Sara Tracey

When the Jam Starts

I tell you you do not / know me if you think I will not / kill you.
                        —Sharon Olds “The Promise”
 
You think it begins on the jammer line,
when the whistle blows, when we’re all hips
and toe stops on the track. I tell you it begins
in the kitchen, standing over a pot of water--
which will indeed boil while you watch—ready
to dangle a mouth guard from a teaspoon until
the rubber is soft and ready to cup your teeth.
It begins with eight wheels and a hardwood floor.
Impatience. Imbalance. With bruised knees
and rink rash, a bag of ball bearings, blood
on the track. We all confuse violence with affection
from time to time, don’t we? Here, the harder I hit,
the more they love me. After the whistle, we are
a beast with many backs. Don’t call it chaos.
We are only reckless in our naming. 
​

---

Stella Teaches Me the Body

                                          
                                             because we’ve all been loved & demolished     
                                                                    –Jan Beatty, “Shower w/notebook”
 
I have no interest in a body free from scars.
 
I want to know where you’ve been cut,
          where you first learned
                                        the taste of fire.
 
Once, I wanted tenderness/a boy
who would touch
my face
as if it were made of glass.
 
                                        I will not break. My body        
                                                                                was made to stretch.
 
I keep track of bruises in a spiral notebook.
          #217: knees against cement
          #329: I swear, he didn’t mean to…
 
                                        Good morning? I am black and blue.
                                        This is my body saying to me: no more.
                      ​Men are just flesh.
          They whisper my name
so no one knows they need me.
 
Forget propriety.
          I am not a vault.
What I take in I do not keep. Wear a hat/
tap shoes/boxing gloves.
Use a condom.
 
          I used to be afraid
          to say cunt, to say touch me here.
          I used to be afraid to say no.
 
                                        The first man I loved taught me
to use my body for revenge.
          He never used his fists, but if you met him,
          you wouldn’t believe me.
                    When I broke my nose on Christmas eve
                                                                                          ​kissing
                                             an icy patch of concrete,
                    my mother wanted to call the cops.
                    
                    He kept me
                                   hungry/afraid
                                   but treated my body like a gift
                                                        he was forever unwrapping.
 
Once, I loved a man who couldn’t see me
            unless I crawled into his lap. Careless/reckless
                        a man with hands made for prayer
                        and demolition. I begged
                                    him to notice. I left my front door open
                                    so he could find me/enter/
                        where he wanted. When he was a child
                                    his father hung himself. When he was a child
                                    he learned how to leave people
                                                wanting.
 
I used to want a man
            who could make me feel small,
            lift me like a gun. 
​

---

Weathervane

It’s a dead battery night on the interstate,
a black ice morning.  You mumble
at the doorjamb of sleep, telling secrets.
I’d say good-night and start walking home--
if I knew where that was. 
Instead, I stand on the back porch,
finger licked and aiming skyward, 
and listen for the wind to point the way.  


 


--
Sara Tracey is a poet and teacher in Chicago, Illinois. She is the author of Some Kind of Shelter (forthcoming from Misty Publications), and Flood Year (dancing girl press, 2009). Her work has recently appeared in Vinyl, The Collagist, Harpur Palate and Passages North. She is a regular performer in The Chicago Poetry Bordello and a teaching artist in The Rooster Moans Poetry Cooperative.