"i have fourgotten" by c.a.m.c.a.

(on misplaced guilt and a post-partum depression)

i have                       four
gotten what people
say about me good bad all spoons stirring coffee

i neglected my plants
i don't plan for dinner

don't we all make it up as we go along
way away

i find myself watching clocks
want
ing 
them to tell me how to feel better a'day
properly responsibly gratefully you 

i time clocks
to see how      fast they run
they're always early from
not where i expect them to be
no term singled out
yet i still four got them

in this self inflicted blackandblue
i wasn't kind i harbored guilt
i[headstrong] told the anchor to leave and not look back

so i watch clocks
although i have fourgotten why i should be kind to 
myself in the first place

"Colour Wheel" by callie atta

Colour Wheel. 2007.

colour wheel                                      sets me dries me                                             like red

 into the grand canyon

                                                                                                                love

is sometimes    light                                         for all the hours

for all the hours in the world I would leave this city to          find you

tempered tempo

we explorers look so similar from afar

and yet on ourselves we etch I am different I am so wholehearted I am so complete I am stealing your lines

bass backbeat coming up from the apartment below

12:22 am on a week day night

it’s freezing outside it’s april outside

I feel like I’m learning too much too early or not late                       enough

timing was a                                       stumbling block.

"toute de suite" by callie atta

tout de suite. 2008. 

granite points and shifts of some-rock

the objects of our affection might change

to replay the chord to box up the wine bottles I left at your sink

we scrambled to the top and broke out the camera

I can hear your good-bye slowly condensing flat third on the front window

                describing me. peeling paint instead of the bridge we climbed.

with a photograph we drew our weapons

four sharps but the melody still comes through.

I thought I would live in a thousand countries, with hundreds stored                                     still                                        as if the wars did not come to them

I played rogue you’re the playwright

slowly the birds of the spring the gulls the link

the ice fields loosen their hold to the ground

three inches each year will bring the whole shelf down

the north and the south; my love was not like that

hearts do not steer when you ask them to turn

melodies surprise the mind when they’ve been lost for years

and exposing the heart’s route can wash away the trail

"bone index" by callie atta

bone index. 2008.

a beach a glass of wine a sunset

two hands about to press

clasped in mind yet fleeing

they understand

their place is the same

they live in the same world

crux would rather

            if one is green the other is green

three rallies in the sky, the gods meeting to

ease the rain horizon

colour wheel retraces timid pulsing for love

"Azores" story introduction by callie atta

Azores: introduction. 2012.

A story of triumph, of overcoming yourself. A young woman is led on a journey to the islands at the center of the Atlantic.

Ilah woke with a start. She heard the cows shifting and yet it was only 5:00 am. Too early. Too early. She thought many things in her life had been too early. She had learned too early that people cannot be trusted, which then became I can’t be trusted. She was tired of the routine, of the same thing for months on end. Months that led nowhere. She was tired of being tired and feeling nothing for days she worked long and hard for. 

Today was the day something would change inside her. Looking back, she would know this had been the day. It doesn't take long to feel the shift - it can be a bank account, a robbery, a cold drink. But things change all the time.

She slowly stretched and opened her eyes. Sun was breaking through the blowing curtains. She had picked them herself on a shopping trip with her mother months ago. Try them, it will add some fresh air and openness to the place. They didn’t. 

"Zenith times" by callie atta

Zenith times. 2011.

I am a small scar

          Harlequin’s mid-day

I am a small near

          Harlequin’s mid-day

I am a small attendance

          Harlequin’s mid-day chance

To light upon

          Stone sooner barrage

To near to stand outside

I am small formal where it lands

          Thirty-two year crown

Seeing you there

          Crux for affected laid out largo

Stance in flux nadir and reference

          For I am a small block

Of tip or place to look

          For all there is

All this happened in water

          The authored turn

Stone to hand to swish

          Sink and then there’s atlantis

In pocket book format

"The fisher and the fish" by callie atta

The fisher and the fish. 2007.

Then it let go. 

With a pop and hissing, the fishing line ran through my fingers so fast that I had not realized I lost the fish. Here we go. Another sign. I was always searching for hemlock, for word posts, signposts. 

None met my childhood dreams. And yet there I was, at 19, running my finger tips along the backs of shelves in my grandfather’s fishing hut. Looking for floats, weights, an old tie? He sent me in for some heavier line, and I thumbed through the boxes and piles. Old hooks, jigs, orange for dawn, red for dusk.

It was the quiet water that drew me out to the docks. It was that quiet moment, between life and the next day. 

When it was silent and grey and nothing mattered. There were no worries or plans.

What is it about objects we can touch that make us feel sure? What difference does it make to hold something? Thinking about it makes it just as real as it’s ever going to be. And yet.

It doesn't quite.

Fishing from the pier, as I often do, has taught me to hang on and to let go. 

It is not the map that locates us – it is the fawning over accomplishment, wishing to be all that we are, but only sometimes. It’s like feeling sheepish when there is not even a reason to feel that way. If I could bridle my emotions like horses, make the local news personal, I could leave a few things packed in time’s trunk. I could make them personal.

To be in two places at once, the fisher and the fish. I could move through the water, a foot from the bottom, where time loses some meaning. 

No seconds no ticking. Heaven. 

We are the fisher and the fish. Our dreams coming from our blue depths, the places we haven’t shown anyone.

To be quiet, and say good-bye with a little dignity, was what took place. I still wanted to shout as loud as I could, don’t go. But the urgency and sting that greets us those first few days, eases a little. Growing into a unworried friend, we walk with our minds on things that are a little further beyond.

Worry. Damn attendant that I apparently enjoy since I seek it out. Like a tilted clay pot I would like to make it and place it on my shelf. 

And yet worry is a different artifact. It is not beautiful, it does not really show care, and it is impersonal. At the end of time, when we read our books and tally the score of how nice we were – worry does not even tell others we cared about something. There is no nurturing because of worry. It is a closed lump in the throat. In my experience anyway.

"World less" by callie atta

World less. 2007

notebook pages torn

separated from the coil

power lines

swept away

from the solid wooden poles as if nothing 

has a place any more

do you believe in policy

does it work for you

three dimensional feelings like love like nostalgia

bruise like a fight

rising temperatures soften the roads

concrete, hard for decades between the city’s places,

softens and creaks.

memory lies

"if everything happens that can" by callie atta

if everything happens that can whenever
salmon migrate out of doors
to touch fins with close encounter with a kind of rush
i would you committed to do the best played out
tapped out we adore black and white films
and the stooges like an oath
varying weathered