Hyperventilation
Friday, I stopped breathing.
I told myself: you have
written before. You will write again.
Start with one true sentence.
I thought of my mother’s answering machine:
Clinical social worker and psychotherapist.
If this is a psychiatric emergency
please hang up and dial 9-1-1
or go to your nearest hospital emergency room.
No one can commit you unless you make a threat.
Even crazys have rights.
You will write again.
I can skate better than most of the planet
which makes me feel published.
Something no one knows about me is
I see myself like Botticelli’s Venus:
modest but unapologetic, with a dash
of unapologetic sexuality,
but I hear myself saying I’m sorry
I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry
I’m sorry you love me, because I’ve fooled you,
because I don’t see what there is to love
while I’m seeing myself birthed from the sea
riding a scallop shell. That’s cocky narcissism,
a category in the DSM IV. Commit me.
I’ll make a threat: I’ll write again.
How’s that for violence?
My pride, my skating, my sharp and biting edges.
One true sentence: I hate because I love
and I love despite the hate.
Boricuas
San Juan, the green stucco façade of St. Elizabeth’s Presbyterian Hospital. Close-up on yellow and blue birth certificates in Spanish.
Mr. & Mrs.:
You two were born blonde
(one with a blue foot,
an umbilical accident),
two years
and three months
apart. Each time,
the enfermeras tried
to pierce your ears.
Cut away to a banana tree next to a pool. Coquis chirp with the coming night.
Bluefoot & Blondie:
We descended from WASPs
wearing nothing
but water wings
and sun bonnets
and diapers.
You:
partial ex-pats,
but we:
Boricuas.
In the foreground, a snowman outside a Tudor house in a New Jersey suburb. Through a window, the family eating rice and beans.
Brookes Moody is an MFA candidate at The New School. Her work has previously been published in The Northern New England Review and Playground Journal.
Friday, I stopped breathing.
I told myself: you have
written before. You will write again.
Start with one true sentence.
I thought of my mother’s answering machine:
Clinical social worker and psychotherapist.
If this is a psychiatric emergency
please hang up and dial 9-1-1
or go to your nearest hospital emergency room.
No one can commit you unless you make a threat.
Even crazys have rights.
You will write again.
I can skate better than most of the planet
which makes me feel published.
Something no one knows about me is
I see myself like Botticelli’s Venus:
modest but unapologetic, with a dash
of unapologetic sexuality,
but I hear myself saying I’m sorry
I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry
I’m sorry you love me, because I’ve fooled you,
because I don’t see what there is to love
while I’m seeing myself birthed from the sea
riding a scallop shell. That’s cocky narcissism,
a category in the DSM IV. Commit me.
I’ll make a threat: I’ll write again.
How’s that for violence?
My pride, my skating, my sharp and biting edges.
One true sentence: I hate because I love
and I love despite the hate.
Boricuas
San Juan, the green stucco façade of St. Elizabeth’s Presbyterian Hospital. Close-up on yellow and blue birth certificates in Spanish.
Mr. & Mrs.:
You two were born blonde
(one with a blue foot,
an umbilical accident),
two years
and three months
apart. Each time,
the enfermeras tried
to pierce your ears.
Cut away to a banana tree next to a pool. Coquis chirp with the coming night.
Bluefoot & Blondie:
We descended from WASPs
wearing nothing
but water wings
and sun bonnets
and diapers.
You:
partial ex-pats,
but we:
Boricuas.
In the foreground, a snowman outside a Tudor house in a New Jersey suburb. Through a window, the family eating rice and beans.
Brookes Moody is an MFA candidate at The New School. Her work has previously been published in The Northern New England Review and Playground Journal.
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