
raw does not bleed
No visible damage
Raw does not bleed
is not red except in our imagination
in actual fact, no one even noticed.
Feeling flayed, frozen in the headlights
pinned in public by private humiliations
apparently everyone is laughing
Flies do not lay eggs in our sores
They belong to someone else’s trash
in actual fact, no one even noticed.
It’s only the insides that suppurate
Silently leaking behind the gauze.
apparently everyone is laughing
We’d better smile too.
We made a better world.
Now enjoy it.
in actual fact, no one even noticed.
Apparently everyone is laughing.
Published in Whirlwind Magazine, No. 6 Fall 2015
https://issuu.com/whirlwindreview/docs/whirlwind_issue6
_________________
One Woman’s Hell… A Gentrifier’s Lament
wrinkles and cellulite
rats and roaches
a boring Saturday night
downsizing and outsourcing
muggers and rapists
bad hair, bad breath
acne, underarm hair
My terror is as real as yours.
It keeps me much to busy
to consider poverty famine war
sickness old age and death.
It justifies whatever measures necessary
to sanitize, eradicate
decry and deny.
My house is a war zone.
How can I care about anything else!
My kitchen a bombed-out hell
awaiting new marble countertops
and a Subzero freezer.
Living on take-out for months
has been no picnic,
let me tell you.
I don't have time
to read the news any more.
I don't have time to care
about Syria and Sudan
or even another body
found on Potrero Hill.
Anonymous brown skin
in a too-tight leather outfit
breasts spilled out
like golden apples.
Nappy head wrapped
in an African scarf.
She went down to Capp St
to sell her body for money to feed her kids.
My husband goes to the whore zone—
to get away from me.
Published in Poor Magazine on-line Sept 2015
_________________
Souvenirs of New Orleans Ten Years Later
Exactly how many layers of exploitation have fertilized the Mississippi mud?
How many bribes and/or death threats paid for your Garden District mansions?
In the Delta, poverty is palpable—first in incarcerations, last in schools.
In a nearby town, a huge plastic gorilla guards a lawn, knuckles to the ground, butt upraised,
in the position you like to keep the dark and muscular. Outside the historical museum,
you brag in my yellow face, secure in your pink skin and white shirt:
“Growing sugar cane is like printing money! The price is guaranteed by the government,
so even if I don't plant any cane, I still get a check.
But the people ’round here (code for black) they don’t like to work.
That’s why we have to bring in the Meskins. Now, they’re good hard workers.”
I don’t ask if they are legal. I don't ask how hard HE works.
And I don’t ask if his subsidies were preserved
by cutting back food stamps in the last farm bill.
I'm an Asian spy, here to visit the concentration camp where my family spent four years.
I don't waste my breath on you who can't hear me.
But I’ll report back to sunny California, “Don't bring your tourist dollars here.
Look for the lies; peek through the cracks
in the shiny veneer, warping from damp and rot.”
How many generations of tradition justify the way you treat people?
How many millions do you spend on your Mardi Gras float,
your purple, green and gold costumes and souvenir cups.
How many pounds of beads do you toss out like lagniappe to the masses?
Beads, made from plastic, that is, petrochemicals—the oil and gas you suck from the land
that you stole from illiterate Cajuns and Houma Indians
who just wanted to keep trapping and fishing in the old ways.
How much do you make from the alligator hunters who pay $10 an egg times
forty eggs to a nest and a hundred nests per acre in marshlands eaten away by oil canals?
How many millions do you extract from Naw'olins
by renovating drowned shotgun shacks for artsy newcomers eager to sip from
the honeysuckle wine while displacing the very people who gave New Orleans its soul.
While you prudently moved your corporate offices to Houston,-----
the town hollows out into a Disneyworld of conventioneers and tourists,
artistes and do-gooders, arriving just in time for the next flood.
Because it WILL come to this land drowning from global warming and corruption.
And yet, the sinking land is feverish with hope and determination
and the remnants of people who believe deep in their souls
that love and family trump money.
If they go down, they will go down singing!
Published in Whirlwind Magazine 5, Summer 2015.
https://issuu.com/whirlwindreview/docs/whirlwind__5
the good wife
1. the good wife
Too much time
in the kitchen
serving tea
washing dishes.
Too many people to thank,
arrangements to make.
People everywhere
So much to do.
No time to mourn,
no time to think.
No time
to sit on the floor
and cry.
2. looking good
How could she be dead
and not even notice.
Was it sudden
or a long slow smothering?
Was there a funeral?
a tombstone somewhere
marking what she could have been?
How did it happen?
Was it in high school
when she was desperate to belong?
In second grade when the teacher
pierced her with her eyes?
Or maybe even earlier
when she cried in my crib
and no one came.
3. old-fashioned girl
“Is this how you s’posed to do it?”
“I’m not sure I know how...”
“You go first;
I’d do it wrong anyway.”
Hesitant and yielding,
gentle flutter of downcast eyes.
Inside resentment builds,
drop by bitter drop.
Inside the wild bitch screams.
She's a good cheering section
if someone else plans the game.
A good worker
if someone tells her what to do
She gives great support
if someone dictates the structure.
But when it’s her own scheme
How quick she is to destroy it
before someone else does.
4. fever breaks
Now when she hears someone
weeping in the night
She knows it’s her
calling to herself.
Drawn by the stars
She stands by the window
And lets the breeze take her
Her fears rustle down to her feet
like last year’s leaves.
As winter breaks,
the tender fronds of a new day
unfurl in the mulch
of yesterday’s regrets.
5. they never found a body
Did she jump?
]Or was she pushed?
Nobody asked; she never said.
Now that she’s gone
we’ll never know.
Did she run to
or away?
Did she die
or did she live?
The guards say she didn’t make it
but how do we know
from inside?
Did she have the courage to flee
Did she give up too soon?
Maybe it wasn’t the bitter end;
But a better beginning.
Some say desertion;
I say liberation.
Shizue Seigel

Selected Poems

Photos by Shizue Seigel