Another South: Experimental Writing in the South

Andy Young

Andy Young In Anguish, the Heart Finally Prays: The liquid brain solidifies in thought. I am more like water, spreading about the world. I live inside the creak and ache. I leap to you in things you cannot name. Let my voice be raw as flayed cattle, pink stench of meat outstretched. Let a breeze blow on it, let pebbles and the sharp flint of bitter wind— Listen, I sing to you. Listen, it begins. Light in the morning, cradle of darkness: in the way things burst forth hear me in milkweed pod and in silky threads slitting it open hear me in defiance of atrium, ventricle in the pumpity-pumpity even when body lies still hear me, please in the green feeling under bark in the laid bareness of deep giving in viridian curtain of nightfall and in the way its plain language says “yes” hear my prayer in salmon-pink crest of clitoris, soul of the body in thunder-perfect-breaking-shell of dawn in unpetaled tulip (just the essence) in things in relief against stone tassel-hope of daybreak, hollow note of hoot owl: hear my prayer So much more than hurting, I am broken, I am damaged more than even orphaned I am cut off at the root— why am I left here, unmothered, unsistered why am I left here, unbrothered, unloved? find me in the rubble pieces find me in the scar listen to my voice against the stone: in the apparition place, the shimmering almost-sight of something, in the pure light and element of saint becoming wholly fleshed. hear it, hear it in comet trailing ice through sky, saying “everything must vanish” in little whimpers dreams make in deep of night in the “lonely, lonely” beaten out with the blood in the shrinking away of cells in frightened skin in the touch-me-not, the touch-me-not in tears, small travelers, sliding from the corners in the metal-shock shiver of orgasm Hear my Voice, Hear my Prayer in tapping of beak against shell in eke of deep matter at the center of things in tiny fissures creeping out their damp light hear me, hear me now in this leaking open, this liquid of blisterpop this rawness, this floundering, this gasping for air in hunger and the lack of it, in desire for hunger, in desire for desire Another South 243 in this black ink drying on the page— Purple Spear of Anguish Jagged Teeth of Joy Sudden, Fleeting Flash of Gladness, Bit of Life Curled inside the Seed: listen to my cries in this wind that comes from nowhere and is nothing yet moves and cleans and breaks things open hear, hear in this trying to name it in this “I want to speak it,” in this I-am-alone-on-the-planet song in flicker poem, in body poem in “Don’t give me any answers” hear in this over feeling, this extra thing in this love-in-death oh please anything at the heart of it, in small flash of light when sperm meets egg in soft raisins of want in the tender pink absence of skin hear me Nightingale, hear me Copperhead and Peep Frog in sacrum and coccyx in the place of half-awake in the fear, not of falling, but of wanting to jump— in the peace inside things, buried deep in human mouth like a balm on need in need to sink teeth in blood hear me, Sea and Lavaflow in rot that makes glands expand, in clear ink in the liquid of the mouth in the being-seized-whole-body-charge that wrings food from the stomach, in weight of the sob as it leaps to the throat yes, yes I knowYou’re there— in sigh of horse’s belly under thighs in the itching, scratching urge to leave 244 Andy Young in new infant squirming from its flesh-place hear and hear and hear in the way kindness flows, in the feather-sweep inside the chest, in rush of salt in swish and surge forward, in opening out like water— you do hear, don’t you? in slight leap womb makes when small belly hairs are touched, in slick gut of longing, in fat, wet life of oyster in shell in little click that tells plum to fall from tree, Broken cup and dust inside my book: Small rain and creekflow...