Claire Rabkin

SIREN SONG

Tonight i’m feeling desperately alive and ready to dance
This is
utter
Acceptance
ready to dance with anyone who will spin me fast enough
I will lose sight of where
I am.
I’ve practically forgotten where I am 
anyway
This is
utter Dizzy with drink delirious
on this ship
moving as Kol nidre
fast as wind can blow
This is utter I grant you
I’ve never felt like this before
I give you
this is the best I’ve ever felt I forgive you
I’ve had such a beautiful day I forgive you
The acceptance is sublimely
beautiful
Here head  
over heals I forgive you

the village swarms — I forgive you
captures the angel, cuts 
her wings SHAME
SHAME I will give you promises — kisses of honey — promises I will keep
— swimming holes, drinking rum from a box — I will give you promises that I break
put your mouth 
over my nose
open your mouth
Shame — on an angel, I will let you cry into my mouth — on an
angel for coming here and stealing all of the love in the world
I will let you piss on my leg
make a sound with your mouth into my mouth
and escape aaahh aha aha ha ah

I will probably
SING
give you 
SING
a baby ah ahya aha ya ya

singin’ it
singin the siiiren song it’s a reckoning. Something,
something I
something I wasn’t able to
sing it!
still not sure I’m ready to
I am, but
I will be a rad fucking mom
bursting
pulsing at my temple

When you put your mouth on my mouth will you sing a song that comes out of my nostrils?
the siren song
aboard the ship, dizzy with drink woozing
alalalala aaa 
sing
from motion sickness
dancing, turning, speaking language almost known, still not known, from each 
of my nostrils 
kol nidre

meteor shower la-ah, la-ha, la-ah, la-ha,
above. Suggestive of celestial disorder rocketing out
of place into rearrangements of orders. 

My body’s a bird — it flies — covered in feathers, a bird.
It’s a reckoning.  
My mouth is a light. Light as a feather on birds. Light. My mouth is fire. Breathe a bird. Breathe 
on fire. Fire breath on a bird that flies in the night. A bird alight

Something I wasn’t ready to say before and now still not sure how ready I 
am but
it’s losing
air

I made a promise, one to you, one to him.  The promises contradict each other. Whose promise 
is a priority. Can I break both promises and be true? Is either promise true? Is one promise truer
than the other? 

Is truth a promise la-ah, la-ha, la-ah, la-ha, laah—aahh

May all such vows between myself and God be annulled; May they be void and of no effect; 
May I be absolved of them and released from them.  May these vows not be considered vows
These oaths not be considered oaths
and These promises not be considered promises

They jumped from the ship to their deaths, never able to
reach her

I’m crouching in the dark on my bed with a microphone in my hand, wearing headphones I 
found on the street, trying to make sense of desire.  

This is the place where desire is most tied to physicality, to immediacy and intimacy.  
—something invisible holds me— also the place where desire is silenced, is stifled, held.  It’s 
also the place where I talk to you about power.
It's also the place where I fling my body into the water from the safety of the ship.