Posts for June 24, 2022 (page 2)

Authors and scientists tout the impossibility,
the sheer wonder of time travel as if it hid with a leprechaun’s
hoard at the base of a neverending
rainbow.

Yet six coal robed men and women can launch 
us into the cult of domesticity with the stroke of a fountain pen,
dragging us back into a world of forbidden contraceptives
and caged women who could only dream
of a future where they could decide to soar,
spreading their wings in their own time.

These women did not have the luxury of a crystal ball
to see a reflection of their present in the twenty-first century.

Late to post have to

One day you will hold
all my insufficiencies against me.
They’re buried on the hilltop,
Their names and dates chiseled
on tombstones,
worn away by the weather.
One day, you’ll take a rubbing
with charcoal and white paper
to remind me
of all that I’ve tried to forget. 
And then, maybe, together
we can bury them in unmarked graves.

tomorrow
I move
as in relocate my belongings
change my address
and all the rest which goes with it
therefore, I contemplate this evening
this place
my occupancy for four years
the first place I ever solely decided upon
      I leave here of my own accord
and strangely I leave few golden memories
sure, it’s suited me, provided for me, protected and shielded me
but it hasn’t been what I currently seek so I’ve found another
I’ll remember the moments, shared with those I love
rest during such difficult days
hours working from home
tiny joys and the deepest sadness
my life here became something difficult to describe
while not horrible, not ideal
I perhaps became lost within myself, within these gray walls
melancholy, dreary but not dark
a place where I learned to walk, then walk further until
tomorrow
I move
and I rejoice in that
celebrate
hope, again

                                         When I

			write a poem that excites
			a reader the way you excite me
			so I tremble inside
			at the mere thought
			of
			it,
			(I will not mention
			more
			except to say)


			Old Seventy creek is
			no more beautiful in its way
			than your eyes when you do not divert them,
			for its water captures open sky.
			It is no more beautiful in its body
			than you are in yours
	       that I can never touch.


			I will touch you with words,
			hesitating words,
			tightly pressing
			against your softness-
			words that are fingers-
			words that are lips,
			exploring the vastness,
	      the unmapped universe
			of the page
			upon which you lie.
				

Ah, but no, not enough
to fill this minute with great fears,
my love (Ask the Abbess:  
Pour us some more tea,  
sweet just as the hour  
if we were not here,  
if we were not  
together.).
There must in deed be
shouts, and cries,
and million-manned marching bands
to salute these whitening tears.  

The hair stylist has my iPhone.

“Why this cut?”

“Because I want to.”

We begin.

I think about gender.
I think about dualities, about binaries. I think about the color grey.
And, in a moment of orange, I tell my stylist to make the left side
             just a little shorter, right over the ear.
I think about breasts.
I think about the heft of them, their softness & their bounce.
            The curve in profile. I especially think about the sides of them,
            the skin that spills from the nipple toward the rib cage & the arm pit.
            I love that slope the best. I’d ski it if I could.
I think about the day my breasts first started growing &
            I was still unembarrassed to be naked in front of my parents.
I think about how my mom came in later to discuss bras with me.
            We went over training bras.
            We went over how my dad noticed that my breasts were developing.
            My mom always used the word breasts.
            And other embarrassing words like developing.
I think about sexuality, about sex, about pleasure.
Around the time of the training bras, I was given the Bible.
            Well, okay, Our Bodies, Ourselves.
            I flipped right to the good stuff.
            I began to religiously understand my vagina.
I think about some of the other people who’ve been to my Church.
            And, I tell you what, we must have been praying something fierce
            back in high school because they never wore condoms.
            And we were lucky. And stupid. And lucky.
I think about luck & how it runs. And for whom.
I think about the colors of our skins & the thickness of our cultures.
In a moment of privilege, I tell my stylist to layer the left side a little rougher.
I think about my uterus and how I now know a whole bunch of stuff
            I didn’t back then but, namely, that it doesn’t work quite right.
            I flip through my Rolodex of embarrassing words like
            viability and polycystic and other ones I don’t feel like writing down.
And then I think about the word lucky again.
And I wonder what it means exactly.

The stylist is layering the right side now, long and feminine.
It feels soft and nice against my collarbone, my shoulders.

“Are you going to blend the two sides in the back? Or how’s that gonna work?”

“Oh honey, we can’t do that. It’s two different cuts!”

We continue.

I think about gender again. And sexuality again. And breasts again.
            And uteruses again. And luck again.
And then I think about the dismantling of duality, the blend of the Venn.
I think about a Rumi quote that I love:
            Out beyond ideas
            Of wrongdoing and rightdoing
            There is a field.
            I’ll meet you there.
I think about nuance. And autonomy. And choice. And rights. And identity.
I think about pride & how it’s the opposite of shame.
I think about embarrassment & how it’s the opposite of pleasure.
I think about black as the absence of light.
And white as the sum of all color, the saturation of hue.
I think about our bodies as an absence or a sum,
            as the offering of rights or a collection plate for legislature.
I mouth the word forsaken.
            Later I google the definition, just to be sure. It means abandoned.
I use it in a sentence:
The United States has forsaken us.
US of the breasts & the uteruses.
US of the pleasure & the luck.
US of the pain & the less than whole.
US of the soft & feminine.
US of the rough & cut.
US of the grey & orange.
US of the wanting & the choice.

THIS peach
is ready, ripe, and
writhing in my mouth
like an infinite
ocean of sweetness
as the bits of
solid fruit melt
into juice with no resistance

I remember my Grandmother
in her kitchen
surgically dissecting
a peach
bite by bite
with a knife
she speared each slice
s l o w l y
and neatly ate
the sacred fruit
I knew this was important
business to be done
Her trance
focused carefully on each sliver
taking each bite
as though
it brought
Revelations of Paradise

Today
I willing join that religion
with this very peach
It has made me a convert
with everlasting faith
and in my last moments
I will ask only
for a
PEACH

The shadow wood beckons—
Oaks grasp & hang
every shred of hope
while firs & cobwebs
strain out anything
left of decency.  Dead
leaf futures cast
in the loam of the forest floor.  

Autonomy apparently,
was an illusion.

In this world, we’re bound to rot