Ava C. Cipri: Eternal Night of Quiet Temper
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
After Listing to PJ Harvey’s To Bring You My Love
your letter
burns
these fingers
that charted your body
over me . . .
under vault lined skies
there were nights we held
on in lust, in greed for another
hour to purchase—
stars
unhinge . . .
each hour
I wish I could forget you
& the you that wasn’t
Scapular Dyskinesis: (which may also be referred to as SICK scapula syndrome) is an alteration or deviation in the normal resting or active position of the scapula during shoulder movement.
//
before dawn you take time to steady me, say, ready,
standing behind me
as I raise both arms to my ears
there it is—
the broken wing
with KT-Tape you fix me
like the physical therapist showed you
my swinging scapula
in astonishment, look,
· I can fit my whole hand under
sometimes preventative taping
when I have a demanding day
of PT, typing, grading, or
steering the car wheel
sometimes
the shoulder is useless
& I'm standing before you patched up
like Frankenstein
while you pull my hair back
kissing the nape of my neck
like any crutch, I can't use the tape
every day or the muscles atrophy
this damaged wing
I've been in & out of PT for over a decade,
even before you . . .
//
in the corridors of my past
as a dancer
my hypermobility was an asset
often asked, those arms,
who did you study under?
once known for embodying The Dying Swan's
dramatic backbends & soft pliant elbows in port de bras
I find myself chasing her down
& telling her the cost
Utterance
In the forests
light clusters pale
almost lavender
droop like wisteria
out in the meadow
the source routed by vines
coiling tendrils
hanging blossoms
like skirts
flowers
blushing any moment
a disguised
eternal night of quiet temper
*Erasure culled from Gregory Maguire’s After Alice, HarperCollins (2015), pp. 124-127.
These poems originally appeared in our ebook The Queer Body.
Ava C. Cipri is a non-binary queer writer and poetry editor for The Deaf Poets Society: An Online Journal of DisabilityLiterature & Art. She is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee with an MFA from Syracuse University. Her poetry and prose appears or is forthcoming in Cimarron, Crab Fat, decomP, and FRiGG, among others. Ava is the author of two chapbooks; Queen of Swords (dancing girl press, 2018) and Leaving The Burdened Ground (Stranded Oak Press, 2018). She resides at: www.avaccipri.com and tweets at @AvaCCipri
