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diannely antigua
from Raleigh Review 9.1
diannely antigua diary entry #30: regression
At first, I didn’t seem far from repair. But on a train from Venice, my tears are fat, used like a boat, replaying memories, the 99 stories of abandonment. There are ways to anatomize my grief, the hardest part was getting their bodies down the drain, the ants. Death is the greatest protector. She occurs like Jesus again and again. Sometimes she’s dressed as a French maid, a Mary Magdalene, a poor woman eating a plum. My family liked me better when I was with him, my certain savior. Only a true believer can die from this curse. Only my mind is an underworld.
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My therapist likes to ask: What are the different ways that you can talk about your father? I have a vision of different spoons falling on him, and I don’t cry. But I’m losing things, I tell her— the half-life of my body, a compressed atom in my head. I’m addicted to the suicidal space, even at weddings. Even in war, we wait for the silent landscape after the bomb.
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tacey atsitty last night, bleeding
Last night when the prophet was near done dying, I lay bleeding on my new mattress.
It had been years since I had bled this way, and I had forgotten how to care for myself.
But Tom’s dad too, he gave them the slip, the cells of his body—went in a calm yellow
way. Tom texted a photo of his father’s head, bald—the way my hands were going
from rubbing out blood from beneath me and inside me, from my garments
and Christ, He welcomed his chosen seer at the same time. Only yesterday did I see
the feet of a stillborn on Facebook. His toes and soles and ankles already so pale
and peaceful in a cloud of sheets, while the rest of us turn and turn in snow,
clotting back into white cells—then a code talker, a grandfather, how handsome
his life and an American flag lies over— these mornings I take to the rain
channel on YouTube, without thunder so it feels real in season. These days,
every time I lie down I imagine cutting the skin from my navel to my neck
and open up like I’ve never done before.
tacey atsitty
