the first time
I came back to life
was in 1980.
I awakened,
my head a blue
labyrinth
trapped
in sound—
a grotesque clutter:
the meep-meep of a
cartoon bird,
sticky flock
of children
screeching
in the courtyard.
Then a voice
(voices?)
I did not
recognize:
a ruined gasp
emerging from
within
my cut-off
throat.
I unwrapped
the telephone cord—
how long had I been
down?—skull
fever-pounding
from the black-out,
body feathered
in sweat. I listened
to the room,
felt the rush
& shuffle
of my heart—
a felled finch.
Lavender
shock of
resurrection.
Lucky my dad
was not
awake to
find me there—
his radiant little
death inventor
with X’d-out eyes
& a halo of birds
circling my dome.
Lucky to have
outlived this
unripened error.
Can you imagine?
A child standing
at the mouth
of the Underworld
pleading
for a time-out,
trying to reason
with whatever’s
in charge:
No, no! I never
meant to stay dead.
I simply wanted
a sweeter life.
outhouse
for Jacob
What does the God of your childhood look like?
A soft apparition pigeoned in the attic,
a wound eating you one year at a time? If you could
destroy the story before it started, would you—
go back—before the unnameable thing?
If you could return to your father at the foot
of the bed, would you swallow your sisters whole to save them?
Obedience in the wrong house is a kind of plague,
survivor’s guilt a sleight of hand. No outrunning
your blood’s calamity, so you gather your teeth
& dig your trenches, tell your stories but never come clean.
No news from the mother yet. Just your gutted sisters
stuffed in the outhouse. Your ageless smile going bad
in a frame.
the second time
was in my classmate’s
mouth. Lying on
the floor of her baby blue
bedroom she asked,
Do you think
you’re a boy or a girl?
& everything inside
me came bruising
to the surface.
Neither, I said
& it was understood.
In that charged silence,
she rolled over, draped
her wronged body
over mine, as if to anchor
the damaged bastard
with no desire to stay.
She listened to the awakened
heat of me, its bright
song infecting my blood.
Our feral bodies, driven
by un-mothered chaos
returned each other to
the living. All hail
the power of a proper
finger fuck & the wet
demolition of shame.
What I had once
mistaken for death
was, instead, a door.
Rachel McKibbens is a two-time New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow and author of two full-length books of poetry, Pink Elephant, Into The Dark & Emptying Field, a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, and the chapbook MAMMOTH. McKibbens founded The Pink Door Women’s Writing Retreat, an annual writing retreat in the US open exclusively to women of color. McKibbens is a member of Latinas Unidas and co-curates the critically acclaimed reading series Poetry & Pie Night in upstate New York.