June 2011

VOL XIX, Issue 6, Number 218

Editor: Klaus J. Gerken

Production Editor: Heather Ferguson

European Editor: Mois Benarroch

Contributing Editors: Michael Collings; Jack R. Wesdorp; Oswald Le Winter

Previous Associate Editors: Igal Koshevoy; Evan Light; Pedro Sena

ISSN 1480-6401

Letters to the Bat

by

Rebecca Lu Kiernan
   

Letters To the Bat

by

Rebecca Lu Kiernan


My Hatred for You


My hatred for you is tie-dyed
With burnt edges in tangerine-black.

It smells like volcano ash,
Bourbon spilled on sweaty sheets,  
And kerosene dripping on withering violets.

It tastes like stale gingerbread,
Raw onions and ruined olives.

It sounds like a lightning struck branch breaking
After shaky months of amnesia.

It looks like traffic lights
Through the black sack
With which the kidnapper 
Just covered your head.

It feels like the tail wag of the dog
Forgiving his abandoner
On the cold cement floor of the pound. 



Mercy
    
lips in chapped neon tangerine
snagged red fishnet stockings
nipples glittering gold
 
he pays a girl to dance like love
 
grips his bourbon and seven
as if it is the combination lock
to the portal
of the past
and he could
unwreck
his unrecognizable self
 
the hungry dog dances
at the clink of its bowl being filled
let's call that love too
a creature with no options
like the fishnet girl
who sometimes gives away sex for free
because it feels like love
 
she goes unbitten
it would be cruel to render
such a life immortal
sometimes even a vampire
finds a molecule of mercy



The Tiger Has Come to Town

He lives in tents, trailers, abandoned taxis.
He eats tarantulas, tacos, tongues.
He loves the tango, tektite jewelry,
Tumbleweed, tearjerkers and trolleys.
He is telepathic, 
Tremulous during storms,
Tolerable as a house guest,
Tiptoeing in his torn, bloodstained robe 
With morning coffee.
He is terrified 
Of turbulence on airplanes, tunnels,
The Taliban and trench mouth.

The tiger has come to town.
He lays out a shell game on the table.
A time travel device, a ticking bomb,
A secret I can never tell.
The choice is impossible.
I take them all.
Each in their own chapter.



Fire-swept


I will be in Phoenix for a week.
I have left you a jar of locusts
With unnerving human faces,
A box of rusted keys 
That match erased doors
Of all the fire-swept houses
Of your regrettable dark lives.

Just past the bluebells in the garden
I have left you
An organized hive of bees.
The ether is in the garage
Between the shovel and kerosene.
(I started to kill them.)
(Did not want to leave you without a project.)

I have left five newborn kitten heads
In the freezer next to the deer tongues.
I have peppered love letters
In spider webs and the snake nest.
I buried a few in the yard.

Don't save them for a rainy day.
Read them
While you can remember 
You were young and loved.

Use them up as lullaby-es
For your tumultuous upside-down dreams
Just in case I do not return.
Do not play with fire
Or the ashes in the urn.



The Longest Month of the Year

Deceased loves have been daring to visit me
Inside my insomniac vigil.
One brushed my breast with an orchid
The blueblack of a bruise,
Withered petals
Breaking into dust against my flesh.
One kissed my neck
With grey, icy, smoke-tainted lips.

Their unwelcome clairvoyance
Cannot be denied.

My ruined lover sleeps in our silky red sheets,
Becoming increasingly transparent.
When he leans into visibility
And I can see
At least
The shape of what was once a man.
He says loving me was his imagination,
Recites a list of my character flaws.

He cups his hands so tenderly
(As he once held my face
The day he said we were soulmates)
And scoops up the silence of the floral room
Slowly and without mercy
Attempting to bury me alive.

But I have been talking to scientists
Who have charted out the approaching storm,
The deceptive calmness of the sea,
Sharks washing up on the shore,
Birds of prey falling from the sky,
The decibel of silence 
That keeps a man awake, shrieking.



Identity
 
It blackens my heart to tell you
The moment your wings shrivel up
And you become a man
Dropping down, stunned, 
Into the home we share.
 
You stagger an hour
Accepting what you are,
My Darling, Dark, Disturbed and Hopeless Creature.
 
I must protect you from the light.
I keep my heart on Dim
Hoping my disenchantment
Does not get caught in my throat
When I say those words to you
Designed to numb your misery.
 
Unalterable Path,
Loveless Beast,
The blueblack shriek of night
Fits you like a custom made suit.
 
If I wished to hurt you
I would reveal
You chose this life.
You were not born to it.
But, who else would you be?
Add up the hours, the days, the months,
The little deaths that went unmarked.
 
End it not for me.


 
13 Step Recovery

This blurry sheet of rain won't stop. It knows.
It could pummel for eternity
And never wash this street clean
Of the words that fell
On the bent blue orchids, wolfkiss lilies, the orange grove.
The ice paralyzes everything.
  
If spring ever has the faith to rise,
I hope the words unkind
Did not kill the roots of flowers,
The laughter of future hours,
The neon feathered birds
That trust enough to light 
On the recovering trees.



Coefficient
 
Angels are coming to cripple your wings.
It's not going to be a gang fight.
It won't be violent.
They will come in inexplicable tenderness and mercy.
You will be rendered unconscious by their grace.
 
When you wake
Disheveled, stiff, flightless,
You will have gazed into
Their prescient eyes
And felt their unwavering hands.
 
This loss will be a fair exchange,
 
Touched by the constant
That is a measure
Of the soul.



Bent Arrow

There's a bee in my honey,
Tarantula in my pumpkin soup,
Rattlesnake in my Cheerios.

I want one more breath before drowning,
A kiss before the guillotine,
Cup of violet tea before the train wreck.

Pink lightning forks the Destin night sky.
How to keep the Florida stars from breaking?

Yesterday smells like octopus sushi
After a day in the sidewalk sun,
201 wet cigarettes in a beer bottle.

Judas takes his German Shepperd, Russ 
On an icy vacation to inhospitable Mars.
The dog gets cat-scratch fever.
Judas gets beaten up in bars.

I do not want a kiss before the guillotine!

I want to walk
The kaleidoscopic orchid gardens
Of Saint Roberts Monastery for the blind. 
I want to pluck dragon's head lily 
Rocket launch daisies , batwing heliotrope
And moonlight chrysanthemums
From the caution-posted forest
And scan the willow bark with my fingers
For an answer carved in Braille.
I want to watch the monks build sandcastles
And buy the hummingbird cake they baked
And write your name
On a request for intercessory prayer.

Gotham is burning and no one can save it.
Pow! Bang! Oomph!
A comic book falls out of the trash.
Stunningly beautiful women in cages.
I don't worry so much why you bought it
As I contemplate why you threw it away.
The only ting that was true?

The dog cries bourbon tears and floods the house
Because no one is home when you are home.
She eats the window sills, breaks down the fence,
Gnaws down the orange tree.
You stroll the aisles of Sears for tools
To repair her destruction.
She is helpless to repair yours.

I would like to buy back a vowel,
Solve the riddle of the tangled sheets.

Quicksand is the scourge 
Of Bent Arrow Drive
Killing slowly with every attempt to escape.
Now you know how it feels to be eaten alive.

There's a bee in my honey, a stinger in my tongue.
My fault for dining at your silent table.
Only you could blacken an angel.



Please Excuse My Absence from Myself

Reality, what a symptom of withdrawl.
Rain fire. Run wolf. Poison pill.
Rock, paper, scissors, a slash of words.
Rake the crippled flowers
From the ice-glazed yard.
The haunt of this house
Is lifting its fingers.
Seven bats
Were just a confusion of crows.
Nothing is exactly as it seems.
Nor, is it the broken tooth
Of a vampire's dream.



Impact Rocks

There lingers a tektite statue
Of an unlikely angel
On the stained glass nightstand.

She knows how easily worlds collide.

Her parts were gathered 
From the strewnfield
In the seventies.

Her halo is the perfect ablation
Of molten glass,
Wings of shatter cone,
Arms, hydrothermal selenite,
Eyes, carved of shocked basement,
Gown, impact breccia.

Her lips and hands 
Are almost impercepibly darkened
With the faint green of breccia-suevite.

The scientist in me understands.
Still, I need to know,
Who has she kissed?
What has she brushed
With her dark fingertips?



Chain

The stench will bring tears to your eyes
When the surgeon chainsaws open
The violet-black-green
Of the ruined tree.

He will gut the rotting belly
And hack off a few sickened branches.
He will shake his head, rub his chin,
Surrendering to your mess.
He will say you need a specialist.
He will send a bill,
Tell others what he witnessed in your yard
But you will never hear from him
Or anyone
Again.
And nothing will grow for miles.



Cutflower

I bring tiger lilies 
To the grave of my beloved.
I bring the night
So inverted blue-black bats
Can watch from the goddess willows.
I bring an unexpected breeze
So the bluebells and wolfkiss orchids
And the dragon's head violets in the field
Will shiver at their luck.



Supernumb

You put hunger in the dog's bowl,
Gum in the crematory urn,
Kerosene in the birdbath.

You turn on the water to start a fire.

Sometimes I wonder if your dead mother
Called you from the bathtub
And whatever you said is what pushed her
Over the edge
And sketched
The comic book character
You have become,
Supernumb.



Present Tense

Something prowls unnamed
Through the zig-zaggy city crowd
And the moon-dressed emptiness
Of the abandoned launch site,
Through the festival music
That vibrates in your teeth
And the silence of the violet lake.

Something stalks unnamed.
It knows everything about me.
It chuckles in the mirror.
It knows what I will call it
And when its time will
Come.



In the News

In world news that day
Pakistan beat Bangladesh by 89 runs
At Sher-e-Bangla Stadium in Mirpur.

Nokia shares plummeted to 6.55 euros,
Lowest since '98.

In Korolyov, just outside Moscow,
The six man crew of the Mars500
Climaxed their 257 days 
Pent up in the mock spacecraft
With a simulated landing
On the red planet.
The Russian Mission Control Center broadcasted live
The faux spacewalk  
Of Alexander Smoleyevsky and Diego Urbina.
The mission had a second agenda beyond the technical,
The experiment of what the isolation of 250 days of flight,
30 Days of orbit, and the 240 days returning to Earth
Would do to the psyche.

Tiger Woods apologized
For spitting on the green at Dubai.

The producers of the 3 million dollar Bollywood film,
"Dear Friend Hitler" launched a marketing blitz
At the Berlin film festival.
It seems they plan to lighten up the Holocaust.

Four more bodies were recovered 
From the Shahalam Market fire trap.
DNA testing to identify 3.
The cell phone SIM card
On the 4th body
Divulged enough information to notify the family.

Charlie Sheen told reporters he is ready
To return to "Two and a Half Men"
After his rehab break.

In Florida news that day
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory 
Announced the Stardust spacecraft's encounter
With comet Tempel 1.
At it's closest kiss of 112 miles
It snapped 72 kaleidoscopic images.

The Naples Daily News
Reported an Immokalee woman was arrested
For having sex in a house of "ill fame".
According to the police blotter,
Martha Torres de la Cruz
Of the 800 block of West Main Street
Performed the act in the west end of a trailer
For a fee of twenty-three dollars.

Thousands of sharks passed near Boca Raton's beaches
En route to breeding grounds
Without stopping for a bite.

In local news,
On the street of Bent Arrow,
Mrs. Parker was trolling the bushes 
In a purple, bleach blotched moo moo,
Her ferret having escaped for the third time.
Jimmy was going door to door
To find a ride to the craft shop where he works
As his car was broken down again,
And a man who had been secretly
Sobbing in the shower that morning
Thought about giving a woman 
One final kiss 
Before he went to work
And she finished moving out of the house,
But he knew he could not do it without breaking
And he did not want to traumatize the dog
Any further,
So he looked at the floor and the walls and his hands
When he said goodbye,
Anywhere but her face,
For fear some faint shade of affection would remain
After he put so much energy
Into being hated.

Ah, the peace
Of having absolutely nothing to lose.



What the Dog Saw

Paw prints in sugar white sand,
One way trip to the sea.
She gathered her toys,
The piece of the fence she chewed off,
A pink sock she had hidden for months,
And a strip of bark from the orange tree,
Leaving them all in her duct-taped bed
For some new dog who could take the trauma.

She did not concern herself
With abandoning him,
Having seen how easily love can be erased.

She closed her eyes 
And felt the water 
Fill her ears and lungs
And remembered the days of walking in the sun,
A woman singing in the shower
And laughter too long ago.



The Abduction

We never talk about the abduction.
The heart-leaf yard has ears.
Even in the pink candlelit hush of the bedroom
We never gave it a name,
What happened on that platinum table
Under those ambivalent eyes,
Through the calm, alien narrative voices.

Paralysis, necessary to prevent injury.
Anesthesia, merciful.

I wonder what the hell kind of world
They came from,
That it did not occur to their hive mind
To render us amnesiac.

Ah, it could only be
A world to which 
They can never return.
We hold this in common with Them.



The Bat's Reply

I am the loneliest bat,
Silvery blue-black
As a strewnfield tektite.

I ruin everything I kiss.
I kiss everything I ruin.

I can forget everything I said.
I can remove the gown of an saint
Without waking her,
But I detest the tart blood
Of the incorruptible.

I fear she would adore me,
Then I would have to chew out her eyes
And she would leave me 
Broom-beaten and starved.

But at least she would be blind
To what I have always been.

I held her hand in a dream.
I almost was a man.



Haunt Couture

My ghost wears crisp navy suits,
Pink fishnet stockings with sensible shoes,
Bell-bottom jeans with a tie-dyed halter top.

She knows every way to skin a cat,
And when it's better 
To wait out its attempt on a tenth life.

Her kiss is the sound of dog feet
Dancing in the heliotrope garden.

She is the hand held at your deathbed.
She is the silence that sirens you awake.
She is the reason you leave fingerprint bruises.

Why don't you let go?



Five, September

I used to trust the universe.
Now I interrogate suspects.

I wear brass knuckles 
When I park in city garages,
But I never look under the car for rapists.

I once wore translucent red lingerie.
Now I sleep in an Air Force tee-shirt.

I would not drag your drunken body
Out of a fire,
But I might disrupt your sleep
At the third or fourth spark.

If time travel were not so dangerous,
I would go back to Five September
And behead you orchids at the door.

I might sit by your mother's
Claw-footed tub,
Brew her a cup of tea,
Have a kind word for her
And keep her suicide
From threading its dark seam
So raggedly 
Through the unraveling cloak of your life.



00111111

This letter is an unbreakable spell.
It is coded and the key is in your door.

It is written in the stars,
Carved in the tree that shades your grave.

It is the lucky number 7.

Cool and calm,
Yet, reddens your face.

It is the picnic day
The dog sat in the potato salad.

It is the angel who breaks down your car
To remove you from the impending crash.

It is love you never had.
It is the little boy who got no attention
And learned to need nothing at all,
And taught everyone he touched
Not to expect much.

It is a kiss, a promise, a warning.

It is time travel and you discover it.
You are so unworthy of this gift,
Groundhog Daying yourself to death
In your bourbon-scented coma of a life. 



The Story of Us

I tried to convince a bat he was a man.
I jammed his wings into pant-legs of blue jeans.
He flopped around and fell off the couch.
He panicked and twirled in circles
And made it difficult to free him.

I cooked spaghetti and insisted he eat it.
Have you ever seen bat diarrhea?
It is violet and endless
And you can never fully remove
The stench and the stain.

I told him he was worthy of love
But he was hanging upside down
From the ceiling fan
Blood-intoxicated, asleep.

The saddest thing was watching him
Attempt to operate
The Lazy Boy recliner,
Pushing the lever
And popping up fast
Trying to stretch open the apparatus.
He flew back and forth
Until he passed out.

He cried so hard when I told him
I finally could see
A bat is a bat is a bat
And it was ridiculous of me
To coax him into the
Light
And whisper, Darling.

He flew back into the abyss,
Somewhat cocky 
At having been right all along,
But the colony does not trust him anymore,
And he can never fit into
Either of his old worlds.

The house will never sell...
The stench and the stain.
Who could live so haunted?
Even we could not survive
The Story of Us. 



Dogbye

Sometimes I left biscuits by your head 
When you were sleeping
So you would learn your universe
Was full of amazing surprises
You didn't have to beg for.

The day I moved out,
I had to put you in the back yard.
You kept getting under my feet.

You stood vigilantly behind the glass door
Unblinkingly witnessing 
Every suitcase I lugged away,
Every box I sealed and carried.

You watched my clothing disappear,
Paintings, statues, photo albums.

Your bark was high-pitched 
And steeped in hysteria.
You started throwing your body against the door.

One final check of the house.
I removed my key and placed it on the table.
I thought I could get away 
Without having to say my terrible dogbye.

But, the agonized shriek of your voice, 
The sound of your seventy pounds hitting the glass.

I slid the door open and knelt down.
You slammed into my arms
Curling your head over my shoulder.
I said I loved you and would miss you.
The worst part was the look of betrayal,
The innocence draining from your face.

Lulu, you have chewed my shoes,
But I have walked in yours,
Nine weeks slamming
One hundred and thirty pounds
Into doors.



Spilling My Purse at the Airport

Umbrella that pops into
Van Gogh's "Starry Night"
On the outside,
Edvard Munch's "The Scream"
On the inside,
Betty Boop bowling socks,
Pink fishnet stockings,
Blue sock monkey on a key chain
With smiling red lips,
Tiny ivory angel in a clear glass marble,
Kangaroo shaped pill case 
With spring open pouch,
Lipstick in "Faux Orgasm",
Dead cobalt bat and white mouse
For the snake,
Wind-up toy tiger 
I stole from from my attorney's desk,
Black cat flashlight that blinks S.O.S. in red,
Photo booth strip of our first kiss,
A tektite paperweight to remind me
Some things are built to survive disaster,
Four pairs of glasses:
Hexagon shaped violet for when I want 
To look like a rock star, 1.5 readers, 
Gold rimmed Steve Maddens 
In deep sienna for serious sun,
Giant black Prada Jackie O's 
For when I want to hide,
The letter I did not leave the day I left him,
Under-eye concealer 
For my recent darkening,
Frayed hardback of Pushkin's poetry 
From the antiquarian,
Pictures of Lulu in our old yard,
Half of a chocolate hazelnut brownie,
Torn tights from today's trapeze class,
Disk with 201 photographs 
In case my house burns down,
Teddy bear shaped pink post-it note 
With "DON'T DO IT!"
Scrawled shakily in black Sharpie,
Hair band with tiny silk daisies 
For days when I feel like giving up,
Packet of tissues with imprinted candy hearts,
Blueberry Chapstick, mini-size box of Count Chocula,
Herbal tea forgiveness potion 
Of cinchona bark, goathoof,
Arrow root and wild fennel,
Crayon-written note on a parking ticket 
Found outside post office
That reads, "What made Elmo snap?"
"Was he tired of Big Bird's crap?",
Three cell phones, three chargers, two cameras,
One digital, one disposable, 
Waterproof to twelve feet under,
Four new charms for my bracelet:
Prehistoric dragonfly preserved in resin, 
A shark's tooth, leprechaun Smurf,
The Coyote's Acme rocket,
Map of the constellation, Pyxis
Where we agreed to meet Elsewhen,
Map of Draco as a backup plan
In case he time-travels and kills himself on the trip.

Time flies when you're on the run
From the martyrs and magicians you have been
To the Goddess you might become.



My Beloved Amateur

Hummingbird cake can be dry,
Must be slightly over-baked
To dull the overbearing sweet,
Best served warm
With lemon-nutmeg butter drizzle.

Bat-wing soup is a taste acquired.
It doesn't seem to matter
That you have eaten turtle ,alligator, eel,
All of which taste like chicken
If you hold your breath while chewing.

I am telling you,
My Beloved Amateur,
You cannot purchase bat flesh.
You have to do the killing
Yourself.
You cannot shoot Him
Even with a silver bullet
As the wing must remain intact,
And let's face it,
If your aim was that good
You would not be Hellbent on this task.
You cannot poison Him
Without tainting yourself.
He is too intelligent to be trapped
And He can see you coming
In the Dark.

My Beloved Amateur,
You must become a bat to catch one,
Sitting immobile 
In His silent blue-black net of night.

Trust me, He will find you
And the only way to kill Him
Is to love Him,
Which is easy
Because He is so pitiful, curious
And affection-starved.

Bat-wing soup is an acquired taste.
How can I explain?
It has notes of winter plum,
Ether-soaked butterflies,
The heartleaf vine in rainrot,
Brown sugar,
Candied apples with razors inside,
And your soul,
My Beloved Amateur,
Your Soul.



Our Beautiful Li(f)e

The day came
Skittish,
Turning red and violet leaves
Over and over again.
As if looking for an answer.

The answer came
Trembly
As a lightning-struck branch
Suffering a soft summer storm.

The storm came
Silent
As the starving wolf
Just before the kill.

The kill came
Sacred as a prayer
Before dying.

The dying will take me
A little time.
I keep seeing 
Our beautiful li(f)e
Between the turning leaves
And entangling vines.



Nobody's Hell

Our nights are nobody's Hell.
We are civil in our silent dinner,
Clear the plates 
And feed the nervous dog
Who cowers in her corner
Doing the math of (x) minus laughter
Plus a scowl times (y)
Times muffled crying
Equals (z).

The neighbors are busy.
They smile and wave
Behind their tractors, rakes and brooms.
No one asks and we don't tell.

We used to play Boggle
And make love
And dream so big, so bright
And trust the universe to get it right.

Now we watch t.v.
I mean we plan the shows
Tighter than the president's schedule
So we don't have a second to spare,
That our eyes might accidentally collide
To see the ugly empty stare
We know is dancing there.

We go to bed about thirty minutes apart.
Whoever gets there first
Pretends to be asleep
When the other comes.
I smell your hair.
I feel your breath.
I dream we are the couple
Who moved into this house.
I cannot recall
How we killed them
Or why,
Or if we allowed them
A trembly kiss goodbye.

We impersonate them so well. 
Who are we kidding?
Our nights are everybody's Hell.



The Bat's Shopping List

1  A firing squad to kill the empty hours.

2  Fractured cup to catch my share of rain.

3  Tektite amulet  to protect me from her powers.

4  Surgical tape to fix my broken wing.

5  Lemon peel to erase the scent of her skin.

6  Clove to dismantle the taste of her kiss.

7  Willow bark to prosthesize her amputated limbs.

8  White noise device to drown the laughter I miss.

9  Time travel machine to prevent my offense.

10  Proof of my existence.  



Friend



nowhere, the answer

sigh soft comic book kiss

pink cotton candy

funnel cake

dream carnival

deceit

opening in kaleidoscopic hues 

like a hybrid 

bat's breath/cat-scratch orchid

in flickering funeral light

elsewhen

ever I called you friend

*

All poems (c) copyright 2011 Rebecca Lu Kiernan

Rebecca Lu Kiernan has published in MS MAGAZINE, ASIMOV'S SCIENCE FICTION, 
NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW and numerous books and magazines in the United States and Australia.  
She was nominated for the Rhysling Award for her seductive cautionary tale, "When a Snake Bites You In the Ass".  
She hosts "The Eternal Poem Project" on whattodowhenhellbreaksloose.blogspot.com

"Letters to the Bat" is her latest poetry series.  Her published collections include "Rummy Park", 
"Jepatio Street" and "An Unkindness of Ravens".

All selections are copyrighted by their respective authors. Any reproduction of
these poems, without the express written permission of the authors, is
prohibited.

YGDRASIL: A Journal of the Poetic Arts - Copyright (c) 1993 - 2011 by 
Klaus J. Gerken.

The official version of this magazine is available on Ygdrasil's 
World-Wide Web site http://users.synapse.net/kgerken.  No other 
version shall be deemed "authorized" unless downloaded from there. 
Distribution is allowed and encouraged as long as the issue is unchanged.

COMMENTS & SUBMISSIONS

Submission and comments should be sent to Klaus Gerken, Chief Editor at kgerken@synapse.net

Submission must be in the body of an email unless otherwise agreed on.