Giannina Braschi - Yo-Yo Boing!

with no short circuit of communication, as it was impossible to short-circuit because it had surged from the pleasure of a night when the drunkenness and its hangover had freed her from her anxieties of feeling clenched in her own jaws or fists, bound to her body at the hips. But it was necessary to feel the heaviness and the bitterness of her body, to feel the whip and the bar, in order to later soar like birds and sing as she had never sung before, in perfect tone with the color of the music, which, emerging from her mouth full of feverish illusion, would communicate the splendor of her agony set free. She had to sustain the note, hold it firmly, loving it, but resisting and pushing it so it would keep rising and surging up through the elbows of the imagination and down through the armpits of the earthquake, and trembling in the vibrant, divided measure of the tone, and she had to conduct it with the baton while resisting its invasion from afar, and control her emotions, and be the producer, the motor, the speed, as well as the ear listening to the rise of emotion and interrupting the imbalance, disharmony, tone-deafness, and be the hand holding, grabbing, lifting, and encouraging it, and causing the pain of pleasure as her blood rises. And she had to do all of this, not only with the flight of her hands, but with slow and deliberate movements, and by lowering her eyes intensifying the movement of her hands, and by following the movement of silence and the pause of her finger, allowing her hips and shoulders and breathing to be moved by her hands, and by conducting the measure and the diapason, making her neck arch back and her brows furrow, maintaining the emotional current running throughout her body, while her feet are tapping to the beat in her head, her eyes are feeling the tremble, and she opens her mouth uttering certain mute words, and then lowers her tone and submerges it in a balanced effervescence that lowers the voice even further until it vanishes, down the hatch, and then it rounds out the corner of her lips mouthing a round O, and then a vibrant, half-open E, to dot the aggressive, divided ithat precedes and interposes another gracious figurative note laughing like a goat, which is an Ethat comes before a white, open A. Proud and distant, aminor climbs the scale of Amajor and from there looks for Eand tells it what to do with bountiful U, and Ois too self-absorbed, it’s like a closed ball, assuming it can’t join Eor ibecause they’re always together or mingling with other fertile couples, but Ois the motor of O, of the exclamation OH-OH!It closes its mouth slowly, but the yawns dawns again — and opens its desire to see the sky cloudy — yawn falling from the sky — open, open your mouth wide, never close it, even a yawn, like a prayer, can turn into a replica, a replica — of the same, the very same thing when the open mouth opens the open mouth O, it becomes the exclamation OH-OH!And it awkwardly balances on its two swings, on its two hips, moving, holding, and enclosing it in the claustrophobia of a whole orange, a full moon, or the sun in its highest permanence and splendor, the other vowels of the alphabet are making their pilgrimage wigwagging, zigzagging toward the closed O, toward its obscurity and silence, musically rendering their desire to be loved or joined at last to O, imagine U’s fury when it almost touches it, but Ufeels like it’s missing a few hairs on its head or it’s missing a hat to cover its bounty and protect it from the burning sun. And by now, A, standing tippy-toe on the top step, arches its leafy branches covered with herbs and bouquets that make it feel so important in the power of the music and the ladder, and all of them, each and every one at its own level, feel so potent and vigorous and fulfill their mission of exalting the production of her name, in complementing and developing all her vigor, from the tip of O’s big toe to the weedy crop on top of E, they are formed by forms that have formed forms, have tightened the measure of her forms, exercised her muscles, heard the grumbling in her belly, the rumbling of her ribs, the knuckles and joints in her fingers, the underarm hair, the counterbeat, the countersweat of the smell, the sulfur and the sopor, the white steam of black breath, the black steam of white breath, and the intense soporific contractions, the warm breath of the open mouth, closing and opening, opening and closing in the slow and deliberate movement, mindful of the movement it makes when opening and closing, supreme control of herself over her own death, watching it while closing her eyes and falling silent as they close, listening to the gentle tremble of her eyelids and gently trembling with them in the splendor of this gentle tremble, in the union of the body with the body, dying and opening, contracting and fading, dividing and closing itself off from everything, on all sides, full of permanencies.

— You open it.

— Why me? You’ve got the keys. I gave them to you. Besides, I left mine inside.

— Why did you leave them inside?

— Because I knew you had yours.

— Why do you depend on me?

— Just open it, and make it fast. And the worst is when you get up in the morning and leave the door open on your way out. With money scattered across the kitchen counter, right next to the entrance. Mindless of the danger you put me in. I sleep until ten. And when I get up and throw some clothes on, I go to open the door and find it’s already open. How careless. To leave the door open. Somebody could walk in and rob me and rape me. And you don’t give a rat’s ass.

— Of course I do. That was careless of me.

— Yeah, what about now? Scratch the knob and I’ll kill you.

— What about now? Let me do it my way.

— Hey, when you’re with me, it’s my way or the highway. Or you want me to call the neighbors so they can see what a spazz you are? C’mon, what kind of jock gets mocked by the locks? Next time you ring my bell, I’m going to ignore it. You think I like it when you ring my bell. No, I don’t like it when you ring my bell. If you’ve got keys, why don’t you use them?

— Because you’re inside. Why can’t you open the door when I ring the bell?

— Because it pisses me off to be inside, hearing the keys fumbling in the lock and hoping with all my heart that you’ll open it yourself, with all my heart, a jingle-jangle later, you give up and start ding-donging, as if I were sitting around all day just waiting to let you in. Suppose nobody is home. Suppose I’m reading. Why do I have to get up to let you in? Do I look like a doorman? Besides, you have keys and they fit. They sure do. You just have to learn how to handle them. It’s no big deal. You’re always making a fuss.

— Shut up.

— You shut up. Step aside.

— Gladly.

— Watch and learn to handle the locks, effortlessly. The rusty one for the bottom hole, a jiggle to the left, and this skinny one for the top slot. You do this just to annoy me. And you do. You certainly do. Never. You hear. I’m not in love. It was never the case. Get it through your head. I don’t love you. You got that? Sometimes I say I love you before I go to bed at night — the intimacy — when I see you snoring as sound as a basset hound, I say — how could I have been so mean to him? Maybe it’s then that I forget what I’m missing in life. But of course, it’s like seeing a corpse, of course, all the good things appear, and I breathe heavy and murmur deep into your ears: I love you. And you roll over in your sleep and wrap your legs around mine, breathing heavy, up and down, with your thumb in your pucker like a lollipop sucker, like a big fat baby, a big lazy oaf. I shake my head no, no, no, no, but I love you, I guess I do, at least that’s what I feel and think when I see you sleeping. Maybe it’s a way of convincing myself that I do. Jabalí had something, a pushing something, a driving energy, even with all his shortcuts and lies. But you, my buddy-buddy, busy-body, are indulgent with me. Sweet and complacent. Why do I always have to throw a hairy conniption to provoke a reaction? If I had another room, if I could close myself away from you, if I wouldn’t have to hear you snoring, lights out, dozing dog. I don’t have the energy to sit at my desk and write two simple words. I crawl back in bed, breathing heavy on your cheeks. When I see you dead like that, I realize how much we have in common. Where is my aspiration? To feel inspired one must aspire. What do I aspire to be: to be inspired, or at least to have a freehold set of mind, free from mental blocks. A house too small, a bad excuse but one nonetheless. Nothing on the road so keep walking, bad and good times, anxiety raining on me — don’t get upset by the downpour, drenching the brain, think clear — but I can’t. The problem comes when I realize I’ve done nothing and I’m still in bed rocking, waiting for Godot or a change of climate. I get so angry at myself that I stand up and write my rage and feel good again, and I change, and I change, and I change, but I never really change. Oh, I skim through the book, and I say it’s growing. So strong. So beautiful. I forgive myself momentarily as I do when I look at my big nose in the mirror. If I stare at it long enough sometimes I can fix it, or at least accept it, depending on my mood. I would like to see myself in the mirror always the same, or maybe like a stranger in the street at whom I smile and stare because I see in him something I see in myself. I always stare to make sure I’m not lost. Do you recognize me? You’re staring at me and you smile. Why? Do you like me? I’d like to ask you a question. Would you smile at me the same way if you knew who I am? Would you still smile so sweet? And you know what it does to me when I get up in the middle of the night, first, suffocating from the heat, I turn off the heater and go to the bathroom only to find the closets open — what’s worse — the sheets hanging off the shelves, the incarnation of my nightmare — the risen dead — and not the good ones. I try to close the door and it derails — and the ghosts are hovering. I’ve asked you, please, clean out the closets. The stench of your sneakers and skanky sweatshirts. I go to the kitchen because my throat is dry, damn, you know the heat, I open the fridge, and my water bottle, where is the cap to my water bottle? Don’t you know the germs get in and the fizz goes out, and I don’t want my water smelling like your chicken curry sandwich. You ruined it. Now nobody drinks from this bottle. I forbid it. I’m throwing it out. I go to the sink and what do I find in the dishwasher? Stacks of dirty dishes, sitting there for eons, with carrot peels and globs of brie stuck on the rims. I’ve had enough. I can’t take it anymore. Your damn keys locking and unlocking my locks. And during the weekends your insolence is unbearable. At least during the week, I’m happy when I hear you leave at eight. Liberty — I say to myself with my eyes half open. I can read in peace. And if I see Bloom watching Gerty from a cliff with his hand on his crotch, all I have to do is draw the shades and let myself go if I feel like it. How sweet. Not to see your face. But now if I don’t wake up, you don’t wake up. You set the alarm for what? To piss me off and snore some more until ten. Because I have an alarm inside, that’s for sure. When I wake up, you know you’re in trouble and you say: