The Tatters. Brenda Coultas

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      THE TATTERS

      WESLEYAN POETRY

      the tatters BRENDA COULTAS

      WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS | MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT

      Wesleyan University Press

      Middletown CT 06459

       www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

      © 2014 Brenda Coultas

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill

      Typeset in Parkinson Electra Pro

      Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green

      Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their

      minimum requirement for recycled paper.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Coultas, Brenda.

      [Poems. Selections]

      The tatters / Brenda Coultas.

      pages cm.

      ISBN 978-0-8195-7419-0 (cloth : alk. paper)

      (Wesleyan Poetry Series)

      I. Title.

      PS3603.O886A6 2014

      811'.6—dc23

      5 4 3 2 1

      Cover artwork: Spiderweb Rose, image by Portia Munson, 2009.

      DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF BRAD WILL

      Brad Will was a poet, Indymedia journalist, anarchist, and

      a friend of mine. He was murdered in Oaxaca, Mexico, on

      October 27, 2006, while filming a street battle between the

      Oaxaca governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz’s thugs and APPO, the

      Popular Assembly of the People, during a months-long teachers’

      strike in which at least eleven were killed. For more information:

      www.friendsofbradwill.org.

      CONTENTS

       My Tree 1

       A Mass for Brad Will 3

       The Midden 6

       Animations 13

       A Gaze 15

       The Tatters 20

       Note: Bradley Roland Will, 1970–2006 47

       Acknowledgments 51

      THE TATTERS

MY TREE

      I found a pearl and wore it in my ear

      Deep ocean echoes sing like a seashell

      A girl promised a purse filled with jewels, if I would be her friend

      Purses open secrets as priceless as pills in a jeweled box

      Loose pearls, enough to imagine what a great loss that necklace was or was not

      I like to see metal turn red and glow and to hear its hiss when it meets the water. Leather bellows, suspended from the ceiling, pump air into the fire. Long-handled tongs and picks forge mostly nails. I open all the old purses. There might be change left in one.

      I built you a tree of light to see by

      To listen to digital libraries in your palm.

      Renamed myself writing this book, renamed myself after building this tree

      I burnt candles all night to grow these leaves.

      I fed books to the flame, to make a blaze to read by

      Mined libraries to power this tower of light

      Built sparkling branches

      with flaming pages for leaves

      dense as the weeping willow’s cascade of curls

      On the mountain ridge my tree stands head and shoulders above the hardwoods. Along the roadway wooden poles, bathed in chemicals, hold up a network of wire

      I built a tree, more cell than sweeping pine or black walnut, as natural as pink pine needles or a silver holiday tree. Glittery pine boughs glue-gunned on

      No needles on the floor

      No forest smell

      My gift is glittery and eternal

      even in synthetic shreds

      dumped on a landlocked city sidewalk

      it finds its way to the sea

A MASS FOR BRAD WILL

      If I were a quill I’d write in bright feathers all about you bursting into flight over the heads of cops

      If I were a handsome feather, I’d walk to City Hall in full plumage and release all of Manhattan’s political prisoners

      If I were a quill I’d give you life on this quiet page

      On a four feather day, last one ruffled another grey with black-banded top

      Then pinfeathers regroup to make a full on …

      You might think his body was blown to bits or burned to ashes

      Thrown into a favorite body of water

      Maybe one of the great lakes

      You might think he was made of feathers or of bird weight

      No, he was buried whole, perhaps with bullets intact.

      Critical mass. Yes, he liked to say it.

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