songanddancegirl

last temptation of ape

i’m done with bucolic  bucolic places that break yer

blackheart   with their treacle  +twee   fuck bucolic

bonhomie   the wretched chowders   stinking of lost

or is that Anne rotting in the attic of the Gables?

Apesie is on the Palms to Pines Hiway  heading

to El Paso via Louzeeeana    Marfa awaits

a town too cool  to be cool

dark cowboys  kitchen snakes

resurrection

__

Winter 2025  ..

What’s the bravest thing you ever did?
He spat in the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning, he said.
(Cormac McCarthy  The Road  2006)

The Hoodoo Queen of New Orleans

she half naked  +freeze  in a doorway  New Orleans  a white guy

with a Snidely Whiplash stache  fingers her  long   greasy hair

dance pig dance!   (Waiting for Godot  Samuel Beckett)

i am on my way to see  Indians  it’s legal to say that word in

Nola  where legal is a relative term   i step over   gilded splinters

potholes  my blistersbleed  onto urinesoaked streets

where Indians  dance free

then there’s  Lightening Lee  RIP   he who kisses me  on a soon crepey

cheek   spittle hitting husband #3   teeth white  +glinting   masticating

blinis   in the outskirts   Siberia on St. Claude   Nola 2013

later on  our cab is late  we wait +wait  the heavens open  all biblical  +Noah

a lean man lying on the pavement screams  YUPPIES!   who me?!  a barker

with the voice of a bell  chants   there is a house  

the sun has set

the gloaming begins  lighting the Vieux blue   a steamboat sits on the river

about to light out for  the territories ahead   whilst this Becky T  returns to

a frozen tundra   +10yrs a slave

at a retirement rez

in year 8   a woman named   Gay Gahzint  says to me: i was in the Holocaust  

but i never thought i’d end up in a place like this   her hand shaking  skeletal

my old mother-inmate  simultaneously  stroking+kicking   my black🖤heart

Nola fades

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Winter 2025  ..where’s the Gris Gris man when u really need him?..🖤🖤

The Swamprat Rimbaud🐭🐭

do the dead remember that they’re dead?  probably   not  

they’re too busy   now recovering  from being alive

spent   concave    desiccate

soon seeds

lately i channel a darkeyed boy-man  with thick fingers

girthy  +dead   ruined by his priest  +his young mother

who gave him up on his birth day

these lost children love in a broken way  or not at all

love=pain  degredate  unkept  bitter slayers of kittens

sisters  wives   dangerous chameleon types

__

..please sir i want some more..

(Charles Dickens  Oliver Twist 1837)

Winter 2025  ..even if u eat yer meat..u can’t have any pudding..

for  Frankie Stanford   poet of the swamp   the monastery

the outhouse  ..i was made to cut the throat of a fawn.. i have

known the evil procreated in the offspring of the bad ones..

and for M.A.

..if it wasn’t for daddy..i’d be in jail..

of mice +marriage +men

last year of my 60’s  about to be  fairly ancient

the rabbi at my father’s funeral said: every year

beyond 70 is a blessing   Lee made it to 68

i am about to overtake him   down the stretch

he was wretchedly young  +bypassed  +breathless

i forge ahead into the rarefied air of Monson’s sermon

the good Monson  married my parents + a brother

also me  to Ricky  husband numero uno   later he

conducted the get  written in Aramaic  for 400 bucks

he said: tell him he has to pay half   but Ricky didn’t

marry another Jewess  so i never collected   it sits in a

drawer   gathering dust mites   who hora incessantly

marriage is like that  dusty  prone to mould  also not

something a rabbi can rent asunder  i have spent 41 yrs in

its confines  there is green mould on current husband’s back

there is a kindness about him  huge lumberjack hands  fierce

doglike +wily    but not as wily as me  is it inertia  or love?

what’s the difference?

__

Winter 2025  ..till death do us part..

Ghost Ranch

he wears an expensive houndstooth jacket  great shoes

he is scion  +dropdead handsome  scion to dynasty  of

horsethieves  bootleg +bookies   he is horsey too    but not Lauren

she is in black   Rita-esq   would never wear black in life

thought she killed her mother  when poet was 5   Freda in

black cardi at her mother’s deathbed  very superstitious    writings on the wall

her mother’s stroke in a rocking chair  eyes rolled back

oh the horror  poet the small witness   a cousin  who just

died at 97   in Alaska   slapped Rita hard  across the face

these are not their stories anymore  +they are not mine

so why drag ’em around   like filthy rags?   why?  

nature of the fate beast  eh

she wears black regularly now  turtlenecks  slim cropped

trousers  long brown hair   take the ribbon from your hair

rail thin   spirited

she is not my mother anymore  recently freed from bondage

to  children  vomitous-dogs  rake husband   she is fearless

men line up

she flirts brazenly  uses her whip on an as needed basis  while

down here i learn to be motherless   +free of her dependency   not easy

now both on brand new trajectories   glory  glory   Hallelujah! 

will you know my name?  the one  you+Lee  Louis  Ella+Basie

gave to me   Lee  if it’s a girl let’s name her Aprill   the 2 ll’s

blinking  11:11  11:11  11:11    blue lilacs in your hair  i’d know you   anywhere

__

Winter 2025  ..blue lilacs your deathbed song  3:10 am  14/11/22..

There is a popular belief that making a wish when

the clock shows 11:11 is a powerful time for

manifestation 

Teddy & Alvin & the be-pimpled Giant

Alvin was wiry  prison-wiry  how would i have known this

at 9?  there is a leftover danger about some people  a smell

mustyripe   +deadeyed

Father brought him home from the racetrack   how did he

miss that?  Alvin slept in our basement  +could easily have

murdered our family    or molested me

i was often alone with him  as he pumped iron  halfnaked

did you have such visitors  at 9?  then there was Teddy  an

older man  without teeth  quite sweet  he lived in the stalls

nuzzled up against steaming horses  he had the dignity of

a FisherKing   always smiling  +threadbare   i visited often in

said basement  left oreos  cold brisket  +the Diary of Anne Frank

you see Ted was quite lonely  he whispered sweet nothings as

i sat on his knee  english not his first language  all nods+arcane

handsignals    a munchkin vibe for sure

then there was the ravine  pure magic  with giants  a dead

grandfather  +one matricidal child maniac  now serving life

in the asylum next door    Jerry can you hear me?

the Giant lived in a burned-out shack  ungainly+pimpled  quite

Quasimodo  he visited me often  in the weewee hours  my screams

piercing suburban nights    oh he was a taskmaster alright!

swore me to secrecy

no doubt you had

Giant visitations

too

__

Winter  2025  …

will the real Aviva Oonroth please stand up?

i thought i would be a novelist  by now

but it’s just so hard to   make shit up

as my mentor David Donnell  aka Krispin

used to suggest

but Krisp  why make shit up  when my family

reads like a broadway play?  call me  Ishmael

Aviva

daughter of the creek

ravine  shetl  racetrack

ICU’s   circus  bestiary

daughter of the dust

__

..iv’e seen things better not to tell..

(Frank Stanford  poet  1948-1978)

Winter  2025  ..can i get a witness?..

the ubiquitous hearse..aka..kaddish the musical

Frank Stanford  1975  Archives & Ephemera 

i am actually not death-obsessed  what i am is  uber-alive  +this

is why   i flirt with the beast   so to understand   his mysteries

his glory

i expect

my ashes

will continue

to sing

just turn up the volume

come Spring  my name

in 5 languages

if you have watched the final breath  you are intimate with death

3 times the charm   now poet is pals with the Great Reap  who will

creep  over the bedsheets  +kiss her  on a  crepeycheek

(okay..enough with the rhyminmaudlin) 

this the most gentle

inhale/exhale

one will ever meet        

bye bye

the creek was full of tadpoles  later squished frogs on the driveway

(aprill  it’s about the frogs..)  but you didn’t really consider them dead

now flat  +quite beautiful   all black fluid +seeping

53 years later  you ride in the hearsemobile  of your fabulous mother

(not really dead either)  whose rings you wear  cautiously   oh the mystery    

she wore them better  her hands bigger   her heart pure laine  child

Saturday at the ballet  35 dancers deep  weeping +throwing themselves

through a gap in the curtain  blackabyss  when a 1960’s pristine hearse

glides onto the stage (!)   to Ravel’s  Kaddish  1914

your husband’s  ghost stitches  sing

holy radiation burns  aquiver

neither of you flinch   or seep

__

..an artist should carry his death like a priest his breviary..  

( Heinrich Boll  1917-1985  Nobel Prize winner ..dead at 67)

Fall 2025  ..memento mori  eh

we are so lightly here…said Leonard Cohen

are we Len?  i mean yes to: you know she’s half crazy..and that’s why

you wanna be there..  Jack knew too: the only ones for me are the mad

ones..mad to live +burnburnburn..

yet so many rage against the cage

where there’s always free cheese

we are here too heavily  

c’mon   rattle those chains

when the rest of you were busy being children

i was busy being a saviour

of children

of adults

of the world!  

she’s got the whole wide world in her hands

when the rest of you

were being children   i became a monk

(Frank Stanford  Arkansas 1976 ..2 years pre..3 bullets to the heart..at 29)

lately there have been  signs

24 kettling hawks   8 low planes

over the dead

starkdark underbellies

dropping leaflets at the cemetery

SUCKERS!!

a light on this poet’s face  at her bro’s place   at sunrise

for whom does the bell toll   this time?

(sunrise over Frances Atkins’ dead body  circa 2022)

Ernest +Frankie   shotgun suicides  gnaw off a foot to fly  what with all

the testing to see if yer gonna die  cuts insouciance off at the knees   old

brittle gimlet me   fabulous roman candle    descent into bathos ain’t pretty

i know that priest with the giant gut  sucked 14 yr. old Frank’s lifeblood  at

the monkery  flayed him  as boys without fathers  are more vulnerable to be

they always promise refuge   don’t they just

i was pursued like this all my life  

the boy with the wild hair they called me

i made promises to death  + kept them

(Frank Stanford  at 23..)

i am not here lightly   no Holly Go   sailors sold me into captivity  at 3

the dancing she-bear in chains  the girl with the wild hair  of a cajun whore

i knew many children like me  in the trenches of humanity

suckled by lions+tigers+bears   +priests

much like Frankie

poet  swamprat  prey

__

Fall 2025  ..for Frankie & Apesie..

the tailor Muttle Kamzoil

he had a way with words

he had a way with witchywomen

with a football

tallish  handsome

not strong

not the silent type

beautifulloser at heart

this the rub

his father Charlie erased him

before he began the race

SCRATCHED

like the lamed ponyboy

oh his impish grin

+cruelstreak

his rise

and fall   and rise               and fall

his last breaths on a yellowed

florida bed   raggedpallet

ancestor visitations

he spoke  in arcane handsignals

HUT!!!!

sister christian

witness extraordinaire

her bro’s band of angels

all in cleats

she flew home then

to tell

his pretty mama

__

Fall 2025   ..he rises yet..