Hear That Noise? I'm Getting Stirred

Abstract

Hear That Noise?I'm Getting Stirred Leslie Contreras Schwartz (bio) Starshine lining my lungs, bright bruisenot scarred but iridescent with darkness, flare.No, it doesn't hurt though if you saw—excavated this body you'd seecut-veined indigo rivers, even here, the recreation room at Live Oaks Hospitalits hellscape of linoleum and horsepill numb despite this, I'm still finding a sharpened history of a landscape pushed and shaped frominside with nothing but my—look Ma no—hands! my organs toothe loyal pup of a spleen purpled valves wagging the heart's tail saying look what I can do look what I'm still doing I'm not done at all Watch me flicker under a thumbWatch me teach otherswhat to do under a knuckle a hand —hear that noise? that wild choir wild selfcontained in a thought box [End Page 12] all of us togethercan make a great soundfamiliar hum didn't your father sing that it's not all just noise hear the hum human hear the musicof Hum that deep sound humming a long sister Eve growl Sacred self fractured selfPart times partto its choir selfwhole cellself within the house selfthe noise it makes inside, mansionof sounds yourself tool, yourself mallet lined in the curtains of each roombeams in the wallsstuds mortar loud architecture of selves answer the call to this grand estatesplendid hum of house landscape both burnt and full-on flare, brilliant & lonely knowledgeevery ridge shelfover the cut-answer the call to enter choir from inside ruffled-curtained off-lit placebedroom both dilapidated and full to the brim— uproar, racket, orchestra harmonic the body wants & takes at last [End Page 13] of children's beautiful song sharpened into breastbone,a bended neck of whip to dance,dance not with a red-smeared grin, lowered eyes, controlledhip pop and as if by puppet string but dance in swing & scrapedance in to pull to carryto tow of feet then legs full thighsletting the horizon slip through twerkgolden trapped space of your own body—opened shaped by two arms one mouth whole self bodythis brick box house of red caravan I'm pulling in the shape of a mouthwide open with teeth white-hot swingheel cut loose How to livein this slipping place. How our ancestorslearned to live with this slipping place. [End Page 14] Leslie Contreras Schwartz Leslie Contreras Schwartz is the fourth Houston Poet Laureate, serving from 2019-2021. A multigenre writer, her book Who Speaks for Us Here, will be released in spring 2020 (Skull + Wind Press). Her second book, Nightbloom & Cenote (St. Julian Press, 2018), was a semi-finalist for the 2017 Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, judged by Ilya Kaminsky. She is also the author of Fuego (St. Julian, 2016) and was a featured poet for the 2018 Houston Poetry Fest. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Missouri Review, The Collagist, [PANK], Iowa Review, Verse Daily, Catapult, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among others. She is a graduate of the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and works for the peer-reviewed journal Tissue Engineering at Rice University. Copyright © 2020 Pleiades and Pleiades Press