Komorebi:
Looking Glass Reng’ha
Were you a nurse?
A maid?
A lady of means?
What is the sash
that dangles from your belt?
I believe Charles S. Rawson
an “artist”
knew these answers.
Working from his studio
at 508 Fulton St.
near Bond
in Brooklyn,
he knew the answers.
He met you,
knew you.
“Artist” that he was,
he saw how beautiful you were.
But he
like you
is gone.
I could already shoot straight, but
Literacy
YMCA membership
A new New Testament
Education in civics
Regular bathing
until I hit the trenches
Trench foot
Belly crawl in No Man’s Land
on an empty belly
The rattle of tommy guns
Fear that squeezed my throat
Froze my heartbeat
Summoned courage
A smattering of French
(outward) Sobriety
A heart for chance, the gamble
Horses
Sports
Cards
Craps
Not blinded by gas
Surviving
Expectation of vice raids
Appreciation for social purity
How to avoid the clap
If I wouldn’t use someone else’s toothbrush,
why would I use his whore?
A German bullet is cleaner than that.
A soldier thinking below the belt lacks efficiency.
My wooden leg and purple heart
Damn, it’s good to be home.
my baby’s got immaculate taste
same guy since back in the day
just more pain and fat in the face
my passion the same
never chased the cash and the fame
never chased much of anything
but packin some strains
and my imagination
trapped up in their databases
brother died at an early age
been saddled with this weight
everybody fightin everyday
a battle but won’t say
a lot just suffer in silence
there’s no love in the violence
thinkin bout it puffin on hybrids
my baby’s people come from the island
in the fridge
she leaves me coquito
in the freezer
she keeps mad sofrito
wanna eat her
culo no un piquito
wanna treat her
like she treat her people
beautiful boricua
she teach me
bout The Young Lords
that’s how you fight evil
only way gun or sword
gotta be ready to die for your people
fuck these slumlords
she teach me
they made her flag illegal
and how they sterilized women on the island
how they terrorized children with their violence
we terrorize children with our silence
verified killings on our devices
paralyzed from willing ourselves out this crisis
it’s a barely alive feeling clingin on to our vices
stare into your eyes but singin to tiny violins
airing your mind spine tinglin reciting the hymns
it’s indefensible
a lot what we try to defend
it’s invincible
a lot what we fightin within
cut it with fentanyl
fore you put those lines in your skin
cut it with chemicals
you’ll still buy it again
Tonight our youngest lost one of her last two baby teeth
That means I’ve only got one more chance to be the tooth fairy after tonight
So tonight after I laid down with her and watched her sleeping for a while
I slipped the tooth from under her pillow, ever so gently
As I tiptoed to the kitchen to write a note from said fairy
and slip some tooth money into a ziploc bag, my heart ached
Deep into my chest, way down deep where her little head used to nuzzle
When she would sleep upon my breast and I was the only person who could make her happy
There really is something to be said about the magic in a child’s eyes
When they look at you with wonder and you’re the only thing they see
These years will fly by, fleeting softly into the night like a fairy
Stealing away my joy like lost teeth
and I’ll have nothing left to hold but the bag
I feel like I’ve been shackled to this soapbox since surpassing Lacan’s dreaded mirror stage. So, I might as well speak on a logical fallacy of conservative ideology.
(Oh the orchestrated ideals of man’s messy making!
Revere the modern muse—modeling GLP-1 and less than a portion of passion.)
Here’s a contradiction of the red’s ruling culture I contend with: one cannot set an archetypal standard of motherhood while also maintaining an aesthetic standard of thinness. Those two conditions of being, for a woman’s body, are diametrically opposed.
Thinness, as in the modesty and morality of taking up less space; anorexic trends returning from Tumblr; the panopticon of femininity policing every ounce of fat; enough autonomy for off-brand Ozempic but not abortion;
Motherhood, as in the traditional assignment of women to the home; eugenic ethnostates (win a prize for procreating six times!); delivering your own deformed desires; Madonna and Christ; I learned to make pasta from scratch during that summer I stayed in North Carolina. My neighbors showed me. They would invite me over for dinner a lot—it was nice. They had this old blue farmhouse and a garden out back. Their son was four, I think, and he had this toy lawn-mower that he would run up and down the yard all day. His mom was so kind to me, and I loved helping her cook these big, elaborate meals that we’d all eat on the back porch together. You know, one day when we were pitting cherries I had a moment where—I don’t know—that late orangey glow of dusk was coming in through the window, and we were listening to a song from their wedding, and her husband was playing with their son outside—I just… for a second I just felt it. I felt like I could be really happy with a life like their’s. With a kid and a loving husband and a little porch swing, you know? Like, there’s so much serenity there. I don’t know why people always call it “the simple life,” there’s nothing simple about it. It was like a microcosm of all the human kindness in the world.
How much care for another person do you have to possess in order to pit cherries for an hour in the kitchen? Just so they don’t have to spit the seed out? You know who does that? A mother.
I will never be one to tell women what meaning they should birth from their own beings— their own bodies.
But beware the beauty of bone (That sounds archaic—I guess it is, Eve’s undoing was also a type of hunger)! I’ve starved myself into societal salvation, left the page for a pretty purgatory.
That size 00 will suck the soul right out of you, warp the womb into a wasteland, diminish every desire except dinner—leave you swaying, struggling to stand on your soapbox.
I spent a portion of the morning in nearly 100-degree heat,
Digging in clay soil to bury a possum that could no longer compete
With the wise old cow-dog that had alerted me in the night.
From curious crescendo to a deafening din which could not be ignored,
I looked where her nose pointed, moved things out of the way,
But my cow dog rushed in for first dibs, which was fine, I guess,
since I was barefooted and in my nightgown, though I managed to grab a shovel.
In the place where I had buried other predators, this one’s ancestors perhaps,
A sprawling garden now grew, with squash leaves more than two feet across.
So large, I could barely find space to step without placing my foot on something.
I know it will be tough come harvest time, since I can’t see when the stuff is ready.
But for now, I must find one more burial spot, before the sun gets higher.
Perhaps in the corner by the day lilies, or maybe by the garden gate.
For sure, nothing helps boost the soil than planting a few bodies in it.
I said this to a friend today, and she responded point blank,
“You are like a pioneer woman. I think you arrived in the wrong century.”
