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4 Poems by Elizabeth Kate Switaj


Lady of the Three Accompaniments

 
Now I go
    where karaoke goes
    w/a thousand of me.
 
I always thought I’d cramp my back
                                                                 next to my mother’s,
curving my fingers for factory pay
                                                               (and  of course  to make
                                                                               shirts that I could never buy
I can buy them now.
 
Now I go
    where karaoke goes
    w/a thousand of me.
 
But it wasn’t enough
               and I traveled the streets that bring
                                                salarymen    to me now
               and first I worked 
                                                 to serve food.
 
Now I go
    where karaoke goes
    w/a thousand of me.
 
And one night a woman shining
   underneath her swoosh        claimed by claimed victory
   and Levi’s jeans.        She made in a night
                                          what I made   in a month.
 
Now I go
    where karaoke goes
    w/a thousand of me.
 
    Now my throat burns
with whatever the hell
                               they say when we drink
                               and, yes, I believe
                                                            it’s always the same.
 
 
 
 
 
    Now my feet move with against
                           their hands-- forget the songs,
                            the rhythm my feet strive to recall
                                                                 and maybe will, if I find
                                                                                         how I liked
                                                                            tradition   again.

 
 
 
 
 




    Now my voice rasps
   when I don’t cramp it to
   whispery American pop    (I couldn’t scream if I needed it
to accompany men
with no language but their mothers’:
                                                                          They don’t understand
                                                                                                   and can’t pronounce the lyrics.
 
Now I go
    where karaoke goes
    w/a thousand of me.
 
And there’s a fourth
accompaniment
                                    but that’s more
                                       than what you’d say
                          is twenty four dollars a day.
 
Now I go
    where karaoke goes
    w/a thousand of me.
 
I can’t tell my family
I can’t give up
                             My brother needs to pay
                                           his school fees...
 
Now I go
    where karaoke goes
    w/a thousand of me.
 
I dream of geishas    across the sea in sunrise;
                  I hear last century’s
weep that I can’t join them
in the teahouse they didn’t know
                                                            waited for their deaths.
 
Or maybe I can.
I breathe  to read
my way out.  I pray you’ll forget
 
to pack your book, but
 
Now I go
    where karaoke goes
    w/a thousand of me.
 
 

------


Mid-Atlantic Ridge
 
              ghost around pink blinded fish
an infant cauled w/ectoplasm and    
                                                                 cilia
 
and just a ghost
                  glowing along lines of sting
                                                                   in diaphany
 
and the orange ruffled dress,
a paw to crawl
               apart from pink body,
                                                       sandwhite tail
 
Here be monsters:
just their prescient
                         soundbite...

------


Every Time...Important
 
    Stout infantfish churn their two months across reefs
and finally fall into a microscope
                                                             where they--   at least the smaller males
                                                                                      become an extreme.
 
                                                                         They lack pigment
                                                out of eyes
                                                                        and in life, transparent.


------


Friday Night
 
burnable garbage,
burnable sky
 
                          and the drainage ditch      as rain
                                                             is automatically      cleaned

 

 

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