Amy Ouzoonian

Editor of the recently released anthology,
"In the Arms of Words: Poems for Tsunami Relief"
(Foothills Publishing/Sherman Asher Press)
and the critically acclaimed anthology,
"Skyscrapers, Taxis and Tampons," (Fly By Night Press 1999),
Amy Ouzoonian is a poet, playwright and editor
for A Gathering of the Tribes magazine.
Ouzoonian is the publisher and founder
of Lock n' Load Press (June 2005)
and the author of a book of poems
"Your Pill" (Foothills Publishing 2004).
Ouzoonian lives and writes in Brooklyn, NY.


Thrust, Leave

Something comforting hid in the locked up green of Jackson Square. At night gutter-
punks try to hock it for a little of what they need. They don't have to sell out, they only
haveta buy their way back on the rails. Loosin' sight for a bite of beignet. A taste of
day-old love.

I've walked the river walk, walked it ripped chicken-wired. Heard men and women and
children bet me that they knew where I got my shoes and I never paid attention to the
talk, just walked on along broken bottles and river-boats with bitches who believed they
were witches and vampires sucking the psychic life force from my speech.

If you sweep the floor of a gutter-punk club house you might fall in. If you take in a dog
thirty-three' ll move in and sixty-six' ll get run out. They get fat offa' the stench of
Bourbon street. I've seen them from Dauphine like monster ticks ready to burst. Little
pustules of disappointment. I've stepped over them, fed them, fought them, nursed their
mother-needs, kicked them up and out of my head, rolled their memory around my
tongue when I thought I'd given up the taste of loss forever.

It's sorta like stealing stones from Marie LaVeau's grave. You're not supposed to but
people thrust and receive, dust and believe, leave and trust that they'll never be back. But
it's in the water, more so cause there's a whole city of assholes and cheaters livin'
beneath those waters. They shake hands like their holdin dead men for ransom. Like
their beatin' their whores to make them want to live again.

At 12 o'clock on a school day, the silver and gold creole babies making us laugh-
spinning bicycle tires on their heads, tap-rats taping OE bottle caps to their sneakers,
trying to con a new yorker, makin money for their crack-head momma's watching them,
making sure not one coin or dollar disappears.

A vanishing act-like letters- like HIV and AIDS are code for people who die together.
Sweating. Sticking to bed-sheets. So nice and free; spreading their love around
unsheathed.

-Scratch that. The only pool I played was when we chased each other around the
Marigny and made love in the Hide Out's comer pocket. Like the time he came back for
a second chance and all he really wanted was another cup of gumbo. I unhooked my rib-
cage and let him out.

I've been mistaken for black paper and stabbed until the moon bled through.

I've been affectionate where my gifts were buried beside girlhood.

I've been a woman who has shuddered "burn, burn plastic likeness of myself."

I caught the plane, the cab, the train, your tears dodging where I found strength.


I knit my eyes into a quilt between the legs of New York City and St. Phillip's,  New Orleans.
I fell in the cathedral's bell one green-lit night, when he said it wasn't safe and I've been
just fine, ever since.



To Mother, Your Daughter Understands

She drops maple-seed propellers.
They spin
Away from her ready to receive arms.
Arms that wait for mother words
Hold her in her in her in her
Embrace whispers...

Too loud
To hear in
This room of mirrors
Where reflections only show
The mad whipping
Of maple-seed chainsawfans
Ripping through insults
Under a purple Bermuda sun
Fitting perfect through
Symmetrically correct bagels
Emitting the faithful perfumes of Judea
And the belief in
Smiling pale faced babies
With borealis eyes
Conjuring words
Exchanging insults
And pleasantries
Found in the Torah.
Though conversion forbid me
From synagogues
I know them all.

2.

Mother, mama, matri, ima, madre
Your hands wear these names
Like rings meant to be kissed.
I banshee-screech them
Between tears and broken-
Told-you-so relationships.

3.

After having dropped
From three story building windows
Your looking-back-at-me face
In mirrors, bedpans, lava lamps,
Sequins on Flappers' dresses
And this shot of whiskey
I dilute myself in.
Blueingreen
Bluein Green
Blue in Green
Blue in
Green
Blue
in
Green
Blue
in

You are queen mama!

Chastising unspoken for daughters
With unutterances bursting from the seams

Seems as if I've written spanked pouty children
Into corners
After having isolated myself
In poorly lit crevices.
Huddled.
Too many years, raking away ego
until it became pretentious

And you send my poems back
Inside a self addressed stamped envelope

4.
30 years ago,
I was writing plays-
Articulating the insanity of our family,
That your father denounced his temple
To chain his floating children together-
All from inside your egg.

Filtering blood and syllable,

Symphonizing formations
Of David's star.
Preparing for what should have been
But would never be
Fan belt tongues

Spoken in a dialogue of Greek
or Aramaic
Misread from Torah.

Mama, I wanted to tell you that your Father was spited
By reeking Death of ancestral
Support, love and wealth.

Your sheet metal voice
Hides my view
Of his whip, loving to spoil and control you
Grasping over your back
by the fist of Osiris

And for this
I can forgive your trembling hands
For violating our emotions
But I can't forgive myself,
For wanting
to Hold them.



Write of Way

Write Of Way: A Manual For Mass Instruction

In Hephaestus welded chariots
In metallic traveling frames
In dream faced pigment
these are raging devices:
Isis is my country
rebirthing lava ink spelling out
long forgotten phrases:
thin wheels
riding between yellow lines.

Crime- no, we don't mean no trouble:

Pygmalions chisel our bodies into these streets
and fall in, single file,
we scream suns from our eyes.

Organically coasting on chains that move us
no holding onto this howling ocean
smiling from eclipsing ideas.

We live on gravel, oil of afterbirth.
Horns honk as these wheels jump
medians, chase traffic light constellations,
grab handfuls of the moon.

Turn signal the cerebral

Oh, Glorious motor heart: run and plow
through a 10 speed God.
We will ride on the revved up intelligent engine
stab through the exhaust with spokes and
these monkeys, in their anti-locked
anti-imagination                    traveling cages
can parade in traffic
eat rust, vehicular demons, in no easy steps.