Poetry by Elisabeth Horan & James Diaz

There are More Ways to Love Me

There once was a time
I thought
I could trap who I was
and fight her off -
be a new person
be better
more amazing and much improved
over all the others.

The hardest;
the all of it came undone
when I
married the versions
- my dysfunction with the ire
and still went about knowing
I should not have let -
the monsters in - me
that I would not change.

My brain is not something fluid
it will only entertain
what I am
I either
take that face value
or fight its clown makeup
the rest of my life
or ultimately throw
in the towel
give in
to alcohol and self-annihilation
to annihilate is my war crime
against me, a small Jew
I was burning her shoe-less

If there is
anything left in my heart.
I want to show you that place
with its worms and skeletons, its
fossil teeth
it isn't far from here, just a continent
where we already
staked one home site

but it also is a free museum
filled with lace and china
glued together from
shards and bits
where we smell the
homemade cookies burning -
mothers wipe hands - wee tots
play blocks on gritty floors
filthy clothes piling up
some husband comes home
and we hide refugees with
poetic dust emoting
some form of hope
or desire to go on
- liberated and fed

My claim to fame is knowing you
my blue ribbon is your star
I wear it pinned on the breast
I'm inadequate if nothing else
but being far from perfect
means you love me even though -
I am all those preventable diseases
I am the shattered glass
do you know this roof
I'm falling down from
the train that carries me away from -
the pavement hard
the tracks disfigured -

Can you invent a new basement
below the terra firma
and then we can know
if the all of it
was a dream
or we, such nightmares;
monsters with the dogs and whistles
so if I don't burrow down
nor splay on wire
and if the rain has stopped
and if something green
is growing in the earth
like a weed defiant
post apocalypse
can you put some glasses on me
or at least shelter me in shadow
with your strong, wide back
- standing unafraid

That way the beautiful rays of sun
can't hurt my eye sockets either-way
as I ascend up, up
into your happy arms.




The Ways I Walk

Can any disease
really be fought off
completely?
Like keeping the sun
out of our eyes
light gets in through our fingers
and does something to our brain
arms over play their reach
and a broken bone here
could paralyze
the spirit

looking both ways
the road is littered
with cognitive land mines
bidirectional danger
I don't mind the nuclear so much
but it's the fall out I fear
how it lingers in the lungs

and the high wire
is the most daunting show
under this tent

but it's no act
suffering is a feat of mercy
I've had to learn to love
the length of what I could not contain
and I hated too what I kept in
it's my skin
and I cannot simply let go

I've wanted to be something else
so many times
and failed

fallen flat
on my heels
my ass
terrified of the mirror

even shattered glass holds pools of light
I haven't enough hands to change that fact

I am cut by sun
and bled dry in dreams

I think I want to hold you
while you scream
because there were those
who held me
and because human touch
matters and the night is long
and sometimes
goes on forever

and there is nothing
quite like a hand
on someone else's
in the midst of terror

it's what poetry
aims for
and misses.




Just Nearby to Me
 
You are wrong
so wrong like I
before
 
The poetry hit me right between the eyes.
Your poetry did it to me.
Those were your words.
 
Like lightning in my spine.
Like CPR in desperation.
Hand held paddles co-reviving on a chest.
 
Your adjectives,
superlatives,
determiners of late;
blasted me back from the ledge of fate.
 
My autopsy report disrupted
the keen obit
where I
adored crosswords
and small animals.
 
That undeserved celebration of my life
changing mid typing to
she's still here folks.
 
For you.
All because of you.
Because you held my carcass.
 
Also my frail hands with
their ghost squid pinkies
in your stronger hands with
their dilapidated highways.
 
Because you cared enough
to give a shit
and write down some guessing words.
I'm still here
and I'm not running anymore.
 
I'm fighting for once -
all the broken I did;
the broken I am.
 
Won't you risk the stitches it takes
to accept the knowing of me?
 
Risk the husky
asthmatic
breathing
epi pen assaults
chemo, by the ton
hallucinate sailboat rides anyone?
 
I will quiet
down and
perfect the screaming
down to
some small defiance
 
So stay,
please stay,
not in the sick bed
but watching over -
just nearby to me.




This Light Always Hurts A Little

Yes, I will stay nearby
I'm listening deep
I know
the breathing routine
I watch the shallows
the dip in the water
when it comes up
against the intangible
the broken stone
what it means to be tossed
to be caught
to be loved

I've seen what stitches
torn out become,
blood on the wall
real ones, tiny threads
pulled with one's teeth
because you can only crane
your neck so far when you're in the jacket
and I don't think that boy survived
he never came back to the ward
and the nurses had a deep sadness
in their eyes the next day
and I knew
he was gone
though they didn't say it

that was long ago
and I am ready to admit
that I still don't know much about my own body
what light does to a room
drenched in darkness
I've done to others
but I've also
taken the sun
out of the sky
sometimes
I am dual
that way
good
and bad
depending on
where the wind
is coming from
and how fast

but from you I learn
how much our pain
is related
we are cousins
of our experience
and I trust, no, strike that word-
which is only a word
and not deep enough-
I feel that we are sometimes the same
different but not so different,
both struggling for air
and water and
when the sky goes dark
we do too

and yes,
these poems
are bigger than light
I've measured it
oh intangible thing that it is
I am not so far from you
I am listening
to every move the wind makes
I am counting the blessings
even the ones that are in disguise.
 



The Little Girl Who Stood By Watching
 
I miss that boy too,
I bet he fought really hard and I love him.
I wish I knew him.
Maybe I do.
 
I remember the empty pit in my stomach
like dragon bile on that day I felt you struggling,
I knew you were going under the knife.
 
You know,
the little girl who stood by watching?
She died too.
 
The day her daddy said goodbye
and went to a new house
and a new lady person
and for some reason
without me -
 
And I knew in that moment
he wouldn't marry me, instead
would probably marry her -
I guessed, at age 8
 
Then he did.
I stopped trying on rings
ashamed of my vanity.
 
All other hardship superfluous to
the death I died
that sunny August day
as I squinted in the sun
and nodded my head dumbly,
 
Yes daddy - I understand
when really I never never would.
 
Funny a straight jacket
can be imposed upon a little boy
while a little girl
who could have flown to the moon
chose not to
but rather checked herself in for being sub par.
 
She did unthinkably stupid things
she fell off porches on purpose
like a fainting goat
crashed her car into an oak
took a few extra Tylenol -
no one was paying enough attention
 
I was invisible except to the predator
who eats alive the little girls
who hate being little and virginal
who hate being little and adorable
who long to be lanky blonde rich sexy cool smoking wearing tight jeans
making out with Stevie by their locker -
Just with lips, not yet tongue.
 
One day I bought Ipecac
from a hungover pharmacist
and almost died
retching blood
by the interstate
in a ditch.
 
It didn't work
Daddy didn't come home
Stevie never dated me
 
I am still the little girl vomiting
her insides out trying
to purge the hurt
the betrayal
the assault of a best friend’s brother
on my lower body
 
The dragon bile of loss and self hatred
that comes when she thinks all this was her fault
 
That comes when little virgins are convinced by
best friends and helpful policemen
that they asked for it
 
But you know, these words?
These frantic words that editors like?
 
The first things that ever, ever been good enough,
that daddy finally took notice and said
 
Good girl -
Strong launch!
 
Maybe, if I am careful never to stop writing
he will finally come home.  
 
The only person still waiting there
in her little yellow bedroom with
the yellow paisley wallpaper
 
Is me.

​

It Is No Act, To Love You Here

Trauma warp
round the root
I rot, you call-
I come running
feel the furrow
the shakes
scan my insides
all rut and ribbon
say this life
will not escape us
will turn into
a porch light
in the deep 
mountains
and when you cry
an angel loans its wings
we beat the earth
we drink deeply
from that ground
open up- something is coming
through,
bigger than light
higher than dope
come drop these chains
come hold this wheel
steady, scarred
and beautiful 
wishing well
belly whispers
break the night
and our hearts wide
open.
More than 
father's return
this time,
our instinct for love
and deserving-
the retching along the highway
spilling its own light,
and such hands as these to catch it.

​

Bio: Elisabeth Horan is a stay at home mom in Vermont, caring for her two young boys, protecting the animals and writing her heart out. Her goal as a writer is to bring attention to issues that she cares about and has dealt with personally: mental illness, sexual abuse, the plight of nature and the environment, and those suffering in isolation and in pain.

She has recently completed a collaborative manuscript with James Diaz from whence come these honest words -
Follow her @ehoranpoet

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Bio: James Diaz is the founding editor of the literary arts and music journal Anti-Heroin Chic. His work has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Quail Bell Magazine, Foliate Oak, and Psaltery & Lyre. His first book of poems, This Someone I Call Stranger, is forthcoming form Indolent Books, Fall 2017.

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