LAUREN BRAZEAL GARZA / 4 POEMS TRANSCRIBED FROM EVP
Interview with Henry Lee Lucas (Reincarnated as Lake Raven in Huntsville, TX)
From the Files of the EVP Transcriber: Session #235
“Ask a warm stone what it loves,
and it will name the sun.
Some mornings it’s enough
to see clustered pines burst
from loam, as their flipped reflections dive
into my dark surface. Hiding
turtles grouped in my silt know this, and stray
children wading in the tall grasses of my skirts: I am made
and unmade by clouds spilling themselves
or withholding. And there’s peace in my swelling
and shrinking face, peace even
when summer storms greedily shunt my excesses
to a spill-off tapestry of crawdad traps
down in that gully of drowning trees. Those wet nights,
when my swollen fingers curl
toward wading ankles or overtake lonely
swimmers, I almost hear their voices
lap against my songless, widening body.
Who doesn’t reach for the very limit
of what can be held? Not the sky.
Not that boy on my beach whose arms overflow
with gathered toys—or lovers, who are never
able to extract enough of the other
to satisfy their hunger’s needs.
We strain to keep our most full selves,
inviting inevitable, catastrophic emptying.
All I am, all that I gain and lose
comes sweetly now, as if the whole
might go on, unchanged.”
Voice from the Decomposed Carousel (Waco, TX)
From the files of the EVP transcriber, Session #97
I imagine being snared from Prairie Smoke
& saddled with my sisters; steel shoes burned
into our wooden feet. Our captors twisted
brass poles through our spines, bisecting our hearts.
We pathed our muddy circles by the circus,
bounding optimistically with children
on our lacquered backs, as if any minute
we’d become our trotting, blinking likenesses.
Over time their bindings broke apart.
They catalyzed an energy—what should I call it?
Life? It must be. They boasted crowns
of mushrooms and collapsed into the living earth.
Now, not even my cries survive the churn
of all their green and hellish breathing.
Devil
From the Files of the EVP Transcriber, Session #127
“Listen, I need love
to be bound
to physicality
& can feel love
for satisfaction
to be lusted after
just as any human does
I seek resonance
within each idle vessel
to be heard
to fold desire
like a bedsheet
coil around small openings
hunt susceptibility
with gentle knocks
let me rattle all your faults
please trust
that I will spring that padlocked
brain of yours & finger
all your tender undergrowths for heat
I need bodies to latch into
eyes to see
I'm not a curse
more an opportunity
just let me hatch
a widening slit between us
animate & undermine us
give me room to curl
my lips around
what looseness we possess
to fortify & heal each fracture
within a collar of our scars
want me to keep going yet?
—don't you dare feel sorry for me
empathy
like anything
dies from lack of use
and I do savor every killing
find all good intentions fallible
give me crumbs
some pet fragility I can exploit
then admit I stimulate
your bulging curiosity
tell me how my swelling favor tastes
don't waver
or imagine who and what I lie with
simply whisper that I keep
what all souls seek
a purpose
& I'll gobble every bit
keep you always capable
of failure to escape
I forfeit nothing when I say it's mutual
now envy my state
I lost everything to gain this freedom”
Deer Hunter’s Voice Tangled in a Neches River Cottonwood
From the Files of the EVP Transcriber, Session #72
“First love
we’ll splay her legs
by rock or tie them hock to tree
tuck the wet
tongue in the cellar
of her face
race the fly threat
pattern her body
and the cutting ring fresh as cream
she could startle up
and bound into a mud
lock or some thicket
blind from pain
I’ve seen a doe
run miles on a bone jag leg
when shot snagged just the half
traced then by blood and hounds
I’ve seen
another drag limp knees to dirt
from a clean spine rip slung in pine thrush
when bruise-dark gloam kissed
each trees skirt
soft as skin together with her
then suddenly alone
answering a noose
of silence with my own breaths
live oak loblolly and stars
bore dark witness to the cull
I killed
love with my hunger’s song
with the knife’s yawn
the blade ringing like a solemn bell
no language in her dying moment’s dawn
only atoms like suns rattled
feral first then not at all in her dimmed eyes
gather now
we’ll carry her in pieces to the car”
Lauren Brazeal Garza is a disabled writer and Ph.D. candidate in literature at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her published poetry collections include Gutter (YesYes Books, 2018), which chronicles her homelessness as a teenager. She has also published three chapbooks, including Santa Muerte Santa Muerte: I was Here Release Me, forthcoming from Tram Editions in 2023. Her work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Waxwing, and Verse Daily among many other journals. She lives in Dallas and can be found haunting her website at www.lbrazealgarza.com