Ava C. Cipri: Eternal Night of Quiet Temper

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

After Listing to PJ Harvey’s To Bring You My Love

your letter
burns                          

these fingers
that charted your body   
over me . . .          

under vault lined skies

there were nights we held
on        in lust, in greed           for another
hour to purchase—

stars
unhinge . . .

each hour
I wish I could forget   you
& the you that wasn’t  

Scapular Dyskinesis: (which may also be referred to as SICK scapula syndrome) is an alteration or deviation in the normal resting or active position of the scapula during shoulder movement.

//

before dawn you take time to steady me, say, ready,
standing behind me
as I raise both arms to my ears
there it is—
the broken wing

with KT-Tape you fix me
like the physical therapist showed you
my swinging scapula
in astonishment, look,

·                              I can fit my whole hand under

sometimes preventative taping
when I have a demanding day
of PT, typing, grading, or 
steering the car wheel

sometimes 

the shoulder is useless
& I'm standing before you patched up
like Frankenstein

while you pull my hair back
kissing the nape of my neck

like any crutch, I can't use the tape
every day or the muscles atrophy
this damaged wing

I've been in & out of PT for over a decade,
even before you . . .

//

in the corridors of my past
as a dancer
my hypermobility was an asset

often asked, those arms,
who did you study under?

once known for embodying The Dying Swan's
dramatic backbends & soft pliant elbows in port de bras

I find myself chasing her down
& telling her the cost

Utterance

In the forests

light clusters   pale

almost             lavender

droop like wisteria

out in the meadow

the source                    routed by vines

coiling tendrils

hanging blossoms

like skirts

flowers

blushing                      any moment

a disguised

eternal night of quiet temper

*Erasure culled from Gregory Maguire’s After Alice, HarperCollins (2015), pp. 124-127. 

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These poems originally appeared in our ebook The Queer Body.

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Ava C. Cipri is a non-binary queer writer and poetry editor for The Deaf Poets Society: An Online Journal of DisabilityLiterature & Art. She is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee with an MFA from Syracuse University. Her poetry and prose appears or is forthcoming in Cimarron, Crab Fat, decomP, and FRiGG, among others. Ava is the author of two chapbooks; Queen of Swords (dancing girl press, 2018) and Leaving The Burdened Ground (Stranded Oak Press, 2018). She resides at: www.avaccipri.com and tweets at @AvaCCipri