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"i don't think this next poem needs any introduction-- it's best to let the words speak for themselves"- Billy Collins, in his poem, "The Introduction."

12.30.2012

Origin Stories 


5 years old:
The world is made of love,
I know it is.
We rose from it,
like mud,
spattered and cold,
shaking in shock and disbelief,
maybe.

I don't know how I came to be here,
exactly,
but I know it's a good thing.

And still there are fairies flickering in the sudden blackness
every time I turn the lights off.
They are not quite their own beings,
but specks of the stuff that holds the world together,
like the dust left over from everything being made.

We recognize each other,
even in the dark.

I lay in bed at night
and send wishes to my grandmother,
and the boy I like,
so they know how much I love them.

I see it: My wish ripples through the mud,
and my grandma picks it up,
and it's like a strange creature, growing larger.
Maybe it wraps itself around her body,
like a blanket,
or maybe it swallows her whole.

My grandma lives inside my love.
Everybody does.

10 years old:
Now there are sadnesses.
There didn't used to be.
They land on my chest like birds with no home.
All they have is my body to live in.
All they have is my love to eat.
So they stay a while,
inside me,
cold and sick, trying to grow strong enough
to leave.

25, now:
I know now the sadnesses come in waves.
I track them on paper,
drawing, inadvertently, the oceans beneath me,
or, around me,
sometimes
the ground moves and swells.

Cori says
she thinks these sudden sadnesses
are from some kids somewhere,
full of magic,
full of power,
sending wishes,
strong as earthquakes,
not knowing where they're headed.

I believe it.
heard Ana @ 10:47 PM

7.05.2012

The Haircut 

My dad always told me
that when he was 16,
he loved, like he has never loved,
a woman named Evie,
a woman with hair long like mine.

It swung
down to my skinny hips
like the roots of the banyan trees
I hung from,
wild.

My hair was never pretty,
never silky,
in spite of the gobs of pantene pro-v i coaxed into it with a wide-toothed comb
in the shower,
pulling out hurricanes of hair in the lather.
I'd smear them onto the tiled wall
into delicate abstractions of spirals and hearts.
They hung on,
like silly wishes,
in the foggy shampooed air.

I'd chew on it when I was thinking,
so it always smelled
like sweat & dirt & spit,
the mildew that settles into the earth,
after the florida rains.

The humidity,
or perhaps my nature,
made it frizz out from my scalp
in tiny half-spirals,
trails of the thoughts I could never contain,
ascending
away from me
just 
     out of reach.

My hair was a dream, darkly knotted.

And Evie was a dirty fairytale,
pretty & feminine & good.
And Oh, the sex!
And Oh, that hair!

I always reminded him of her.

At 16, the haircut was my first real betrayal.
My mother, his silent challenger, took me to the beauty parlor,
where a blonde face,
fresh out of beauty school,
quivered at the chance to transform me.

I learned
it had been dead for a long time,
all that hair.
That was why it never shined.
It was too long to thrive,
a self-defeat. 

Always posessing a bit more than intuition,
maybe he knew
the haircut was just
one shoulder-length layered look
closer to dyke.
Maybe he could see the sped-up film
of the years before us,
my hair growing shorter and shorter,
hacked at with kitchen scissors,
bobbed as I worked summer jobs at the mall,
until a straight-edge razor
in a shack
in a village
in India
rendered me balder
than the moment
I first
fell into his hands
in the hospital,
cold.

I shivered when my bare head brushed against the mosquito net in bed each night, 
against the grain, 
But being seen as a boy
on the streets each day
                                 was escape.

Maybe he knew,
because when I cut my hair at 16,
my father yelled at me
until I cried,
the guilt of failed girlhood pouring out of me,
a draining wound.

Some people have nightmares about being naked in high school. 
But I anxiously dream
that my hair betrays me,
grows girl-long again minutes after I cut it,
as suddenly uncontrollable as my lilting thoughts.

I am helpless and desperate,
the scissors shaking in my hands
in the mirror of my girlhood bathroom,
while my father, in the next room,
impatient,
calls out for me--

my old name.
heard Ana @ 12:36 AM

5.29.2012

on being a feminist 

we pass our nightmares around
like potluck stews
like bell hooks books

--because they are our education,
our nourishment

--because they leave us hungry
for new worlds,
and that is a hunger
worth feeding,

--because this world
has nightmares to feed us,
hanging from the trees,
like fruit
the color of the night sky,
like fruit the shape of faces.

the stories are tired--
"i said no and he kept going"--
we cradle them in our arms,
strange bandaged creatures,
we somehow try to heal,
as we fight for our survival.

[old lover, sunday:
you took in my nightmares
you held my body gently, like a story worth mending.
but because you do not carry ghosts in bundles,
you could not understand my sadness
and so, like stupid pop song refrains, you left without saying goodbye.

still, i have the dream where we fuck each other into the bodies we were meant to have
spinning like disney transformations
when i am inside you:
you become girl
and i become something apart, between,
something invisible to those who would hurt me.

new lover, monday:
i said stop, and you kept going,
and i said i had to leave, and you kept going,
and i said "you have really got to respect my fucking boundaries,"
and i slipped out from under your body,
and out the door,
grateful to have a voice,
and to be numb and strong,
carrying my still-sleeping nightmares over my shoulder,
the air still buzzing with survival

i will care for my nightmares later,
but now
 i imagine them
 outgrowing us,
too big for our human arms,
and imperfect genders,
winged and dangerous,
wild songs of hope.
heard Ana @ 3:05 AM

4.20.2012

The Opening 

Because we have seen both justice and injustice,
we know the difference between them in our bodies.
And when we could not find justice,
we knew out by its absence.
We always knew.

And so we use our bodies,
our sadnesses,
as filters for each other
from the things we cannot bear.

When we speak,
I speak softly
for all the voices that have trampled me,
standing on top of me just to be heard.
I speak softly for all the voices I have trampled.

I speak as if my words
are open hands
or open books,
as if they could hear you
and resound in you,
like the guitar hollowed in your hands,
like my skin,
flickering
under your breath.

I am a moth with you,
a small, strong aliveness.

I flutter, I creak
--open

heard Ana @ 1:23 AM

2.03.2012

the unknown place 

where do you me come from?,
i ask the poem boiling inside me,
a blossom,
a tea,
gnarled and warm.

i will go down to the river
to lay, in place,
my love poem,
alongside all the others.

every person
is alloted 20 love poems in their life,
20 places at the river.
not so neat, they sprout and gape
open
sometimes,
offer flowering hands,
up to the stars,
dirty and scarred.

in an open space, my own,
i will kneel and my press my mouth into the earth
to make the shape of her.
i love the ritual of it.
when i am done, the clay there will smell of her,
translucent like her skin.

poem, you were born
here,
a wet ember buried in my blood.
poem, you came of age inside my body.
poem, you left me,
left my mouth
when the first eyes knew me--
knew that i was not a girl.
poem, you cut my hair along your blade
and gave me my exhaustion.

but now that i have found the words for you, i lay you down to rest here,
in the river mud,

breathing deeply,

grateful i have 13 left to go.
heard Ana @ 1:20 PM