Jane Joritz-Nakagawa


from PLAN B AUDIO
Excerpt #2


Well, now I am locked up for sharing "sensitive info". Whether it will be used for good or ill I don't know. My angel wings, like Kewpie's, haven't quite sprouted

                               inside the machine that bites, licks and sucks
                               pleasures and oppresses
                               a relic of the past hidden in today's specimen
                               a(non) a(tone)

I bump into one of the guards; emptiness returns to my face

"i wash you for the same reason as I wash rice . . . to get rid of
impurities" he says to me in passing

The cotton towels are rough reddening my skin which bleeds a bit

The administrators always speak in such vague terms that they are
not really saying anything. Especially they like to talk about
sensitive information, hackers and breaches of security, without
mentioning what the info is for, who it is for and so on.

Later surely they will brag to their friends about the amount of spare parts
they've accumulated, without of course explaining exactly how they
were acquired. Perhaps they describe them as token gifts versus
stolen objects, for now all i have is a blanket of distorted memories
to wrap around myself for protection

if they mess with this attire i'll surely be lost

of course progressives have been requesting tax breaks for those
without spare part stockpiles, while conservatives demand large annual bonuses for the stockpilers. there appears to be no way out of this
recurring deadlock

backwards and forwards. they are the chain of crumbs that could help you find me. if only i wasn't so invisible. despite the escalation in emotion. the stairs that led into a corridor of nothingness

they want to break me into parts. they are helping themselves to me. at this juncture i'm not sure which parts are missing and which are simply hidden from view at the present time. for the time being the lack of music and loud senseless noises are driving me nuts. the room with the beautiful forested ceiling i've not seen in weeks. this room's ceiling is simply beige with surveillance equipment built in.

now that i am forced to bend over backwards. the sides are not symmetrical. metaphysical afterbirth fusing the distance between us. now that we are connected i halfheartedly struggle to break free. though freedom is disconcerting in its uncertainty. and though another set of circumstances will threaten it. so all i have is my resistance. even if only symbolic. even if wounded.

deep in my wound i see you. my mother and father are also visible. beads of sweat form a chain of memories leading to sadness or madness. they said they changed my medicine but i feel no different than before.

today i wake up and feel i have been kicked repeatedly in the groin. there was a thick fog outside -- i could see none of the buildings even a short distance across the street. i smelled something moving and heard scratching noises.

xx/yy/zz xy/yz/x

zz/yy/xx xz/yz/xy

zy_yz_xx yz/zu/xz

my vulva next to the teapot
my vulva on a zabuton
jingle bell
Jesus in hell

Santa Claus with jingling balls
Hung as ornaments on the Christmas tree

I love my bloody vulva
as wholly modern ancient ritual


The following day, after a half-eaten breakfast of cold oatmeal and radish sprouts, a different administrator in a blue suit with large black glasses looked at me and pointed to something across the room. Though I wasn't sure, I thought she may have been pointing to a door so I went and walked through it, only to find myself next to the desk where i used to work sorting medicines. Someone who looked something like me was doing just that.
Due to the air quality I searched for a door or window leading to the outside. when i finally found one, i realized it was only a painting of the outside

at a job where i suppress my values. in order to make a "decent" wage, where i am invisible and my voice inaudible, unrecognizable and unimaginable. a statue with naked breasts looking a lot like me. with a mommy who is a mummy.


Yet at what point are people just bellyaching versus
helping things change
The layers of scars trying to heal beneath new layers of scars
To bring up everything that has ever happened to you
subverting god

I get called into the office of one of the administrators. the
walls are painted a sickening yellow orange color and i can
smell old daikon radish and umeboshi.
I am asked to distinguish photos that look to me
exactly the same, which is the earlier and which is the
later. Since I can't answer properly I'm sent back to
my small cell in order to contemplate my shortcomings

Later that day a man pulled down his pants and started
playing with me on the
cobblestone street. These days people are so busy and
always looking into their mobile devices that they don't
notice what's going on in their midst. tanks could roll
down the street and except for those in their path no
one would pay any attention.

I had been warned about the lesbian vampires but the
worst they ever did to me personally was pull down
my pants and start playing with me. i had no objection
to this.

cereal killers

I saw that robots were working in the room as well. Of
course it occurred to me that perhaps i was being treated
by a robot all along but only today noticed it.

As I looked up from the bed, instead of my doctor's face
I saw tan animal had wandered in, cute and cuddly, i could not
resist picking it up and stroking its fur vigorously. i began
to part its fur with the fingers of my right hand.

There was an empty hole in the wall. Since my right
labia major was now a testes and my left labia major a
penis, i was able to lift myself off the bed and
fill the quivering gaping hole with
various parts of my body including my fingers, tongue, lips, and
nipples. i became very erect and climaxed.

The putative cycle begins anew. How spectacular
the body about to be destroyed, what
beautiful ripples, hills, valleys . . . .

"This time we'll tie the virus around your waist." The
technician leaned toward me and whispered in my ear.
I noticed however that the usual technician had been
replaced by a silver robot.

I think my right foot has gangrene. I put a black sock
over it though the left one is white. They are affixing
their seals to the document which tells the dragons
what to do with me. Which ones of us are the living
dead.

i wonder when i speak with my inner voice if it
can be heard. the black sock fights with the white one.
it's always exactly like this. a strange object makes
a wheezing sound as it hits the wall near the window

The world had become so quiet and so still, like a
retrograde desert with a single melting candle, the
length of a flimsy filthy life that refuses to be
extinguished. i waited for you for so long with such
longing that a new word needs to be created to capture
the feeling of all the world's dead without you, i am dying
from an invisible illness, no one is yet here to save
me. in lieu of you i read a book that you once gave
me. but it makes a very hollow sound when its
pages are turned.

after a few months i began to wonder if nobody was
coming to visit me, or they were but were being
sent away. whatever the facts, i was beginning
to experience a loneliness that tore at my heart
just as the 3 headed dragon tore at my flesh.
Later I find out that these were experiments to find
out which was more devastating, the loss of the
body or loss of the mind deprived of meaningful
human contact

Mold grows on my shoes

Because I've been given so much medication I can only
speak to the rocks in the garden beyond the window.
Although clothes were left on the bed I have no idea
how to put them on, they are from a different century, so
i have to wander the hallways naked looking for the door's
ever-changing location. The music is back on, with
nonsensical lyrics like “Perfume my face blank starlet hanger
punctuated by the shrieks of young deer.” The night is
longer and the darkness greater

Later I'm given the job of feeding stray cats (they sure try
to keep me busy in here! though I'm ill). Today i
feed the grey one, always toying with a fallen bird, the black
and white one who ignores me and the sickly looking tabby
with filmy eyes and matted hair who hiccups
when she tries to eat. The other
cats have disappeared or have been jailed or are in hiding

a garden of dying flowers, a cockroach on its back



envying the truth
I find a sliver of hope in an old log

hey baby you're an old woman now
did your momma sell you out?
I'll have to hump your humpback now
your price has gone way down

but still alive


the open space inside my body
Buddhist in its leanings

The sky was bright orange

I make a list of things to do in an emergency such as when
objects in a still life painting suddenly start to move

I synchronize my heart to the whirring fan but I start to asphyxiate
and throw up into my unperfumed hands

When passing by the red brick building her chest filled with dread. as if stuffed
inside a file cabinet
Inside were old wooden rooms with antique blackboards and silver grey cabinets. despite herself sometimes she could not resist wandering inside to view the punishment of residents

sleepsitting bumping my head cushion off
i read from a book while asleep on the toilet
what book i don't know

They turn me into Barbie

For some women they don't replace the vulva but rather cover it
over with skin leaving a smooth shiny surface

i am not flame proof
the acupuncturist's needles feel like a crucifixion
"you're tensing up"

reduced to a thought inside a thought
motorcase melody
dampen fragment

kinky habits of sick needles

wet fields                               bamboo
yearning to lie on sunny grass




Jane Joritz-Nakagawa has published over a dozen poetry books and chapbooks, most recently Poems: New and Selected (Isobar, 2018). Email is welcome at janejoritznakagawa(at)gmail(dot)com.
 
 
previous page     contents