Melissa Benham
IF YOU WANT ME
If you want me, you know where I am, slosh-mouthed and dancing too much. These
devilish nights keep me talking loud, gasping at the wrong man, crouched up
close to the bar. All to find a bed that will keep. Years ago you knelt over
this body saying, "Calm your eyes, girl, the blur will subside," then caught
the next plane out of town. Since then mornings fail me, without a penchant for
alarm clocks and all day dreaming of water: a clear pool to wash out messy
organs and heavy rusted lungs. But too, the invitation stands at the end of a
continent. To imagine struggling against turbulent waves, wishing for an
underwater city to catch. There is the difference of straying too far into
fantasy. I should know, I spent months praying to a drowned singer to put in a
good word. Manipulate the strings a bit in my favor. And so I spend long
hours locked inside my room, laundry and ashtrays overflowing, letting the
telephone ring. You were right to settle down, find a wife, and give way to
clatter of dinner plates and baby spoons. I don't have that kind of stamina,
not even to read books straight through. The avenues find me testy, driving
all over town. Careening too fast, spilling coffee, and singing out the
window. Did I ever tell you the time I hit the man in the rain? The dark
spilled so thick and he too appeared as if dropped from the sky. It wasn't so
beautiful as that. He called me a bitch and threatened me with death, but
walked back into the night after the cops came. Now, I wish for quiet but know
it will never find me here, so I make noise to drown out the others. I turn on
every appliance, anything that sounds. Four am. finds me a bed that doesn't
sleep, only whispers exhausting stories. Last night, I gave a performance
more fierce than a Mexican soap opera, shaking my friend's tiny bones to make
her see what she had done. Until another voice came from my mouth,
"Calm . . . calm . . ."
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Date of Birth:
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5/6/75
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Location:
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San Francisco, California
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Email:
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xmeli@hotmail.com
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Website:
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http://home.earthlink.net/~evilwarlordprincess/index.html
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Publications:
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Starters 5/8, Infrequencies, People Have Ears, Between Darkness and Light, Poetry Super Highway, Nature's Echoes, Stirring V2:E11, V2:E12
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Chapbook:
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Recounted
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Other:
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Recently accepted into MFA programs of The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and Otis College of Art and Design
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