Liz Bowen is a writer and literary scholar living in New York. She is the author of Sugarblood (Metatron 2017) and the chapbook Compassion Fountain (Hyacinth Girl 2018), and her poetry and essays can be found in Boston Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Atlas Review, Dream Pop Press, and glitterMOB. She is a Ph.D. candidate in English and comparative literature at Columbia University, where she is working on a dissertation that traces disability and animality as intertwined sites of literary experimentation in the long twentieth century. She also teaches undergraduate writing, works on the poetry staff at Anomaly, and cares for a rescue pit bull named Rosie.
from compassion fountain
(i)
A screeching sound An awful screeching sound in the valley between animal and vegetable In the valley between sea glass and garbage. How anyone avoids obliteration is anyone’s guess. Our children in the boiling hunger wars Our children in the pathogenic renaissance Our children we can’t have for their own imagined sake. We imagine telling them we wore winter coats in New York. N says “I just hope the dolphins make it.” I think What would they be without our nets and particle vortexes I think They have language They have the potential for threat. Our children in the sea empire Our children as terrestrially other. There is no retreat but is there refusal? Is there a scream that would put to a stop. (Given the evidence? Nah.)
OR
generous mounds encased in basements
will not feed the pacific sore
but our compost won’t save us
when the time comes
I swear I saw a ghost
in the air conditioner
I swear I saw an angel in the fan blades
cut up like a flip book
when I turn out the light
the body works for itself
piling scar tissue on tissue too much
a too perfection
and somewhere a republican thinks they know me
like they know how to aim
mom tells me it is not worth my while to hate
but i want to shrivel them
these people who feed their children
gender and ammunition
(ii)
the sea level rises higher than my premiums
the least favorite friends go to mars
it’s ok i’m back here with my moldy organs
and the pit bulls bust loose from the pound
no relief but at least no children either
nothing that must be explained
will poetry survive the move underground?
what about when our eyes go white?
the only one who can bear my pronouncement
that in the disaster i will die of diabetes
is a woman
(iii)
A bruise is the true injury, ugliest after the fact. Savor the green and yellow fleshly afternoons. Which is the tenderer: the knee or the rock? In any case I showcase my limbs. Which is the thirstier: the man or the mtn? When away from the man, I finger the marks until they nectarine me sappy. When away from the mountain, I pick my igneous scabs.
I LOVE YOU VOLCANO
YOU PERFECT EARTH HERPES
you know the drive to carry
and spread
your substance is mineral your virus runs white
you and i baby
disclose and disclose
DISCLOSURE:
a duty / an endangerment / a labor / an invitation
a sampling of another’s generosity / a sampling of disgust
a volcano clouded over / a walk through blanket fog
a rapid walk to save the spine
an emptying onto a rock / the animals allowed to lick
/ animals allowed to charge
(iv)
A man I have never met asks me why strong women like myself make fun of male fragility, when we were once the fragile ones? I don’t bother to respond because I don’t accept the terms. Who are you to call me a strong woman. I hate strength like / I hate America. This is the one strong thing in me, my hate. My therapist tells me I can work through my anger and I ask if I can still keep it after. I keep it always under my left breast. I fold my hate up like a weather report. I keep it always / in my punctuation. I can’t publish this. My students could always be cameras even though in practice they are fountains. My name could be put on a list. Is it strength to have my name on a list. Seems wealth / nettedness / which is strength. Seems a powder under the teeth whose meaning depends / on whose teeth. A man I have never met grins in the gulley / enfleshes blue light. He presses send He presses and presses and presses.
(v)
the smell of sex is better
than the feeling of sex
remember the tropics,
the sweat turned syrup
a twist and a drenching of fabric
shuddering from blue to green
your girlness and your boyness
stretched out next to each other on the surf
almost as if they inhabit the same country
almost as if you and i do
sever the goat from the fish
the twin from the twin,
i am dangerous two
he’s not president yet but we find paradise
on the periphery of a naval terror
radioactive underbrush
how you gonna be mad on vacation
let me show you
the restricted area
if you see any of these objects while snorkeling
alert the authorities
we don’t deserve the night waves
we don’t deserve the small sharks
we don’t even deserve to be eaten
(vi)
i try to be tender with you i be tender
when you cannot be tender with me i be tender
when it feels good when it hurts
it’s winter and the red is underfoot
lips are under red under the foot
when there is green i do not belong
when there is a fresh smell it is not coming from me
K and i are ‘reclaiming slattern’
which is harder in the winter
when the sweat smell is a stale disowning
instead of a desire capsule
i am afraid of the tenderness veining into purple
a steady encroaching cold
jaw set
i don’t carry happiness
i am not a hammock
i am only a companion that licks
the throb and the throb
that would subside whether i licked
or didn’t
disclose me like a mineral disclose me like a rock
the fan is on and it is out for blood
I am Blood Locker
with the heat lapping my gills
my angular pupils
my ganglion love-bites
carrying futures like postage
an older instance thrust forward
disclose your need so I can bring it
disclose in invisible messages
/ what do I become when I’m gone?
a mundane vibration
my devastation has many facets
some are ribbed for pleasure
(vii)
< sometimes it looks like i have an affordance in me it looks like a nourishment but it’s just air>
OF COURSE I WANT TO HEAR HOW MAD
YOU ARE AT THE WOMAN WHO GOT SICK
OF TALKING TO YOU THE WOMAN WHO
WAS AFRAID TO SAY SO IN SO MANY WORDS
BECAUSE SHE WAS AFRAID OF THE POSSIBILITY
OF RAGE IN YOU YES OF THIS VERY RAGE
THAT YOU ARE DEMONSTRATING IN THIS
ENCOUNTER WITH ME THIS VERY RAGE DIRECTED
AGAINST HER BUT PROJECTED TOWARD ME
THE NEAREST FEMME YOU COULD FIND
WHY WOULDN’T I BELIEVE YOU ARE NOT
A DEMON WHY WOULDN’T I EDGE CLOSER
TO YOU AT THE BAR HAHA OHH WHAT I MEANT
TO SAY IS WHY WOULDN’T I HOLD MY OFFICE
HOURS IN A PUBLIC PLACE WHAT I MEANT TO SAY IS
WHY WOULDN’T I REFUSE TO GIVE FEEDBACK
ON YOUR POETRY FOR FREE I RUMBLE BUT
YOU DON’T HEAR IT THE TREMOR IN MY VOCAL
CHORDS YOU DON’T EVEN REGISTER
THERE ARE A FEW OF YOU WHO CAN HEAR ME SAY
“I AM SO AFRAID OF AGGRESSIVE MEN” I FELL
IN LOVE WITH ONE OF THEM AS SOON AS HE
HEARD IT AND THE REST I WRAP IN DEAREST
WARMTH I LIST YOUR NAMES IN MY HEAD
WHEN MY RESERVOIRS ARE SCREECHING EMPTY
BUT GOOD GRIEF YOU ARE SO FEW
< / this carriage of poetry that subsists in my body it can look like a capacity but it’s air >