brushing your long brown hair,
like stroking the sinews of an angel—
tensile cords of spun copper
binding you with green withes,
new ropes, and my lap—
a spider's web
severing your faith, your strength
woven as they were into seven locks,
for all that, I have no regret.
We take pills without prescription
because we own our body without restraint
being dumped it’s a starter that we eat
every single day, and we accept bad blood
his excuses and late nights so I growl inside
to not speak loud and hurt your stereotypes
of me without wide open legs, elbows on the table
talking easily and claiming my conquers.
"He's a whore, I offered him four beers
and two hours after we are having sex". Oh sex,
excuse me to have desire inside my mouth
with my permission and not yours. Don't push me
back and forward, and back again, you're my container
of disaster that's why I get high to flood useless power
that's why I raise my hand and I slap you in the face
that's why I can't take no more your indecisive breakups
your mellow voyeur fantasies, your new girls and texts
that's why we are Tinder, we are "the Tinder" of real life
even those who don't use it, we are the scroll ups and downs
the supermarket list, the blindfolded dates wrapped sometimes
in surprise and realness, when I wish I had met you before
without rain and six years of past, and Netflix series on the couch
and low cost tickets that get us everywhere we want to more
superficial artifices and filters, and cuts, and likes and unfollows
that's why I pour my wine and I watch porn as a blockbuster movie.
I don't do comparisons about my hips, if I'm skinny enough,
tall enough, sexual enough, pleasant enough, woman enough
as I'm counting the late acne marks:
is it smoother? less visible? less relatable to smoking one pack
of click cigarettes when the reason is being stressed
being under pressure, putting pressure, having my eyes balls
squeezed into screens of objectification and self-approval.
Self-approve my existence and see if I let you!
I'm not a established gender
I'm not a tag on my sexuality
I'm not a waitress serving your wishes and exploiting egos.
Too commented
too touched
too exposed
don't apologize for wanting to be apart of a neutral game
where woman is a chess piece formulated as a castle
full of walls but with doors too
don't apologize for getting laid
buying condoms and forgetting them beneath your mattress
with your socks and old lace bra
don't apologize for exchanging testosterone for estrogen
loving lakes instead of mountains, don't hike too much dear
without reaching the top, we're water, watering nature
full of walls but with windows too
where I can jump and hug ideologies
my hard-on for a man
for woman
for both
for libido as power
Just be libido.
Just scream libido.
And don't forget to touch yourself.
I remember the color of air before I was about leave my least favorite bar in Bushwick when you called out to me
I liked to pretend I didn’t believe in Love back then
some nights I got on my knees and tried to cut at her with my own flesh
I swore and blasphemed her, defending the nightmarish gift that hisses at my veins
the moon witnessed the whole thing
to give up on Love is to assume the position of a shell and embrace the hollow fierce wind that takes up in the soul
howling obscure and indefinable; where does she reside?
you called out to me and I could feel her quiet breath on my neck
she never did turn away, but let me throw my fits
and timelessness laughed
and ignorance wept
we introduced ourselves right there in front of everyone because even strangers respect the beauty in hope
my hand touched your hand in a formality
then my hand to my mouth, because I had to double check—
it was a smile
A maize maze of my own making,
I spend my days trying to decide
what my next day will be spent doing.
Turn the corner,
it’s another year of wandering. Turn
the next corner, and it’s a shrug.
We just don’t know, Nobody
knows. Where does the world fit now?
Yes, we see you, they say, while
mispronouncing my every feature.
There was a time I thought I knew.
At 20, I had all the answers. The universe
was an easy series of yes/no, and complicated
issues were reduced to a monochromatic
paint by number. In the words of Jonah:
Oh, whale.
Now, I’m just deciding the best
line of fit. Not for prestige. I just want
to do good work.
A finger typing, a mouth speaking,
a lesson learned and teaching. That’s okay.
In the words of the 90s prophet:
We do what we do like we know
what we’re doing.
Once my husband remarked how the sky opens like a gift as you turn off Weaver onto Quaker Ridge. Now every time I make that turn I think of that. And about the farm that was once there, an actual working small farm with fields where a fancy market and Condos now stand. We'd go in summer in my mother's little red car to buy tomatoes still warm from the field, strawberries for shortcake, and corn that I never wanted to eat because sometimes while shucking I would find tiny little worms and my mother, a farm girl's daughter, would say nonsense and she'd just cut out the wormy parts and insist the corn was fine.
Take a right off Quaker Ridge down a sloping curve past a wooded area where once I saw a wild turkey take flight into a stand of trees. I pulled the car over, something mythic and holy about the moment, cars hurtling past me rushing home as dusk began striping the sky in indigo, rose, and gold. Once my daughter was sad and I told her to get in the car and we drove random streets for nearly an hour as I played Nick Drake's song Pink Moon over and over because it was a pink moon that night. We saw a fox and I turned the car around to follow it up a dark road and we stopped when it stopped, staring at us from a tangle of bushes, rust colored fur, defiant eyes. We let it be and drove on under the pink moon.
“Once my daughter was sad and I told her to get in the car and we drove random streets for nearly an hour as I played Nick Drake’s song Pink Moon over and over because it was a pink moon that night.”
Tonight the trees are black against a peach sky and I am rushing home because the dog does not like to be in the dark and no one remembered to leave a light on. Once my oldest son played in these woods using sticks for swords and their bikes for horses, coming back exhilarated, scraped and bruised, and deaf to my declaring someone would lose an eye. Once my daughter told me her friends claimed the woods were haunted, how none of them would go in them after dusk. I later joked to a friend that it must have been a rumor started by coyotes to keep the kids away.
So many things have happened that my mind could turn to, keening times of despair, difficult times we stumbled through, fears about the unknown future, and yet driving I see the peach of the sky and think about my children and wild geese and pink moons, and how I am mostly like that, one who notices the color of the sky, and I am so grateful for it.
Once by these woods I drive past, very late at night, I pulled my car over to the side and wrote a poem about magic, and hot soup, and keeping the wild things at bay. Even as I wrote it, I felt the press of something against the windows of my car and I kept glancing up, feeling both fearful and foolish. It's easy to believe in anything when you're sitting in a dark car by even darker woods writing a poem by the glow of a streetlight. So I wished peace to whatever might be there and kept on writing because words on paper are angels enough to guide a lost soul through whatever forest they might find themselves in, and lead them home.