of flash fictions and mesostics shipping with an original soundtrack by Chris Brokaw from Publication Studio in Portland OR.