Poet: Carrie Seitzinger, Portland
Smalldoggies Poetry Feature #1: Carrie Seitzinger, Portland
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SECRET PAGES I
This is the way the summer lulls us,
heat to sleep, heat to sleep--
but where was my body last night?
Let me hold it in the palm of your bed.
There, I am weakened
to a pool of ghostcolor,
and the slick crows stop following me
like a rain cloud, and bid no omen at all.
Hold my navel under your tongue
if you think you want to speak to my center.
My body will dissolve like a disk of communion,
my body is the flesh of any body.
Hold my neck like a guitar.
Hand me my gift of the Holy Spirit
if it comes in a pen case.
Hand me my gift of the wholly spirit.
And we will bite each others’ tongues,
and keep our secrets secret.
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ONE MISS, TWO MISS, RED MISS, BLUE MISS
Once I get out of this head I'm sure I'll fit into society quite well, and straight
into a nice codependent relationship where no one has their own individual
person, and we can forget ourselves completely, and forget why we chose each
other as opposed to the other billions of people, because what's the matter
anyway – We are in California, and the sun is out again today, shining and glitter
all over our obsession for each other – and the facts of our love drown the spaces
around us, which is just to say that we know we could never love ourselves as
much as we love the other, our lover – and who could blame us for loving every
sun-dyed sleepy second covering ourselves with each other because when we
are forced to remember, we never really liked spending time with ourselves
anyway – we never really liked ourselves anyway – we never wanted to think
about it like that – we never signed up for this reminder of ourselves. When the
day comes to a close, with its weighty darkness running over the city like God's
nosebleed, we never forget to remind each other to “take a deep breath, baby,”
even if we suffocate ourselves in the process.
But this is just to say that if I could just get out of this head, I'd be able to
tell you that I've thought about you, considered the angles of your face and the
art that shapes behind it, considered how, to be honest, I never thought you were
the One, considered how I might outgrow you – but even in all that considering, I
can't shake the colors in your paintings' backgrounds from the colors I dream in
when I sleep alone under a blanket filled with dead duck feathers and wake up
with my hand between my legs. I can't fight off my selfness when I leave poems
like prizes at the bottom of your cereal boxes. I am exactly how I am, and
sometimes I don't listen to a word I say, but bid myself farewell into my head, and
let my memories of you cry themselves to sleep because I wrote you a note to try
to tell you I miss you and it came out, "One miss, two miss, red miss, blue miss."
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FOR C. NOELLE, TO WHOM I WISH WINGS
Not one for division,
but pushed into this bleak corner,
she turns to grind these pills
to make her air.
She rips the plastic gloves,
puts the left on the right,
the right on the left.
Bring the separation to a crossroads,
make the differences the same,
she thinks.
The dye fucks up
and now her hair is blacker
than she can discern
from right or wrong.
What is a seed to a field of soil
compared to a seed in a pile of seeds?
We’ll get to that blankness
when we love enough to leave.
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LETTER FIVE YEARS AFTER READING FRANNY AND ZOOEY BY J.D. SALINGER
Franny,
I understand your feeling of God.
I wanted to lay down with you
each time you would faint.
I wanted to offer you soup
I knew you would refuse.
I wanted to lay down my life,
and read that story for you
again and again,
until you died,
pale in my arms,
next to the bleached book pages
of some simple story you loved.
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Carrie Seitzinger has been featured at poetry venues throughout Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Orange County, Seattle and Portland since 2003. She graduated UC Irvine with a degree in English (poetry emphasis). Her first book of poetry was titled The Dots Don't Connect (2004). Her poems have appeared in Poor Claudia, Mosaic, Cobalt Poets, and have been recorded for podcasts.
She currently lives in Portland, Oregon.
Find out more about Carrie Seitzinger at her website.