\nDRAG STRIPS<\/strong>
\n
\nFour lines of a lyric
\n(or nothing comes that rises):
\n
\nDear figure of mother: I\u2019m staying
\nwith the white page: since
\n
\nnothing comes that rises\u2014
\njust the truth that drags & bitters
\n <\/p>\n
\n
Mullions cut the windows into equal pieces, there were cats prowling the halls of the asylum. Nights straight-line rain hit the glass, the wooden rafters shook. Oracles in white uniforms scavenged, lifting us to their rooms under the heavy crucifix. Searching for prophecy in our small bodies, they held us to their flat breasts, drove [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12922,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[437,149],"class_list":["post-12917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-coty-by-amadeu-de-souza-cardosa","tag-wikicommons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12917"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13141,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12917\/revisions\/13141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nGREEN COMETS OF THE FUTURE<\/strong>
\n
\nDown County Road 18 outside of Stow,
\nmy head flying the room of strangers.
\nI was fifteen & doing peyote in some guy\u2019s trailer
\nbuttons of weed, young enough I was
\n
\nwearing my scapula around my neck,
\nburning into my skin with its green string, praising:
\nIMMACULATE HEART OF MARY,
\nPRAY FOR US NOW in all scary caps.
\n
\nOn the other side, Mary in long robes holding
\nthis flaming bloody heart\u2014
\nThe green comets of future spinning,
\ncatapulting me in & out of time &
\n
\nI thought about my pillowcases at home, sewn
\ninto a sleeping bag for safety, the drapes pinned shut
\nBirds were flying around inside me\u2014
\nin circles, white. I could feel the
\n
\npsychopathic swirling of air. Were they
\nspirits returning to dive-bomb
\nthe monstrous buildings of my past?
\nIn the cloud soup, in the cloud river
\n
\nof my brain, the hills & factories of Pittsburgh
\nrose up like the only real things.
\nWhat was it that people wanted from me?
\nWhat was I trying to hold together?
\n
\nI hurtled the broken-down steps
\nof the single-wide\u2014what passed for a country
\nhome on that green night, my head
\nnow the comets, my head now walking away.
\n
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/NN-Jan-Beatty_HighResPhoto.jpg\")
Jan Beatty is the winner of the Red Hen Nonfiction Award for her memoir, American Bastard<\/em> (2021). Her sixth book, The Body War<\/em>s (2020), was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. In the New York Times, Naomi Shihab Nye said: Jan Beatty\u2019s new poems in \u201cThe Body Wars\u201d shimmer with luminous connection, travel a big life and grand map of encounters. Books include Jackknife: New and Collected Poems<\/em> (2018 Paterson Prize) named by Sandra Cisneros on LitHub as her favorite book of 2019. Beatty worked as a waitress for fifteen years, and as a welfare caseworker, an abortion counselor, and a social worker and teacher in maximum-security prisons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"