underneath: I want, I know, I feel; then he tears you apart from
behind, inside. Y ou could use words to say what it was and
how it felt, the dark banging into you, pressing up against you,
pinning you down, a suffocating mask over your face or a
granite mountain pressing you under it, you’re a fossil, delicate,
ancient, buried alive and perfectly preserved, some bones
between the mountain and the level ground, pressed flat on the
cement under the dark, the great, still, thick, heavy dark. Y ou
could sing pain soft or you could holler; you could use the
voices o f the dead i f you had to, the other skeletons pressed in
the cement. Y ou could write the words on the cement blind in
the dark, pushed on your knees, a finger dipped in blood; or
pushed flat, the dark on you, the cement under you, N in o ’s
knife touching the edge o f your skin. The poems said: Andrea,
me too, I’m on m y knees, afraid and alone, and I sing; I’m
pushed flat, rammed, torn up, and I sing; I weep, I rage, I sing; I
hurt, I’m sad, I sing; I want, I’m lost, I sing. Y ou learned the
names o f things, the true names, short, abrupt, unkind, and
you learned to sing them, your heart soared from them, the
song o f them, the great, simple music o f them. The dark
stayed dark and hard but now it had a sound in it, a bittersweet
lyric, music carried on the edge o f a broken line. Then m y
m omma found the words I wrote and called me awful names,
foul names, in a screaming voice, in filthy hate, she screamed I
was dirty, she screamed she wanted me o ff the face o f the
earth, she screamed she’d lock me up. I left on the bus to N ew
Y ork . N o one’s locking me up. When the men said the names
they whispered and touched you; and flat on the cement, still
there were no locks, no walls. When the men said the names
they were all tangled in you and their skin was melting into
you the w ay night covers everything, they curved and curled.
There was the edge o f N in o’s knife on your skin, down your
back, with him in you and the cement under you, your skin
scraped away, burned o ff almost, the sweat on you turning as
cold as the edge o f his knife; try to breathe. She screamed
foul hate and spit obscene words and tore up all your things, all
your poems you had bought and the words you had written;
and she said she’d lock you up; no one locks me up. Men
whispered the same names she said and touched you all over,
they were on you, they covered you, they hid you, they were
the weight o f midnight on you, a hundred years o f midnight,
they held you down and kept you still and it was the only
stillness you had and you could hear a heartbeat; men
whispered names and touched you all over. Men wanted you
all the time and never had enough o f you and the cement was a
great, gray plain stretching out forever and you could wander
on it forever, free, with signs that they had been there and
promises they would come back, abrasions, burns, thin,
exquisite cuts; not locked up. Under them, covered, buried,
pinned still— the dark ramming into you— you could hear a
heartbeat. And somewhere there were ones who could sing.
Whisper; touch everywhere; sing.
T H R E E
In January 1965
(Age 18)
M y name is Andrea. It means manhood or courage, from the
ancient Greek. I found this in Paul Tillich, although I like
Martin Buber better because I believe in pure love, I-Thou,
love without boundaries or categories or conditions or
making someone less than you are; not treating people like
they are foreign or lower or things, I-It. Prejudice is I-It and
hate is I-It and treating people like dirt is I-It. In Europe only
boys are named Andrea, Andre, Andreus, but m y mother
didn’t know that and so I got named Andrea because she
thought it was pretty. Philosophy comes from Europe but
poetry comes from America too. I was born down the street
from Walt Whitman’s house, on M ickle Street in Cam den,
N ew Jersey, in 1946, after the bomb. I’m not sad but I wish
everyone didn’t have to die. Everyone will burn in a split
second, even less, they w o n ’t even know it but I bet it will hurt
forever; and then there will be nothing, forever. I can’t stand it
because it could be any second at all, just even this second now
or the next one, but I try not to think about it. I fought it for
a while, when I had hope and when I loved everyone, I-Thou,
not I-It, and I suffered to think they would die. When I was
fourteen I refused to face the wall during a bomb drill. T hey
would ring a bell and we all had to file out o f class, in a line, and
stand four or five deep against a wall in the hall and you had to
put your hands behind your head and your elbows over your
ears and it hurt to keep your arms like that until they decided
the bomb wasn’t coming this time. I thought it was stupid so I
wouldn’t do it. I said I wanted to see it coming if it was going
to kill me. I really did want to see it. O f course no one would
see it coming, it was too fast, but I wanted to see something, I
wanted to know something, I wanted to know that this was it
and I was dying. It would just be a tiny flash o f a second, so
small you couldn’t even imagine it, but I wanted it whatever it
was like. I wanted my whole life to go through m y brain or to
feel m yself dying or whatever it was. I didn’t want to be facing
a wall pretending tomorrow was coming. I said it outraged
m y human dignity to have my elbows over m y ears and be
facing a wall and just waiting like an asshole when I was going
to die; but they didn’t think fourteen-year-olds had any
human dignity and you weren’t allowed to say asshole even
the minute before the bomb came. They punished me or
disciplined me or whatever it is they think they’re doing when
they threaten you all the time. The bomb was coming but I
had to stay after school. I was supposed to be frightened o f
staying after school instead o f the bomb or more than the
bomb. Adults are so awful. Their faces get all pulled and tight
and mean and they want to hit you but the law says they can’t
so they make you miserable for as long as they can and they
call your parents to say you are bad and they try to get your
parents to hit you because it’s legal and to punish you some
more. You ask them why you have to cover your ears with
your elbows and they tell you it is so your ear drums w on ’t get
hurt from the noise. They consult each other in whispers and