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.