Negative Capability Press Contest
Spring 2020 Honorable Mention
Tattooist’s Needle, Jewish Museum
I come from
women starving
for sleep—
chapped lips stuck
to deflated breasts.
A prisoner’s palm,
clenched & closed
under his
control.
His fingers
steered me
where
to crawl,
dig & drag
through
convoys
of skin—
He taught
me the art
of etching
& scraping
numbers
into
arms.
I hold
drops
of
dried
blood
and
luck
on
my
tip.
How many lion-hearted
goodly creatures heard mercy’s gavel slam
are there here in the Pied Piper’s courtroom
How beauteous hired guns,
our mankind is lay down arms for alms
O’ brave new world We’re light yearning to found
We are such stuff as dreams are made on
our little life waiting some night song
to be sung by soil rounded with sleep
six feet
deep.
Almost Like Memory
For Matthew Shepard
In the harbor of my mind, you never entered The Fire-
Side Bar. You end up in New York, and we meet at Queens College’s
Gay & Lesbian Union. We go to Pride together—marching in our parade.
You’ve tied the rainbow flag around your neck like a cape.
It’s an easy day —where breezes only blow as much as I want—
alleviating June’s newborn heat. We walk Manhattan, braving
people’s scowls, stares & our anxiety. Turn up at the Whitney’s,
Hopper exhibit. In the elevator up, doors open on early Sunday morning.
Its windows and half-raised shades seem open like eyelids
lifting from sleep. Long horizontal puddles of shadow
cut and interrupt the street, paralleling the canvas.
Silhouettes seem to continue past the painting— almost like memory
can continue past what we think we know, into what we don’t know.
You turn to me, nod and add, there’s a street like this in Morocco.
We stop at the hotel room—a woman in a girdle sits on the side of the bed,
hunched over, defeated. She holds a blank paper
with horizontal folds. If that was a letter with writing,
what would it say? You don’t answer, just stare somewhere.
I think it’s a letter saying goodbye—yet to be written.
Again, you’re silent while we walk to the next work, Automat.
This is one of my favorites—see how the woman is doing nothing
but gazing into her cup. Focusing on her coffee, like it’s the only thing
to cure her loneliness—Look at how the empty
chair across from her is pushed as close to the table as possible.
See how she isn’t far from the door? As if she’s ready to go—
anywhere—To make a break for it—for herself to break
into someone new—and leave with the first person who comes in—
just to not be alone. You add, her mind seems stateless.
Nomadic—trying to find an exit from her mind
and the mirages anxiety creates. She is grounded
by the anchor of solitude. I know what it feels like
to not exist, to not be recognized
as human. You sigh and continue. I don’t feel like I exist.
Later, in the museum’s café, after reviewing the day, you open,
like a letter that has waited years to be unfolded and read:
I was gang raped in Morocco. One of them gave me AIDS.
From: Unhoused: Yearning for Home
Edited by: Candice Louisa Daquin, Lisa Tomey-Zonneveld,
Zaneta V. Johns and Jia Ling Yang
