1. Death to all billionaires
2. Slow, painful death to all fluorescent light bulbs
3. Death to social media
4. A cyclical perception of time in which death is celebrated for creating life and life is celebrated for creating death
5. A peaceful death
PROLOGUE - PASSAGE DREAMS
my childhood house had secret passage ways
beyond the doors i never opened:
one:
a half-sized door in mum's closet --
the secret wing nobody talked about.
dark wood.
windows to a courtyard.
bright, present.
no furniture, or home-like clutter.
empty. devoid.
present.
two:
the basement's infinite staircase
led to a dark, tiny room.
rotten couches and carpet.
cigarette ash table and
beer can floors.
midnight television static walls.
a slab of meat hung to dry
from the ceiling ten years ago.
preserves are rotten, too.
too much alcohol.
it's not there,
and guests aren't allowed
in the garage.
three:
i don't have a nana,
but she lives in the secret
basement apartment that dad
set up for her.
yellow quilts, golden light.
plants. kitchenette.
fishing equipment.
foam puzzle piece flooring.
who are you, nana?
why does dad want me
to know you so bad?
awake.
the passage ways are once again
only their entrances that i never
went through.
dad has been trapped in the
liminal spaces since [///---].
the doors are gone, their lessons taught.
my journey within begins.
INTERLUDE - QUEER-TEORITE
i expected to fly this flight
across the great atlantic ocean
to the place i'm "from",
or so i've been so often told
i'm from,
when i was a young child.
not now.
i'm "from". not really, though.
the blood pumps, sure.
but i cannot speak,
and as i waited for my feet
to finally leave the ground;
as the years
passed and crashed and slashed
their way by;
i lost my desire to
comfort the conforming
with their mirror identities
and become someone
my family wouldn't know
to love.
i feel like a meteor
bracing for impact.
i am afraid the colourful waters
in my caverns and craters
will challenge the minimalist
concrete dams
of a people sleek, modern, and conservative,
comfortable in mainstream consumption.
bože moje.
ONE - CAVES OF WAR: IN-TOWN KONJIC, AND MOSTAR
the challenge itself
lies in naming the
products of war,
for they are caves that
delve too deep into
the mantle of the soul.
through rooms and tunnels
and crevices i've searched
for any remains
besides the cigarette ash tables
and beer can floors.
i've turned off the television,
and now the walls are dark.
behind the static,
the mask of war,
are bestrewn bullet holes
and bellowing blasts of brick
who also know the dread
of begging for mercy
from substances whose only
purposes are death and destruction.
since coming to see the blood on
my lands, i’ve seen real walls,
real brick that are covered in
ivy and sprouting young trees,
the roofs long rotted away.
my dad said to me
through his moss-covered
boyhood pain that these rooms
were once too filled
with heavy-chested laughter
and the smell of smoked meat,
and conversations in that
language i’ve sought so long
to comprehend but just can’t.
so when my blood gurgles
to ask if i want a cup of
coffee or food or a hug or task,
i look at my dad
who stares back with that painful
and rotten and god-awful television static
and i find myself holding
his trauma in shame.
my name is another blood sputter
that other kids beat and kicked
and laughed at me for
as if the war followed
my dad here, to this land
that isn’t ours.
my name is Darija Šilić, and
i am a product of war.
but that “i” isn’t really there,
for i’m still lost in the
bloody ivy cave, searching
through the rubble of my
Yugoslavian family grave.
TWO — CREATURES OF SALT AND CRITTERS IN TEARS: MALA DUBA, CROATIA
part i, drone beetle:
a big buzz for a small beetle!
they loved me, and i loved them.
by coast house or sea
they’d buzz and come and
land on me,
or this book of mine,
or tangle themselves ‘tween
strands o’ my hair.
my cousins screamed;
they were scared! o, cry!
of the harmless guy
on his tiny, shiny way
to eat all-the-day the
dead wood and decay.
and dad,
he said they’re friendly but
they can feel your
body heat radiate
a kilometre away.
that night my beetle and i
shared a tomato
and my aunt and cousins and i
played the board game “Sorry!”
where i and my beetle
were buzzing and laughing
through the whole night
at Maro’s accent Ruski spoke he
for wits in his splitten English
while my dad spent his time
on the terrace outside
looking out to the mountains
and down to the sea,
and at the end of the night when
he came in to check on me,
he reminded 21-year-old me
to put ona pajamasand
usa ta batroom, sweetie.
my aunt, his sister, cried for three hours
and told me if i needed anything,
food or laundry or anything of care,
to ask her
if my father was not all there.
part ii, dying cat:
the path from the house
to the beach was unalike
any path i had taken before:
alleyways and stairs,
peoples’ front doors
which for some were just
curtain walls at the top,
the neighbour’s barking
rescue dogs that live
in her coast-town vet clinic.
then, the highway.
first, understand that
highways in Croatia are not
highways in the west:
this major artery,
running along the entire
adriatic coast of Croatia,
up into Italy,
down into Montenegro,
was two lanes.
one in each direction.
twisty and curvy as they wind
along the rocky mountainside.
this stretch of highway,
after the fig-tree-obscured stairs,
was a straight patch between
two sharp turns: from neither way
could oncoming cars going
a hundred kilometres an hour
be seen,
so when you arrive to cross
the ‘way and continue the path
to the rocky salt beach,
you and those who go too
must stop and listen
with patience and care
lest a car come ‘round and
kill you right there.
the rest of the path
was fun and whimsy:
a dirt stretch cut through
someone’s backyard
vegetable garden and
fig-pomegranate-kiwi orchard,
best of all bestrewn with kittens!
who were scared of people,
but cute nonetheless.
o, to be a kitten born and free
in that yard of trees in
Mala Duba, Croatia!
i stopped to greet every one i’d see
and every time my dad would yell
for me to keep up so i don’t get lost
as if i’ve never crossed the path before,
as if i,
21-year-old me,
would get lost in a small town
of no more than 2,000 people,
on my way down to the beach.
there was one day on the coast
where i had arrived at the
rocky and salty beach
and decided that i actually
did want to use my
flippers and goggles
that i left back up the path,
across the highway,
and up the stairs,
at the coast house.
on my merry way back down,
excited to dive and see the fish
and sponges and shellfish
and everything in between,
a sullen cat wandered up the stairs
from the highway,
and as he flopped onto his side
on the closest landing
i didn’t know what else to do
besides sit by him and cry;
his jaw was gone.
his nose ran with puss.
"ne govorim hrvatski"
is all i could say to the
woman who found us
just sitting there
as she asked me questions
about the cat and where i found him
and how long i’d been there with him
(luckily she knew more english
than i croatian)
and she scooped him up
and brought him immediately to her house,
her vet clinic.
when i returned to the beach
to my aunt and cousins who sat
waiting for me to bring their water bottles
and lunch-time snacks,
i arrived crying and i said
that i found a dying cat
and my aunt misunderstood
and thought i said i had
found my dad drunken and dead
and even when we cleared that up
my aunt told me that crying for the cat
is useless.
but at least she held me,
kissed me,
wiped my tears away.
later, i picked a
drone beetle
out of her hair.
THREE — DAD
i love you.
i have always loved you.
you’re my dad.
i’m not saying these words
to call you a bad.
you are a good dad.
i say these words
because i know
without a doubt
that you love me.
for a long time
i felt like you
couldn’t see me.
then i knew you
could see me,
and i wondered what it was
that was so wrong with me
that made you
never talk to me.
i loved to watch you cook,
but you’d yell at me
to get out of the kitchen.
i loved to watch you
make a fire
midnight sea urchins,
in a jolted pulse,
puncture my
ceiling-brains.
your komorebi magenta freckles,
dazzle my skin
like television static dropping
in the pit of my stomach,
like the dizzy kaleidoscope
clinking, chinking
W A R P I N G
your violets,
emeralds,
and golds,
and on our
tippy-dippiest toes,
(lest the urchins
ooze from the
abyss in my closet
to crush my rib cage
and whisper drippping
bloody
red
terror
from eyes, ears,
mouth, and nose)
we waltz beyond
the limits of my prose,
and you dip me
like a lover that knows
the secrets of the centre,
the rhizome,
the embryo,
and in this place,
for a very short while,
i am unlaced,
untactile,
unself,
unknown.
A train of oil tankers
thunders through my backyard
four times a day.
Each car is a beast that hoards
its wealth llike the world would
burst into flames without it.
We can have fun tonight
and spray a streak of magenta Freak here
and lime green Hippie there.
Against the jet-black beasts
our vibraint deliquent stains
are an anti-money crusade,
drip, drip, dripping reminders
that splatter all over
the minds of those
the train rushes by.
But it will never stop for you and I;
It runs through our youth like
the drugs we smoke
to stop thinking about it.
Today was a beautiful, hot November day
to burn my lungs like the Amazon
and drown my liver like an oil spill.
I'll paint these tankers with
the blood of my youth
for the rest of my life
because it's the end of the world.
What else is there to do?
To the wind our home flies
With waves washing away the shore.
A cracking foundation
Mom says cracked the family,
But your heart knows
Crystals in splitting castle stones
and crumbling bridges,
And hers shaking twigs
Of a nest
High in a swaying tree.
You stared at the cracks too long,
And our toys aged in hands
behind you eyes,
But through the cracks
The wind played puppet-master
With my heart strings too.
Your eyes yellowed
When your brothers met the gusts.
These walls withered away
in the howls,
But my fingers between yours,
My arms around your back,
We are the roots of a weeping willow
Holding firmly to our shores.
(y)our body is light:
electromagnetic pathways.
each (m/b/tr)illion stars' photon eyes,
when met with mine,
does us interinanimate,
like lovers' baby-eyes in gaze.
it arrives when my eyes
draw in a whirl,
twirl
the
ribbon
light
-string
from (y)our gift of knowledge.
the wavy string,
as it descends,
speaks the language
of my neuron brains
and your galaxy chains;
can't you see?
we (think/know/are) the same.
Sweet lavender.
Dusty purples, giant green zucchinis.
He was raised in a vegetable garden
And told us all that we were doing wrong.
The fort; the tree; the Big Tree!
Crusty cicada shells
and sticky pine sap,
scratches on your way in and out.
Sticks and elastic bands
bows and arrows in our imaginary plot-lines--
elves and ivy and tragedy
at age nine.
Teary morning dew and bare feet.
Wishing white butterflies
were what I wanted them to be
when one landed on me.
Mom ripped out the lavender bushes,
but the stars shone brighter
the more crickets were there
to sing to them.
The grass whispered to my thighs at age twenty.
More butterflies came to land
on the ghost of me.
More birds, bugs, critters, and creatures
celebrated our untended childhoods.
Dusty white lavender dried just before
that backyard that we played in
became all overgrown.
Mom lived in her nightmares,
And he was raised in a vegetable garden.