To My Brothers

(N.B.: SB 1070 in AZ was given the nod by both brothers in reference to state's rights; they are not racist, homophobic, or sexist - the politicians they support are.)

 

I will have to teach your son

that a starched blue uniform and polished silver badge

should never hold the power

to pull a man over

because his skin is the color of deserts.

His hands, like old leather —

creased by carrying his sons out of nightmares,

and worn, nursing his daughters through fevers, —

don’t smuggle their laboring wives into Arizona

to birth an anchor baby,

don’t make plots

against the twin towers of capitalism and commerce,

don’t hide opiates in a child’s shoes

to sell to a Columbia grad student.

I will have to teach your daughter

that a business suit, high definition make-up

and a flag pinned to a lapel

does not a patriot make.

She’ll know Daddy handed that man power,

but he holds none

over her growing body,

has no right to define

what love means to her,

can’t lock her in a cell

because she didn’t say no loud enough.

I should warn you, brothers,

I am prepared to drive your them across state lines

and sew my lips shut to keep their aborted secrets,

prepared to love them more than you,

ready to be the black sheep only mentioned at the drunken holiday tables,

because neither of you

hold a candle to your father.

He was a Times-worthy front page against the arms race,

demanded accountability from his government ten years before Obama entered Harvard Law,

ordered Congress to give our grandfather his due veteran’s rights,

and defended our mother’s right to choose at the age of 21.

He is still marching the streets in the name of peace -

our motherland is a warzone

and you are Helen Keller in an air raid,

with no sense to where the bombs are falling.

 

I need you to protect your children

like our father protected us,

so when they grow up

no one can arrest your dissenting daughter,

or bloody your precious son’s face for daring to sleep in Zucotti Park.

so no one can murder them

for standing outside a building,

voicing what you purposely blind yourselves to:

something is desperately wrong here.

Love As a Fat Girl; or, There's Nothing to See Here

Renoir used to paint pictures of me with roses at my ladyparts,
one arm flung above a mass of autumn’s fiery curls,
the other all graceless elbows and imperfect fingertips
cradled softly, looking for another hand to hold

Mais oui, Pierre-Auguste, I wish you could see me now
one hundred and eleven years into the future,
my living room rug the same shade as the chaise we adored,
and a plethora of fetishizing sweethearts saying,
“You’re a big girl, but you’re not fat”,
“You could lose weight, but I don’t want you to”
as they slip red foil Russell Stover boxes, wrapped
in cheap static-y cellophane beneath my door and leave
wrinkled, sticky packets of peanut butter M&Ms on my desk at work -
they’re desperate to blow me up,
artificially enhance each limb with enzymes and preservatives
so they can fuck my still-breathing corpse
after slipping their powders into the pill that they slip in my drink
because
I can hear those boys at the end of the bar playing Fuck, Marry, Murder
and one of them just said
I’d make a fine Christmas ham.

I know what those slick lipped lovers want, always licking
their teeth with slug tongues
at the ample bosoms and buttocks
of the girls walking past:

they want to dig their fists into the fat at my belly and
carve out their piece of flesh to suckle deep in the night where
it is safe to love me.

But Renoir used to paint me with roses,
and I’d rather be there
because I’ve been the voluptuous skinny girl with strawberry lips -
that body was jumped in the park at twelve when it was too dark to see,
invaded at fourteen with a filthy sock crammed in the opposite hole to stop the screams,
trapped in the designated driver’s bed at eighteen with too many beers consumed,
and when the cries of “No” brought his mother running,
he yelled through the deadbolted door that
I was only having a nightmare.
It’s okay,
I’m only dreaming.

So, no, I don’t worry about thin anymore,
because my ten minute mile
can’t outrun the trauma of a twenty-eight inch waist,
can’t outpace the breath sneaking up on my neck,
or the fingers clawing at the my face,
can’t close the distance between my eyelids any faster
when my boyfriend’s sweet kisses pull a trigger in my memory
and I can only freeze or make him shame me.

But Renoir used to paint me.

Renoir used to paint me
to rise again and again in the immortal phrase
of J’taime
and color the love
so violently splashed across his canvas.

Ménage des Fleurs

Liebe.

There's a word unused.

The taste of your twenty-four years resounds

in my lips and loins, both sets.

With my blackberry brambles unshaven,

worth it if you can part the thicket.

My legs unshaven, I lie between two,

draped in too large, five-year-old pink underwear,

a hole at the mons pubis,

where she has just stuck her finger

and she's touching me where you do.

she's touching me where you did.

She's touching -

suddenly, he too -

the sweet thin-lipped gryphon, so fierce and clawed,

that mane and those

teeth are at my nipples,

worrying.

(I can't help how distracted I get

when she brushes by on her double-bodied journey,

something lives in her breasts

that are the same as yours -

you're both swimmers,

it may be the muscle,

it might be the heart)

Are you old enough to forgive me?

Am I?

Is forgiveness suddenly age related

is this how it happens

does the truth of love in one direction become a granite

in place of graphite?

Because when I draw you in my mind's eye,

it isn't tender or soothing or nuturing anymore -

my red blood cells got a fine arts degree,

changed mediums while I wasn't looking,

and your visage is being chiseled

into the alabaster walls of my final resting place.

Someone kisses me so hard I taste iron.

her mouth is teasing out my secrets,

and I am making the noises you do

making the noises you did in the bathtub, on the trampoline,

in your roommates bed -

until silence rushes up my toes and the weight

of November pulls my eyes back

and I am straining into her while he holds me down,

I am whispering

swallow me

swallow me

she is an ocean where you are stars

she is an ocean where you were

Birthday Poem (Twenty-Four)

Clementine,
are you pacing the bridge at midnights?
Now that you're married, who do you wait for?
Does he throw rocks at the balcony of your hotel?
No - but I bet you do.

Ruby Clementine, did you kiss on the Seine?
Tell me you went back and reclaimed all your footsteps -

tell me you got arrested for swimming in the reservoir -

tell me that Claudia is still stalking the streets like an Amazon queen,

and Kastin

is slipping hash between your lips

Tell me why when I dream of you, it's wispy,

and I wake up with sand between my toes

Tell me there were bonfires in Valencia and

you went to Catalan to paint and be inspired,

tell me you've married the vagabond life

and it's the greatest love triangle you've ever known.

Violet Clementine, is the sleep bruising your lashes

at four a.m.

after bottles and bottles of two euro wine?

Tell me, darling, are you still dreaming?

Elle Se Déverse

Sometimes I hear a thing,
throw myself in a hole,
clap hands over ears
and sing

loud enough

to fill the Dom where I first fell in love.

And when that isn't enough,
I lie to beautiful women.

I tell them three years
when the timeline was eighteen months

because

I am so sure
I am so goddamn sure
I can change it.

I would be lying again
if I said I didn't miss you

and still be lying if I said
it wasn't easier.

I would be lying if I said
he isn't better to you, for you,
than I ever would have been.

He won't judge you,
or begrudge you,
I would have because

I am still wondering
how you can look at anyone but me.

I am so glad you will never kiss me like that again.
The last kiss should always be the moon
pulling the tide from the earth.

But I would be lying still if I said
I won't be the midnight secret you share with your daughter
when she is questioning her blossoming sexuality,

or the tear on your cheek
when you finally let fall for another woman

or secreted away in long-ago letters
where your favorite letter is "L"
and you can smell me in the Moroccan wind.

So live and love, and go knowing
I only ever lied about one thing,
because I couldn't bear it to be true.

Maybe when I reach heaven
I won't write your name
in clouds across the sky
but when I reach the ground
I'll immortalize your visage
in something as tangible as love.

Plant Poem; Elliott Bangs

Once my love was kudzu
Somebody dropped a seed
and ran;
It was a weird miracle
and then just a problem

My love has been the blackberry.
It seemed to you to grow up overnight,
but only because a year passed
between your glances. By then
it had swarmed the whole neglected yard -
It wrote scars on your arms to remind you that
it was all sweet enough
till you fell into it

My love was the dandelions
obsessively sowed by the wishing of kids
amounting only to some splotches
of Roundup;

It was the volunteer tree
of unknown species, that grew
way, way too tall, until one day
it exploded in the power lines,
the end.

1111

It's New Years now
the year has turn
and the snow has leaked into my boots.

We're spinning in the slowest circle
on the fastest orbit known,
mewing a melody
that threatens to take us to the sky.

o red winter star
shine on with me
light up all I see

Show me a life full with
incorrect timing and muddled data
-this is all I know of love-
but your voice, clear as ocean water
and mine, soft as a war machine

The Funeral, Part II

We lie unguarded
awake and torn apart
back to back
under unrelenting starshine
all to do is close our eyes.

I am not an imaginate,
though I may be a figment;
when I was young I thought
I might grow up to be a fire truck
now I am young,
I want to be a real boy
so I raise a wooden gesture
and soldier on.

Forearm to table
forehead to forearm
you exhausted me with possibilities -
you dreamed while I slept.

Rolling over in sunlight -
I seem to remember August, green,
but awake it is January, gray gray gray.
Sleep! Sleep no more!
Honor Darling shall sleep no more.