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    Bring Down the Chandeliers
    Bring Down the Chandeliers
    Bring Down the Chandeliers
    Ebook107 pages44 minutes

    Bring Down the Chandeliers

    By Tara Hardy

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    About this ebook

    Tara Hardy�s first book of poems explores the glory, garden and grit of wound while aiming at the bulls-eye of redemption. Translating what the body knows into text, she writes about love, betrayal, sex, war, addiction, regret, and forgiveness. From flat out advice to a trauma survivor, to what roils inside Adam�s rib, to sex from the perspective of her hair, these poems strive to come to terms with human flaw and its aftermath. Through personal narrative, her work deepens our understanding of larger cultural splits, among them victim/perpetrator, gay/straight, urban/rural, coastal/middle, poor/privileged, self/other. These poems press us to work shame into joy, rage into art, and regret into possibility.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWrite Bloody Publishing
    Release dateOct 1, 2018
    ISBN9781935904311
    Bring Down the Chandeliers

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      Once, Tara Hardy saved me. Read this book. Give it to the people you love.

    Book preview

    Bring Down the Chandeliers - Tara Hardy

    Chandeliers

    Hummingbird

    In the orphanage of my voice box

    my father sits, fork and knife upright

    on the table before him. He’s already cut

    off my hummingbird and fed it

    to our dog. Scientists can’t pin down

    how hummingbirds are able to maintain

    flight-flap at a pace so feverish when

    energy expelled exceeds energy consumed.

    In place of my hummingbird my father

    drapes a bib, so he won’t have to look at his

    handiwork. But behind the curtain

    the nurse explains in some sort of

    capacity retained exceeds capacity consumed

    miracle I still have apparatus necessary

    for flight. In an under the table deal of my

    own I make faithful our dog, stroke the beast

    hold to his nose the scent of his master.

    Make a bid as mistress to tear limb from

    limb the obstruction of my father on the runway

    called my mouth, on the runway

    called my other mouth. Itself an overcrowded

    with cornered voices orphanage. As our hound

    hones his scent, all the children I ever

    wasn’t but was meant to be,

    break open the roof, take wing,

    and I speak

    speak.

    Daughter

    What I want you to know is this:

    My father did monster things to my child body.

    This is a lamb’s truth.

    Like pouring bleach over grass he burned his name into me.

    What he took no one can repay.

    Say this is a tax collector’s truth,

    but also say this:

    It did not make him powerful or grand.

    He isn’t somewhere cackling on a distant hill.

    He is at home, sleeping in a wool cap

    on a sinking sofa because he snores

    like the train that orphaned him at seven.

    He is an old man with a garden, pinching

    tomato bugs between thumb and forefinger.

    You can say he is a doddering letch, but also say this:

    Say he did the dishes, cooked; taught me how to fish.

    There is a boat still floating at the wharf

    from 1917, the same year he poked his

    puckered head through his mother’s legs,

    squinting. The boat’s rhythm against

    the water is his wet lungs still pulling

    breath. This is an organ’s truth.

    And me, say I am half of him, his monster flesh.

    Pulled from his injury on my mother like a fist.

    Say I am a fist. I am not

    the pasty faces of incest children

    growing on the underbelly of a log,

    color of the way-inside of lettuce.

    I am spunneling, alive, and red. This is an artery’s truth.

    You can say I am half-blooded monster,

    but also say this: my

    blood does not make a pity trip.

    The fist of me unfolds to pluck the quill of him from my throat and

    regularly fill it. This is a pen’s truth.

    Six years ago, crossing his state’s line

    caused my body to clutch itself so completely

    I couldn’t pee for three days.

    Except in a long thin terrified stream.

    A scream as long would have melted the road. The sticky tar of it.

    Say he stole from me the right

    to be around to bury him,

    but also say this:

    I am not the road of tar. I was only stuck to it.

    A wingless, but determined beast.

    This is a daughter’s truth.

    Adam’s Rib

    When a man I love hit a woman I love,

    what I wish I’d said, but didn’t:

    Inside Adam’s rib is a kitchen. A yellow

    kitchen. Inside Adam’s rib is a container

    of bees. Of scars. Of chases.

    Inside Adam’s rib is a wish. A woman

    is a wish. For something more than salt

    on your tongue. A woman is a wish

    for something to puncture lonely.

    A woman is a balm. Inside Adam’s rib

    is a remedy. A resurrection.

    A spontaneous eruption

    of wings. All of our possibilities

    peeking skull-out from between

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