"A man stripped of his privacy may die of loneliness. . . . In order to be able to do anything one must relinquish control" (two unattributed quotations, copied by Diane Arbus in her 1964 appointment book; see Revelations, p. 171).
The stars were nightsongs.
Heaven fell out of the sky.
She had earth to hold her,
her body weighed down
by her restless fingers
entwining what she saw.
Carlotta in her slip, light
curtained, hand to throat,
peering into the open lens.
My, she is pretty, Diane writes.
Underwear for Harper’s Bazaar
unpublished. A call girl said,
I’m in love with love. I love
to please. I could smother
someone with love. Diane
writes down what she said,
which takes care of control
and saves a man from death
by loneliness. Don’t you wish
heaven was still in the sky?
The pictures grow lifesize,
Diane tells Carlotta. Closeups
prevail. Like making people,
she adds. Carlotta gives birth
to a son in her husband’s arms
in Holland. The stars blink
the code meant for lullabies.
Carlotta’s brain surgery yields
two holes drilled in her head
in Holland. Diane’s photo
of four-year-olds, a black girl
and white boy holding hands,
goes unpublished in the Times’
Children’s Fashions. The girl
and boy on the cover are white,
but it’s hers. Otherwise she’s free.
She is learning to live alone:
"Partly, it seems a matter of
severing connections in my head,"
she writes Carlotta after long silence.
"Like if I do this that will happen,
because sometimes it does
and sometimes it doesn’t
and I have spent a lot of energy
exercising non-existent magical
controls. . . . I have so much
to learn about how to live."
Six months twenty-six days left.
Carlotta is in New York, about
to go back to Holland. Diane
rides her bike over, ten days left.
Next day Carlotta returns to Holland.
Diane alone, home: "I used to think
consciousness itself was a virtue,
so I tried to keep it all in my head
at the same time, past, future etc.
tried even to feel the bad
when I felt good and vice versa
as if any awareness was
a marie-antoinette sort of sin.
its like throwing ballast overboard
to only do what there is to do NOW.
a kind of confidence that later
will bring its own now . . .
It makes Sunday more Sunday
and even Monday is better . . ."
(For references and quotations throughout the text, see, in the order they appear here, the following pages: 171, 170, 187, 194, 207, 206, 212, 214, and 224.)
(II: 31 October 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander, and 2003 by the Estate of Diane Arbus
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
So It Is
Words said with eyes closed
pay out in a line straight as true.
How else know the city lies far
from the country, dirt’s flesh, and bone
the earth’s. Far off lie the castles.
For the rich the money makers
make money from the money of the rich.
Camels prepare them for the needles’ eyes.
A needle sees them through: how some make it.
Children feeling doomed are most to be feared.
Locked in, locked out, there is no in-between,
sorrows, ecstasies frozen at the planet’s poles.
The young grow old too quickly to know why
those who called them holy wracked them with fear.
These words fell from a blind tongue. Both eyes shut
could not see where they were to take them back.
So it is. Ice melts, seas rise, blizzards rip
the globe until Earth’s turning stops.
Fathers enslaving mothers with children,
children killing children–all God’s phantoms.
(31 October 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
pay out in a line straight as true.
How else know the city lies far
from the country, dirt’s flesh, and bone
the earth’s. Far off lie the castles.
For the rich the money makers
make money from the money of the rich.
Camels prepare them for the needles’ eyes.
A needle sees them through: how some make it.
Children feeling doomed are most to be feared.
Locked in, locked out, there is no in-between,
sorrows, ecstasies frozen at the planet’s poles.
The young grow old too quickly to know why
those who called them holy wracked them with fear.
These words fell from a blind tongue. Both eyes shut
could not see where they were to take them back.
So it is. Ice melts, seas rise, blizzards rip
the globe until Earth’s turning stops.
Fathers enslaving mothers with children,
children killing children–all God’s phantoms.
(31 October 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
And After, If Ever
God take them all,
I don’t like to cuss
(she was superstitious),
I don’t believe in hell
anywhere but here,
but they don’t get my share.
(She was old now, dying.
This didn’t take the cake,
not at all, Abe’s murder
happened just before
the worst storm she’d seen
come up in the cotton field.)
I’ll see them go unraised.
(I was too little to listen long,
wish I had now I’m damn near
as old as her.) Tell your pa
he needs to teach you things
I tried to show all my boys.
(She meant you did no favor
to you or any of your kin
if you settled for hating.
She got down the rattle
and shook it good.
Gourd set fire to bones . . . )
It was all over, except for me.
I had my granddaddy’s ear.
He sat back making music.
The wind that was up
died down. I asked him
if a storm was ever over.
(Drusilla read my thoughts:
You’re too little to know that.)
He lived too far away to know.
He let his hair hang long.
Grandpa John stared a hole
in the fire, his eyes stirring ashes.
I could hear the hush all around
sounding like some sleeping beast.
(She didn’t flinch from silence,
louder ceremony than any storm.)
I had to say I hope those two die
someday, and the whore too.
And one night Abe’s killers smashed
into rocks, catching fire by the road
we were driving, Clyde and I,
and passing Diddier’s outdoor
ballroom, we saw the woman
who like both her men was charred.
(I got home before the storm quit
years later, took to the basement, said
World without end over and again,
Cathleen pointing her red toes straight
ahead, crouching over her knees.
I waited to blow her lips my wet kiss.)
(II: 30 October 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
I don’t like to cuss
(she was superstitious),
I don’t believe in hell
anywhere but here,
but they don’t get my share.
(She was old now, dying.
This didn’t take the cake,
not at all, Abe’s murder
happened just before
the worst storm she’d seen
come up in the cotton field.)
I’ll see them go unraised.
(I was too little to listen long,
wish I had now I’m damn near
as old as her.) Tell your pa
he needs to teach you things
I tried to show all my boys.
(She meant you did no favor
to you or any of your kin
if you settled for hating.
She got down the rattle
and shook it good.
Gourd set fire to bones . . . )
It was all over, except for me.
I had my granddaddy’s ear.
He sat back making music.
The wind that was up
died down. I asked him
if a storm was ever over.
(Drusilla read my thoughts:
You’re too little to know that.)
He lived too far away to know.
He let his hair hang long.
Grandpa John stared a hole
in the fire, his eyes stirring ashes.
I could hear the hush all around
sounding like some sleeping beast.
(She didn’t flinch from silence,
louder ceremony than any storm.)
I had to say I hope those two die
someday, and the whore too.
And one night Abe’s killers smashed
into rocks, catching fire by the road
we were driving, Clyde and I,
and passing Diddier’s outdoor
ballroom, we saw the woman
who like both her men was charred.
(I got home before the storm quit
years later, took to the basement, said
World without end over and again,
Cathleen pointing her red toes straight
ahead, crouching over her knees.
I waited to blow her lips my wet kiss.)
(II: 30 October 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
Terpsichore
"When I make money from a photograph, I immediately assume it’s not as good a photograph."–Diane Arbus (quoted by Patricia Bosworth in her Diane Arbus, p. 198)
From West Virginia hollow
to the Block off Baltimore Street,
with black hair, black eyes,
she’s got her own Two O’Clock Club,
done now with Bourbon Street's Sho-Bar
and Louisiana governor Long.
Blaze Starr in Nighttown, 1964.
What would James Joyce say?
That little woman’s big camera.
Fannie Belle shines a tit
covered over for Esquire.
Wearing Earl’s fur coat: part
of her act. Left hand perched,
thumb down cradling her bare hip,
right arm behind her hair,
naked save for sequined pasties
and rhinestone panties.
At home she strikes a pose
on her living room rug,
its design a furious thatch
of leaves, manicured white poodle
between her and the Buddha,
in her white-sweatered breasts
and skintight pants
with high-heel toeless pumps,
her right hand’s arm still back
of that head of hair,
her left hand poised, placed
between hip and thigh,
forefinger pointing up, beatified.
If only you could hear the beat
she struts to, barely a stitch on–
Fannie Belle Fleming
from Newground Hollow,
Twelve Pole Creek–who’s now
Nighttown girl come home
wild as ever, yet with her self-
respect intact, saying, Mama,
I told you I’d make you proud.
(30 October 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
From West Virginia hollow
to the Block off Baltimore Street,
with black hair, black eyes,
she’s got her own Two O’Clock Club,
done now with Bourbon Street's Sho-Bar
and Louisiana governor Long.
Blaze Starr in Nighttown, 1964.
What would James Joyce say?
That little woman’s big camera.
Fannie Belle shines a tit
covered over for Esquire.
Wearing Earl’s fur coat: part
of her act. Left hand perched,
thumb down cradling her bare hip,
right arm behind her hair,
naked save for sequined pasties
and rhinestone panties.
At home she strikes a pose
on her living room rug,
its design a furious thatch
of leaves, manicured white poodle
between her and the Buddha,
in her white-sweatered breasts
and skintight pants
with high-heel toeless pumps,
her right hand’s arm still back
of that head of hair,
her left hand poised, placed
between hip and thigh,
forefinger pointing up, beatified.
If only you could hear the beat
she struts to, barely a stitch on–
Fannie Belle Fleming
from Newground Hollow,
Twelve Pole Creek–who’s now
Nighttown girl come home
wild as ever, yet with her self-
respect intact, saying, Mama,
I told you I’d make you proud.
(30 October 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
Monday, October 29, 2012
Love's Skin
"Contact Sheet #4457 of a couple on a couch." In one of a dozen shots, "Diane is lying across the man’s lap in place of the woman" (undated; see Diane Arbus, Revelations, p. 180).
If she wants to know them, she must be one.
Since she’s the woman, she asks to lie
in the man’s arms. She stretches naked
across his knees. Is the woman amused
by Diane Arbus, her attempt to become her?
Why would Dee-ann want to take the place
this woman’s earned? Does the man want her,
or will she be spared having to say no?
The man’s naked lover puts the camera down.
She smokes, then cups one breast as she brushes
its nipple hard, crossing then uncrossing her legs.
She’d like the photographer to get up now
and let her have her man back, now she
knows how to play her, how it feels to touch
what will be seen on film following this
fol-de-rol that goes hand in glove with love.
Who broods the woman’s white, the man black?
In eleven shots they show love’s deeper.
(II: 29 October 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
During
The big demon hit.
The devils let it.
You can’t be little
and not know big.
She sees nothing
nobody else sees.
She thinks all see
what they want to.
She hunkered in
to shelter. Signs
were a bird bent
against the wind,
the dogs roaming
the countryside,
a chorus of voices
shut down, silenced.
The fear on the air
was on her tongue
making no words
easy, as obdurate
as dread, a hush
nobody knows
or will ever know
who was not here.
(29 October 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
The devils let it.
You can’t be little
and not know big.
She sees nothing
nobody else sees.
She thinks all see
what they want to.
She hunkered in
to shelter. Signs
were a bird bent
against the wind,
the dogs roaming
the countryside,
a chorus of voices
shut down, silenced.
The fear on the air
was on her tongue
making no words
easy, as obdurate
as dread, a hush
nobody knows
or will ever know
who was not here.
(29 October 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Devils
Then there are the devils.
There are always more than one
and they are not the same as the demons.
They kill wherever they go,
no one is spared. They are
the devils who sup on power.
They find you in the grave and rip
your flesh from your bones,
they rend so even dead your agony
has no end. They are inside.
Demons are outside.
Drusilla wondered what to say
after Pearl told her all
she needed to know: Be careful, but don’t
skip a breath or let one pass by
without reaching with your heart.
Drusilla went off and prayed.
She knew the words you need.
They are in no language you know
that doesn’t come from half your mother.
(28 October 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
There are always more than one
and they are not the same as the demons.
They kill wherever they go,
no one is spared. They are
the devils who sup on power.
They find you in the grave and rip
your flesh from your bones,
they rend so even dead your agony
has no end. They are inside.
Demons are outside.
Drusilla wondered what to say
after Pearl told her all
she needed to know: Be careful, but don’t
skip a breath or let one pass by
without reaching with your heart.
Drusilla went off and prayed.
She knew the words you need.
They are in no language you know
that doesn’t come from half your mother.
(28 October 2012)
copyright 2012 by Floyce Alexander
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