HER BODY LISTENING

CHERYL PALLANT

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

Her Body Listening

by Cheryl Pallant
Copyright 2017
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in
reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover Art by Kathleen Markowitz
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-264-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016946133
BlazeVOX [books]
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Kenmore, NY 14217
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Remove All Blocks

Her body listens. Her body listens to the barely audible, a
light, a nudge, a dizzying wave. Her body needs to know,
needs like a hand slipping into a glove. Like a passage opening
and closing before winks open again. Her body gains what it
loses and lets gall.
Her body reminds herself to forget and poises between verb
and verve, between tomorrow and here. Her body quiets and
steps between fall and rise.
A caricature of itself, a pretense of authenticity that erases
seams, she will not speak the lies nor truths, only the express
with tracks and many tears. She knows better. She knows
nothing.
Her body drops into flow, into go and be, doing and done.
This light. This nudge. This quickening of nonrefusal and
hand unfurling. This body touches brow and cheek, hip and
heel, portals to here, petals of morning and eventually. No
time. No time. Not this time. She cheeks, she bones, she
breathes.
Remembering.
Forgetting.
Arrival.
Her body thought she hears. Her body sees she hears. Her
body touches what she had not thought. A circle, the quickest
way to rouse warmth and vision, not war and wart, vis a vie, so
enso.
Her body faces the ten directions, the omissions, regrets,
nurturance, and awe. Ancestors watch from their graves, their
burnt demise, their shot on the street. Not a way to go is the
way they went.
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Unable to forget. Enabling remembering. Arriving presently.

Her body wings it, widens at the shoulder, upon the crease
into ease. Can not can. Can not does. Doing does.
Because they legislate inaction, the start and stop of life.
Because they try deafening her arousal which she will not
defeat, will not send into hiding, will not silence, instead will
shout, will wear pink or blue or whatever color enables the
cord of choice.
Her body chooses life on her terms, combating her demons,
not theirs. How dare how they dare. Shame on her is a shame
on them. Shell have none of it. She lifts her gaze to verve.
She crisis, laughs, and alofts. Turns her cheek blush tunes her
ear. Push against presses toward. Pressure on presses froth
and silence her friend wills her speak and write with or
without a bento box, with or without creme.
Will not have it another way. Will wants nothing other than
breath and choice and follow no pattern but patter path of
willingly.

12

Illumine the Ecstatic Plane

Her body trips upon itself, stumbles upon fear of the thorn,
the village razed, the page erased. Her body fails to know, falls
to cower, descends to the trample of doubt, the hard boot of
defeat. Separated from self at birth, diverted as an irrigation
ditch blocked, seeds shrivel in wait.
How can she. She does. Who can how it refers. Stomp. Roil.
Roll over. Plain as gut and guttural. She intensifies the search,
lets go art crafted for ease of being. Rather this truth. This
truth. This line. This express.
Empower. Rewopme. I so metric. Dis solve. You view la.
She was once this way. She is this way a gain. She raises her
arm, pains in the plan executed. She cannot extend further
than a thought. She trials to imagine and evidence supplicates
a shortage of supply. Oh Onerous One, where be Radiance.
Where be Aloft?
She lifts go, belly bellicose, veins valuing vanity. Betrayers, all.
The fight of slighting, of sledding not down the hill but up the
hope, the hand extending toward grasp, fingers folding palmwise toward the word rolling off tongue. Expert of
introspection, she switches on wishing what turns up in the
wash turns up. Can not whines. Can not wins.
Sisters gather round: Carla, Lyn, Susan, Helene, Gertrude,
Virginia, Cecilia, Deborah. Power in numbers in the
metronome of breath. They witness. They do not knit. Nor
bake nor consort with defying presentiment. They fan the
flame of flux.
Look there
where
I ocean
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I sky
I earth
and bleed dark, the wet round death birthing the shed of skin
peeling logic and pretense, lines rendering senseless supreme
sense. Sisters enter whole and crouch on knees and elbows,
waves foaming, a small dance beaconing adamantine
retrieval, the great perfection of imperfect. Strings vibrate.
Chips chip away. La la lee. La la lo. Cannot winnows can to
win.

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Thread to Transcend
How her body asphyxiates and twists in paroxysms of crust
and shell, air restricted, water welling where water shouldnt.
Her body coughs organ and stench, heaves toward hauling
unheavenly. Body burdened with the bends, boughs, its own
indeterminate futility, its own writhing upon sheet and chair,
one hand clutching one hand slack.
Darkness suffuses light. Dense suffocates levity. Bronchioles
clenched by parochial numbing. What little air can. What
little ease. Little breaths and sips.
Her cells divide and bicker in friction of function. Who fires
whom. Who consumes. Who dies and who reproduces. Might
she aspirate. Might she tubal litigation and metals strapping
her in for straightening an etiquette of commonplace and
extremities.
Lung linings soften in the burn, in trials won, the heir
achieved. Whirring her to go on, to weasel by with fewer
coughs, fewer spasms calling mortuary.
In the places where things dont fit. In the fitting where laces
tighten and tangle unsuitable to her. This body this body this
body might scream, might turn the night her final lover.
Her body heavens. Her body stars. Her body implodes in
callous exhaustion and collapses on the bed, a mangle of
limbs and sheet, sleep calling into dream a benign despot, the
severance of bating breath narrowing into ease.

15

Let Beyond Through

There she was persnickety with a cloth balanced on her head.
There she was absolutist with bath water spilling on the floor.
There she was obsolete with a cricket leaping toward the loaf
of bread.
There she was effervescent with the light bulb twisted in the
socket.
There she was contiguous with a toe nail scratching the door.
There she was prevaricative as if her tooth would loosen the
gum holding the door hinged.
There she was ruminant as if the mark on her shirt
blasphemed her wish for harmony.
She was as she is or could have been but thought ransacked
her underwear and pillaged unread books as if there were
another day when rain would stop, thunder cease, and bees
return to pollinate.
As if anyone cared.
As if sublingually, the moon mattered.
As if arterially, the soil recovered from drought and the
pestilence of pesticides.
As if phlegmatically, the photosynthesis of brains sprouted a
utopia without a dystopic leak.
As if Miss Ogyney marries Mister Urbable to place their
gametes on the table for connubial transcendgendered bliss to
reduce methane and the arctic melt.
The sameness of desire desired her. The suchness of oneness
multiplied. Bacterial flora replicated in the garden and the
first couple coupled to flesh glory. She would say she is sorry
and he sorry and she worried and he worried and they story a
new epoch in a must of mutability.

16

Reinforce Vital Pulse

How so nuerotyptical, he said, linear but lopsided. How
neocortical, underachiever dimmed by dumber than green.
How nueroruminant, neopopletic, nuerodivided until thee
conquer. How
cytoplasmic electricity
disaffectual millenial
tetratongued lipreader
borealis agnostic
bird of parachute.
How beside ourselves parked and metered by overlords of
civility. How far away infrequenting fluency perambulating
between clenched teeth.
Blisteringly hot combustible humor
blisteringly cold combustible humor
Have faith. Forgive. Testify against. Terrorize the dot.
Fragrant. Make it so. Sibilate, tongue whetted and whipping.
Upcough.
The blur of memory suns someones cheek.
Be bold in the coming forth coming through unstoppable as
any involuntary reaction, oil pan spilled, hazard hazard, what
this moment keeps pointing out, the value between persons
who look alike looking retinal with all cones tetrachromatic.
This is how she displays herself, line by line, sharps by flats,
horn by heard. She listens to vibrating keys and kisses tissues
connecting valves. This is how she opens energetically and
isomorphically.
The heat rises. The eye catches. The tap records. The tree
bends. Spine streams the fluids of self, caverns and peaks into
a mesh of spleen and splendid. Liver with liberal, kidney tells
a joke: Two theories walked into a bar...
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Expose Beauty
How she is held as holdover from eras past, witches burnt,
desire chastised, desire flaming his weakness emboldening
flesh. How she is held back. How she is ensnared, commanded
to not point out nor point in. Excuse yourself. Your volume
threatens him. Your scent permeates. Your wiles challenge
reason and render logic a mutable fetish of a gendered brain,
an amygdala misfire.
She prefers the holding. Fingers extend and palms open,
inflow lacing with outflow, cause in reflect, coital antics in
duel seated at the table in gracious pass of salt and sleeve,
folded napkins fallen to floor.
She prefers the lights low, the anger in residual digress on the
patio subject to rain, snow, a raccoons perch. She prefers
drumming a soft slow beat matching circadian rhythms, the
blood percussing to cricket and frog, thick mist with a cool
blanket nearby.
She prefers a path up and around the mountain. Call it choice
or what you may. Call it nerves and fear of the mountain
lions pounce. Call it aversion or protein free breakfast. Call it
lacking in charms or ivy proliferating. Call it prodigious or the
way forward. Call it the soles of her feet tenderized by earthed
hands, a reflexology of trust.
She prefers the chants of her parents and those passing into
family willingly. She prefers the mercurial mantra, the kneel
with a kiss, cervical pride without short shrift of the shaft. She
prefers wisdom homecoming by wagon or foot, by neigh and
solitary song. She prefers rooted knowing shifting with wind.
She prefers rambutans brought in by ship.
She holds knowing. She holds whispers. She holds the cancer
sufferer with one hand in bougainvillea and centers herself to
focus on perimeters. A glance fertilizes the inconceivable.
How she lays on the land. How she waters mind. She knows to
unknow whats been told.
18

Dance Concentric Waves

Her body wishes to describe the indescribable, to light a
diamond cut with verve, to phrase salivating tongues
and quake flesh to spawn. Her body utters an escape from
clutch, a ribbon severed and noose loosened. She wishes for
a desert revival, thirst quenched in endless pour of wine
sobering the eligible with wide arms and revelatory hearts.
She had to. One way or another. Nature would have its way
humoring the curse of a medicated mass masticating minds
starving the body. What had to be done. Be as being is. What
sings and dreams itself awake. Let go in the going having it all.
Her body refracts. Turns luminous. Unbound blindness sights
digits beyond finger count and rays in Eros path. Not quite
two, not quite semi-precious. Quintessential, an anthem, a
reverse in voice. Some. Sum. Sun. More. Ceremonial dance
plays beyond the constraints of logic to between states, an
island paradise that built no hut for ego. Sum more than
Moorish in extremes and arches ancient.
Touch

and glow.

Flesh compels a seized hand as a parent might a child, pulsing

blood in beat with hum, palm licking palm in vibrational
agree. She might, she would. She cut, she slims. She wheezes
to open bronchioles, vertebrae loosening to align with light

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and gastroglee

neuroshine
neovertical wonder.

She knew to forget. The way a foot slides on the dance floor
and a stanza crescendos into a poem. The maze centers
every step, every reach, every knee above ankle, hip bellowing
sigh. She renews her pass to the biosphere and beyond. She
tickets desire in synch with magnetic fields. Her body wows.

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Open the Eyes

This she was sure of: nothing.
How do you mean?
Look north, she said. What do you see?
Nothing.
Look again, she urged.
He waited, then recognized the upward glow.
The earth may stretch its skin but will retaliate from constant
stomp.
Are you sure, he asked.
Do fish swim plentiful? Where are the bees?
I do not believe, he said, in hope or despair.
Thats not what I asked, she replied. Touch me.
How, he asked.
Imagine fire raging across brush, heat searing lungs, and
rafting between life and its undoing. Choose to wrap a tendril
around a finger and lift into ether.
I do not understand, he said.
Know, she pled, what hides with a deft graze of skin and eyes
up lid to sky.

21

Let Go the Target

Her body withdraws. Tenses from the violin without horn, the
go without safe, a pulling back, away, skin cooling, fingers
retracting, a violence of connection. She was seven, perhaps
eight. She had a mouthful, more than her share. She wished
he had not shared and found the key to his truck. Reality
pressed against her torso and she pushed to get away and
dodge into a dream.
He left but not his residue nor the cut along her jaw. Her hand
rubbed. Her press could not erase the impress. She left her
mind and moved doors away. She walked near enough to see
when the shades lifted to gaze at a whom.
Wind blew swirling dust into corners too close to her bed. She
dusted futility, fluffed pillows, and spoke down and up.
They ranted cussedly and sharpened their knives. Her heart
no concern of theirs. Her thought a no mans land. They did
not grow beyond the suck, could not climb the ladder.
She climbed alone. Her body with its hiding places up the
steps unfolded. The sight from above slim, wide, and
wondrous. An ache burst the pus of norms. She clutched the
rail and leaned into the wind, eyes closed, heart pressed, hair
untangling knots of thought unraveling denials.
Cannot could. Maybe
might have. Should have
should by night and moist yes.
Others caught her in fall. Caught her in loft with neither
forethought nor replay. Simpatici with their own indignities
and clothes in thrift, they carried her overhead, a parade of
worries with supportive arms, her health their matter, a crack
toward subsequent tranquility.

22

Place her in her body. Place her in her hands. Place in heart
and belly and groan.
She heartedly received. She reseeded centuries of drought, of
rights razed and burned. Hand in prayer, hands fondle a greet
as great as any fecund field.

23

Call Out
Oh, insipid reason, numen lights lamps turned off from
filament break. Awkwardness brushes off mud from shoes.
Walk where there is dew. Walk to unwrinkle the brain and
receipt grandeur. See she see him. Be he be heaven to grass
blades, hoof prints, the lettering of express, however slow and
groggy, however confused in the lost of the city and crimes of
ego. See she be he. See he be he who knuckles better on his
knees in dirt, needs metered by cycles and a season of whys.

24