Six Poems: Jo Blair Cipriano
Winner: Patricia Cleary Miller Award for Poetry Selected by Simone Muench
drive When the roof of the car rolls back, a sound like boulders coming undone, the sun affirms there’s no returning: this older girl driving me home is a secret I’ll never know how to tell. Gold flecks her bronzed skin. Her hair tangles the wind and not the other way around. I am ten and old enough to know she is old enough to borrow heaven, hours at a time, in a roofless machine and we are alone together for the first time. “Want some?” She tips the cup, its styrofoam mouth stained the same slushie-red as hers. I lean in, the straw a flailing bridge between us, bump my chin then bottom lip on its plastic, sip too fast. She doesn’t notice. I turned nine while she was working in the shop with my dad. Two older boys with guitars walked in and moved as if pulled, as if the frozen waves of cream
212
S I X P OE M S
behind glass had their own currents, as if she behind the counter conducted the undertow. “Play something for Josie, it’s her birthday!” she said, and they did. Whatever tomorrow brings I’ll be there, they sang and she smiled. Papa saw the bitterness in my face, thought I wanted the boys’ attention. But I am old enough to know I am a child and not even my birthday song is about me. Instead I think about melting. Being reshaped. About warm hands. In the car now, her fingers drum the wheel, rise into sheets of sunlight above us. For the first time, I miss a moment before it ends. Papa’s shop is going out of business. I don’t know what we’ll do. If he’s told her. But I’m too young to change anything, so I signal which street to turn on—and it’s over. In my driveway she offers me the rest of her slushie and I reach, allow myself to believe it means something that our fingers kiss in the transfer.
JO BL A I R C I PR I A NO
Cremation Society of Maryland The first flake of ash exits the industrial chimney It’s her Mama says. Should we catch it? I know it takes hours for a body to become gravel but I fold my own hand into my mother’s and we move toward the building where we’ve now started another fire. We’re regulars Mama says when we arrive and the man apologizes like it is his job. In the lobby’s lone painting a stormcloud dissolves into a thousand small crows. In the next room the man pulls back a white sheet and I think again of dissolving. I’m glad we identified her body Mama says when we are outside. Me too I say. She has taught me the right way to lie. A pair of crows fly over the chimney. Mama and I watch their wings tangle a cloud of ash. We grip
213
214
S I X P OE M S
each other’s wrists. We lie. We imagine when we leave people we leave them whole.
JO BL A I R C I PR I A NO
Map of My Brother as [Man/Monster] I don’t know how many this makes between us: beatings, expressions of love. This time, a [man]. Moonlight. A shattered jaw. My brother bleeds into gravel but is not allowed to call it assault: “Fucking asshole.” “Fucking mugged.” He cannot say beaten left for dead. The problem is once, someone told him he was a [man]. Then they did it again. The time the [man] beat him, I took pictures of my brother’s bruises. I looked up the [man]. His fake badge number. Stroked sweat from my brother’s forehead until the alcohol in his body carried him to sleep. Now him left for dead and me on the other side of this country. Always between us and safety: Surrender. Landscape. A [man] we don’t name.
215
216
S I X P OE M S
In An Empty Train Car, “Yes” Means “I Want To Live” The stranger sits behind me. “You just showered,” he tells me. His breath wants to separate skin from my neck. Yes. I should’ve paid more attention. How reckless of me to have hair wet as proof of its cleanliness. Yes. I will finally let her buzz it, the girl waiting for me at home— our home. “You got a boyfriend?” asks the stranger. Yes. She calls the subway the metro but she knows I am on my way. Yes. The doors open. No one enters. The doors close. One day your body will forget him, she says one night over pizza she made from scratch. I’m too afraid to eat the crusts. Yes, I throw away my favorite parts and she says nothing, sweeps away the crumbs, calls me beautiful. “Answer me bitch,” says the stranger and the rails screech and click under our speed. Yes, when I gather myself, when I push through the train’s side doors and the darkness moves through me, I am afraid. I sprint from this car to the next. Then the next. My lips moving, even when they can no longer remember his face— Yes. Yes. Yes.
JO BL A I R C I PR I A NO
217
Triptych I.
In one room, my brother swallows the sky.
In another, he is salt.
Both ways, he is what’s left of a sea.
Listen: if you train your mind, you can hear the gulls. Once you hear the gulls, you can’t unhear them starving.
II.
First there is a room full of flight. Then between four walls a pile of winged corpses. Tell me it’s there
218
S I X P OE M S
i don’t see
the color red
i don’t hear
please.
i don’t have
a brother.
somewhere
in all this blood: my brother’s smile. my brother’s smile. my brother’s smile.
III.
The wings open like volcanoes on our backs. In feathered bodies, my brother and I, we will start over. Our bones are flutes alive with wind. Please.
If you get this message: don’t tell me how it ends.
JO BL A I R C I PR I A NO
Ars Poetica Our rapists go out to bars with their friends. They loosen their ties. They laugh. They work for the government and boast the highest security clearance. When they meet new people, they don’t introduce themselves as rapists, but as “retired college athletes.” Our rapists are friends. They are friends with each other’s friends. They are part of a whole network of rapists who don’t identify as rapists, but as “being in finance.” Our rapists fly first class, ride the Acela, own the newest iPhone that, when pressed, illuminates their young children’s faces. Our rapists are family men. They provide for their wives and their children and sometimes their lovers and their commutes are painless. Their faces turn pink in the sharp Chicago wind. Pink in the endless New York City winter. Pink in the suffocating Miami heat. Our rapists sleep on Brooklinen sheets and they do it soundly. They found organizations and give to charity and jerk off to the sound of their own poems. They say Beyoncé isn’t even that hot bro and genuinely believe that the OnlyFans models love them. Our rapists want love too. This isn’t a joke. Do you think this is a joke? Two rapists walk into a bar. Then two more do. Then two more. Our rapists are chiefs of police. They patrol while we sleep. While we shower. While we love who we love, despite them. Our rapists are paid by other rapists to attack us. To defend us.
219
220
S I X P OE M S
Wanna hear a joke? Two rapists pass the bar. Then two more do. Then two more. Show me on this body where they hurt you. Show me on this map where we’re safe.