these texts are an archive of my life in the San Francisco Bay Area from march 2007 - march 2015. it stands as a record of close to a decade of my life, charting the struggles i faced as an artist, daughter, and lover. messy and chaotic at times, eloquent and poetic at others, these texts are an index i am proud of. it was here in this electric box that i learned how to be honest about my experiences and the person i needed to become. it was here that i first learned the truism that words make the world and how to trust such a beautiful, rife, hard fact.

thank you for meeting me here in such tall grass.


my artist website is here.

Sep 2, 2010

the forest is not to blame.




yellow leaves spin. screeching hinges. the pig-sounds
of wind snared in tall trees.
my breath goes a loose white.
swaying.
limbs are coming down.

yellow leaves spin. an awful determination.
sparks radiate. crack my palms. catch in a crescent, this
lowly rabbit. the transparent virus.

last night i lay awake a long time. my thoughts were angry.
polluted and skittish.
the scent of too many deer.


i want to think of the forest.
i want to think of my mother and
the forest behind her,
behind her roses. her roses
behind her iron rods:

deer-bitten.
slowly frozen.
the cracking-sounds, her upturned palms.

my mother will not die in concrete.


the death of frozen things- people
held down, cars
flipped on their side.


i wake to find things on the ground that weren't there before.
black branches, black burl, bits
of litter flung from the highway. i wake
to check the calendar. i wake
and well up my Fear Traditions.
the silver and the shards dug in.


the moon is white. full in the little window between the tall trees.
full-blown. this cold, unclouded thing.
yellow leaves spin.
there is a gaping eye to push through. a solid white.

the wind is to blame.

it wants our doors. splits its knuckles.
toys with our hair-delicate hinges. fingers creeping
against the dry seal of so many mouths.
fingers like thermometers. cold. cold. and sharp
against our fevered pink.

first thing, i look up to the little window


i am lonely. it is a black morning.
aching. windless. an awful veil.
stolid as a dried out fish belly.

apples fall out of the trees, thickly black.
no time to cut the bruises out.
wrinkled and twisted. i lock my eye
on the tiny shimmers of gold below the cracks,
wilting on the inside.

my mother will not die in concrete.


yellow leaves spin.
limbs are coming down.


here
is the thread end

and the needle cut loose.

a solid eye to push through.






.

4 comments:

Elisabeth said...

This is brilliant, Angela. your writing is powerful and disturbingly evocative all at once.

angela simione said...

thank you, elisabeth! i've been trying to sit with the poems a bit longer than i ususally do. let them sit there and bake bake bake. :)

Anonymous said...

powerful, anxious yes!! but i love it. keep writing!!
i can relate about these sufferings.

i am in the library. an old woman , a clocharde, taps taps at the computer, spits and belches,, eructa. i feel anxiety: must write about it!!

much love, dear friend!!
yolanda

angela simione said...

thank you, yolanda! i will keep going! write about anything, everything, all of it! or as much as i can find words for.

much love to you too, dear friend! :)