Ada McCartney
Patriarchy Migraine
I went to hear my clear green hope, it told me I was dead
I ate its flesh and drank the bones, wasted years instead
I went to see my dank night heart, it beat it beat it beat
I went to see my swallowed courage, got lost in its ebony
I went to see my youth wont with wandering curiosity
She was stuffed inside a tarnished mirror, tres chic
Hear, see, hearse, and heresy oh gee I don’t think breadcrumbs will be helpful where we’re going
better to eat ‘em automatic reality really matrixed the loop left to rites I write to get to free
original work being an effective vaccine against fundamental-isms-miser-y
We are all occupied territory
The patriarchy is in me
Nothing is original really
all occupied, we are territory
Troche Troche marching feet
instinctual rhythm I’ve betrayed you
please forgive me I am distracted by the wrenching short-breath gut punch left temple to spine
whip plug throb Throb, throb Throbbing—
All territory is we, occupied being
The animal gives it away
but only if you pay
attention pay respect pay the price or pay the cost
make sure you stay your path know who’s boss
and don’t forget to floss
animal me sees you wailing sees you raw as meat
Typhoid Mary is coming up from nowhere like poison ivy. Why now? As in “don’t be a…” Go
figure. Rhetoric, interpretation. Passive administrate manipulation. Propaganda in the distance
information onslaught inching closer, throb-robbing forager.
I want to brush my teeth
numb the angry bitten sores sweat from these stiff cracked lips—
Throb-shaking nauseous tremor east plane to Midwest true and through. What of twenty-two?
Or, active spirituality wabi-sabi. This whole room hole is throbbing.
I want my bed, B. button, want my nest treats, lover-smelling wrinkled sheets
I want cherries.
Creamsorrow
after Kim Hyesoon and Li Fi Jae
Whose hands cover me?
Creamsorrow hoodie I’m battle ready in this coat of arms that are dishonorably groping all
over and in between my private
parts. I am such a rude and graceless thing.
What is left to die from? Maybe curiosity. I keep wondering.
What am I generating or destroying every time I Thing? The shrill hysteria of living in between
corporate entities acting as human beings. Why would I want to be born again?
Fingers cling
intertwine with everything all over me covering and gripping. I am such a blind, dumb half-deaf,
pitiful weeping thing.
Whose hands are these?
Who is parasite? Who is host? Who will love me: hold the cold fingers of an aging crinkled
ghost, a flabby little blood witch?
Desperate or protecting cover, arm, or bury me I disappear but for leg and feet beneath, beneath,
beneath these lumpy mud sausages head cradled in my own pralines the hot pink of blush-rushed
or bleeding onto white sheets,
spilling over into the bowl of white cream.
This is Another Entry
in a catalogue of imprints
collection and acceptance of this brokenness
opposite of border. This is knowledge passing
through my body.
Dear Earth, Dear Mother, I feel what you’ve endured
in marrow
I metabolize how you’ve been entered, opened, used
against your will.
High on this is a ladder of small truths,
knowing I can’t ever look down—
I ascend depth perception-less and tentative.
What I’m working
toward is ephemeral, is obscured, is an occasion of freedom, unabashed
gratitude, orgasm, revolution—
I am churning inside belly blossoms unfurl and drop petals or emit gas
wood splinters, sweaty palms, sun on my back, salt, tears, weight of these boots.
our lyric vernacular sustains this liminal climb:
variations on the subliminal a transmission that enters
semantic collectives collecting emancipatory
modes of collaboration speaking of breathing
There’s a summer heat killing
with flat dry wind
outside this refuge, tucked in
to the cliff on a precipice
our precarious sanctuary.
Little Known World
Life is a country too full and foreign and still hungry, hunched over at the end of the bar, falling
apart. Spill of tea spots golden green on thin as paper me
grasping at coronas at straws
wondering what to do and how to be easy.
All life is dream, gristle, blood, and pee. Chickens neck-snapped hanging dripping over swine
buried alive and we tested, tested, tested, positive-false-negative police enforcing and people
deemed illegal though there’s no such thing—
nonsense and powdered toothpaste on black jeans. I am antithetical, unreal in this military state
crisis of refugees.
My quarantine witness is the empty breeze, the barren trees, the diminished creek. I wander
aimless: formative, developing a death in slow-motion progressive beam of yellowed
teeth smiling, smoke enunciating my lung capacity.
Raspatory, how a cloud breathes rain, see how it falls and falls and covers everything, every
soaking thing. Where are we?
In the voice of the wound. On the receding land we’ve seeded.
Ada McCartney is a poet, performer, and teaching artist. Ada holds an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University and a BA from Kalamazoo College. Some of her favorite performances include “Tongue of a Bird” at Festival Playhouse, the inaugural Extreme Future Festival in L.A., “Survival Skills” with Laughing Pig Theatre, and “Inherent Worth and Dignity” at Arts Intersection. She is an editor of the anthology More Revolutionary Letters: A Diane di Prima Tribute (Wisdom Body Collective, 2021) and the author of cunt poems (In Process, 2021). Her writing has appeared in Plants and Poetry Journal, The Bombay Gin, Patchwork, Phoenix Dance Observer, and elsewhere. @aa_mccartney on Twitter and www.aamccartney.com.
