CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE
A STEP WITHOUT FEET
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
For the degree of Master of Arts in English
By
Elizabeth Moreno
May 2013
The thesis of Elizabeth Moreno is approved:
_________________________________
Leilani R. Hall, Ph.D.
_____________
Date
_________________________________
Mona Houghton
____________
Date
_________________________________
Dorothy Barresi, Chair
____________
Date
California State University, Northridge
ii
DEDICATIONS
For Ilsa, so that you may one day understand my silences. I am so proud of the young
woman you are becoming.
For Sal, for always being there even when you aren’t. One life sentence with you just
won’t be enough.
Thank you both for choosing me.
These poems are also dedicated to the memory of my mother, Theresa, and my father,
Paul. The story is not perfect, but it is ours.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis would not have been possible without the love, support, knowledge and
guidance from the following people:
Professor Dorothy Barresi. You wrote, “You’re a natural!” on the first poem I ever
submitted in English 309 and I believed you because look where we are now! My poetic
journey began with you and I am so honored you agreed to direct my thesis. I would
have been lost if it were not for your mentoring and patience.
Dr. Leilani Hall, for asking me what my poems are doing on the page, for helping me
embrace the craft of poetry and for teaching me how to make my poems smarter. Your
calm, quiet guidance inspired a stillness in my writing that made possible so much
growth. Thank you.
Professor Mona Houghton. I promise you I have not given up on fiction yet! The
semesters I spent working with you on the Northridge Review were some of my best at
CSUN. I am constantly blown away by your dedication to our writing community and to
writing in general. Thank you for lending your eagle eyes to my manuscript and for your
encouragement and positivity over the years.
Marjie Seagoe. Words cannot express how grateful I am for your organization and your
remarkable ability to talk me down when I was hysterical over looming deadlines,
imagined or otherwise. You are just amazing at what you do and I shudder to think what
grad students, and the English Department in general, would do without you.
All of my classmates, friends and family who read my poems and offered feedback.
The Northridge Review for publishing several of these poems in previous incarnations.
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, whose writings teach us all how to “take a step without
feet.”
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Signature Page.....................................................................................................................ii
Dedication...........................................................................................................................iii
Acknowledgements.............................................................................................................iv
Abstract..............................................................................................................................vii
Preface..............................................................................................................................viii
Snow Child..........................................................................................................................1
No Llores.............................................................................................................................2
The Church of Rock and Roll..............................................................................................3
“Cry for me” -Argentina......................................................................................................4
PMS: An Abecedarian poem................................................................................................5
I Wouldn’t Call It Murder....................................................................................................6
Pele On The Rocks...............................................................................................................7
Where Do Babies Come From?...........................................................................................8
The Bill of Right Now..........................................................................................................9
Galactic Capitalism............................................................................................................10
Renga.................................................................................................................................11
You or God.........................................................................................................................12
James River-One................................................................................................................13
Conversation on the Ascent...............................................................................................14
Happy Hour at the Tender Glow........................................................................................15
Toby....................................................................................................................................16
v
Eastern European Lovers...................................................................................................17
Dead Mother Superhero.....................................................................................................19
What The Anthropologist Won’t Say.................................................................................21
Cuervo Queens...................................................................................................................22
No Just-For-Men for Jesus.................................................................................................24
5 North...............................................................................................................................25
Hostile Environment..........................................................................................................26
Forecast..............................................................................................................................27
Fences................................................................................................................................28
For You...............................................................................................................................30
Brief and Momentary Contact...........................................................................................31
Minimum Eligible Parole Date: June, 2024.......................................................................33
Said Kali to Raktabija:.......................................................................................................34
Said Raktabija to Kali:.......................................................................................................35
Notes..................................................................................................................................36
vi
ABSTRACT
A STEP WITHOUT FEET
By
Elizabeth Moreno
Master of Arts in English
The following collection of poems is a poetic exploration of what French psychoanalyst
Jacque Lacan refers to as symbolic order. Symbolic orders are social and familial
systems that exist to teach a person how to behave and live according to the rules of that
system. A child is born into the symbolic order of her family, then goes to school to join
the symbolic order of the student body. Symbolic orders are inescapable and
subsequently oppressive. What happens, then, when a woman loses her husband to the
prison system for twenty-five years? Is she no longer part of the symbolic order of wife?
Who decides who is in and who is out? And can we ever really escape the confines of
social order? These are some of the questions the following poems address. These poems
percolate with themes of sadness, longing, loving and letting go. They also explore
spirituality through glorifying the manifestations of the divine that occur in everyday life.
vii
Do you think I know what I’m doing?
That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?
As much as a pen knows what it’s writing,
or the ball can guess where it’s going next.
—Rumi
viii
Snow Child
Snow sweeps lush
over womb-barren
backyard. Which is itnine months, or
forty weeks?
From the arrant white
expanse I shape your:
back, bones, sinew. Eyes
and ears only - no mouth,
or one fashioned only
from some silent, shining
ornament.
If I could manage one
last trick, I’d breathe
into you the spirit of
the black spruce, the
grizzly dusk.
Upon waking,
blinking
and blind,
you’ll likely find
the somatic existence
regrettable, but remember:
this is the separation.
1
No Llores
Sometimes God comes home from a long day on the job, showers, puts on an Anne
Murray album and shoots a speedball into his left arm.
Sometimes God says Be right back. Outta smokes and returns eight weeks
later with a nasty case of herpes and a carton of Benson & Hedges.
Sometimes calls from God begin with: This is a call from an inmate at a California
correctional facility. To accept, dial or say ‘5.’
He says he isn’t, but God is always the 1%.
Sometimes God turns himself into a Mexican radio station so that we can learn
how to say ‘Oh God, we’re so fucked’ in Spanish.
That’s him you hear crackling in over AM waves somewhere between Fresno and
Bakersfield. He’s the one telling you: ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, no llores...
________________________________________________________________________
_____
No Llores: Reprise
California inmates stand a
1% chance
of being the 99%.
Ninety-nine-to-one
it’s gonna be a long
day. Our job is:
smokes, speedball, herpes. Oh.
God. We’re fucked.
So?
2
The Church of Rock-n-Roll
Buenos Aires, 1989. On my way to
12:30 mass with my mother. Outside
Rinaldo’s TV Repair on Avenida
San Nicolas I am ambushed by the
electric serenade of a flaming Les Paul:
take this wine and drink it, for it is
the blood of your savior.
Spellbound by Spandex.
Mother calibrates control-top in
window’s reflection. Molten
blue floods out of the
speakers. Eager ears won’t
waste a drop.
So begins the naughty tingling
between my thighs that
could only come from tattooed
guys with teased hair, motorcycles,
dead-end jobs and long, hard
arrest records.
Above this throbbing rhythm, a little girl’s
voice: This is my body, which shall be
given up for you.
3
“Cry for me”
-Argentina
Years away from you
have made me a tourist.
Time has softened
my accent, but not
the heart of the boy
who stopped to ask me
for the time,
and my purse,
by way of a pistol in my side.
I said,
“Deberias estar en la escuela, Nene.”
And he said,
“En cualquier otro lugar. No queda
nada para nadie en este
pais de mierda.”
But isn’t there something
for everybody: Sadness
we can taste
and smell
and carry on our backs, mothers
who will wait forever at Plaza de Mayo for
children who will never return,
skinny babies and fat presidents?
Argentina,
your tangos are death marches now,
and Perón keeps time as he rolls
over in his grave. Everybody knows
you only need 25 cents
to call the Devil
from Argentina:
calling Hell from Hell
is a local call.
4
PMS: An Abecedarian poem
A bright crimson dot ends fun. Girls, hell is jeering
kilos, laughing, menacing. Now, ovaries protest,
quietly rueing scales tipped. Understand? Vexation:
waterweight! Xanadu: Y-chromosome zen.
5
I Wouldn’t Call It Murder
I would have called you all kinds of beautiful
if things had been different. I never meant
for it to turn out like this, only wanted to wrap
myself around you like eight legs of time, web
you with the finest I could spin. But when you touched
me that first night, frantic to make me yours, you didn’t even
stop to trace my shimmering hourglassed ventrum. I knew
then you wouldn’t call again. I wouldn’t call it murder.
6
Pele On The Rocks
By the end, you couldn’t
get away fast
enough, the world
one mammoth,
downward slope
away from me. I spewed
threats after you until
my fire was a mottled
fracture of a flame.
But in the beginning, how
you’d beg
me to burn you, how
I’d obey.
You’ll never see
me again, you said,
and I believed. A man
has limits. A man
can only splinter himself so
many times against
an obsidian heart.
7
Where Do Babies Come From?
The depths of a murky fifth of Bombay Sapphire.
Expiration dates.
Student visas: expiring.
I guess you’re not leaving after all.
Advances in cryogenics.
I want somebody to love.
I want somebody to love me.
The martini that broke the good girl’s back.
Hey, Baby, got any Italian in you? Want some?
The jacaranda woven into her hair.
Just promise you won’t do it again.
Promise you will.
8
The Bill of Right Now
I’m not looking for forever love,
more like four-hour love. One of
those motels on Sepulveda love. Sneak
out while you’re passed out love. Forget
you ever saw my face, Love.
My Mr. Right made a wrong
turn onto Folsom Prison Drive, and
18 plus 25-to-life equals too goddamned long to wait for
anybody. Right now, all I need is any body, minus
disillusion in a fairy tale cover.
Mr. Right can’t make it on set tonight, but I’ve got
the lighting just right, so stand in, sit back, and shut that
perfect little mouth. Get as close to me as your
slightly above-average anatomy
will allow.
9
Galactic Capitalism
Here’s a revelation:
Vegetation will soon be history.
As our intestines digest those test-tube tacos,
Earth speeds through space
at 75 miles per second.
Forget fretting about
spinal curvature, or that miniature 401k.
The infinite indigo is calling.
Eternity is splendidly careening forward
toward that greedy bitch Andromeda,
lurking in the depths of the murky universe
like an intergalactic Halliburton.
The macrocosm is planning a merger,
and I’ve been dreaming
of liquidating your assets.
Time to cash in a few orgasms.
Only a few billion years remain.
Throw caution to the solar wind!
Lets kiss,
and kiss
again.
10
Renga
Last Black Friday, my
friends occupied L.A.
while I occupied
the Westfield Mall. In an
iPad/Droid Bionic/XBox
induced stupor, a woman
twice my age and half
my weight bowled
me over
to be first
in line.
Do you spell
'Christmas' with
an ‘X' or a 'C'?
And how
do you spell
'revolution'?
11
You or God
I told you not to touch her
Daddy said, looming over the baby
bird you found in the backyard. Neck’s
damn near broken, got your scent all
over her. Best just to put her down
now.
You stood, shamefaced and bare
foot, entranced as shallow sighs
heaved sparrow bones up twice,
then once, then not at all. I know
I taught you better than that.
But remember how you
said you could feel her
staring at you, asking you or
God to stop, asking you or God
why? And when she realized
you were God, she stopped
asking.
Like that Muslim girl in Basrah
towards the end of your second
tour. Those same imploring eyes,
how she squawked and
squirmed beneath you, mouth
opening and closing, even after
she fell silent, like she still had
something to say, like she
still believed to you or
God it mattered
12
James River - One
My mother decided 56 years were plenty
one Monday in early May. She dressed
in K-mart jeans, checked Chambray button-up
and Keds, scribbled explanations,
not excuses: I have three daughters and all
have failed. Lost: Last seen walking on the James River
Bridge. Coworkers passed by, wondered why she looked
so happy. I have three daughters. Must have
Mondays off, they thought.
Found: Female, Native or Caucasian. Enlarged
goiter. Contusion, right forehead. Must have
three daughters hit headfirst, as though
she had leaned too far over
the glistening railing to hear all have failed
a gurgling secret the river would
only murmur to her. Where
do you think she learned
to listen like that?
13
Conversation on the Ascent
Orpheus:
You know how much I love you, Babe - far too much
to let you
shed your earthly skin. Up here, we’ve got
it all: multiple
orgasms, pistachio gelato, two-for-one horror
flicks, and that feeling as I first slide inside you.
Eurydice:
Break-ups are so much like molting, that raw feeling
at first, but then
all that potential once forever is
off the table.
Still, you wonder why I’d want to shuck this carnal chrysalis,
your face a hull I’d gladly leave behind.
14
Happy Hour at the Tender Glow
- “Father, if all things are possible unto thee, take this cup away from me.”
Mark 14:36
2-for-1 drink specials don’t last all night - now
that’s agony. Our Mary Magdalene wears velour
track suits, Chantilly Lace. Orders her
deliverance neat with a water back.
Round here, we’re on the pay-as-you-go
retirement plan.
Tonight, our Peter, James and John think ‘designated’
means ‘least drunk,’ think playing chicken
with a semi
is as good a Friday as any.
Is Jesus the seatbelt or the steering wheel?
Good lord- Channel 7 says it’ll take a full
two hours to shovel that chrome alloy fuck-up
from the number 1 lane. The rest of us
will just slug on home, sleep it off.
We’d give anything to rise again.
15
Toby
The poor boy can’t focus on
history lessons, only the persistent gnawing
of his stomach. “Please, just one,” he says to
the barmistress. She hadn’t missed any meals.
World hunger? What about my hunger?
My, those are lovely
sweet buns there in the rubbish bin...
Is anyone looking?
Who is the pauper and who is the prince? He
gets two meals a day at the workhouse,
eaten with two clenched fists - one for eating
and one for pummeling any bloke
who
gets in his way. He tries
to remember, here it’s
eat or be eaten.
16
Eastern European Lovers
Tonight I will lose
myself in the ringed brown
sadness under your
eyes, which is fine - we know
individuality is for the
bourgeois. We nuzzle
bony-bridged noses and
attempt to warm the Cold
War out of our bones.
We are what happens
when West LA
meets East Berlin.
You have such a Russian
face you whisper, and I know
that’s a compliment.
On 500 thread count Egyptian
cotton, we are white on white
on white, which is also fine where we come from, Red
is the only other color
that matters.
Afterward, we press
ourselves against the cool
windowpane, peering out over
sprawling, wintertime Vegas.
Capitalists look curiously
more like ants than
pigs from the seventeenth
story.
Popped bottles of champagne:
to a new life! We drink
with purpose, and wait for the
nouveau-riche hemlock to take effect.
Bellagio we say, killing
17
time and any latent Socialism left
in us. What do you think that
means?
We make
no effort to answer, we just like
the sound of it,
so important, so American.
18
Dead Mother Superhero
after Michael Dickman
The best part
about throwing
yourself from
a bridge is that
you end all
the misery once
and for all, for
yourself at least.
Where face meets
water at ninety
miles
per hour
there is not one
space for regret,
like wishing
you had remembered
your
cape.
You could have asked to borrow
mine, you know.
Every seven year-old has one.
*
The best part about
having a Dead Mother
Superhero is
reinventing your
every death every
time I tell the
story.
It’s never the same
death twice:
Mostly variations
on thyroid
19
cancer, sometimes
a drunk driver, and
once, (when asked by
a Christian
co-worker), you were
stabbed
to death by a lesbian
lover.
But my favorite is the
real story, almost
nothing altered,
only this
time
you stop to say
goodbye
first.
*
The worst part about
having a Dead
Mother Superhero
is that there
are no mirrors
in my house
anymore - not that it
would matter.
I can’t ever bear to look.
When face hit
water at
ninety
miles
per
hour
everything of you in me died
too - thank you.
I am my
own cape.
20
What The Anthropologist Won’t Say
A few hundred years from now
a dashing doctoral candidate will hold
my pelvis up in a lecture hall and say,
“Caucasoid female. Note the enlarged pelvic
opening, the grooves are indicative
of childbirth.”
He won’t know the twenty-four hours
it took those grooves to get there, or the Filipino
nurse who took her lunch break in my labor
room, rubbing my back while my
then-husband
watched the Laker game and sucked down the last
of my ice chips while a Pitocin hydrogen bomb
was unleashed
on my cervix.
He won’t say that the child was a girl with a genetic
predisposition for strawberry Starburst and air
guitar solos, or how I often feared my heart
would burst with love for this girl, her sleeping
face my own, private, nightly
apparition of the Virgin herself.
He won’t tell them how much I prized
those scars that coursed across my belly.
He won’t tell them, but I want
them to know. Tell them
I was once the river
from which all
life flowed.
21
Cuervo Queens
What happened to us? Somewhere
between Radiohead and National
Public Radio we grew up, grew out
of those RedLight jeans, you
know, the ones you said could
stop traffic.
My daughter says just let me
out here, Mom- slams the door
because I can’t remember
the difference
between Bruno Mars
and Veronica Mars.
She looks
at my junior prom
picture. You were skinny then. What
happened? You happened. First
your dad, then you, in that
order. That part may be
important
to her someday.
The junior
prom, remember? I went
with Bill Lami (he came out
a year later.) My daughter
wants to know if he got
to first base that night.
Overnight, I went from
Mamacita to Mommy. Fuck
growing old gracefully, I’m
going out with time’s DNA
under
my fingernails.
22
Every now
and then, I pass a grocery
store window and catch
a glimpse of the girl
who broke necks
and hearts in acid-washed
jeans. She surfaces
just long enough for me
to remember that leather
jacket, those Doc Martens,
the fuck-all attitude not
found on the shelves of
department stores.
Daughter, my love,
age is a drunk driver
who T-bones
everybody,
eventually.
23
No Just-For-Men for Jesus
No, Sir. No crows feet, no
sagging skin, just six-pack
and sinew. Boy, ain’t you
something. Preserved
right in your prime.
But me? I’m down
here, trying to speak to
you on knees that snap,
crackle. Pop two Alleve,
suppress a cackle when
I recall how Eve
took the fall
for The Fall.
Preacher’s talking
about the qualities of a
virtuous wife, but I’m
thinking about peeking
under that loincloth, see if
I can’t teach you a little
something about
female-assigned-at-birth.
“...and she will bring him good, not harm, all the days of her life...”
Sing holy, holy
Hallelujah, Boy.
Praise my name
for once.
24
5 North
Tell me again why I hurtle myself over miles
of pockmarked freeways, past Flying Js,
Pilots. All around me are last chances:
Next rest area 35 miles.
Nevermind food, gas, lodging - you are my basic need.
My body becomes one with asphalt at 85 mph. I don’t drive
like it’s stolen, I drive like every oncoming Halogen
mistake I’ve ever made is barreling down on me
in the fast lane.
Come dusk, water from slaughterhouse sprinklers catches
the sun just right, sending up a thousand blazing rainbows.
Tell me one day we’ll be over them.
25
Hostile Environment
Little children, headache; big children, heartache.
-Italian Proverb
Once, you were flora
my body cultured, fauna
cocooned within me.
Hands vowed to
distended belly:
we will always be
this close.
How is it, now, that
you exist entirely outside
of me? Next to me,
the distance
between driver
and passenger window
you stare out of
an abyss
I cannot bridge.
Who could fathom this distance?
I’ll walk the rest, Mom.
Door slams, and I wonder
when I became alkaline, why
I can no longer host you.
26
Forecast
You went down to Hades
on a foggy Sunday.
Early morning phone call
prompted me to slump at the
straight-razor edge of bed.
Wonder if I shouldn’t
set foot to field, follow.
All day, this thought: what song
could I play in His world
to lure you back? Instead,
I walked a drizzled mile.
When it rains and the sun
is shining, that means
the Devil’s beating his wife.
That Sunday’s forecast was
rain with patches of sun.
Now I remember, we’re
not always anything.
27
Fences
“There is nothing as white as the white girl an Indian boy loves.”
-Distances, Sherman Alexie
We jumped the knotted
wood fence and lay
like lizards
on the Reservation
rocks. I watched the desert
sun fancydance
across the bronze
of your skin, each closed-fist
kiss your Daddy gave you left
its own zip code on your
stomach.
I wondered how long
I would have to lie there
before I would be brown
enough for you to
love me. We kept one eye
open for your mother.
The other we closed,
and set about making
our temples a
little less holy.
Invoking Father Sun
we sheathed our tongues
in words like “Apache,”
“warrior,” and “tribal identity.”
I said I want to be Minnehaha.
You said I should stick to Minnie
Mouse. I said it would take a
strong warrior to steal me away.
You said it would
take a strong horse.
28
I said, “two weeks late,”
“free clinic,” “I’m sure.”
You said nothing.
Your mother said,
“goodbye note,” “bus ticket.”
My mother said, “quit school,”
“factory,” “full-time.”
Years later, I passed
your mother by the
factory gate, the chain-link
fence casting a shadowed
grid on her face, slicing
it into tidy squares
of ambivalence.
She said, “murder,” “29 to
life,” “visitation allowed.”
At Folsom I said,
“I needed you,” “I don’t
understand.”
You said Father Sun had
been kind to me.
Now the fence is barbed
wire, but it’s still me on
one side, you on the other
and between us, suspended
like frozen particles of light, all
the reasons why you ran
until the road ran out, why you
could never love me, and
why the fence that tears
me apart is the one I keep
climbing, I keep
climbing.
29
For You
For you, I become the wind and travel down
the invisible path that leads to you, past
white clapboard country stores that sell
cell phones and haircuts and heads
of lettuce, through lazy stretches of fog
that murmur your name. I will squeeze
my way into your bed through cracked
cinder to wrap myself around you and love
all of your long-neglected places, to tell you
I don’t want to die without licking the salt
once more from your skin. To whisper go ahead
and sleep. You’re safe here.
For you, I become sunlight, an atomized
version of myself soaking down past blood
and bone, bronze shimmering in every cell. A search
party of one for the lost little boy inside your
Siberian heart. Come out now, everybody is waiting.
Hand in hand, we’ll radiate out of you like an undiscovered
sun telling everyone: go ahead and stare. This
is what love looks like.
For you, I seep down into the ground and become the water
that snakes its way through pipes to shower you
with absolution. Steaming the remorse from your pores,
soothing the spots rubbed raw from self-loathing, purging
grief once and for all, saying, wash it all away,
Darling. Today is a new day.
30
Brief and Momentary Contact
Each institution has established a visiting schedule which provides a minimum of 12
visiting hours per week. Each visitor and inmate is responsible for his or her own
conduct while visiting. Weddings will take place on regularly-scheduled weekend
visitations.
Wind arrives
on time, gusts
rush to greet
guests.
Branches skitter
slipshod
over the backs of
buzz-sawed sofas.
Wind wraps
flagpole, fusing
fabric to ferrum.
Union.
Do you take this woman?
An inmate and his/her visitor(s) are allowed a period of brief and momentary contact at
the beginning and end of their visit, which will be limited to one embrace and one kiss.
Rain rattles buildings
in their temporal
frames, creaking
skeletal structures.
In
Japan, rain on your
wedding day is
a sign of
fertility. In prison,
less so.
Didn’t I say this
would be the happiest
and saddest day of our
lives?
31
Holding hands on top of the table in plain view is permitted, with no other physical
contact. Excessive contact (kissing, massaging, stroking, and sitting with legs
intertwined or sitting on laps) could result in termination of the visit.
Cold carves,
whittling
us down until
we are now
only what fits
inside brief and
momentary
contact, shearing us
down to the old
blue bone,
the borrowed. Something
new.
Sing our dirge, Boy:
I do - and don’t
speak
of the days
when
we tried
to force
infinity
into one
embrace, one
kiss.
Speak
of the days
when
we won’t
have to.
But where
does it go,
all that does
not fit? And
what does it
say about
us, that we
try anyway?
32
Minimum Eligible Parole Date: June, 2024
By the time it’s all over, Penelope
will have nothing on me. I admit,
she did a much better job of fending
off suitors, but can you blame me?
That thing that happens to women
in their thirties is true. In fifteen
years, only twice have I removed
my ring, turned your photo facedown on the dresser, turned myself
face-up for some Odyssean stand-in.
Mostly, I stay up nights, looming
over letters, weaving
myself into your reality. Time
is a dance of undoing.
How does a shroud
come apart? One thread
at a time.
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Said Kali to Raktabija:
Don’t fight it. I am your funeral
pyre, the last remnant of earth
to engulf you.
As my ten arms wrench your feet
from their resting place, you learn
there are fates worse than becoming
god, that love is torn sockets.
Love is swallowing whole.
I am the tongue and the blade that rips
it open, the bloodstained soil which again
becomes you. You are the seed. Pray
I let you grow.
You know me. When it comes
to destruction, once is never enough.
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Said Raktabija to Kali:
All our blood is yours
to spill. Here,
at your feet, thousands
of us clatter toward
you, each
almost-carcass
a prayer: make
it quick.
The first time
around, we never
grasp that this is how
you show love. We
only know
ruptured spleens, flattened
sagittal crests.
The next time will be easier.
All we ever wanted?
A love worthy
of evisceration.
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NOTES
“Snow Child” is inspired by the Russian fairy tale of the same name.
“The Church of Rock-n-Roll” refers to Ace Frehley from KISS.
“Renga” was part of a class renga (Japanese-style conversation poem) that took place in
Professor Dorothy Barresi’s graduate verse writing class during the Fall semester of 2011
at California State University, Northridge.
“You or God” is inspired by stories shared at Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Toby” is based on the character by the same name from Sweeney Todd: The Demon
Barber of Fleet Street.
The legal verbiage found in “Brief and Mometary Contact” is taken from the California
Department of Correction and Rehabilitation’s Visiting Handbook, found online at:
http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/visitors/docs/inmatevisitingguidelines.pdf.
“Said Kali to Raktabija” and “Said Raktabija to Kali” are inspired by the mythological
battle that takes place between them as described in Elizabeth U. Harding’s Kali: The
Black Goddess of Dakshineswar.
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