Linette Reeman: Wail/Wild
WAIL/WILD
i don’t understand how laughter
works. do i hold my breath
until it explodes out like a sneeze?
do i force it out like bile? do i swallow
it like a pill? what am i supposed to
sound like when i’m happy? maybe
a plane landing? will my ears pop
like balloons? is it only real if my
throat opens like a water-slide?
is happiness a water-slide? can
i practice laughter in the mirror
or will my neighbors call animal
control to fix the strange wailing?
when animal control shows up,
will they ask me where the
feral thing is? or will they know
it’s me just by looking?
ORIGIN STORY IN TEN PARTS
1.
in the beginning there was a war and then some other stuff happened
and then we’re all sitting around my grandmother’s table in england and my grandfather is scraping everyone's plates off into his own and my grandmother says he’s a garbage disposal
and no one hears her except for this memory of it
2.
(before i began, my mother and father grew into their jaws by living in their parents’ wars)
(before my family began, there was enough food to satiate every vermin)
(before the holocaust, my family existed only in a prayer)
3.
in the beginning i read somewhere that a symptom of tapeworms is a ravenous unending hunger and i bookmarked that page and never stopped ruling that option out
4.
(in the beginning there was a war and then nothing else mattered)
5.
before i began, all the men in my family grew tapeworms and swallowed each new morning and they were lucky because all my family at the table is a jew so is a war or a plate or a prayer
6.
(in the beginning there was a meal and then there wasn’t)
(or there was a war and then i happened)
(or there was a pile of dirty plates and then i started buying single-use)
(or there was a god of silverware but / i used my hands instead)
7.
in the morning of myself my girlfriend (jewish) and i (jew-ish) eat off of each others’ plates and this is the most Abrahamic i have ever felt
8.
(before the holocaust, jewish people ate
food and then there wasn’t and then
eventually my grandmother’s dinner table and
my father and grandfather both shovel at the limp meat
and this is the war remembering in their bellies)
9.
in the mourning of myself a partner filmed me devouring at the restaurant's table and when i asked them why they said because i looked so concentrated / so campy / and it was funny to watch me scramble inside my memory for the correct--
10.
(i refused to be filmed again / i didn’t stop the war / i just stopped remembering)
Linette Reeman (they/them) is a writer, performance poet, graphic designer, and Aries from the Jersey Shore. Their chapbook BLOODMUCK is forthcoming from The Atlas Review. / LINETTEREEMAN.NET
