Streaming

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781566893756
• eBook ISBN: 9781566893831
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Split This Rock Recommended Poetry Books of 2014

Praise for Allison Adelle Hedge Coke:

"These are the songs of righteous anger and utter beauty."—Joy Harjo

From "Carcass":

Split skin stretched over marrowless cage,
encased dry tomb, like those strewn
through this loess reach, cradling past
ever present here, and now you come
walking riverside, bringing sensory thrill
into daylight much like this cervidae
culled morning each waking before
demise. We move this way, catching life
until death captures us, where we rot
into the same dust holding multitudes
before us, and welcoming those beyond.

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke is a poet, writer, performer, editor, and activist.

III

---

WHERE WE HAVE BEEN

---

for my father

TAXONOMY

Mornings made delirious, scrambling into thread

out from dreaming, wrangling ways past delusion

into streets unpaved, unproven, unmet. It was hard-

over, no sunnyside—easy—and the only yolk—seated sky—

rose streaming over the lot of us quickened in some

strain no corona could bear resting, lean. Then

the mesa sat standing wayside, case some giants made

their way back into meantime, met us here, met us.

We were tabooed, shunned, mocked and on our mettle

most any pierce of day. Principal struck blows to show we

deserved no mercy. It was splintering. Holes bored blisters

each smacking wave. We were deserving. Wave after wave

first grade took the test out from me. Never did spill again,

no matter the syndrome. We were anything but beggars,

so we scraped by, held up. We flung ourselves into every

angle, withheld our curve. Split loose from whatever held on.

Motown made our mercy. Only soothe in western rooms

rounded in radio waves gleaning out the insides of maternal

mind. Unkind charge firing synapse beyond reasoning goals.

She moved through it like lightning, charging each wave

with serious challenge, but nothing made it bearable and

hands down was just a game call brag. Only hands down we

laid was on ball courts. Home front was daily challenge, there

was nothing certain other than each day just like the last.

Lest they moved you, sent you off to foster somewhere no

one warned might reckon. Sent you streaming. Gave you up

like paper. Tossed, crumpled, straightened up, and smoothed

out flat. That was that. It was nothing you’d remember, but

we do. Still taste that strangeness surrounding ones who go

between, move through other worlds while in this one. No

one lives like we do, least it seems so, always on the mind.

Why? Never time to question and still don’t know. Only thing

we know we are different and not like you and even though

we try three times harder it never works out right. No,

nothing takes the sting of it, or scent either. We look off,

sound off, give off a presence everyone else knows stay away

and they do, so far from us we walk sideways vanishing

points return to horizons soaking us in, distinguishing us.

Mettle in our mouths as well, steely, and steal we did, still

do, no one’s got more lift than us, no one’s got more hunger.

How about the time they made us breakfast, real one, over

that pancake house off of 40, remember? Dad’s Christmas

to us right before seeing her in The Pavilion, little dish of

butter looks like ice cream to kids like us. Made the eggs

slide over easy just like he did before the madness. Man this

is rough country, get that straight. Mettle this!

SUDDEN WHERE

Talon-plucked speckled trout from bitterroot bed, splish

dream through cloud swells, turbulence imagining comfort

on the way to forever. It’s the shake of it, the sudden where, like

tossing suitcases into corners lent for foster kids untangling

claws still extended. Not the best of us, no, not near what we

once were, still only children, we scraped by, skinning knees

on borrowed bikes, traded at the B & D. Cousin tamed since

no one else had time to tender. Was a working world, cast

out toothbrush hanging wherever a hook held still enough.

Nine lives by nine, cut, torn, blasted to bits all around us.

Walls sometimes plastered with brain noodle. In some

fascination-led Western, so & so. Was it our baseball coach

showed us conceal? Marched us in Sears & Roebuck, night

before her wedding, wanted something scanty little girls could

ease outside without losing dimes, much less dollars. No, coins

better spent at any skating drive-in joint. Teens hanging over

Mustang glass, blinking easy, leaving all intendeds, puffs,

smoke, bottled-down splash to sink secure, like fishing, like

something some winged friend would come down this way for.

She was good to us, even when we couldn’t be to one another.

Save the lifting, her heft carried us through. Far more than Siebert

pranks, stealing plums when uncle carefully turned his head a-shy.

Only a baby then, that was way bac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• PRELUDE
• I NAVIGATION
• II BREAKING COVER
• MAY SUITE
• III WHERE WE HAVE BEEN
• IV WHERE IT ENDS
• CODA
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Colophon
• About the Author