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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