Rigoberto González
May 2010

Mise-en-scène


            after Lizzie Borden

You are not a woman,
            you are not a ghost,
or the shrill that makes the neighbor’s hounds abort.

You are not a space between buildings,
            not wind tunnel or porthole
through which the indigent cat slips in and out of its coma.

You aren’t the hermetic door with its back to the street,
            you are not the echo to the cracking wood,
or the footfalls mimicking distance

as they spiral down to the dark hole of a center.
            You are not the center.
You are not the interruption of the window

surprising the postman as he skips the tin mailbox once more.
            Every person in this house has died.
You buried your mother with a plum pit in her throat,

you buried your father without his hair or his shoes,
            you buried the hair inside the shoes.
The shoes behave like flowerpots and wait for the moss to grow.

What does a creature do
            in the tar pits of its own extinction
but lift its tusks to the heavens to pierce its own wail?

You are no less dead than the parakeet
            that gnaws at the chips of paint.
Father said to keep it in its cage

but you want something else to die before you
            hand over the room to your corpse
and disintegrate like the stack

of father’s pornographic magazines in the fireplace.
            You are not the immolation,
you are not the woman pressing her shriek to the page.

But you know about turning black, limb by limb.
            You know about finding a smile
on the mantle and detached from its skull.

You buried your father without his teeth.
            You buried your father the night
he wanted to step inside you the way he enters the house.

You are not the dress
            that opens from the outside like an iron gate,
you’re not the stupid woman

with her finger shoved inside her mouth.
            When she goes up in flames
she will melt into the fruit bowl.

You are not the fire, you are not the bowl.
            You are not the reason the parakeet
sputters down to the floor in a trail of smoke.

This is not your bird and this is not your house.
            You are not the screeching sirens.
No, you are not the owner—

he disappeared into the mattress and left his bones.
            You’re not the daughter,
you’re not the spouse.

She’s in the kitchen.
            She can’t get out.
You’re not the poison in the soup,

you’re not the knife or gun or noose.
            You’re not at home.
This is not your burning house.  



 

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