Palm Reader

By Christina Issa

A man reads my palms. I'm holding back tears, then crying for minutes. Don't let them see.

I'm thinking about writing a play. About the brain. Specifically the disconnect between what we think and what we do. It's called cognitive dissonance. In reality this is evidenced by the world-wide human struggle to simply co-exist, and the subsequent identity crisis literally and figuratively dismantling humanity's bridges. We've disconnected from our souls while outsourcing our joy to the external world, only to be met by disappointment over and over. Am I wrong? Too many simple minds that can't process nuance, nor tolerate human difference and change that wield too much power and influence for society's good.

I don't know what else to write. So I just write what I know. But then again I know nothing. 

Life has been like trying to fit a cube into a round hole. I don't want a stubborn life. Or any analogy that improves it.

The human condition is an effect of all the things we have no control over, yet are trying endlessly to force into shape. Instead life shapes us but we still deny that it has a force of its own. Everything we do or don't do has a direct impact on our lives and on other's lives. We think we have control, and yet we have so close to none, in the big scheme, it is negligible. So what to do with this information?

The universe is vast, remember this. A full cosmic stretch would probably bump into many multiverses. Think of a Swiss cheese block but so vast that it's literally innumerable and spans universes....and we live inside one tiny hole. But we think we are the entire block of cheese. Lunatics.

Nobody thinks about this stuff, but I do. I internalize it. The palm reader knows. Internal turmoil he says.

You have self confidence issues, he says. You must value yourself more he says, like other's do. Your life is shit, according to my palm. Get your shit together he basically says. Ok. Thanks.

I think about being seven again and being the last kid picked for a team of a game of elementary kickball.

No one thinks about this stuff. Identity, where we came from and the space we occupy now -- sitting in traffic with round shrubs and iron gates staring back at you for miles. Where the hell are we even going?

But back to the brain. What goes on in our mind? And can this be recorded and documented in a meaningful poetic way? I'd like to understand what of the mind is reflected back into the external world and how does it crawl out of the brain dome of our skull. Is it in the palm? Can our bodies tell us something more about ourselves perhaps more than we even know how to handle? How quickly do we run away when the mirror is crystal clear and scares the shit out of us? The horror. But the palm reader knows. His dog is my friend, sitting on the porch around Persians and cigarettes like it is home. We're doing a garage sale today. My boyfriend's sister owns so much expensive shit it's disgusting. Just lighting money on fire.

The palm reader talks a lot. I'm tired and want to yell at him to go away. He just made me cry and for what! I did not ask to be transparent and interesting. But anyway, he could have read me from a mile away. I might as well get a story out of it.

love is a drain

by Christina Issa

love is a drain
an endless pipe leaking
acid rain
she carries the words
from mountaintops
all that heavy weight
cannot fill a blank screen
a white page
no beauty left to convey
love is a pain
because you feel so much
all at once
over and over
and while I cannot refrain
from infecting the others
the needle doesn't even
know my name
isn't it strange
that I have nothing to say?
where the words of my genius
once filled my eyes
and leaked from my fingers
love has replaced words
only silence remains

Blind

by Christina Issa

the stark light of love
has left me blinded to the core
my insides are illuminated
for your soul i weep no more

instead i weep for all the places i cant go
the distances i wont cross
the places i'll never know

i feel it in the depths of my breath
the ache of control
two humans that love
also take a toll

the hardest thing to do is
let go of what you know
but a blind bat doesn't float
unless it has somewhere to go

but to be blinded is to be lit up
with a visually clean slate
i dont see you any more
all i feel is your weight

I Am Nobody by Emily Dickinson

by Emily Dickinson

I'm Nobody!
Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name –
The livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!

I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You by Pablo Neruda

By Pablo Neruda 

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it's you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.

Pasty Colors

by Christina Issa

pasty colors fill the face holes

of voids we didn't know existed
holding hands is contrived 

tepid manners replace love

tricky words fighting patience

hinged on thin-string semantics
playing the harp of language 

this polarity is rough

we want what we desire

breaking dishes against the ceiling
definitions are now fleeting
and intimacy is enough

making love is immediate
timeless energy that treads water
we forgot about the dishes
it's raining fragments from above



https://twitter.com/ChristinaIssa

Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath

Mad Girl's Love Song by Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

We Could Create a Second Sun

if we fell into the ocean

we'd fall so hard

that the starfish would shoot in the skies 

and scatter

and cluster

and become our second sun


https://twitter.com/ChristinaIssa

Piano

master,

hands fall numbly to your sides

of the piano

and graze the thick of my thighs

faster,

strokes delight the slumber of my vibrato

and you key the notes of our tomorrow

while our today sleeps upright

Litany

By Rebecca Lindenberg


O you gods, you long-limbed animals, you

astride the sea and you unhammocked

in the cyprus grove and you with your hair

full of horses, please. My thoughts have turned

from the savor of plums to the merits

of pity—touch and interrupt me,

chasten me with waking, humble me

for wonder again. Seed god and husk god,

god of the open palm, you know me, you

know my mettle. See, my wrists are small.

O you, with glass-colored wind at your call

and you, whose voice is soft as a turned page,

whose voice unrolls paper, whose voice returns

air to its forms, send me a word for faith

that also means his thrum, his coax and surge

and her soft hollow, please—friend gods, lend me

a word that means what I would ask him for

so when he says: You give it all away,

I can say: I am not sorry. I sing.

Rebecca Lindenberg On Writing Poetry

By Rebecca Lindenberg

"I think there is a general misconception that you write poems because you “have something to say.” I think, actually, that you write poems because you have something echoing around in the bone-dome of your skull that you cannot say. Poetry allows us to hold many related tangential notions in very close orbit around each other at the same time. The “unsayable” thing at the center of the poem becomes visible to the poet and reader in the same way that dark matter becomes visible to the astrophysicist. You can’t see it, but by measure of its effect on the visible, it can become so precise a silhouette you can almost know it."

Craving Poetry

There are certain things we will each always crave, whether we know it or not. I find myself constantly craving poetry.

 Writing has always been my primary tool for creative expression. Ever since I discovered the spiral notebook at age 5, I became attached. I wrote and wrote and wrote and soon enough, my writing became me. I felt that I could write, therefore I could be. Suddenly, I learned that I could write to change, and even transform.

 A Nietzschean urge kept speaking up inside, to destroy and rebuild all my own preconceptions. To excavate and analyze the artifacts of my mind, things that had been accumulated unknowingly. Even when working in design studio in architecture school, I explored my conceptual ideas initially with words, in a pragmatic way. Words turned into paragraphs and paragraphs began to give form to visual and spatial experiences, which then sparked my initial design concept.

 I will always crave poetry. Writing and reading it. I lust it, I want to be a part of it. No matter how streamlined and routine my life becomes, I need poetic ventilation (as I like to call it) to satisfy my inner need to jump around and yell like a Banshee. Poetic ventilation helps to bend and exercise the mind - to get me out of my comfort zone and thinking about the things that are deep-rooted, subdued and often too categorical.

There are no limits but there is also no mercy – just me staring into the vastness and complexity of life that inspires me to put words to paper daily.  I’m just a girl who knows that no amount of writing for an audience (or doing anything for an audience for that matter) will ever give me the same satisfaction as those sixteen words that don't mean a whole lot to anyone else but mean absolutely everything in the world to me. X Chris

Quakes

by Christina Issa

Slight nudges are like modest quakes

Empty cavities reveal the stretch of

A porous and lighter existence

Joni on her side but still

She feels adrift

Light nips at her fingertips and

Daylight shakes off her moody weight

Withered tomorrows signal for

The night to drench her

Only momentarily

She hasn't seen a thing yet but

Roads have not been so friendly

Passer-by's and their evil eyes

Pierce a thin veil and cull

Her overgrown weeds

Clouded by fantasy

She is

Sleeping wide awake

Only woken up by the

Most modest quakes

Valentine's Day: Don't Over Think It

stoic seas

nowhere to go and nothing to say

I can't remember the last time I felt this way

somewhat euphoric and somewhat defeating

deep in my mind i'm always retreating

into fractures i sink endlessly

grafting myself onto tumultuous seas

grayness engulfs me - i think i can swim

then i remember i don't think anything

silence resonates under crashing waves

hollow like a pair of wooden claves

nowhere to go and nothing to say

I can't remember the last time i felt this way