Xcp:  Streetnotes: Spring  2005
Streetnotes Spring 2005 xcp

 
 
Ellen Baxt
 

Excerpts from
Analfabeto / An Alphabet

 
 
 


There are many stars above Salvador. My mother is bowling in her blue bowling bracelet.







Humidity curls the pages. Sometimes I lie about sozinha/solteira. Because it is New Year's Eve, the avó in the elevator wishes me saúde, prosperidade e bom marido.






Só is only. Sozinha is alone.





::





 
Everyone wears white. Everyone orders something that sizzles. There is a deep voice speaking a sound check into a microphone. Um dois tres. Dois tres. Um dois. Um um.



The concert hall is a shell. The couples in love are hot and testy and process communication issues. The dishes are for two. I waste half.





::





 
A motorcycle delivers blue cylinders of water.  





The buildings have two addresses, one above the other so you are always at the wrong building.





Pressure of proximity.





The boy does not want to enter the church. There are witches. Also there are Catholic saints in African melodies.
 






::






Que quer dizer esta palavra?  Divagação, wandering or digression.  



Durable beam, her life was a difficult one.  Pão duro.  Dar a luz.  Desabrido.
She is serrated, notched. She is durable, lasting.  She is, what does this word mean?  Disguised, unequal.   What is the difference between unequal and unjust?



She does not have bread at her disposal. She has praise {in verse and song}, liquids {to learn by heart}, sleeping {to break in}.



Speak slowly, you are a rough weather.  You are to peck, to type.  You are sleeping beam at my disposal. We are apricot and damask.  We are to give birth.  We are from the North, decorated by liquids.  



She spreads her blanket over my geography. Pushes the latch. At dawn she asks if my family knows.
In the van she covered our legs and held my hand underneath. Você tem vontade? but I don't know vontade.






::





 
In 1654, a band of twenty-three Jews expelled by the Portuguese from Recife, Brazil, landed in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. From that day to the present, there has been a permanent Jewish population in what is now the United States.




Rua Bom Jesus was called Rua dos Judeus. Blue script on white tile.
 






::

 



In French there is no word for saudade, so Dorothee approximates sadness + nostalgia.



Bom dia, Sr. Silva. I am homesick for my country.
Heart is drain. Hand of a sunbath.
Sozinha. To have a parasol. To whisper.



Skirt, soap, saber de cor.



Alone, meaning both sumptuous and I am homesick.
Alone meaning arrow slants the plow.
How do you say I am not married but I am parasol worshipper
in your country? I bleed for my country, Sr. Silva, is not the same as,
I bleed for Sr. Silva, my country.


  (c)Baxt 2005


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