The History of Silence

When did it begin? 

 

               Beauty 

Intentionally buried. 

Don’t comment on screaming 

It didn’t happen— 

                               Did it happen? 

Maybe they didn’t think 

We’d hear. Of course 

They knew we’d fear it. 

Silence is memory, 

Black space in the mind’s violent eye. 

Silence is choice. 

Don’t comment on memory 

The screaming 

Didn’t happen. 

Silence 

To erase, erasus 

From to scratch 

To scrape 

More at rodent to gnaw 

Silentium 

Absence 

Of mention 

Oblivion 

Oblivisci 

To forget 

The fact or condition 

Of forgetting 

Having forgotten 

The condition 

Or state of 

Being forgotten 

Or unknown. 

Corn is our history. 

Why is it called an ear? 

An ear hears and after 

Eaten the cob remains and remains 

And remains. 

Sugarcane, shiny reeds 

Who would count the inches 

Between sections of guitars, 

Staff for notes, staff 

For tuning circles, frets, 

Shadows in between 

Or the sweetness contained inside 

Telephone wires 

Let’s talk 

Like marionettes 

Little leather boots 

Against pregnant stomach. 

Is the uterus 

Pregnant or the 

Woman? 

Spiritbody within the spirit 

Or body. 

Can the spirit control anything? 

Fret 

From frezzan to devour 

Akin to ezzan to eat. 

To eat or gnaw into, Corrode, Fray, Rub, Chaff, to cause to suffer 

Emotional Strain, Vex. To pass time as in fretting. Agitate, Ripple, 

Wear, to become Agitated. Grate. 

Hands of the puppeteer 

Atop the wood cross handle 

And the little hook 

To hang it up 

After playing extinct 

Would hang 

Like a good fall. 

A row of soldiers 

A row of bodies 

This is my row 

Row: a noisy 

Disturbance or quarrel. 

Fresh corn rows 

With silk tassels 

I can be tender too 

White and flattened 

On a stone. 

My sisters’ bones. 

Where are they? 

Stalls in pupils 

Between rows 

In the desert 

Dilating 

Bullets 

Mother 

Corn 

Utterance. History 

Of indigenous. 

The murdered women’s pictures 

Millions of self-portraits.