Misael Osorio

Another Verdict for the Suspected Genocidic Lady

It’s a frantic desperation that compels our limbs to go

it will remain indelible her name would be spelled in smoke

inconceivable undertaking though there are no predictable horrors

now to disturb your sleep having seen the bodies of our parents

mauled by police dogs dragged through the streets of Prague.

our heroes and our foes though we the actors of our history

in bold strokes perhaps bound to fail because of catastrophic errors

in our genes like for instance the fumbling of the nation’s will.

the boys couldn’t look at you in that sense of wonder anymore

but as that acidic foaming at the mouth in the clear signs of desire

nauseating frantic dizzying or not brailleric in its song of dots

discovering how beauty has a corrupting quality of bluish poison

and in any case every energy is wasted

in the convulsing waves of laughter

that mysticism that comes with age

and we don’t have to plan our holidays according to the seasons

we could take a dancing trip

if that were to happen we could even lose our fright

we could tour the golden fields of Troy

during the harvest of the wheat

and clouds will roll in clusters

and it will be like an exploration of our shared consciousness

and it will be found

that all experience can be created out of songs

and so that is the reason this song is Gregorian

and this piece is classical

and this song has no name

and this name has no numbers one

writes of the trains

and the forced marches just like that

and the days of hunger and the days at sea and the fireworks

and the triumphal entries and the noise of cannons

confused with the noise of celebration

and the broken bottles and the sticky floors.

in one moment, all the memories of rain which people tend to overlook

or simply ignore because there is light and sound to hold our attention

come rushing in like a roaring typhoon

and a lady with her little dog waltzes in

to do me a great mercy

claiming to know the secret’s in the black book

of how to choose the sick the weak among our fellow wolves

a well-meaning mother that is correct not like the others

those rustic symbols of power in a set of graceful movements.

if someone were to send her voice wrapped in cellophane

and dry foliage I would dare not see her face because the pages would

frighten me with their black and white rumble

this is all I know: that it would be like learning a new language

a small kindness after all that would be to have seen

those horrors to have felt the hand of destiny

pulling and pushing away because otherwise she could not

do anything useful but we judge nonetheless

what could she have done?

this is the reason why we don’t

the events caught up with us and we are all touched

by a monstrosity just like that casually.

Lilie in the Blanket

I open the door to my sister Lilian’s room and I’m surprised I didn’t smell hair chemicals mixed with incense thick in the air which never failed to transport me back in nostalgia to a magical childhood of stories and dreams shared before bed time. Instead, a faint smell of hand sanitizer brings images of sterilized hospitals and mental institutions. Posters made from newspaper clips commemorating concerts we sneaked into still hang on the walls, testament to her brilliant imagination and her attachment to memories of innocence and mischief, but otherwise the room is empty.

On the wall opposite of the door, there’s the Garden of Eden reproduced from Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s 2011 comeback tour. On the right wall, there’s Moonface’s young girl in a red background smelling a rose from the Organ Music Tour. On the left wall, Kevin Barnes from of Montreal is trapped in an inner-city ghetto. On the door a floating girl in a yellow dress and empty eye sockets smiles when I look at her.

Lilie sits crouched in the middle of the room wrapped in a dirty blanket, her long black hair, not in her usual braids reminds me of Our Lady of Zapopan.

“Hey looser,” she greets me, “I thought you were still angry.”

“I am, Lilie, but Mom doesn’t need to know I’m here,” I reply unable to let go of the door knob.

“Well, in that case you better have a good story, if I’m going to be distracted.”

From the door, suppressing tears of frustration and exasperation I try to pretend composure. I try my best to hide my rage for being unable to approach her and hug her like I used to.

“Listen young lady,” my voice grave, “I know you don’t understand but you’ve got to give me a break, Mom was born in another age, you’ve got to be more open minded.”

“Oh, so Mom was right then huh, you think you’re all that, all proper and sophisticated, but that’s why I’m asking you, if you tell me a story like you used to, like before you went to school to tame the beast and become a poet, maybe I can pretend you’re not all mad and perhaps I’ll even let you into my secrets.”

“Secrets? You have no secrets, you tell everything to ‘Ma, and even if you don’t, she figures them for you....” I stop myself violently.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she says, “you ought to know how crazy runs in the family.”

I do not cry, not in Lilie’s presence anyways. I don’t ever want to make her feel that I am sorry for her. But when I’m not busy writing or when I’m sick of it, and all I can do is think about how mother and I drove her to madness, then I melt my heart in tears and soak my pillows in a rain I wish could cure her of that disease that has eaten her brain and left it reeling.

And I remember the last story, the story Lilie told me before I left for college, when Mom and I fought because she thought it a waste of time and money going to school to become a writer. “My kids are not going to be no maricones, this is not what I sacrificed myself for working to raise you ungrateful brats.” And I stormed out of the house into the summer heat, only to climb into Lilie’s room a bit after midnight to say goodbye and I found her covered in that blanket with her left hand raised unconscious praying her dreams:

the canopy of stars hanging from the ceiling says that you’re impossible says that I’m insane and perhaps the bathroom walls were not splashed with blood the night I dreamed and said that you were born perhaps it is not me and perhaps not even you dripping slowly from the ceiling or standing open-mouthed on the door unable to let go unable to forgive unable to forget that we were standing one fine evening in the middle of a crowded Palm Desert street for all the world to see could be El Paseo could be Park View it’s likely altogether somewhere else because from here I can see the trails and early-birds worming their way into the purple horizon from here I can see you as you dance wearing a gown made of plastic bags soaked and sticky with amniotic fluid chasing dreams of immortality up the fragmented hill chocking in the lactic acid of exhausting laughter that refuses to be contained that refuses to be told in your stories in my dreams of prophetic technicolor like a paradise burning itself into days of letters written to queens sisters daughters in oblivion and even if I could talk without the fear of being crushed exposed to the whims of hours suspended in rejection by those who would hear us praise the bonds with root and leaf the sacrifice expiated with blood and sight even if by mercy they would say allow our voices to color free the cryptic languor that comes as cold breathing where we are torn apart by lucidity and forgetting

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