{"id":14265,"date":"2018-03-26T11:23:10","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T16:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/?p=14265"},"modified":"2018-03-31T21:23:39","modified_gmt":"2018-04-01T02:23:39","slug":"portrait-of-reality-in-fragments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/14265","title":{"rendered":"portrait of reality, in fragments"},"content":{"rendered":"

in this reality, i am a boy
\nwho kisses his lover beneath
\nthe fireworks \u2014 july 4, 2012.
\nthe last girl i wore on my breath
\napologizes before calling me
\nfaggot<\/em>, an observation.
\n& perhaps this copy of myself
\neven replied thank you<\/em> & wasn\u2019t
\na ghost sifting in its floorboards;
\nin another body this is the story
\n-book ending: this is the ending
\nwhere even i come out
\n______<\/span>alive \u2014
\n_____________<\/span>*
\ni want to say i love my mother
\nlike the four-year copy of myself:
\nmy chubby hand open in waving,
\ncatching air, sticky with saliva
\n& sweet crystalline residue;
\nhow even in infancy i craved most
\nthat which could end or define
\nme, an unknowing symmetry;
\na red serum dissolving & trickling
\ndown my cheek like Styx \u2014
\n_____________<\/span>*
\nThales hypothesized that all matter was
\ncomposed of water molecules.
\ni\u2019d like to think there exists a world
\nwhere everything i touch becomes
\nboth desire & inheritance; permutations
\nof a former self; hence, i could absolve
\nmyself this body; & every time
\na lover entered me, they could taste
\na country on fire: the freedom
\nto deform,
\n______<\/span>& forget \u2014
\n_____________<\/span>*
\nin this reality, my mother\u2019s liver was,
\ninstead, a drawbridge; her hands were not
\nminotaurs escaping a burning kingdom,
\nmy brother was not her child forsaken
\n& crucified, and we didn\u2019t have to beg a
\nhalf-sung religion from her ocean-liner
\nvertebrae, as if they were not the aftermath
\nof partitioned countries; my mother wasn\u2019t
\nsouthern transplant, or daughter
\nof floodwater; instead, the mountain
\nforgave the river its dry
\n-drowning; instead, the bloodied ethanol
\nclimbed up the cliffs of her throat \u2014
\n_____________<\/span>*
\nsay the marrow forgave its captor, bone \u2014
\n& even that is its own form of shelter;
\nsay a bruise is just a rebellion of blood,
\na rupture of capillaries & all the ghosts they
\nfailed to contain & is that not the body
\nin its primal beauty? what of the self
\ncan evolve without breakage
\n______<\/span>of touch?
\n_____________<\/span>*
\nmy mother, in her purest anger, reminds me
\nof a reality where she birthed me drugless:
\nthe expense___<\/span>of me being the splitting
\nof her,___<\/span>of atom, of umbilical cord stretching
\noceans; isn\u2019t the mother___<\/span>in exile an act of self
\n-dispossession? i am both___<\/span>child & ransacked
\ntemple in Her___<\/span>image, hence___<\/span>premonition
\nof flesh, in all its brief___<\/span>partings; of a lineage
\nwhich craves most___<\/span>its own
\n______<\/span>collapse \u2014
\n_____________<\/span>*
\nwhat of the body isn\u2019t
\nan unbecoming \u2014
\n_____________<\/span>*
\nin this reality, the story unwrites itself:
\nmy lover un-ghosts me after i swallow
\nconfession<\/em>; the word bisexual<\/em> unmakes
\nitself at home in me & i do not leave
\nmy house; the clear liquid runs back
\ninto its bottle like a river might; my mother
\nis not yet a mountain: the avalanche sweeps
\nup her body, unlearning & inhaling its anxieties;
\nshe\u2019s a good girl, a good southern girl<\/em>:
\nthe future grandchildren of my mother\u2019s sentences
\nretreat to a hypothetical womb; her blessing, not
\nformed, hangs heavy in the thick air; my queerness
\n& self-loathing unwind, like DNA strands \u2014
\n_____________<\/span>*
\ntoday a white doctor who is, perhaps,
\na surgeon, draws a river of knotted blood;
\nis it in your family history?<\/em> a red punctuation
\nmark swelling on my forearm & today i am
\nmy father\u2019s stubborn child; there\u2019s nothing
\na bit of exercise won\u2019t fix<\/em>; even blood?
\ni wonder but do not ask; tell me about this<\/em>
\n history of anxiety<\/em> & i want to say it is
\nmy blood; my veins, the churches crowded
\nin the aftermath & is that not desire?
\nto crave most a coping which un-empties
\nthe body; i inhale my gut & it is no less
\na knotted anchor; i am no less stranger
\nin these waters; i call it southern<\/em>
\n hospitality<\/em>; i practice good manners:
\ni am teaching myself the slowest way
\n______<\/span>to disappear \u2014
\n____________<\/span>*
\ni uncork a bottle of liquid galaxies
\n& tonight i am my mother\u2019s child;
\na boy i find pretty presses his tongue
\nagainst my front teeth & i forget
\nmyself;___________________<\/span>i later find
\nmy self___________________<\/span>alone beneath
\nthe star_________________<\/span>__<\/span>light & this
\nis not___________________<\/span>__<\/span>the reality where
\nthe boy loves himself back, nor is it
\na story where the boy needn\u2019t hate
\nhimself to be worthy of touch \u2014
\n____________<\/span>*
\nsay the sweet tooth bites back. carnal:
\nsay he didn\u2019t make me swallow his country
\n& its brief sunrise that night & i cannot say this
\nis this not what i wanted \u2014 to crave most what seeks
\nto end itself inside of me? what of the self
\ncan evolve without fracture? without man
\nentering into kingdom, all floodgate & storybook
\n& tonight i am not my mother\u2019s child, but a boy
\nconvincing a copy of himself this is the ending
\ndesire gifted him: the boy, kissing a parallel copy
\nof his lover beneath fireworks \u2014 in any case, the story
\nends in implosion; in any case, the boy is both fuse
\n______<\/span>& detonation \u2014
\n____________<\/span>*
\ntonight i am a thousand miles north
\n& i do not call my mother. i do not
\nsmell the ethanol through her phone
\n-static; i do not hear the same apology
\nunwinding itself from her breath
\nlike collapsing rosary beads; like allah<\/em>
\n yerhama<\/em> whispered at a wake; but i do
\nhear her say i love you, you have to know<\/em>
\n i love you<\/em>. & is that not its own funeral
\nquiet? her hands, kissing the bottle\u2019s rim
\n______<\/span>submerging in the absence \u2014
\n____________<\/span>*
\nsay the sun forgave itself the inevitable
\ndisappearance; say the ocean forgave
\nthe moonlight\u2019s lonesome pull \u2014
\nsay the fluid forgave its captor,
\n______<\/span>history \u2014
\n& even that can be its own shelter;
\nmaybe in that reality, i would be,
\ninstead, child of Thales: descendent
\nof salt & molecule; everything i touch,
\nspiraling into a galaxy of droplets,
\n______<\/span>dissolving \u2014<\/p>\n

George Abraham<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

in this reality, i am a boy who kisses his lover beneath the fireworks \u2014 july 4, 2012. the last girl i wore on my breath apologizes before calling me faggot, an observation. & perhaps this copy of myself even replied thank you & wasn\u2019t a ghost sifting in its floorboards; in another body this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":647,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[56],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-3I5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14265"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/647"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14265"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14691,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14265\/revisions\/14691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}