Staceyann Chin

FOUR DAYS TO GO!!!!

Previews are mid-stride

And Thursdays looms promising
so many parts of me

congeal
that afternoon/evening knock/s
near and meaningful

the show begins
again
as if we have not been in full throttle
for what seems like eons

we have been here before
but never so much to lose
before

never so much heart invested
so many years

precious the goal slips possible
into perhaps
maybe

we might make something of worth
of this

borders and bodies clash
all the time

this is no different
for Bernice Perry
for Hazel Mills
for Olga Wishart

for Miss Jones
and the dreams she does not speak out loud

for Rabbit and Maz
for Elisha/Randi
for Ashly

for all the times we had to survive
hard steps and broken hearts
and romances
that did not hold us at our optimal angle

This show is for my brother
Delano and my small sister Larah

I see you both
negotiating adulthood and new boundaries

this is for my great grandmother
Mama Lou
I apologize for not having come sooner

I might have become friends with you
great grandmother
midwife
tie-head
kind handed woman
had I been born two decades earlier

for the doctor and Metta
who likes to color beyond the alloted lines

my grandaunt

for Lisa who will come to me from Munich
this summer

for all the names I dare not write
outwrite
for the names I no longer remember
for the mothers who let me rest when I needed some mothering
June
Pamela

Ruby
Ms Johnson
Carol

I am grateful thursday looms
large in the knot of tales told

in pieces
parts of women
we have long buried without gravestones

I mark you as having existed
Zora
Harriet
Sojourner

my father
I am not so much angry at you
as indifferent
most days I am indifferent

my apologies
I am yearning towards evolution

this is my life
told in vignettes

as remembered by me/a life
is always a sliver of what is told

behold these are the parts
that make me sane

the others rest silent on hills I have not climbed yet
sometimes I view them from my lovers arms

from there they look
surmountable

knocking animal
and strange I creep to the edge
plant myself firmly at the foot of such mountains

today and I am defiant
on thurdsay
afternoon/eveing
I will tell the wall to go fuck itself

in a theater
in a city
in a place I have loved you before
I will hold you

precious
as a tale told well

on Thursday
I will promise you truth
and all I ask is that you hold me
safe in the curve of an honest ear

in hope,
Staceyann

Posted by staceyann at June 12, 2005 11:05 AM