Phoenix Hearted in Amanda Paradise

CAConrad | Amanda Paradise: Resurrect Extinct Vibration | Wave Books | 2021 | 136 Pages

The autumn equinox of my 30th year

Also the 15-year anniversary of my grandma’s death

It occurs to me that she left on the precipice

Of the inward journey of the seasons

Spilled food on my dress and remembered how she lamented

This quality in herself

A synthetic suede that reminds me of her couch

The color deepening when you brush your hand against

Her yelling for me to get my oily fingers off

I create a small altar and resolve

To step into the cave with grandma at my back

Will watch All About Eve later, inspired by CAConrad

After googling Bette Davis’ picture and remembering

Her face enlarged on grandma’s wall

Something in the spirit of the poet and my grandma aligned

Fierce, irreverent, bon vivant

☲

Both in and outside the world of poetry

In and outside of community

Challenged, “so how does this happen?”

When I share my poems with a community leader

In the Camphill lifesharing community of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania

Guided here by my great-great-aunt Ya Chen

Her arrival to America aboard the Marine Phoenix on April 7, 1946

Working 13 hours a day in an environment that

Must be what it’s like living and working inside a honey bee’s nest

I have trouble even answering, “how was your day?”

Coloring the energy with more yeses and nos inside atoms

I understand the desire to know the web around and

It’s so hard to accept my effect

☲

I start reading Lincoln in the Bardo during small breaks in activity

Concentrating my energy on something other than the swirl

Its grief brings me back to Amanda Paradise

Knowing CA’s medicine has worked on me before

I wonder about the poet’s young love and my own

The mutual passion that makes up the falling

Trusting and fearing on our first date

Knowing he would stick when he said

“You make me feel energized”

And I felt warm and tingly at my base

Which I have always thought was sexual

But am now realizing

Was the desire and safety to be close

☲

To persuade my MFA program to invite CA to our campus a few years back

I told of the aliveness the day we studied their poems

Poetry no longer just about sitting and writing

But most of all about living

In “this vast sensual paradise … imbibing, smelling, sampling,

loving whomever I please … a sleeping dog dream-kicking

 in a tree-shade triangle; a sugar pyramid upon a blackwood

 tabletop being rearranged

grain-by-grain by an indiscernible draft … “ (Saunders)

Also F U C K  Y O U this A N G E R

The human spirit’s resistance to anything less than dignity

CA’s, grandma’s, insistence on disturbance

CA’s directive to write all across the page, take unruly shapes

Grandma once went to a black tie fundraiser

Wearing a Conehead cap with a bow on it

In and outside of country club society

In and out of spirituality

☲

Helping others with their personal care in this new community

A window into my own

I remember at five mom teaching me to move the wash cloth

From vagina to butt and not the other way around

To bend over into the stream to clear the soap

Somehow this memory laden with my mom being neglected as a child

Never having been taught to take care of her own life, body, miracle

And the fear this creates of what’s here

I let out a moan in the shower, releasing some of what we’ve carried

When I first arrived I told S I was nervous to work with a disabled population

She replied, “but you’ve worked with people right?

So the same idea applies”

Not with judgment but a strength of heart

☲

Living all time all the time

Not just preparing but living with past, present, future selves

The moments that would bring us to our knees

Trying to self-parent as my mind obsesses over a crush

Wanting it to mean family?

The shame and misogyny I've felt in this obsession

Desire to feel known and loved

I want to tell that 11-year-old that I don't think she wants to heal by forgetting

That a relationship might help

But it's not going to make the love and pain go away

And that that's a good thing

Because its her pain, her love, life, miracle

☲

A realization about leaving my heart behind

And the possibility for ritual to bring it back

The ritual today is that I remember that ritual exists and

Before I write I dance for ten minutes

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés says wisdom is whatever works

Lurching forward, expectant motion

Smelling all of our asses as one in the communal toilet

The untangling more painful than words

How to not leave my heart?

What does he mean to me?

Do I have to let him go to know?

☲

At the doorstep is she who loves order

I am quiet and B holds space

Coming down on depakote, flipping through his Annie Liebowitz book

I feel grieved by how we treat the body heart mind

And am wondering if I am too sensitive for what I want

Did I say autism spectrum disorder?

Did I say he gave me space to learn?

Did I say thank you?

The inflection you inflict when trying to delight a child

All the time a child all the time who am I?

All the time the same day all the time my heart left

All the time getting high all the time trying to get high

All the time an addict all the time the two wings

Remembering to forget

A note, a sign, reminder

A love letter from a moment of wisdom

The sacred heart is in fire

To be bleeding and let the sun shine in