Little James, Changeling Child

My cousin screams his bloodful displeasure
The textures rake his skin
The noises break his ears

My aunt and uncle coax him into boy scouts
And little league, summer camp for audio-integration,
Have him tested for every possible disorder
Still he wails, bites, kicks, and spits

That baby with sweet almond eyes,
Who smiled and drooled as any baby should,
Was replaced in the night by a child
Who cannot speak to the world,
A boy of violent inclinations

He eats but rarely
Shoves his sister into walls
Shrinks from thunder as though it were iron

The other children call him freak and idiot
If not for their Roman Catholic upbringing,
They would call him changeling
If not for the teachers' watchful eyes
They would do him worse
Run him through with lead pencils
Strike matches along the walls of the gym
And light his shirttails
To see if he gives himself away as a monstercreature

My aunt and uncle, throats raw from yelling,
Eyes sore from crying, sigh into the relieving moments
When their undersized and battering son sleeps,
Twichily dreaming of the other worlds to which he belongs

Of the Laurel Tree in My Garden

An aeolian harp is an instrument played not by human hands but by the wind. A stringed instrument, tall, if you place it in a windy corridor or on a hilltop, the wind will rush through the strings, causing them to vibrate and making the most eerie, beautiful, and haunting noises...at once a sigh and a moan. It was named after the ancient Greek god Aeolus, god of the wind.


Daphne remembers
And wind whistles through her.

Once she tumbled, limbs over limbs,
With lovely Eola.
She and she would laugh, dance.
They were for one another
And it was enough.

But jealous gods breathe jealous gales,
And Apollo, storm of lust in him,
Could not bear to see their hands entwined
Climbing like catbriars with dark, tumescent berries.
He gave chase to take what was never his.

When I see Daphne now,
She is posing her prayer to the gods from my garden.
Her feet anchored in the soil, her arms up in supplication,
She begs the gods for the day when no man sees fit
To rape what he may not have for the asking,
And when a pair of blossoming nymphs
May love as they choose.

I add my prayer to the laurel's,
And in my queer heart dream
Of some future she, and the knowledge
That she and I will be for one another
And it will be enough.

Meanwhile in the garden, Daphne remembers.
She has become both a tree and a harp,
And Eola, a whisper of wind, still plays her strings.

Tuesday and the Swamp Lady

“Love is a fire. But whether it’s going to warm your hearth or burn down your house you never can tell.”

Tuesday and the Swamp Lady

Here’s what I want you to know.

It went down like this:

Palm to palm is holy palmer’s kiss

But it was more than palms that sent Tuesday to the swamp lady’s door

Oh yes, so much more.

From her perch in a window

The swamp lady saw down into the streets

And on grasshopper legs goes dancing her way

This powder keg of a girl

They call her Tuesday

Oh Tuesday, now Tuesday
She had rhythm in her knees, in her elbows and her pockets
And her mama couldn't stop it

Oh honey, it was rhythm in her knees
It was pink lemonade and black-eyed peas

In rhythm and sugar, she was a black-eyed feast
So Tuesday, she came dancing down the street

With all the fireworks of a girl who has not been told that she can’t

Who has not been told that she isn’t

Who has not been told she ought to be kept down

So Tuesday whipped her braids around
Some slick young cat, he liked the sway of her back
So whistling at those swinging braids
He yowled and wound around her legs

Oh honey, it was cherries jubilee

It was stars and the moon, and black jellybeans

And what Tuesday grew, that’s between you and me

But her pockets were full of rhythm
Her mama said, “Don’t you do that dance
Bring trouble into my kitchen”

So Tuesday, she danced herself right onto the streets, right into the rain
Away from the feast, and right towards the pain

Cause that slick young cat who liked the sway of her back

Heard those songs as they were burgeoning out
And before a single song had left Tuesday’s mouth
He was a-running on his way south
Where, oh honey, birds fly in v’s,

Where it was sunny all the time, and there are tall palm trees
And not a single trace of those black-eyed peas

And no matter that Tuesday looked all around
She couldn’t find him, but oh yes she found

That her rhythm slowed down

As her belly grew round

And from the window, watching it all

Is the swamp lady, who puts palm to palm

Knowing it takes more than holy palmer’s kiss

So when Tuesday arrived at the door, she told her this:

Red swamp lady, call now to me, resound below the waterline

Belay my hands sweet sugar water for that man dark and leonine

Daytime mister, speak in whispers, fisherman’s knots work under my skin

Mossy vista, moon-eyed sister, into my fabric press round little pins

And with a purse full of herbs and home remedies

Swamp lady sent her home to tend her black-eyed peas

So some smears of blood later, Tuesday found out

Where once there was rhythm is now an empty pouch

And she knew she couldn’t stop it—she was empty as a pocket

Feast and famine come to us all

And the swamp lady’s ready to heed to that call

But what I want to ask, what I came here to say
Is what does it cost and are we ready to pay

Or do we push it off, for another Tuesday?

I can tell it's love because when I'm with you
I turn into an idiot.

I forget what I did this weekend
And how to find 20% of my bill for a tip.
I say unclever and possibly racist things.

All of this to guarantee that you will think I'm an idiot
(and possibly a racist)
And not ever want to see me again,
Thus ensuring my unremitting singledom and eventual solitary death.

Stage Four

Too long the moanly hands
Ran over and over my hair
Smoothing the hiccups
Into shuddering Baby baby babies
And Ssshhhhh nows

Please convey my deepest thanks to everyone
For their condolences, prayers, thoughts, and good vibes
And please
Get out of my sight.

Inheritance

I cannot wear cowboy boots.
My mother gifted me with her relentless calves, which preclude wearing shoes that go up past my ankles.
I've never been fashionable, so maybe it doesn't matter.
But then maybe it does, because even galoshes get stuck at the juncture where the goose egg of muscle rejoins the rest of my leg; when it rains I have the appearance of someone who does not believe in sensible shoes.
These calves would make my legs powerful, if I were the sort of person who does powerful things with her legs. But I am not that sort of person. My mother, on the other foot, is.
She power-walks, power-spins, and power-plays tennis, and with her Herculean calves she propels herself ever forward, fit as a fiddle. I suppose that would make me more of a cello.
When my mother was informed of her colon cancer, she planted those powerful legs on the ground, and she stood and stood.
I cried. She stood. The cancer bowed.

On one particular Wednesday, I ripped a hangnail nearly to my knuckle.
I had gone to a Zumba class that morning, couldn't keep up, and left early in shame.
I sat in my car, the paunch of my belly drooping perversely over the waistband of my pants, and I wondered, where is my tenacity? Am I even a trace of that powerful woman?
As my index finger bled onto my hopeful spandex, I looked down.
And there they were, my trembly and uncoordinated legs.
I do not feel powerful yet, but my legs tell a different story. They speak to my mother. They say, This is my tribe. I belong to you.

Atelier Home Parthenon

The studio has long been left
to blankets of dust
on the crumbling statuary: my easel,
your bathrobe, the hunchback lamp.
There was a time two goddesses
came here for worship.

It was easy to see you then,
poised and posed, sore from stillness.
I saw and adored all of you.

I do not go back anymore.
My brushes are silent, dry from disuse.
I imagine you drape your seraphic limbs
across someone else's understuffed divan,
and I am glad of it, truly;
you bear the adoration and the arguments both with grace.

But I have not yet found a new temple,
so it is in the streets
that I kneel and chant in search of a name.

Tornado Berlioz

Sirens yowl from the main campus
Rattle my windows
Cindy watches the television in the
Basement where we camp, and
When Spencer asks a question she
Hushes him with a hiss.

They will wait out the tornadoes
For maybe two or three hours
Before they go to bed. I will sleep
In my hallway with the dog
Unwillingly smooshed in the
Crook of my arm.

In Alabama I know already
Houses were flattened
People were sucked out of windows
And tossed like frisbees into the wind.

I'm not worried.
Maybe I should be, but I'm not worried.
Instead all I can think about
Is Aunt Sylvia, the tiny television perched on
Her knees, and no color in her face.
She watched the footage they aired and re-aired.

We were safe in Baton Rouge,
Crowded, but safe. But the thing is, nobody knew.
We waited to know how high the black
Mold would creep, when we could go home.
In the thick, thick air for weeks
My Aunt Sylvia watched the tiny television
Come in and out of static, and if anybody
Talked too loud she would hush them with a hiss,
Completely unable to stop waiting and listening.

The weatherman says we are in the clear
A mere four hours later,
Not even long enough to give it a proper name.
So I name that time in the basement
With the symphony of hail on the roof way above us
And the wide television and Cindy's hiss
And the vestiges of Aunt Sylvia and static

All this I have named Tornado Berlioz.
He's a palimpsest of that violent woman,
Who took her time coming and outstayed her
Welcome, who left bruises blooming on
Our walls. Bridging six years, Berlioz
And Katrina do a two-step through
Birmingham and Johnson County and
Through my mind again.

Red Beans and Rice

You cook the vegetables down
So you can hardly tell anymore that
You're eating bell pepper or onion.
Call them vegetables
So they count for greens.
Let's not lie, though, because what we're
Really interested in here is the
Andouille and salt-pork,
The vinegar and the tony's.

Chop the onions, bell pepper, garlic.
If you put the fan by your face
It blows the onion scent away
So you only cry a little.

Chop the onions the way
Your mother does: inefficiently and
With a knife that has seen better days.
Hear your father remind you
Of the Holy Trinity, which in
Your home has garlic instead of celery
Because celery doesn't taste like anything anyway.

Mince the garlic, dice the bell pepper,
Chop the onions, wait for the
Salt-pork. The red beans are an
Excuse for the andouille and a
Mask for the vegetables.
If you add tony's at the beginning
And vinegar at the end,
Your grandmother approves
From no matter how many miles away.

Breadth

On my side table, Sarah's painting is lovely in its frame
Two figures, a woman and a cow, look up
Towards their only option, towards the crescent moon
There is a way out
Yes, the two of them are going to jump

As though neither knows that she is surrounded
By four strips of painted wood
And the galaxy beyond is my living room
With other paintings hovering on the walls

I gaze at the artwork, at the walls so attentively decorated,
At the books--gateways to infinite worlds--and at the window
Two smudged panes bashfully standing between me
And the skies so wide I can see my breadth

blink

I want you to know Jamie is doing fine.
The eggs fry up nice.
The boots collect mud.
I am fine, too.
Go to school, earn a little.
You'd hardly even know we were missing something.
The dog keens more than I do.

I come to the place where they buried your bones.
I know you're not there.
But all the same, I want you to know.
Jamie and me, we are doing fine.

Macaroni Portrait of a Love Affair

There once was a girl. (There's always a girl.)
But this one, she was the why of it.
She laughed at me, tripping over my own shoelaces,
And I left them untied, hoping to make her laugh again.
I whispered heavy secrets to her,
The kind that must be spoken with cupped hands and daring proximity.
She kissed me once. (She probably doesn't remember
Because girls can be so guilelessly affectionate,
But I was over the moon for days.)
When she left, I was certain I would never love again.
I had sworn my heart, eternally, to her.
Luckily for me, the attention span of a kindergartner
Does not often reach eternity, so by summer vacation
There was a new girl, (there's always a girl,)
And she quickly became the why of it.

As You Are

"What is to give light must endure burning."
(Viktor Frankl)


Alright, Sal, here's the truth.
Your left breast is smaller than your right,
And, perhaps aware of
This inequity, it bashfully gazes
Outward like a lazy eye.

And your teeth, like the rest of you,
Have never been what you'd
Call perfectly straight, preferring
Instead to lean upon one another,
Comrades in the downtime of the chewing war.

And if we're dissecting here,
I'll acknowledge that you do in fact
Have a streak of strangely-placed obstinacy
And a tendency to leave
The cap off the toothpaste.

It is possible that you will
Never know how to handle money,
Nor intuit when to stop arguing with your mother
Or how much salt to add.

It is possible that these moth holes
In your fabric will not ever be
Patched, and your birthmark
Will show no matter what you wear.

And to all this, I must tell you, Sal,
I will again and again
Say yes.
Because it is through the
Gaps that the light comes,
And through the tears that
We learn to mend.

And for my part, I will
Smile to tell you easily
From the women who wear
Adult braces and pad their bras
And pay surgeons to fix
What, to be honest,
Was never really wrong in the first place.