Author: mao

I'm a student. Always.

Letter Home

Mama, I’m awful tired

and I feel like coming home

to eavesdrop on the ocean

and spit into the foam.

I talk to people on buses

spend all my tips on books

tell lies to good looking customers

and cheer for all the crooks.

I listen to jazz all evening

forgetting to sleep or eat;

there’s a brown dog from the junkyard

who attacks me on the street.

My friends aren’t.

My lover doesn’t.

My work is.

My party wasn’t.

Out here in the heartland

even the cows are bored

and I’d commit hara kiri

if I could afford the sword.

Dear Character Defect

I need to let you go now.

Because you interfere with my ability to experience the joy of doing something for the simple love of doing it.  Because you have me spending too much of the limited time I have in this head focusing on who or what is better or worse instead of what is.  Because you rob me of celebrating my successes and those of other people.  Because you are an aging artifact of the behavior of insecure, immature people who could not make good decisions but were in charge of my formation.

You are a portrait painted by hurt people, no less a construct than the fairy tales I was nursed on and rejected.  Believing in you perpetuates the hurt and fear of your creators; keeps that hurt and fear spinning out into the world.

This doesn’t mean I give up my right to practice discernment.  I intend to use brain and eyes to the best of my ability.  I intend to be right sized.

I have people now who hold me in their strong hands – neither blind to my faults and humanity, nor disgusted by them; neither dazzled by my gifts and talents, nor jealous, fearful, and dismissive of them.

I can breathe.  I can stretch.  I can fall.  I can get up.  I can smile at the mirror and at the rest of this raggedy family.

Reflections on a Winter Window

I stand before the glass – a shocking sight,

too white, too big, in stocking cap and coat

and glasses, too.  Is this the girl who wrote:

I’m god’s frail angel, trembling toward the light?

I could not be this woman in the pane –

What could she know of trembling heavenly bliss?

If I’d known back when that I would look like this

I’d have put a bullet in my trembling brain.

And missed the snow upon the redbud tree.

And missed the sleeping spaniel’s velvet ear.

And missed the graceful green frivolity

that rises as the turning of the year.

For though this flesh may less than solid be,

I thank it for the love it’s shown me here.

Borrower

She stopped using him years ago, but she just wouldn’t give him away.

She’d leave him like an extra pair of reading glasses

and not miss him until he turned up again on the sofa.

Even when the Salvation Army would call,

she’d forget to donate him.

Or maybe she just didn’t consider him clean and usable anymore.

I started borrowing him.

For the afternoon at first, then overnight, then days at a time.

He fit me perfectly and I only had to be careful not to wear him

if I thought she’d be at the same party.

One day she’ll realize she hasn’t come across him

in a while and wonder where he’s gotten to.

By then I’ll be able to say, “This old thing?

I’ve had him forever.”

Visitation

Returning to the house he was so recently asked to leave

he waits in the kitchen,

a cup of gas station coffee in his gloved left hand.

She comes down to tell him they won’t need him today,

school’s called off and she’s staying home from work.

She offers to refill his cup.

If he has time.

While she runs the water

he stares at the down behind her right knee,

the place she always misses when shaving.

Hard already, he unsheathes his hands,

slides them under his old tee shirt,

turns her,

tries to come home.

Why I Want to Draw

A dispatch from the 60s.

My sight is fading fast.

Every few months I buy new, stronger reading glasses.

In you never miss the water until the well runs dry mode I now realize how

much I’ve lived in my head.

In my own stories.

Literally not seeing what’s in front of my nose.

I cling to this soft pencil

hoping it will focus what’s left of my light.

Garage Satori

double-rainbowPulling out of my parking spot

I am meditating on whether kapotasana could be done in a chair,

whether one would feel enough pigeon-ness if she were seated,

when I awake to the chime of my front quarter panel kissing

the wheel well of my brother to the left.

Only paint.  Only paint.  No scraping, really.  I can’t handle this today.

The car will be fine.  The driver might not even see it.  I can’t handle any more.  

Out of the car, I spit on my fingers and rub along the Oregon Trail of Shame.

It’s fine.  I’m leaving.  Why should I be the only person on the planet to leave a damned note?

Drive out, heart pounding, hitting the brake at imagined vehicles.

Bring breath into belly, in and down, up and out.  Brain comes on line,

a light at a time, a Whoville Christmas in my neo-cortex.

I turn and spiral my way back up to brother Saturn to reveal myself.

The Nurse and the Sailor, 1945

Every horn in the city blares

She edges through the mob

Where’s the subway stop?

The familiar corner is disguised

in Mardi Gras crepe

Cold beer sloshes down her neck

A hand on her shoulder

She spins around

All night she’s been moving bodies and listening.

During the day the boys smoke and play cards,

but on night shift they tell stories, eyes unmoving;

a heroic raincoat stuffed into the suck of a lung,

gut burst from the shockingly fragile skin of a belly,

the white of bone,

the remains of a face.

Drink this, she tells them.  Rest.  I’ll see you tomorrow.

She spins around

Some sailor grabs her

Cigar smoke and sweat

Tongue prying her lips apart

A shutter snaps

She breaks

Away