TEXTUALITY OF FLESH by Mona Bozick Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program YOUNGSTOWN STATE UNIVERSITY May, 2009 Textuality of Flesh Mona Bozick I hereby release this thesis to the public. I understand that this thesis will be made available from the OhioLINK ETD Center and the Maag Library Circulation Desk for public access. I also authorize the University or other individuals to make copies of this thesis as needed for scholarly research. Signature: ____________________________________________________________ Mona Bozick, Student Date Approvals: ____________________________________________________________ Dr. Craig Paulenich, Thesis Advisor Date ____________________________________________________________ Dr. Steven Reese, Committee Member Date ____________________________________________________________ Dr. Mary Biddinger, Committee Member Date ____________________________________________________________ Peter J. Kavinsky, Dean of School of Graduate Studies & Research Date © M. Bozick May 2009 Abstract Textuality of Flesh is a poetry manuscript consisting of poems that explore identity and sexuality through a central poetic persona who, biologically and mythically, is a chimera, or a person who has two complete sets of DNA. Table of Contents Latter Day Mythos 1 Like Breathing 2 The Voice That Isn’t Hers 4 The Still Before the Rain 5 The Whisper of Leaves 6 How She Got Her Name 8 The Desert 9 Bringing Rain 10 Outporing 14 The Scent of Wet 15 Lorelei 17 Ignis Fatuus 18 In the Tank 20 The Press of Blade 21 Danger Upon the Skin 22 Lost in the Silver 23 Emmadora 24 In the Mirror 26 She Will Paint the Sounds 27 Anchoring 28 We Grew Up Fatherless 29 Congo 30 The Tortured Body 31 Stepping Off 32 The Dream 33 Saint Subirana 34 In Mountains 35 Slough, Definition #3 36 The Shock 37 The Imprint of Ice 39 Unconquerable Longing 40 Moths 41 The Breaking Point of Water 42 Revolution 43 Across the Line 44 Her Little Fantasy 45 Cocoon 46 Lluvia de Peces 47 Piecework 48 The Stage 49 Cunning Stunts 50 Carna 52 Sunday Morning 53 Center Street Bridge, June 2007 54 Latter Day Mythos You are flesh of my flesh, bone of bone. In my mottled, sometimes skin. In my hair that doesn’t hold color, in my face changing with the light, sometimes harsh, planed, sometimes like the filtered face of Rita Hayworth. As with rosebushes grafted, I am hybrid, more than my roots. I am two, become one, in those first few hours. While they lay lethargic in some sweaty bed, smoking, loathe to sleep before the sun, we were formed, not as one in the beginning, rather two, alpha, omega. How to know we were a modern ouroboros twisting in on one another, until one, we—I was born through some unknown alchemy, more than the sum of my parts. 1 Like Breathing 1 As a child— before the dreams and the change of skin— she loved the flight of butterflies, would watch them at rest on rocks along the crick-bed. The slow flicker of wings like breath, the pause between intake and exhalation. 2 She was never the girl with pink shoes, pinafores, never wanted to cheer on the sideline. She craved contact, the shoulder driving in below the blade. 3 When the boy down the street had a birthday—she went. The only girl at the party, the boys pretended not to see her. But when the birthday boy, with piggish eyes and greasy hair, smashed wings in his ham-hock fist, smeared streaks down tree bark, she punched him, 2 straddled his chest in the grass, until finally, plumed in color, they saw her. 3 The Voice That Isn’t Hers Awareness of the niggling voice inside her head grows as she grows. Sometimes it acts as her conscience, other times eggs her on to climb higher, ditch school, pee standing up belly pressed to the rasping bark of the oak in the stand behind her house. The voice helps her hide when mama comes calling. Not under the bed, she will find you, squeeze behind the dryer, she’ll never look there. She never doubts this voice that croons to her, that soothes her when loud noises rumble the sash against the sill and blue light strobes against the vellum of her eyelids. 4 The Still Before the Rain Walking down Main Street, sky high and clear, Lorelei sets the dogs to sniffing. Cats forget the birds they stalk, watch her as she passes. They gnaw on tufts of grass, swat anxiously at gnats that swarm low in nebulous clouds. Swallows swoop in shallow dives to clasp the easy prey. Silence spreads in rings, cricket-song slows, bees flee the meadow, quickly flood the hive. In the field empty of buzz, cows sink to their knees, sleep, side to side, tails turned to the east. The only sound on still air, frogs in frantic cacophony down in the pond at the foot of Miller’s Lane. In the wake of her footsteps, trees curl their leaves, the indigo folds in its petals, exposes its tender white. 5 The Whisper of Leaves On the long drive from Seattle to New Mexico Lorelei, like any other child, longs for the drive to be over. The Dinosaur Diamond stretches south through Utah. With only creosote and pebbly vistas beyond the backseat window, she mumbles to her wavery reflection in the backseat window. Mama keeps the eight-track cranked over the howling of the wind through the VW van windows. No twenty questions, license plate games, camp songs, only the loneliness of the desert roads heading south, slightly east, but always south. Leaving Seattle behind, she had hoped the rain, always dropping from clouds pricked by the vertiginous point of the Space Needle, would stay, but the rain is loathe to let them go. The van chugs desperately south. Boredom nibbles at her chest, makes it hard to breathe in the desert heat funneling through the windows. She drags the silver-handled, horse-hair brush through her wind-woven hair, loose strands 6 fly out the window, float like streamers. Rain clouds gather above the highway, like the clouds, dark and foreboding, in the cheap dime-store novels mama reads, juice glass of iced Boone’s Farm in hand, before falling asleep with the bedside lamp still on. Tangles of hair coil in thermals above the desert floor, undulating shimmers of heat distort funhouse cacti in the distance. Lightning jags the blackened sky stretching from horizon lip to the apex of the bubbled windshield. Hail pummels the van, rain sluices down the glass, Mama pulls onto the hard-packed grit beside Highway 191. Even with the windows up, she hears that rain in the desert sounds hard without the whisper of leaves. 7 How She Got Her Name When I think of Lorelei my head turns all around As gentle as a butterfly she moves without a sound -Styx Mama won’t say his name, only that she loved him, that she knew as the sun dripped across the sill she was with child. She waited four months to tell him, the swell above her panties noticeable. She knew she would never see him again. On her way home after the yelling and the accusations, Lorelei came on the radio. She knew it was the name, never stopped to pick a boy’s. She prayed that some man would be turned by her daughter, but then, she didn’t know what I would become. 8 The Desert Lorelei and mama take a day trip up into the mountains. This first desert spring is dry and hard. Lorelei balks at keeping her shoes on for fear of scorpions and diamondbacks; she would rather sink her toes in grass. They leave town, the road becomes narrow and rocky as they climb. The rainy season is just beginning, but already the track is washed out in the dips and culverts. They get to where they can’t drive anymore, so they hike in. The vistas make it worthwhile. In Washington, trees block out the view and moisture seeps into your pores. Rain here is distinct. It falls in sheets, in bands. Rain falling on a town fifty miles away spreads out across the horizon like a veil, like hair across a woman’s eyes. When it comes, it is relief, is power, is life. Some people can’t take months without rain, can’t abide the need to pray for rain. Lorelei knows mama is one of those people. She can see the road reflected in her eyes. She hopes that mama waits until the monsoon ends, but then she will be ready. She hates people’s prayers echoing in her head. 9 Bringing Rain 1 The men from neighboring farms advance on the back door without trees to camouflage their approach. They wait until twilight hovers just above the ground, covers them as they circle. They skirt on tiptoe the tangled patch of tickseed encroaching on the buckled back steps. In the light of the screen door, they brace feet firmly. Mama answers in cutoffs, wine glass in hand, bare-breasted beneath an old wife-beater. The farmers, decent family men, glance, quickly discover flecks of filth on boots. They never make eye contact, but then that would be tough, standing in the dark. Light bends around Mama, leaves them in her shadow. She waits silently while they screw up the courage to ask, something they find mighty difficult. 10 Voices, low, hesitant, they stammer their need. I heard a rumor someone here could help me. Mama, wordless, backs away from the door, leaves them in the pool of light sifting through the tatty screen.