LATE SUMMER 2020
mai c. doan
after a dream, a scene opens. meaning, a vision arrives. inside my third eye. trees stretch up and fill the scene. cottonwoods. the grandmother trees of the bosque. also (in the) opening: a girl in a red dress, curled up in dirt. budding against roots. home in the ground. the scene opens and she is opening inside of it. or inside of me. this is how she begins. and i am beginning too. waking with her, in this cradle of earth. create me. she speaks without speaking. and i call out too. with want and with questions. Somehow we both are waiting for somebody else to answer. write me. it’s a feeling in the form of an ask. we are both waiting for an answer. tiny cradles of earth. born of want. and aren’t we all? born of want? create me. the words begin to pace themselves inside of the scene like a running heart. where are we going. we are both waiting for an answer. collectively, we wait in time. the scene is still there. governing the space. a still against glass and then the trees break through. the trees begin to move. unearth. i can feel the dirt pedaling my feet into a motion. they pound against the earth like a heart. where are we going. and then we begin to run. as if into an answer. this how we begin: waking up in dirt and running our way into the answers. in the process arriving. in process of both returning to and escaping the earth. we are moved by our bodies left unanswered.
part 2
create (with) me, she demands.
you’ve already written
my name.
give me y/our blood. let it drench us. where the water meets the earth.
she is
roses and want and the red
dress and the body
burning in love
and riot.
she is
my want
that burns the whole
thing down.
we were prayed into being from the same feral fire.
we are what remains when the fires get put out.
part 3
in the garden behind my house, a wildness is growing. over the last few months, my skin and piss and blood and tears and tangles of hair have become part of the wildness too. (my parts travel through the pipes and get washed out into the earth.) parts of me grow from the wildness and the wildness grows from me, too:
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inside the house: my own lonely centers that i allow myself to touch. i touch them until i soften. i touch them until i open up. no longer in waiting. no longer a ghost. i fill out across space. i begin to take form: a gem-filled cavern. a mountain side super bloom. a kelp forest in quiet, wet and alive. from across two states, i catch the santa ana winds and the smoke of a brush fire. above me, a full moon is ready to light the desert floor.
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inside my mouth: wind of fire. red dress. rose petal. summer of ache. every season becomes wildfire season. which means, i am always already on the verge of a flame. my dry brush matted. my body this close to a burn. my cheek brushes the softness of my pillow and i blush red. my body coming back to me. my body returning to feel.
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part 4
she is a call and i am the response. or, i am the call and she is the response. either way, we are now swimming in a soundwave of our creating. we are now swimming in a soundbath across time. both of us listening in want. cradles of earth. running in a red dress. red dress pouring out onto the ground. earth blood. pure flame. love spell. spilling over in want. wherever we go. create me. and we begin. we answer own bodies. we fill our own want.
