DIES IRAE
- big drum rolls around behind your eyes
- even before robin #1 wakes up & hysterically greets sun
- rest between yips of anxious dog 3 streets over
- secret you kept so well you don’t know if you made it up
- quieter & quieter as death gets nearer & nearer to old ears
- underwater, considering whether to surface & breathe again
- wind blows nothing around on the parched plaza
- dark lack of engines when power goes out
- exhausted exultation of 5 am zazen on day 3 of sesshin
- fresh-oiled stories untold by someone dead’s unsold chiffonier
- poison, stinging things you do not say during argument
- after crashing steel, breaking glass; before screams, snapping bone
- the shadow beside you takes your hand while you walk in the dark
- turning your head left to right, up & down, after vertigo passes
- alone in the house, no one sings or scrubs dirt off potatoes
- old dog dies. only a knock or doorbell signals a visitor. you walk alone.
- you talk fast because you don’t remember what’s in your pocket
RECORDARE
- the sound of a spider web breaking as you walk into it
- a banana being peeled
- a page being turned in a printed book
- when the water stops dripping
- a warm gust detaches the tannin-heavy leaf
- how the house sounds when no one else is home
- the pause before you remember the word you want to say next
- your heart calms as fear passes
- empty rooms you walk through after you get rid of your dad’s stuff
- still morning after a storm took out the power last night
- ash falls from a disregarded cigarette
- pen moving on paper when you write your name
- cat’s muscles vibrate as she stretches in her sleep
- the flame closing as you shut the burner on the gas stove
- skin cells pop as you face the sun with your naked face
- a meteor misses the sleeping earth
- conversation ceases as the room notices the blood
- before another human you can’t see laughs somewhere up the river; and then after
- all your neighbors are out of town for the holidays
- after it snows and you’re outdoors, a knit cap and hood covering your ears
* From Land of Lists, 2016 Floating Bridge Chapbook Award finalist.
Lydia Swartz brawls with words, sound, movement, pronouns, and light in pursuit of capricious form. Does that make Lydia a poet? Lydia sporadically performs weirdly mixed un-hip genres in hip Seattle. Does that make Lydia a hipster? Lydia obnoxiously refuses to drive a stick or acquire an MFA. Lydia has a degree in editorial journalism and a job in health care marketing. Lydia blogs at No One Tells and keeps a Seattle Spoken Word calendar at Seattle Poet. You can find Lydia on Facebook and Twitter.