GAS Featured Poet: Toti O’Brien

 

Toti O’Brien is the Italian Accordionist with the Irish Last Name. She is the author of Other Maidens (BlazeVOX, 2020), An Alphabet of Birds (Moonrise, 2020), In Her Terms (Cholla Needles, 2021), Pages of a Broken Diary (Pski’s Porch, 2022). 

HEROIN

 

And the closet where she would be shut to be

in total darkness and—like Galileo in the tower

—meditate on her sins.

And the sin that caused the punishment

was the same, each time—daring rebellion

against some perceived abuse.

 

The result was the closet—a radical form of

reclusion meant to weaken her hubris by sensorial

starving. So to speak. Soon, the darkness

that first, paradoxically, had blinded her, filled

itself with glare like will o’ wisps in a swamp,

like the halos of wandering ghosts.

 

In the closet, she didn’t repent. She calmed

down, her rage like a motor that—unplugged

from her counterpart, her opponent—slowly,

slowly, lost speed. The engine that had put her

on fire hushed itself, melting  with the very

beat of her heart.

 

And her brain, which had wound itself into

tiny loops of obsession, chewing onto the meager

bone of some right and wrong, some vague claim

of justice, finally went numb, lulled by its own

bitter song. Time vanished in the closet,

as space did.

 

Only her aching body, only her bruised soul

remained. Of release, she recalled nothing.

When was the door unlocked. If she heard

the key turn. If she dared trying the knob. If

the light outside made her blink, if she first

had to pee or looked for a kerchief, for water.

 

If she smelled dinner, and the smell suddenly

comforted her. If food made her forget.

If she could eat at all.

SHADOWS OF FIRE

 

Venus rose from the sea, they said. Of course, naked.

Long, curled hair, echoing the rippling of waves.

Perhaps, she had a mermaid tail (mythologies melt).

Like the Lady of Guadalupe, she stood on a crescent

(hers was abalone). Like that Mary, she niched in a

sort of vulva lined with mother of pearl, and was

haloed by cool layers of blue.

 

Athena rose dressed from the head (the brain) of her

father, Jupiter, king of gods. Dressed means with spear,

shield, armor—and clothes, underneath. Shoes were

on her feet. She looks marble in sculptures, but she

was splattered in blood, at least from the ax blow

that split open her father’s skull. She did not wash.

No need. She was bound to war.

 

When she stepped out of the mess of gray matter,

she marched on. She didn’t turn back, oblivious

already of the place she had come from. Soon

she was on horseback, and they called her Joan

the Maid. She donned a red tunic under the chain

mail, waved a red flag, her mount was harnessed

red—all preluding to her firing farewell.

 

She was seen afterwards, still in scarlet tunic,

playing Malinche. She spoke many tongues, and

too well. She went on, always marching westward

like a sun vainly looking for its resting place,

fated to constantly resurrect. They say she never

met her half-sister, the azure goddess,

or the pious mother of Christ.

 

She was not invited to family parties. Fairies missed

her baptism. No aunt demonstrated how to make

apple pie. She knew not the flavor of milk. At night,

she drank straight from the bottle as she leaned against

the iron rail of some bridge, listening to the roar of

water smashing on stone, catching (out of the corner

of her wide open eye) a meteor falling.