“I shuddered to think that while we wanted that flag dragged into the mud & sullied beyond repair, we also wanted it pristine, its white stripes, summer cloud white…” ~ Maya Angelou { All God’s Children Need… }

I’ve been in enough abusive situations with a loved one to know what it feels like… The constant looking over your shoulder & inability to relax even when you are alone, the discomfort of contorting your body to suit the posture of the moment, the consequences of ignoring your needs to the point of regular physical malfunctioning, the insomnia & frequent nightmares whenever you finally do manage to drift off, only to be awoken by raised voices again. I’m no expert on the matter, merely one more survivor. Yet I hope my experience is sufficient to merit me an ounce of credibility when I claim that, as citizens of the United States of America, we are in an abusive relationship with ourselves.

It is tempting to word this otherwise. I could say, for example, that we’re in an abusive relationship with our country. Or call this tyrannical government our abuser (which it absolutely is), but those narratives shift the blame solely onto the powers that be, which rest out of reach & seem relatively untouchable. If we are victims is not the question, but rather, what type of victim we choose to be is what interests me. In an abusive dynamic, the one who speaks out is often labeled a black sheep, the scapegoat, or a troublemaker. They must be taken care of by intimidation, manipulation, or ostracization… Interestingly, it is rarely the abuser who does this work, but rather the victim’s fellow victims.

These types of victims, better known as enablers or (a more devious variant) flying monkeys, become the wall of bodyguards surrounding the more supple tyrant at the center of the hivemind. A victim who goes rogue becomes a lone survivor who must endure the coldness & disdain of those who remain silent out of fear or a lack of support. It is little wonder that so many survivors tend to conveniently disappear after taking their story to the media, with nothing left but rumors of there having been someone who once dared to speak. Even our current tyrant president is followed by his fair share of whispers about the corpses buried underneath his copious rolling hills of expensive golfing turf…

Now we find ourselves, the citizens of this country, being held hostage by a bully scratching at death’s door to provide cover for his enormous pincushion of a posterior whenever he decides to dance a jig or let out flatulence on the world stage. Far beyond being embarrassing, it’s downright dangerous, & has been since the first day of his flatulency. Living in the U.S. feels like smelling the hot breath of a predator on the back of your exposed neck at all times. It is, in short, a terrifying experience… But most of us seem to have convinced ourselves that it is, somehow, worth the torture. Or we simply can’t afford to leave, because we lack the support & resources. I, myself, got out for a while.

I lived abroad in a democratically socialist country for half a decade, & if I’m being honest, it was every bit as beautiful & blissful as that sounds. Except I suffered survivor’s guilt the entire time, because I couldn’t bring my family with me, & I carried their experiences everywhere I went. My parents already endured the immigrant experience once, so that I could have opportunities they never did. They had already learned a foreign language so that I could have a better life. Being overseas & becoming trilingual felt like repeating the saga, except I had no child of my own for which to care. Meanwhile, my sister was giving birth to babies in the country I’d left without a backwards glance.

It became clear to me that I couldn’t abandon my family, even if I could leave my country, so I returned without regard for the nostalgia I would surely feel for the time I spent living only for myself. In essence, it was too late for me. I embodied the spirit that this bastard country imbued me with from an early age… A gritty determination to make things right for my people, even if right is largely subjective, & my people are the scattered diaspora of dreamers who remain broken-hearted at the failed promises & faulty dreams they were sold, which they already abandoned their respective families & homelands for. For better or for worse, I loved the America (& the Americans) that I called my kin.

It has been five years since I came back, & not a day goes by that I don’t think about leaving. Yet I don’t regret my decision about returning for a moment. It has proved to be a powerful homecoming & period of restoration. I seem to have grown far stronger, even as the surfaces surrounding me show cracks to reveal their fragility. There is good earth here ripe for the planting. In the Old World, I felt flimsy & decorative, as though my spirit were being siphoned out of me by powers I didn’t quite grasp. In the New World, I know the ghosts by name, & can befriend even the most frightening ghouls. No demon is so scary that I don’t know the spell to cast it back into the pit. Ancestors speak to me…

I can’t blame the place for having become disconnected from my own magic. I can only blame myself & my choices. Suffice it to say, I feel safer in the arms that held me as I grew, even if they squeeze too tightly & strangle me from time to time. Trauma reshapes the body & brain in ways we can’t really even begin to appreciate, so I’ve stopped trying to fight it: At least, from a distance. Keep your friends close, your family closer, & your enemies right where you can see them. Within the line of sight, which is also to say, within firing range. My weapon of choice is my words, each poem a protest to chant in the face of despair. I refuse to bow out quietly, even if I choose to go down with the ship.

American Flag

America, I have pledged allegiance to you more
times than I can count, but what has my loyalty
given me except blue balls? My cheeks redden at
the thought of us going steady, yet you draw lines
in the sand, sun-bleached white & scorching from
having baked all day long. You were once beautiful,
America, but now you’re just damned ugly from the
botched facelifts & flagrant disregard for your own
failing health. I could pick your flag out from a line-
up at the station: The blue of your eyes squinting at
me through the swelling of your shiner, as if daring
me to point you out. The red stripes like the streaks
of blood streaming down your face, & the many stars
like white scars bursting across your knuckles from
the fights you’ve picked with anyone who will listen
to you insult them long enough. America, I pledged
my allegiance to your people: The names you tried
to erase, the bodies you made disappear... America,
you were once beautiful. Clean up your act, you still
could be. Oh America, I still love you—can’t you see?
The blue of my bruises has faded, the storm clouds
have cleared back to white, & a red sun has marked
the end of another day that was difficult for the both
of us. Yes, America, I’ll hold your hand while you cry.

“Writing, then, was a substitute for myself: if you don’t love me, love my writing & love me for my writing. It is also much more: a way of ordering & reordering the chaos of experience.” ~ Sylvia Plath (the unabriged journals)

Author’s Note: I’ve been gifting lifetime subscriptions to fellow writers, so I feel a bit better about putting upcoming posts behind a paywall. This one gets personal—discussing friends & fellow poets who are also real people… So I feel some discretion is called for, even though the only thing I find myself criticizing is the culture of taking money from hopeful writers!

I remember the first AWP I attended (in Chicago, 2009). I went all by myself, stayed with a friend I had a major falling-out with, saw snow fall for the first time, & returned to the news that I’d been accepted into graduate school for poetry... I remember attending a second (in DC, 2011) with cohorts from that same writing program, all starry-eyed to see our professors give their panels.

Both times, I scoured the schedule & circled every event I wanted to attend—so many of them overlapping with each other that I kept falling asleep on the floors in corridors—exhausted, yet full of fresh ideas & poetic inspirations to last me many months. However, I can’t remember either one as vividly as the third & last time I attended the well-known conference (in Minneapolis, 2015).

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“More than a decade after the first strong signals of the collapse (or at least the twilight) of the American empire, there is yet to be a melancholic reckoning with the decline of empire…” ~ Anis Shivani

“It is difficult to get the news from poems…” argues William Carlos Williams, & yet, fellow poet Philip Metres adds (in this essay for the Poetry Foundation) how many poets have historically functioned as journalists. From archivists to agitators, the voices of all those willing to sound the alarm bells & speak truth (when the rest of the world goes silent) are the ones that ring throughout the ages to reach us today… I claim to be no such poet, & would be lucky to have even a single line of what I write survive my death. But I’ve been using poetry to help me cope with the news for over a decade—so the day a maniac at the helm of our country threatened a civilization, all I could do was write this one.

American Doomsday

What if I told you that you had one hour left,
America? Who—presuming anybody—would
you want to spend it with? Or what would you
want to do, where would you want to go do it,
& when did this fear become the new normal?

I ask myself these questions every day. I try to
be brave enough to ask my country... What if it
is our own finger on the trigger, our own hand
pointing the guns toward our own heads? Why
the self-destructive tendencies? False bravado

of a gun-slinger walking into town after sunset
when the curtains have already been drawn on
a gruesome scene, the bodies already collected
& dressed by the women for burial... Men to be
mourned by the children they leave behind—if

there are any children left, at all, by the time the
dust settles. We put real guns into their hands, &
real bullets into those guns... We warned mothers
not to care so much, or to look the other way—to
turn the other cheek, or to be slapped into silence.

“The thing is that any sophistication I have, aesthetically, comes from Vogue [Magazine] and Harper’s Bazaar. In the 60’s I never missed an issue—even if I had to steal to get them.” ~ Patti Smith { in Interview Magazine }

There is a story I’ve been wanting to share for quite some time, but I never really found the space to tell it. You see, the front cover of my first book of poetry—featuring the top half of a naked woman showing a slight bit of side boob, but mostly her back (as a nod to the title, The Wingless) while crawling around in the dark—is actually only half of a photograph from a spread for Vogue Australia. I originally found it on Tumblr, then used TinEye to track it to the source—down to the exact date & issue of the magazine.

When I contacted my editor to tell him that I’d finally found the image I wanted on the cover of my book—he laughed & told me to keep looking. First of all, it was a photograph taken by a fashion photographer who lived in NYC & whose work had graced the covers of multiple famous magazines...

Secondly, our budget was $200—which was shameful to offer even an amateur in the field. “Gerry” (my editor) has been in the business of publishing poetry since he founded the press—which he has almost single-handedly run & kept afloat since the 1970’s… I knew that I would do well to listen to him.

I went back to clicking through page after page of mostly dull copyright free images. In doing so, I was fairly dismayed to find where so many of the covers I recognized from shelves at bookstores had come from. Surely, it wouldn’t hurt to contact the editors of the magazine. So I wrote the following:

“To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Cecilia Llompart, and I have fallen in irrevocable love with a photograph from a 2009 issue of your magazine. I am a poet, and my very first book is about to be published by a small university press in the United States. They have, rather graciously, allowed me to suggest my own image for the front cover. While it has been suggested that I use an image that is in the public domain, I have scoured hundreds upon thousands of these... Many of which are intriguing in their own right, but none which captures the essence of my work. I am, quite frankly, tired of the same, droll, stuffy, unimaginative images that have dominated the covers of books for centuries. Don't judge a book by its cover, they say—but why not?

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“The sound of silence

Is all [of] the instruction

You [will ever] get”

~ Jack Kerouac [et moi]

Something happens between birth and death that forces us to slow down. I don’t know when I began, but I like to think I’ve been doing the work of digging myself out from beneath the rubble of my own past. This entails creating a space that feels safe enough to read through the journals of my youth—to unlock those still painful memories—or to sort through photographs that play tenderly on my frayed heartstrings.

A new (for me) creative practice I have enjoyed doing for the purposes of this platform—this assemblage of my mixed-up memories—has been to pair photographs with journal entries (including drafts of poems) jotted down within the same time frame. Entries oftentimes only a few lines long… Yet combined with images captured that day (or even week), I’m delighted to discover what I was unable to write down.

It might simply be human nature to want to plow (or plod, for those of us who are on the slower side) forward into the future… That is, until we lose something which begs we retrace our steps. Or until age catches up with us—forcing us to catch our breath more and more often. Taught that time is linear, life is a race, and death is the finish line we’re all desperate to outrun—it’s little wonder we end up stalling!

Or worse, going around in circles… I imagine hell is repeating the same mistakes and never learning from them. A few years ago, the world stood still just long enough for me to catch my breath—to remember who I wanted to be: Someone who took ample time not simply to stop and smell flowers, but lingered long enough to write a haiku (or two)… Who talked for hours with trees… Who listened well—listened closely.

I spent the global lock-down going up and down a handful of streets in that Parisian suburb which I called home at the time—slowly walking my dog because it was one of the few authorized activities (outside of going to work) I could do. I already knew I was saying goodbye… Not just to a city I loved, but also to a self that no longer served me: An identity grown stiff from wear and tear now stifling my future growth.

It wasn’t easy for me to peel back the layers—nor was it easy for those close enough to me to bear witness to the wreckage. I sought solace in silence and steady movement… I wrote haiku as I walked as a form of meditation. Taking stock once more of the smallest wonders all around me—how they enhanced what was made with tools or by hand—at last, I trusted this beauty would follow me anywhere I went.

~ Parisian Blues ~

{ { in 25 haiku & 1 tanka } }

~

Paris is a state
of mind—as much as it is
the sun on your face.

~

In Spring—I worry
the cherry blossoms will fall
before you return…

~

« Nos amis les chiens
ne sont pas admis » read the
sign outside the park.

~

Nine white round pots and
eight black square ones guard
the side door to the hotel.

~

English ivy crawls
under a black wrought iron
fence with spear-like tips.

~

Potted cacti peek
through windows at posters of
the Golden Gate Bridge.

~

A mustard colored
splatter of moss stains the base
of solemn oak trees.

~

There aren’t many
leaves left on the ground… Winter
has digested them.

~

« Doucement » I find
myself whispering when I
step over the stones.

~

Catching my breath on
a bench—the wind rustles the
bamboo behind me.

~

A young woman in
glasses stops to read the words
engraved on a plaque.

~

rue Joseph Bernard
named for a « sculpteur »
who died (1931).

~

The bark on these trees
looks blue compared to the ne-
on of the bamboo.

~

Hearts made of paper
hang above the flower shop—
moss tickles my feet.

~

A magnolia
tree helps the noisy din of
traffic seem dampened.

~

At night—fake candles
draw me toward a window
of fragrant flowers.

~

A stone face with a
surprised expression still hangs
over the blue door.

~

Teenagers curse in
Arabic while loading crates
of bread onto vans.

~

« Vous étés des cons un
chat est fugueur » scribbled on
the lost cat flier.

~

« J’avais pas eu le
temps de le réfléchir— » said
the man cycling past.

~

A dirty blanket—
with leopard spots printed on
it—waits in the rain.

~

Pink feathers float down
murky gutter water then
disappear from sight.

~

A grey-haired woman
plays songs from Amelie on
her accordion.

~

« Je voir la lune ! » says
the child—pointing at the sky.
« Bien joué » says the mom.

~

In Spring—anger chills
my bones, despite these flowers
stuffed in my pockets.

~

A cigarette butt
bounces off the back of a
speeding motorbike

inches away from my face
before landing in the street.

~

Note: A few of the entries I eventually translated into French { with the help of my then partner and excellent fellow poet writing } such as this first one—in which case I will share both the English and French versions.

« A Paris, l'ancien Paris se cache comme un mythe au-dessus de nos têtes. C'est une ville construite à partir d'histoires autant que de pierre.. L'histoire d'être délicieusement seul. L'histoire de tomber amoureux de soi-même. Paris est le balcon d'ou on peut regarder le reste du monde tourner. Le bleu toits tissés ensemble comme un drapeau usé et drapé sur nos épaules semble refléter le ciel. Mais le ciel d'ici est également violet, aussi rose comme une barbe à papa. On entendre presque la musique d'un carrousel venant de l'intérieur des nuages. Si vous fermez les yeux, l'air a le goût du sucre sur ta langue. Si Dieu avait jamais un jouet préféré comme enfant ce serait sûrement Paris.. Paris, la toupie. Paris, la scène d'un spectacle de marionnettes capricieux. Paris, le ballon qui n'éclate j'aimais. »

“In Paris, the old Paris hangs above our heads like some myth. It's a city built from stories as much as it’s made out of stone... The story of being deliciously alone. The story of falling in love with oneself. Paris is the balcony from which one can watch the rest of the world turning. The blue rooftops woven together like a worn out flag and draped over all of our shoulders seem to reflect the sky. But the sky here is also purple, also pink as cotton candy. You can almost hear the music of a carousel coming from inside of the clouds. If you close your eyes, the air tastes like sugar on your tongue. If God ever had a favorite toy as a child it surely would have been Paris... Paris, the spinning top. Paris, the scenery for whimsical marionettes. Paris, the balloon that will never deflate.”

This book is tentatively titled American Hypnotic, and I have decided to share it here one draft at a time—as I collect a…

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“Blessed are the wingless, for their bones / are not hollow but heavy with want. // Blessed is whatever flocks homeward…” ~ Cecilia Llompart

“The utter originality of these poems makes me bow down. Cecilia Llompart’s breathtaking instinct for image and intuitive sense of pacing creates poems which feel like magnetic force fields, whole landscapes of perception. A mind is quieted, changed.” ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

“In Cecilia Llompart’s amazing first collection, The Wingless, whimsy and imagination are rooted deep in mystery and rise up on sure stalks to flower, again and again, into that most desired and various of blossoms—the one the Surrealists called ‘the marvelous.’ ” ~ Gregory Orr

“A little smoky and mysterious, Cecilia Llompart's work is lean but full—maximally minimal. The imagination here is vast yet supple, the vision, simultaneously gentle and fierce. Everything her mind touches seems more mystical, more alive. Her poems convey a gratitude, a joy less stated than implied by currents of appetite and love, romantic love and a great wide love of it all.” ~ Bob Hicok