Into the party favor of my face Jenny King kept on blowing hot air because she thought it was funny. It wasn’t— and Ms. Power didn’t find it funny either. She thought we were kissing and sent us to the principal. Punishment was swift— delivered via pink slip in the cubby hole above my name. We were separated—my detention served on Tuesdays with the gardening club. I raked leaves into piles, picked wrappers from the fog ignored instructions about black-eyed susans, the spouts of the fountain, unruly and against me, making my pinafore stupid with rain. I left— escaping to the churchyard across the way. I befriended a father, his face stuffed with feathers, sitting on a park bench beside a sculpture of woven palm. He gave me a sacred robe to wrap around my waist. I was petulant thinking a few hours would absolve me, that the cloisters would hold in my mistake. And the fuzz of the candles, with the red of the windows, made the day into a smoothie of light. When I left, my hair was still braided with ivy. My family, a picnic of girls.
after Parmigianino I, too, and grasping at my chest as a holy baby levitates in my lap and my foot levitates on a pile of pillows which are satin and hand sewn by children. I wear a crown of nonpareils no, a string of sea pearls, which hang like scars between my temples. I throw my cape to the parapet! I throw my eyes to the dust! My earlobes, flapping my drapery, wet with milk. O my neck is a PVC pipe, rejected from Lowes and my neck has an announcement to make because my neck is also a radio. Now for the weather today in Parma: we are expecting a puzzle piece of rain and a matching puzzle piece of brown gelato. And wait, dear ones that are gathered at my waist line, your nudity so precious it must wear a disguise: a silver vase so perfectly held—is it a gift? O I accept! Place it by my pillar, which is held by a man unspooling a riddle in the bottom right-hand corner. The pillar is salt, or else it prefigures salt. It represents eternity, or something else I can’t name. It speaks to the neck that holds up my head like a pair of scissors holds a butterfly before asking what next O where are my manners, I have tucked them behind the curtain and your faces, children, are like pieces of the cloud.
You play a game called “stump,” because it sounds like fun— you hammer nails into what was once living. It’s too dark to count the rings, so you go somewhere brighter. The library, which is lit with snow. 8 a.m. and you drag your tote bag up the hill to chant Te Deum with the others. You don’t know the translation— the voices of your classmates, like ribbons in your ear. Everyone is wearing very stylish clogs. Everyone loves Meredith Monk. You go to class inside a barn. You live in a house with twelve other girls, who are always barefoot and wearing slip dresses. In class, you learn that language is a spell, so you try your best to fall under it. Instead, you mispronounce Foucault. You trip over the thorn bush and get sent to the infirmary. The nurses call you “Lucy.” You wear a little white gown. Anemic, you talk into an ashtray. They feed you raisinets before bed. Your mentor calls your name. Every sound, like a cloud. He writes with pink chalk, one arm tied behind him. His office is a jacuzzi in which everything floats. His door is always open, his ear to the payphone, and he wants to know from where in your childhood your poems emerge. For homework, you listen to prepared piano. You write an essay about the Popemobile, a crown of sonnets from inside. You win a little prize, and wear the sash for the rest of your life. On weekends, you work in an empty gymnasium— the floors gaudy with wax. You wipe down the treadmills, and spin for hours in a brown leather chair. At the party, you hear the most specific compliment: one girl tells another she has the mouth of Cape Cod. It’s a costume party, and you’re dressed like a Dalmatian. The smell of something burning makes you all turn your heads. Now your arms are like ivy, passing buckets of water down the line.
I am sweating profusely. I am talking through my nose, which is a tunnel of wind. I cry and I cry wolf. I hide and no one looks for me. Mrs. Hall says, “draw your family tree.” Instead, I draw a pack of dogs, A family of long tailed lemurs. Everyone thinks I’m making a joke. One person, the teacher’s aide, looks out for me. She holds open the door, lets me cut her in the lunch line. Nurse Kate, she hates me— hands me bunches of tongue depressors, won’t let me call home. Recess, I am rolling in the flowers. Girls, all named Allie, hang on parallel bars. I stuff a balloon under my t-shirt. I say, “Look! A baby!” Everyone laughs, asks me how I was made.
Luciana Arbus-Scandiffio is a poet at UT Austin’s Michener Center for Writers. In 2018, she received an Academy of American Poets prize (selected by Dorothea Lasky). Luci has two lesbian moms, and is originally from New Jersey.
Still photos captured from “How The Eye Functions” (1941), an educational film by K.K. Bosse released as part of the Knowledge Builders Film Series, with the supervision of McCrory Studios and narration by Douglas Harlton. From the Prelinger Archives at archive.org/details/HowtheEy1941.
