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  that boy to confess he loved me though I knew he was lying next to

  CROWN NOBLE

  CROWN NOBLE

  poems by

  BIANCA PHIPPS

  © 2020 by Bianca Phipps

  Published by Button Poetry / Exploding Pinecone Press

  Minneapolis, MN 55403 | http://www.buttonpoetry.com

  All Rights Reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Cover design: Nikki Clark

  ISBN 978-1-943735-79-2

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-943735-86-0

  LINEAGE

  NINA

  FAMILY PORTRAIT, 1995

  MY FATHER’S EULOGY, THE EARLY DRAFTS

  REFLECTION

  A NOTE ABOUT MY FATHER

  THE HEARTBREAKER POEM

  CROWN REGENT

  ESTRELLA

  IT JUST HAPPENED SO FAST

  BORN TO EMBODY IT

  STICK

  MOONSTRUCK

  ALMOSTS

  I AM ALL THE ROOTS

  IN THE CLOUDS

  ELENA ALVAREZ IS LIVING MY BEST LIFE

  SONNET FOR MY DAUGHTER

  LENGUA

  THE SNOW CONVINCED THE PLANE TO STAY HOME

  WHEN THE BOY SAYS HE LOVES MY BODY

  STAY WITH ME

  FLYPAPER

  A RHYTHM A PATTERN

  ANOTHER NOTE ABOUT MY FATHER

  THE DREAM

  SURVIVOR’S WEIGHT

  CROWN GARLAND

  CLOUDMOTHER

  PRO-CHOICE

  WHITE RIVER WRITES HOME

  MY FATHER’S EULOGY, EDITED

  NINA REDUX

  How can I leave without hurting

  everyone that made me?

  —REGINA SPEKTOR, “SMALL TOWN MOON”

  …and nostalgia you can’t trust.

  —NATALIE DIAZ

  CROWN NOBLE

  NINA

  Nina has the patience to be a pianist. She smiles to hide all her teeth. She puts her left contact in first. She lives in Seattle with her girlfriend and their rescue mutt, Harriet. Nina has a garden that draws all the neighborhood curiosity. Nina works at the elementary school teaching music. Nina is good with numbers. Nina keeps her hair short because Nina didn’t braid her self-worth into its length. I mean, Nina keeps her hair short because Nina enjoys ease. Nina cries at the movies and everyone hands her a tissue. Nina has three siblings because there was no miscarriage. Nina’s parents divorced with the same tenderness they used to get married. Nina is honest in therapy. Nina likes to cook for herself. Nina drinks her tea before it gets cold. Nina appreciates process. She fetches fresh vegetables twice a week. It reminds her of her father. Nina doesn’t draft his eulogy. Nina calls him. Nina has a good life. Nina knows all good things must come to an end. Nina doesn’t write the expiration dates in her planner. Nina likes to say goodbye. Nina has boundaries that bloom like her tulips. She embraces her lover and sleeps without dreams. Nina doesn’t carry tension in her shoulders or her jaw or her bite. Nina doesn’t search every room for marked exits. Nina is serene. Nina lives in the alternate world where my father won the right to name me. Nina was pulled to the clouds, and I was pressed from the clay.

  FAMILY PORTRAIT, 1995

  Imagine the child didn’t fall far from the

  metaphor. Imagine you are the apple of his

  hesitation. Imagine the crown of thorns

  woven from daisies. Imagine the blood of

  the covenant flows thicker than the water

  of the women. Imagine your family photo.

  Imagine you are all smiles. Imagine the smiles

  reach your eyes. Imagine your eyes. Imagine

  the scramble of memory. Imagine your father’s

  eyes. Are they your own? Imagine the inheritance

  gifted when you meet your father’s eyes.

  Imagine your lack of inheritance. Imagine your

  father’s eyes the first time he wept. Imagine how

  your father clutches his sadness, christens it with

  any other name. Imagine salt. Imagine a crushed

  weed underfoot. Imagine a crushed parent under

  fire. Imagine your father’s clutched sadness;

  christen it your own. Imagine the transition from

  clutch to cradle. Imagine your new sadness gazes

  with a stranger’s eyes. Imagine the pages of the

  photo album filled with proof of who belongs to

  who. Imagine in every photograph your father is

  blinking.

  MY FATHER’S EULOGY, THE EARLY DRAFTS

  we have gathered here this afternoon to celebrate

  we have gathered here this afternoon to memorialize

  a good man a dear father

  we have gathered here this afternoon to honor

  a man we all thought we knew

  we have gathered here this afternoon to pay homage to

  this man we’ve all met

  his name was crown noble

  his name was my name

  though he always prayed I would give it away

  in exchange for another man’s

  but we cannot let go of what we are

  even when we bury it

  we have gathered here this afternoon to remember

  this man we’ve all met

  his name is printed on the top of your program

  though names are relative

  he was something else to each of us—

  we are only what others call us

  when we aren’t around to answer to it

  we are gathered here this afternoon to remember

  this man we’ve all met

  his name is printed on the top of your program

  he was something special to each of us

  he is with his father now

  and the Father

  where he always dreamed of living

  when he dreamed of life

  I cannot find it within myself to remain bitter

  he did not love me enough to stay—

  he is happy

  now and

  isn’t that all I yearned to know:

  happiness

  with my father?

  REFLECTION

  dad & I own the same phone case

  by accident.

  dad & I quote the John Mulaney stand-up

  at the same time, miles apart.

  dad & I drink Moscow Mules

  but never together.

  dad & I sing in the same off-key

  & cry in the same silence.

  dad & I know how to make the room laugh

  so loud they forget we are there.

  dad & I don’t call it depression,

  just the sadness, a scent to shake off

  maybe soon or in death,

  whichever comes last.

  dad & I cradle grudges in our shoulders

  against ourselves. each one is named

  after the ones we’ve hurt—but never

  our own names & never each other.

  we cannot forgive what we struggle to love,

  dad & I.

  I mean, he loves me & I love

  everyone except myself.

  dad & I both call it the sadness,

  though what we mean is

  the loneliness

  though what we mean is

  whatever will not kill us

  no matter how we beg.


  A NOTE ABOUT MY FATHER

  by winter break of my first year of college,

  I owed $2,000 to the university and couldn’t register for classes.

  my father sold every piece of furniture in his house

  so I could be the first person to carry our name to graduation.

  love is the sacrifice and the carving knife.

  guilt is the yoke that ties me to home,

  and what is home but a cracked rafter

  holding all the snow at bay?

  THE HEARTBREAKER POEM

  i.

  my father spills his youth across the kitchen table:

  nostalgic revelry, the color of sirens

  my mother doesn’t speak

  the threads that weave her tapestry

  loom from my father’s mouth

  he unspools the way he tamed her

  saved her

  from a life of reckless abandonment

  clipped her wings to keep her

  from flying too close to the sun

  but Icarus would just as soon have drowned than burned

  and the silence in my mother’s mouth is saltwater dark

  she does not speak up to defend herself

  even now, years after their divorce

  my father’s voice can fill a room

  my mother still makes space for it

  when my mother teaches me not to be swallowed

  she is already sitting in the belly of the beast

  i wonder if she has grown to love the cavern

  like she once loved the man

  ii.

  the day i learn the importance of emergency exits

  is the day my heartbeat stops sounding familiar

  a stuttering tongue a trembling hand

  my heart beats like

  closing doors

  my father’s fading footsteps

  every plea i learn how to swallow

  don’t go, don’t go, don’t go, don’t—

  my father taught me to be the first to walk away:

  leave before they realize i am not worth staying for

  iii.

  when my mother tells me not to be afraid

  of falling in love

  i do not miss the way her hands shake

  i wonder if they miss the handcuff weight of the ring

  i wonder if i, too, will fall

  in love with a padlock man

  i become wary of boys with birdcage hands

  their mouths like oceans

  and my mother is still wringing seawater from her bones

  iv.

  i master the art of slipping away

  by starting small:

  set the body clock

  to keep them in the dark

  plot the escape route

  before the entrance

  force my heart to beat

  just go, just go, just go, just—

  i practice on the ones i love most

  solder wounds into wonder:

  mangled by my hand

  means safe from another’s

  i don’t know the last time my heart

  sounded like a heart

  v.

  he tells me, you eat like a bird

  i tell him, my mother taught me well

  he laughs, and reaches for my hand

  i smile, and begin to slip

  through the cage

  of his fingers

  vi.

  when the boys begin the hunt

  for fabled bedroom healers

  i warn them:

  broken glass bottled shipwreck interior

  no room for mending

  they don’t care or they don’t hear me

  they cut themselves on sharp tongues

  make finger paintings with blood on their hands

  a soft pastel shimmer image that looks so much like me

  i almost believe it a mirror

  almost

  soon

  they will wake with scars and blame me

  i leave them a bandage in the dark and don’t look back

  i leave before they realize i am not worth scarring for

  vii.

  every outstretched hand wants me drowned

  i sink further underwater

  ignore the burning in my chest

  run my fingers over the names

  leaving my mouth

  for the last time

  and convince myself

  this is the victory

  CROWN REGENT

  Mother is here, too. A siren who traded her fins for legs. A champion runner. Could have been a bird. Was a student in dental school. Wanted to be a ballerina. A point guard. A disco ball. I follow Mother into all the club bathrooms & meet her eyes in the mirror. Neither of us know how to go home. Mother is a flashing light. A tinny voice on the other end of the phone. Mother has agency. Mother makes her own choices. Is golden yarn. Was spun to save someone else. Mother used to sneak out of her own window. Mother never stopped. Mother made windows out of people. Mother is afraid I’ll turn into a mother. Mother is afraid I’ll turn. Mother is afraid of my reflection in her mirror. Mother is proud of me. Mother made her own choices. Mother is out there, somewhere, dancing. Mother is a good skater. Mother is a good runner. Mother is a good tennis player. Mother is a good mother. Mother never lies but I do.

  ESTRELLA

  mom never talked much about the day she met dad

  & that was alright with me because i didn’t have much

  to ask. i mean, i had already written the story in my head:

  my mother, young,

  dressed in the polyester skirt

  that made her feel faster

  & skates painted from tongue to tip

  with the delicacy of a butcher’s hand.

  tied with the laces she lifted from the payless

  four backyards from her front door.

  a smear of gold against the wooden walls of the roller rink.

  my father, a shadow

  billowed in the corner to smoke

  with friends & skates kept powder white

  through the luxury of time.

  he rolled into the rink to race & found a comet

  stole his spot. she was speed. untouchable.

  gold hoops and a laugh so loud

  it lasted until i was born.

  she slowed down

  enough to make my father a starcatcher

  & then he was in orbit.

  my father’s year around the rink

  was an hour out of my mother’s day.

  it was the last time she was fast enough

  to outrun him.

  IT JUST HAPPENED SO FAST

  One minute everyone clambered onto the same couch

  & the next we didn’t.

  Or is that just memory? Anyway,

  I betrayed them. I told Dad

  where we were going. I thought they loved each other.

  I loved them both. I couldn’t imagine a world

  where they didn’t—love each other like I loved them.

  I could forgive them for anything.

  It all changed. But it was me:

  I unlocked the door

  & left a note

  & told him where we were going.

  I wanted him to follow.

  My fault. My love.

  My inability to separate them.

  BORN TO EMBODY IT

  “My wound existed before; I was born to embody it.”

  —JOË BOUSQUET

  my body has never been mine

  alone

  always a shared space

  with the ghosts of my father’s past

  and my mother’s favorite demons

  and little room for me.

  I am a product of my mother’s fragile vertebrae

  and my father’s miserable veins

  an attempt at creation by two bodies

  designed for destruction

  insatiable need to feel something
r />   no matter the cost.

  my father tells me of the monster

  hidden underneath my skin

  on a Wednesday afternoon.

  he christens it addiction.

  he speaks of its ways

  with the tone one would use

  to describe a lover that scorned them:

  with anger, with adoration.

  the way he speaks of my mother.

  he tells me how it rattles our fault-line bones

  tells me it rots our family tree

  too fast for any branch to escape.

  I can’t tell if this is an apology.

  this means, he tells me,

  that we will never know how to let go.

  we will cling to something until it chokes us

  we will let it, we will love it.

  he says this like a warning

  but it sounds like his wedding vows:

  I will love you until it kills me

  and then I will love you more.

  I was born to a pair of addicts

  desperate for each other

  a fire that consumed them whole—

  I am my father’s daughter my mother’s mirror

  designed to seek that which can destroy me

  and let it, and love it

  I was carved hollow by hands that loved me

  to hold wars in the spaces between my ribs

  to see destruction written across my fingertips

  I am clockwork catastrophe catalyst

  a girl of ash and broken glass

  the remnants of a Molotov cocktail marriage

  I was born to go up in flames

  a can of gasoline in love with a match

  I would let myself burn just to feel warm.

  I am scared I have sought you out:

  I am a doused woman drowning

  you are frayed electricity

  dressed as a lifeline.

  you could tear me to pieces

  and I would let you.

  and love you.

  STICK

  you split me like a shell in your teeth, spit out the hard interior.

  giggling is a fool’s feeling and i am a fool around you. all laugh.

  face split, cheeks ache, you make me smile like an eggshell crack.

  my capillaries want to move into your lungs. could you make room?