Duende and The Great Matter of Life-and-Death

By Karen Morris

 

Garcia Lorca called me last night (Before you get in a twist, he called you too.
You didn’t pick up.) He said, “Disappearance and Death are real.” I suggested he text
but, texting’s too flat for the poetics of death. “Sure,” you said to no one
out loud, ridding yourself of the bitter taste on your tongue.

I feel you quicken, slow drifting away. Turning the trail by checking the volume,
counting the likes, followers, following. Disappearance after disappearance. There’s no
way to count the air. You think you know death. The Day of the Dead is just
ink. Garcia Lorca called you last night. Your line was dead.

Playing at death in the House of Numb.
Ay! Valiant cruising Internet!
Ay! Needles nattering!

Garcia Lorca is calling from Portland. Pick up!
Pick up! You’ve disappeared again, strategized
a pretext. Blackout. Death

is instantaneous. Torture, endless. Hunger,
slow. Shit a scandal of humiliation. Torment
deeper than a half-life is long.

The afternoon is ordinary. You are about to take a next breath, to shoot
an email to your publisher that contains your manuscript, Daily Minutia. The server
is hungry for fresh insights. It drags your text into the nearest hog-
shaped cloud. You have no teeth to speak of.

You ponder atomic particle theory. Trying
to manifest reality,
bitch-slap the keyboard.

He called from the marshes of Satilla Shores where there’s no reception at all.

He called from Minneapolis through a busted windpipe to tell you of the mastermind.

He called from Louisville awakened by a battering ram.

He called from Portland choking out the names of vanished people.

He left you a message from Chicago about meeting up in Kansas City,

He said, blossoms fall on the Day of the Dead.
You are a dreaded weed about to be pulled.

 


Karen Morris received The Gradiva Award for Poetry (2015, NAAP) for her full-length collection CATACLYSM and Other Arrangements (Three Stones Press). Her poems have appeared in Chiron Review, Plainsongs, The Stillwater Review, Paterson Literary Review, SWWIM Everyday, and others. She is a psychoanalyst by profession and an Ambassador of Hope for Shared Hope International in the role of volunteer public educator concerning the impact of the commercial sex industry in the sex trafficking of children around the world. She is a cofounder of Two Rivers Zen Community in Narrowsburg, New York.

Image: David Alfaro Siqueiros Echo of a Scream, 1937, MOMA.

Say Their Names

Writers Resist is honored to share some of the many and diverse creative writings recently inspired by Black Lives Matter, systemic racism, police brutality, U.S. protests, and the gorgeous, global chorus demanding equity and equality for all. This issue includes works by Kitty Anarchy, Despy Boutris, Schyler Butler, Marcy Rae Henry, Dana Kinsey, Christa Miller, Aaron Sandberg, Sarah Sheppeck, Jennifer Shneiderman, and Rebecca Tolin.

We’re grateful to be able to illustrate the writings with images of protests, labor that often puts photojournalists and lay photographers in police crosshairs.

Please join us in celebrating all these works by sharing them wherever you feel safe doing so and—more important—when it isn’t comfortable.

Silence is not an option; resistance is transformative.

We’ll be releasing one piece daily on social media for the next ten days. Follow us to share the posts on Facebook @WritersResist, Instagram @WritersResist, and Twitter @WritersResist.

And subscribe at writersresist.com. It’s free, and words do create change.

With love and persistence,
K-B, Debbie, Sara, and Ying
Writers Resist
Publishing the resistance since 2016

 


Photo credit: “Say Their Names” © 2020 K-B Gressitt.