Lesson III: Devil Chain
It is best to keep your demons close, even
inside you—hold the devil riding your tongue
though he burns the mouth with sulfur
and yellow, with oil of vitriol. We never speak
of our sufferings, how the worthy tongue licks
clean the walls of cobwebbed stone in the cell
of the anchoress. Tuck the pink tongue away.
Because I am possessed by color-storms,
by the sounds the ants make inspecting each sand
grain, we consult Saint Dymphna, and Mother
wraps me in a chain blessed by the tears
of our late Sister Barb through the eyes of Sister
Thomas. On one end Satan strung in silver
bangs against my beating chest. It is thus
the nun’s first miracle beyond the grave
to bless me with the means to keep
the devil on a delicate link.
Lesson V: Trinity Explained
The doctor orders me to bleed.
I stand like a bird on his chair.
The doctor orders me to stand down.
Meanwhile, the Lake calls: go under.
If I go down now, I am sure to come to
death; the train is soaking wet. Yes,
the alters may swell and die,
turning up on the shore better
for the broken, bloated blue that strokes
them like glass, but the host must survive.
She will be the Lake, the Daughter,
and her sacred Ghost, and we will be blessed
with the waters of many: blue woman.
Lesson VI: Cormorant Breath, Endurance
It is time to exchange gifts of sapphire and light.
Who is building a house of light? Tomorrow.
Come and exhume me from the throat
of the willow by the yellow pond. Cormorant
breath: what does it smell like? I’ll tell you:
windows to the floors of ocean overturned
by skylights, a blessing, a funnel of fresh green-
blue, goodbyes. Breathtaking, in other words.
Heart breaking. Expectant ghosts, ex-spectors,
careening red masks into the maths of the universe.
It is time to say goodbye. The child tries
to cut off her breasts. Forever strikes us again,
a crush over the head with an iron, a blow
to the neck. Come into the room again and I will
kiss you. Forgive you for beating me. Excuse me,
I meant being me. Everyone has their excuses.
Yours are fresh, like half-turned wounds,
like somersaults in the child’s night, black grass,
still awake with dew. The fallen leaves, withered
wounds, declaim their prophecies with broken
mouths. Blood can be a language of love
at the feet. You send the child out in her white
dress, bare-limbed, to the hills, to the cold
where she may play with the frozen rabbits’
limp white breaths, the frozen rats’ long tails,
their long love, and learn to endure.
Lesson VII: Sacrament of Confession
He beat her until her teeth came out,
kept her in the cage where she drank
acidic liquid and wept the poison out,
hung her from the mast by her swollen
blackened arms, until she grew
wings and shuddered off,
feet dragging in the sea and torso
in the air because she’d just learned
to fly as she shivered behind iron bars,
and never very high, as she was a part
of the water to which she’d been
confessed.
Lake Angela is a poet, translator, and dancer-choreographer who creates at the confluence of poetry and the language of dance movement. Her books include Scivias Choreomaniae (Spuyten Duyvil), Words for the Dead (FutureCycle), and Organblooms (FutureCycle). She holds a PhD in the intersemiotic translation of Austrian Expressionist poetry into dance and has her MFA in poetry. She is a medieval mystic and nonhuman creature. Recent work appears in The Common, Seneca Review, Passages North, Portland Review, and Die Leere Mitte, among others. Lake is poetry editor for Punt Volat and a Mad advocacy writer. She also presents the value of schizophrenia spectrum creativity through Companyia Lake Angela’s poetry-dance translations: www.lakeangeladance.com.
