Category: Being Female

Accretion/Debridement

When House was new it asked for filling.

We complied with staples and treats and whimsy and hope, in their turns.

Repujado’s required tools are good for nothing else.  Parts of looms lay

akimbo in the nook upstairs.  Clothes of outdated sizes rotate to the back

of ample closets.  Business cards not used, now supplanted by better.  Instruments

upgraded.  Posters outgrown.  A chest with toys untouched for years is colorful

behind the vacuum.  Hats.

When Home comes it will demand spaciousness.

Surfaces easily wiped.  Doors wide enough for chairs and beds and the wagons

with the tubes and beeps.  One dresser with three drawers.  The clothes coming back

from the laundry may not be ours, but we will wear them.

Breathe in.  Breath out.  We open our hands, palms full of oxygen and memories.

 

The Fight

We are not dealing with trivialities.

I don’t care about the shape of your skin

or the mechanics of insertion

or the posture of excretion.

I have chased that mercury across the linoleum before,

and I know how little it all means.

I am coming for something more essential

than your liver.

 

Still Friends

He is telling her about a trip

he is about to take.

He is leaving out anything that might hurt her.

Who he is taking.

What he feels.

Why he left her.

His voice is carefully casual.

She nods, smiles absently.

She traces the barely raised ink

of her Pepsi bottle

with an unpolished fingernail,

scraping slightly,

finding no gap,

no place to begin its destruction.

Longing

‘for your husband shall be your longing, though he have dominion over you.’  Genesis 3:16

So this is the plan:

this throb,

this molten river coursing

from nipple to belly

as she watches the husband return

from the garden.

She kneads floury biscuits at the window,

an amethyst bracelet of bruise

appearing and disappearing into her cotton sleeve.

And this:

this portion of spirits the husband allows himself,

erasing ache and knowledge.

On the way to lunch

he calls each restless beast by name

and tucks his bottle into its straw cradle

knowing he’ll return.

Late, in their unforgiving bed,

she rends his back,

he pounds her prow of bone,

longing.

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.

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.

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.

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

Overkill

Mother’s cooked up way too much.

She doesn’t just make duck, but makes

pintail ducks, wood ducks, ruddy ducks, eider ducks, fulvis tree ducks, widgeons,

cinnamon teals, red breasted mergansers,

and on and on, a redundancy of duck.

Still she pushes the plate toward us.

Fescue fingers up the sidewalks.

Chickweed loiter at the curb.

Trumpet vine clasps the gate shut.

Profligate snails dance through their 17 hours of foreplay,

leaving trails all over.

Cottony packets stuffed with baby spiders

hang in the back of our closets until

we carry them out at arm’s length.

Bagworms wrap the redbuds and gorge

until we split them open.

There’s no end to her excess.

Dandelion blow sticks to the sappy trunk of the white pine.

Millions of sperm bulge in teenaged boys.

And babies drop into dumpsters at dances.