Feeling New Agey

Vibrate low, moon throat, gargle salt.
Debris up and down the canal of the body.
I pay a woman with long braids
to stretch my body like a canvas,
press on the points that gleam with pain,
the tiny needles sticky in skin, energy
clinging like moths to light.
I am supposed to make a silly noise
when I breath out, like a horse,
to swat my own Chi with my tail
like a fly, to conquer heat and demons.
She pets my name and the rain licks
sweat from my hide. I surrender.
I surrender. I surrender. Oh, exhaustion
says it’s okay, come lay down
and sleep with your mouth over mine.
Oh, exhaustion says you spent
all your anger for the rest of your life
on a cheap tote bag with your own face on it.
Oh, fuck me. Burn the fabric down in protest.
When the smoke clears, hello shadow.
Fool, you were fighting a shadow all along.
The shadow is the result of a tree.
You hug the rough bark and the world
rushes in, barrels backwards
through the universe into your hands.
Hello, crack of daylight squeezing
goodness onto the cruelness of me, hello
icing of light slicing me down to simple matter.
Sometimes, I admit, to heal, I imagine
a calm so placid, I can finally stop feeling.
I occasionally reach zen when I laugh
at the insanity of my life then don’t
give a shit about anything for like 5 minutes.
No, no, she says, sucking moons
onto my back with the mouths of glass cups,
what do you miss? Let us conjure.
Do you know what I miss? Singing in the car!
Let’s jump in a car named after a New Mexican
waitress and high tail it outta the city.
The playlist: a pinch of gangster, lotta jazz,
pouring The New Yorker over Cuban,
the clack clack of dancing heels
punctuating the ceiling, disrupting sleep.
I’ll dig up a symphony of forgotten joys
& open my mouth wide, the sharp ache
of my voice squeegeeing the window clean.

_____

Caits Meissner is a D.I.Y.-spirited, poly-creative writer, artist and cultural worker, and the author of the illustrated hybrid poetry book Let It Die Hungry (The Operating System, 2016). She currently serves as the Prison and Justice Writing Program Director at PEN America.