Hell to play, already cast
1. Slow slow, gentle, we’ll have none of this wrenching up—wrench her from the ground? and you gone from heah. How long how long been in the ground? Them on the ground the builders, the builders you smash, without them, you fool you foolz you makers of barren fields, without them you no have no thing to eat, to say, no poem, no music, no dance. You bad legged, not from yr warz you bad legged from kick your dogs and kick the doctors, the cooks. You go up the stage rip down the curtain, you want the velvet for royal cloaking, behind it, beauty you cannot fathom, you cannot fathom, you banish you banish but they no vanish, hear them, hear them singing, hear the birds and the children, and up on the stage every ghost you make singing, singing, remember you say?—No singing! Just you, your song, the whine of, You own this and you own that; the groan, of leading out missiles on a chain like a dog you kicked, knowing hell to come. Each hell—and you good at hell—each hell worse, you fool you club of foolz you damned—you know you damned? We have no lodging in hell for you at the moment—so full—you laughing? You think we go enslave them who come across, give them no hardhat, to build you up a fine hell? Already built! You wrencher, you laugher, you thief, you bulldozer. Get ‘im out of here, I say, take that velvet from him. You leave the stage bare and no mystery now. Velvet cannot cover. Crime too big. Criminal too small. Left heart in the toilet. Brain in the trash. What’s left of you need no velvet. What’s left still wants to make hell. Now, you asking hell for lodging? You’ll get it. Perma-lodging. Perma-hunger. No more perma-shoot shoot shoot holding up your kill for comedy. Your ego-go. You gone be the comedy now. Get it? You get it? Wrench her up harsh from the ground you made a horror pool? and your, Ah, look I saved the girl ain’t cut it. Take ‘im out to the lodge. Here, a leaflet it say Good rooms all taken, long took up. You ain’t no builder but your lack of skills be necessary now—carry them blocks! Make you a little shut-in. Sip the ground water—you know, Your recipe— Recipe: dust of home and body, bone and blood, phosphorous (careful careful no greedy fast drink it’ll burn a little) don’t break your tooth on shrapnel, on buttons and zippers. The shoes be gone no worries. Don’t bump your head on the missile. It’s what we got to hold up the ceiling of the room. We think it’s a dead one, or you’ll be. (it’s a joke, fool, a joke, have a laugh.) Big empty bowl there you can piss in, catch bugs to eat, slosh them around, you gotta soup! Wanna better wait for the food?—it’ll come when she say. This sky, you’ll never see no more. No sky for you! but you safe in your shut-in, it’s concrete, slit for air. And we’ll leave a sharpie in there. You can write your mem-WAZ!
2. got the foolz outta heah. Now, we can work. Bring her up, bring her up from the ground, she already singing, new and she singing, each word treasure in the ear. She can’t carry all that up from in the ground, but she’ll bring it in the treasure words. Harsh, many. Soft, too, the cradles we make of ourselves as we bring her up.
The breaking that
I don’t have no language my You think I do You see it in eyes my your face goes wet by spit of tongue my curse
I can say my eyes but why I put the gift of sight after the me of I, the mine of eye while volcano spew fires of no breathe and choking I am choking but you think I am only me
Laughing in the fires at that
I was never only me, I was after a while stepped forth gave talk
You it was pressed word into word into mouth my by rape of tongue so, lang lang lang song my, unlanged Never put the gift of sight after the owning Never imagine, you brutes, that I am on- ly me the me of you The door of sight don’t open for that one that own the me of you
I’m sing, but you think it song only song, only thing and otra vez otra vex I’m tell you wrong a gain
I’m sing apostrophizing the oil rigs apostolic of the forests devotee of oceans Not, what you think you
See?
Song in me sure, but I no give you song my
Go now
Jump in the fire you make and hear your song the howl you make in green world my
Sudden
Subway, loaded bullet barreling through the tunnel, into the air of light a bridge as we all are bridges, miraculous, and this ride miraculous, not because there is prayer but there is prayer, not because I am alive but I am alive, but because you are, and you, not tu but ustedes, as in small neighborhoods of three and four, two and each one who lives an expanse that has no end
There is prayer in Spanish three women holding their Bibles as if they have not been beaten with them but instead arrived at compassion for the other little villages in the subway car, the three reflected in the deep waters they call god’s sea
There is song an aria flourishing forth from a slight girl standing at the pole, perhaps down which the spirits enter
There is prayer from the men with sidecurls davening stirring the waters the jewels of the sea come up into light
More prayer rippling in the giggles of a child whose mother whispers in his ear, whose hair shines in the light like a tangle of poem
Soon we will go underground again, that bullet relentless in its job: to burrow into the city,
but for now in the light over the sea the buildings raised like something growing around a field, perhaps a field of prayer
for now we are crossing a bridge, and the bridge is pure light touching everyone riding toward the next stop
Anya Achtenberg is a fiction writer and poet whose publications include the novel Blue Earth, and the novella The Stories of Devil-Girl; poetry collections The Stone of Language, and, I Know What the Small Girl Knew; and individual works in many literary magazines, including Harvard Review; Gargoyle Magazine; Mizna; Tupelo Quarterly; Poet Lore; New Letters; Another Chicago Magazine, and Taos Journal of Poetry. Her recently completed poetry collection, Watch the Rising, seeks a home. She is close to completing History Artist, a novel long-in-progress, with an ensemble of characters connected to three genocides and their aftermaths, and centered around a young Cambodian woman born with the U.S. bombing of Cambodia. Anya consults with writers individually and teaches three series of fiction/creative nonfiction/multi-genre creative writing courses: 1) Writing for Social Change: Re-Dream a Just World; 2) The Disobedient Writer Workshops; and 3) Say it! Digalo! A series of standalone multi-genre workshops (both craft-expanding and generative of new work).
See https://anya-achtenberg.com/ for more information. Please see her Substack, Writing in Upheaval, here: https://anyaachtenberg.