Cycle
______In a past life, I was my teacher Jan,
___________who was Amelia Earhart in hers, and also Lizzie Borden.
In this life, I miss my petticoats. Jan misses her leather jacket.
_________Jan has no children. When she was Amelia Earhart,
she passed from matter into spirit into matter and
when you can do that, you can choose
whether or not to come back.
She chose not.
_____________In order to become me,
_______Amelia had to walk all the way back from the Bermuda Triangle,
_______sick with disappointment
_______that she hadn’t quite escaped. I was the trail of blood in her.
.
.
.
Then the rage became Lizzie, poor Lizzie—hot all the time. That word ‘spinster’
_______wove a net over her that laced her up tight as her corset and made her eyes bulge and dart.
_______she bled and bled, this moon curse that made her even hotter, the spongy rags
between her legs, the dull pain from her womb up through her spine to her head where
everything looked gray or red. So much blood, yet she didn’t die; was there such a thing
as too much blood? The question enraged her—who was so
___________________________________________horribly alive and bleeding.
.
.
Then came Jan, grudgingly
_______admired by Kerouac. They both looked good smoking. Jan was always “smoking her brains out.” That’s the way Jan speaks sometimes, it’s the Lizzie in her.
_______The other part of Jan only speaks when she is flying,
her mind well-joined as a bird’s wing and as light. Her voice
_______comes out over the water and echoes there for years.
.
.
Being me means not being able to find the aerie,
_______this present is fleshy—
We were burned as witches long ago,
it’s true, I can’t cross oceans, though I float beautifully—but now
I am bloody with desire for a child. This womb has long been filled with Amelia’s
airplane, Lizzie’s upstairs parlor.
.
.
.
After this I want to be Jan again: I am only feral—
_______She is wild.
__________________________________________________________
Alison Rogers Napoleon’s poems have appeared in BloodLotus Journal and Podium. She currently teaches English and Creative Writing at Hunter College in NYC. She also has a blog called PRACTICE about yoga and other feelings that don’t always fit into poems.
that was a reallly good poem, I just printed it up. I love the movement the return and flow that echoes the content, and the tone. It made me happy.