Marsha de la O
(USA)
Two for a Penny
She’d locked the door and somehow lost the key a faulty keychain, hadn’t she told him, and
the spare nearby After so long without rain, sparrows fought to bathe in the dust take a moment wait let’s start again falling she had time to wonder why the freight of drink the past her shoes, her absurd pumps – the weight of an entire body balanced on two slender sticks she wraps her arms around herself look at the way night has shaped us She’d locked the door and somehow lost the key falling she had time to wonder the slightest breeze, a small rush of wings could’ve toppled her a man upright, woman prone but it wasn’t the wind and by now we’ve gone beyond the gloaming we’re losing light he struck her falling
she had time how small she is beneath his sway in the Bible sparrows are two for a penny but never apart from the Father these lovers, this slippage loving every ravening thing salt of their kisses salt sting an errant tooth gashed into her lip and here’s providence, something broke her fall her new stepchildren never saw wait, here’s the lyric after so long without rain dirt becomes a kind of silk slow down and breathe sparrows battle one another to bathe in a dustshaft she toppled hush now, don’t explain falling a small king beating his wings against the ground, dust rising like talcum, a rush of wings the jacaranda hush now her head empty – a few stars like a handful of salt scattered on a map of nothing sometimes on your back, you actually feel the world spinning, all the shame the children knew to disappear
his babies could hide on a dime jacaranda blossoms petaling the patio violet gone gray try this retake it doesn’t make sense
Blue Parrots
Some lunge at each other’s throat, others blare
their klaxon horns, quarreling for the roost
because desire is a terrible thing, each crook
more brilliant than the next. The nets mesh the air
spread over the blue like a snare in heaven.
Years ago in another aviary, I’d sit like this
without moving for hours, I’d trained myself.
Here, flamingos dizzy with lice, their beaks’
chisels open and close on what’s not there
but that’s all part of it, this squawk and sputter
after pure space in the canopy, the way parrots
want flight and wanting should be spare and
made of nothing but a woven wire, a door,
an outer door, two locks. I’ve gone through
that threshold into shadow, but what violet
what blue compromise with the steel and cobalt
of night—for this it is said, entertain strangers
for this the match flares in bars of yellow and
blue, for many have entertained angels unawares,
flameburst of radium and bone, helpless, undone,
you drop everything, it all falls away, and when
you come to, you’re holding hands with the
wrong stranger, it’s like that
Imperial Night
I’m a grown woman, and know Buddhist scripture
makes no distinction between beauty and ugliness
in the Pure Land. My dreams are not that land.
The story never changes. Always in a car. Those
pilgrim girls, this painful impermanent earth,
a sutra is a thread that holds things together.
I do miss a good night’s sleep, don’t you?
When Milosz says, what reasonable man would
like to be a city of demons, I choose to believe
he includes woman in the word man.
I drive through imperial night. The thread is violence.
You must know how power fails to make us safe, those
prisons for mothers and children built on the border.
The moon threads her needle through my eyes, lashes
them open. Here come the vans with trapped girls,
they’re too young, barely speak the language, not sure
what put out or get out means, they press their palms
against the side windows, each one crying I’ll get out.
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BIO
Marsha de la O was born and raised in Southern California. Both sides of her family arrived in the Los Angeles area before William Mulholland built the aqueduct that brought in water from the eastern Sierras. De la O worked as a bilingual teacher in Los Angeles and the rural community of Santa Paula for more than twenty-five years. She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Vermont College. Her first book, Black Hope, was awarded the New Issues Press Poetry Prize. Her second book, Antidote for Night, won the 2015 Isabella Gardner Award and was published by BOA Editions. She lives in Ventura, California, with her husband, poet and editor Phil Taggart. Together, they produce poetry readings and events in Ventura County and are also the editors and publishers of the literary journal Askew.
Set in present-day Southern California, Antidote for Night is a heartbreak lyric, a corrido, a love song to California’s city lights and far-flung outskirts—the San Diego backcountry, the Central Valley, the Inland Empire, and the Mojave Desert. A book of remedies for dire circumstances, rock-bottom realities, and the unrelenting weight of mortality, specifically among young men of color, this collection shows what it takes to see in darkness. Marsha de la O’s voice is a kind of free jazz, musically rich with L.A. noir and the vastness of metropolitan Southern California.