World Heavyweight Poetry Champion Pat Payne, who ranked second as a contender in the World Heavyweight Championship Poetry Bout, beat out the top-ranked contender Saul Williams for the the 2002 Heavyweight Title. The Poetry Bout consisted of eight rounds of poetry read without accompaniment and one “free form” round. The following poem is part of her solo show "Perfume," an alternative response to the events of September 11th.
Perfume in Hiroshima
skin is ash flowerbed of cinder blossoms
awaiting Spring
there
shadows bear the elegant names
of incinerated children
Fujio, Kiyoko
if tears could sing
lullabies would no longer be needed in Little Tokyo, LA
Kana folds her fingers inwards
rubs her nails together briskly for a few moments
tells me
smell
in Japan we do this to remember
in Japan we say
this is the odor of burning bodies
Baylee, Gabreon
discarded, charred
lullabies run down my cheeks
deafening me
in Lower Manhattan
I walk through velvet air
heavy with apprehension
watch as Rachel and Abdullah plummet hand in hand
evaporate into relentless nightmares
the open mouths of dead songbirds
tuned by twisted tines
serenade the rubble
the Missing cradled in concrete boughs
wear shrouds of dust if destiny is mapped by genes precise order
I question the letter blocks strung by this preschool God
holy infant slinging alphabets of DNA with gleeful disregard, enjoyin the din of procreating divine human beasts, who feast on their young in the New World Order
innocents sing lullabies for freedom
as hope scents the air may the wind bear your likeness in jasmine Pat Payne
More info: Taos Poetry Circus |
