Eugenia Leigh

May 7, 2021

“Undiagnosed” by Eugenia LeighPosted by

Eugenia Leigh

UNDIAGNOSED

I’ve let a regular who tipped alright
fuck me. Standing. In someone else’s bathroom.

Macramé of silver grunions
manic on the sand.

When my father kidnapped us,
I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to be

feral. I wanted to test my luck.
Plane rides fall short of that first plane ride,

bookended by police. Men fail
to meet his standard of surprise. Three a.m. wakings

on school nights. Sometimes to whip us for imagined sins,
sometimes to dance.

I need to see the music
quaking in the furniture. Chair legs jittering, cheap wood

threatening to split.
I took my first steps outside this country with a herd

of church kids on my nineteenth birthday. I convinced them
to drive to Tijuana. That’s how I found the one

I bribed to drag the virgin out of me.
Before I tried to kill him, I saw ten nameless angels

bungling about his dorm. His roommate
(Emmanuel) was never there. Then

the torment set in. I wouldn’t leave my top bunk for weeks.
It’s possible they never loved me. They loved

what I made possible.
Low-hanging harvest moons swing

in swerving windshields. The tint of flushed
skin, biblically red.

We never saw my father sleep
when it was time to sleep. He wound around the house at night,

a broken or horrifying toy that wouldn’t shut off.
Or he slept for weeks.

I was the one who would risk
rousing him to check. Thirty years

I lived with the urge to run into traffic. And did.
Windows thrown open, floor-standing

rosewood speakers flooding our home with rock operas,
we couldn’t hear our voices.

That’s when we knew he was happy.
That’s when we knew we could breathe.

—from Rattle #71, Spring 2021
Tribute to Neurodiversity

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Eugenia Leigh: “I was diagnosed with complex PTSD and bipolar II disorder in my mid-thirties, a few years after my first poetry collection was published. My first book chronicles the speaker’s history of childhood abuse and its ramifications in her young adult self, but now, with the added perspectives of my recent diagnoses and with the privilege of mental health help, my newer poems reexamine and complicate that earlier narrative while asking, ‘How do we live with what we’ve had to live through?’” (web)

 

Eugenia Leigh was the guest on Rattlecast #91. Click here to watch …

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February 13, 2013

“Destination: Beautiful” by Eugenia LeighPosted by

Eugenia Leigh

DESTINATION: BEAUTIFUL

I’ve come to hunt a time capsule at the west end
of Sunset Boulevard. To rummage the beach for remnants
of old friends who’ve abandoned themselves to sprout

new families. Suddenly everyone has cleaved
to strangers made of diamonds and cake, capable of waving away
whole bruised childhoods—rotten fruits we used to feed

this drooling ocean. Years ago, a friend and I
hiked the Will Rogers trail. We caught a dim rainbow
at the cliff, where he stood and hid

his hands in his pockets. We sucked in the Pacific,
the traffic. We met an elderly man called Timothy—a retired
tour guide who slept in his car with a book of red-letter scripture

seatbelted next to him. I hoped I would die
on that mountain because I thought, that close to God,
it would be a hassle to send me to hell.

In the memory of that day, I am alone. The friend is there—also
alone. He leans from the cliff and scans the city dots
for his beautiful girl. His, now,

wife. Wife. The word bends like a soft
branch in my mouth. I’ve learned not to choke on it
by lying achingly still. The waves reach and reach for me

over the black ocean. The tender white hands of children
petting a large, harmless corpse.

—from Rattle #37, Summer 2012
2013 Neil Postman Award Winner

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Eugenia Leigh: “I own a photograph of this moment when my friend stands at the cliff with his back to the rainbow. We’d stopped midway up the Will Rogers trail (in Los Angeles) at a resting area called Inspiration Point. I borrowed the title of this poem, ‘Destination: Beautiful,’ from the title of indie/alternative band Mae’s first album, released in 2003 by Tooth & Nail Records. That album looped in my friend’s Honda Accord that day.” (web)

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