Crown Noble
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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
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?