music, writing

lyrical substitution

Jeff Buckley looking through match flame . . .

I looked upon his face through flame
and knew the shape, the curve of mouth
the bottomless eyes,
the puncture wound
left by his name,
but still the ache like silken hands beneath
a sleeve that only brushed my cheek
and how can I love
so deep
a boy who sings
as though to weep
and gather all
my heart in knots
of red red silk,
to wring it white and colorless
and sting my taste against
the other strangers I have never met.

~ Andrea E. Janda

writing

Complete Body of Work

I spent a lot of time today.
I put on stockings
. . . . . . and I never do that
And when I laid myself down on that long white canvas,
she traced my body
in all the fine details I liked and admitted
and those I could not see.

And we laughed and remarked
all those points in between where my fingers jagged
and how much I liked the empty slopes to be touched.
and how the pencil had a way of making points and triangles
where there were none.

The first time I tried this exercise
was in the 3rd grade.
There was no ginger navigation,
there were no points no hips no breasts to avoid.
And Timmy, did a fine job, and didn’t make my head too big.
Timmy with a beautiful brown birthmark
on the side of his cheek.
I called it Jupiter’s spot once.
He blushed and took it as a compliment.

When my outline was finished, I rolled it out
and hung it on the wall
And I began to affix things to it.
Scraps of poetry, beer caps, pictures,
Miniature snapshot flashbulb memoirs,
Tiny swatches of time I inhabited
Meaningful, in all probability,
only to myself.

Once my body was full of all that I was
I hung it on the wall at school for all to see.
I existed for a time in two places.
And it was disconcerting to see me everyday like that,
People looking at those scattered pieces of me,
unraveling me,
knowing me.
I felt naked and under scrutiny,
but I grew comfortable.

And that one thoughtless boy,
One of a string of so many like him,
I caught him pressing my profile
Waiting for a class,
I had to ask him, If he wouldn’t mind so much as to move
. . . . . . .
I’d rather he read me,
than lean on me.