Author: jmckenna

More of it

jmckenna

In the red clay, I scoop a low grave, roll into it, rust across white cloth. The lion pawing, howls to get back out. It drags me by the dress-neck, summons fire and a circle of ancestors to minister a liquid. Nothing takes.

A teacher explains I’m just in a bad etheric neighborhood, no need to stay. The lion manages me across its back, walks us out of the landscape. It drags me to a fountain chiseled from quartz, leaves me there, licks at my limbs.

At which point the water matters, at which point the garden matters, who knows?

I beg my own root open, melt past fear with gold light.

In the waking, my dog declines, loses her weight, fur over bones and skin gone wonky. Jupiter squares my Moon, Neptune chokes it. I steadily leave myself. At the oil, spike, and rock shop, a reverend says he can see, shoves bloodroot at me, golden calcite, says why wait.

Every dream is me

standing over my body

breathing

get up, get up, get up.

receiving

jmckenna
I made a storm.
Before that, on the table, the new widower punctured my limbs and ears, drew blood at the third eye. He left me to align and later held my neck and asked me what I saw. I told him, an expanse of tall grasses blowing on a white-cloud clear day, but I was on one side of a short wooden rod fence. An Eastern Bluebird appeared in my left hand and seemingly near death, discombobulated. Suddenly a worm appeared in its beak, and if flew off, revived. I hopped the low fence and began walking through the expanse of grass. My dead dog was with me. It felt futile, just grass forever.
Resigned to it, but then a lion. A massive male lion walking to me, conveying protection, as a familiar. It lead me to a tree I climbed to rest. I picked and ate the tree’s fruit in the shade. Satisfied, it left to hunt, returning with a bloody muzzle. It slept under the tree.
We awoke and kept walking, but just grasslands. The other dog joined us. I tell the lion the dog isn’t food and the lion accepts this, leading us on. There are more of us now, but I wonder if this is just it, forever, the same landscape.
Later, I see a well under a tree. I pull up the rope up. Inside a bucket is midnight blue silk cloth. I lower it again and draw up a silver spoon. I think of my Grandfather. Again, and this time it’s a green frog inside the bucket. I put the items in a hip pouch and lower it once more. A yellow canary or goldfinch rides up on the side of the bucket and flies away.
That night I turn on a show. In it, a woman walks out of the exact house I dreamed that I owned, over a year ago.

Last night I made a storm outside that cracked at the ground and shook the houses like shoulders. Went to bed sweeping at the sky for the breeze to break heat, and rain so I wouldn’t have to water. Weather is not stubborn.

jmckenna

2 versions / drafts

lunation

the way to your home
a white pet struck
fur blows the road
cat crossing your yard.

my hand casts a line
sacraments your path
breath gone to seed
nearing your sleep.

a raccoon breaks,
stirring the ground ash
pads my intention—
featherfoil, sanguinary.

all the times I’ve seen you,
and you’ve never seen me.

______________________________________________

lunation

the way to your home
a white pet struck
fur blows the road
cat crossing your yard.

my hand casts a line
sacraments your path
breath gone to seed
nearing your sleep.

all the times I’ve seen you,
and you’ve never seen me.

jmckenna

The first half of the movie A Quiet Place is the closest thing I’ve experienced to an accurate metaphor of what it’s like living with C-PTSD. It’s like that, all the time, except no one is there with you, or understands at all.

Friends if this is also you, you might want to skip it. Personally, I found it relieving, less isolating, to see something portray this experience.

part company

jmckenna

then the ground

was shatter and smooth

over something harder.

the same as my chest

filled up tar molasses;

before that, heavy cream,

sand, ornaments.

 

I pointed up, slow,

second place fireflies–

my body strobing

memory drum and limp nails

on floorboards, the ceiling

hit between tasks,

time measured off.

 

a heat register’s cloud

and fall from standing–

speaking glued shut.

synapse panicked syllables

a metronome’s tick

repeating at the tremor

 

 

(2004. 4 of 28 drafts I’ve never done anything with, being resolved into notes and outlines.)

jmckenna

Linden

 

leaves stick

the dog paws

soles gone

seasonal slippers

Wasps test

nurses, guards

defended entrances

flex dread

I pull blossoms

weeping sap tea

aphid trails

transformational honey

steep the

brittle end

 

(8/18. 3 of 28 drafts I’ve never done anything with, being resolved into notes and outlines.)

 

 

 

 

women at the hellmouth

jmckenna

First season, that hasn’t aged well, and frosted lip gloss. The slayer dropping her bag. The wardrobe was never good. Solids are characters in their power. She says James Spader is hot. This ages well.

Our first combat, our first use of the library, I’m nervous about Jenny. Patterns are hormones, textures anxieties. In being taught how to watch, every escape is natal. Devotion is at the earth’s threshold.

Darla is brilliant, her trajectory beyond the half season. Watch this sire, common-law, sex worker. This will come up again, how-to stratify women, their sex a map legend. How she is the entrance and exit.

This is our first hero shot.

 

 

 

(2 of 28 drafts I’ve never done anything with, being resolved into notes and outlines.)

solar return

jmckenna

the best birthday I get

is as many loved

ones since the Sun is

lucky, and better than

being at the doctor,

So, success. It feels like

tripping thanks &

correct begin. So much

honing off of, shivering

in alignment.

 

(1 of 28 drafts I’ve never done anything with, being resolved into notes and outlines.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

canticle of the turning

jmckenna

With thanks for the out of bounds angels, poets with visionary limbs, the manifesting ultra pisces, the old woman in the purple jacket’s hand on my canary sweater, and her fine hands holding my head, my knees, this hound, that child.

Blossom

Dorianne Laux -1952

What is a wound but a flower

dying on its descent to the earth,

bag of scent filled with war, forest,

torches, some trouble that befell

now over and done. A wound is a fire

sinking into itself. The tinder serves

only so long, the log holds on

and still it gives up, collapses

into its bed of ashes and sand. I burned

my hand cooking over a low flame,

that flame now alive under my skin,

the smell not unpleasant, the wound

beautiful as a full-blown peony.

Say goodbye to disaster. Shake hands

with the unknown, what becomes

of us once we’ve been torn apart

and returned to our future, naked

and small, sewn back together

scar by scar.