Waltzing Matilda

If I give a name to the things I carry
I can take them, dancing

Styrofoam beads that cling to my skin
Eyelashes I shed, and hairs,
Brushed crumbs from my breast after lunch
And always the pilling of my dress

Attend them into a pile together
And wrap neatly with, say, a handkerchief
Or a dinner napkin
And then take a shoelace, if one is convenient,
(floss or floral wire otherwise)
to secure the matter

And a stick--don't forget the stick
It doesn't have to be grand or straight

Throwaway things, or ingredients for voodoo,
Or food for mice and moths
Wrapped, tied, carried cozy

Take me dancing, Matilda.
Carry me in a thundershirt around with you
So I feel the sway unbraid my hair

Anthropomorphize me
(I hardly feel human)
And I'll dance with you

An Unscientific View of Embodiment

You might not recognize it at first
But my body is made of stars.

I did not know this for too many lifetimes
But I know it now and I am saying it out loud so I don't forget

I am made of stars.
I am the world's hipsterest constellation
Stars so obscure, hipsters haven't even  heard of them
Sparrow major and spero minor are only two of many

I have not always been kind to my body
I cut and pasted words from magazines onto construction paper
and mailed myself bomb threats
I held my breath hostage

I think I thought people wouldn't hear my body
if I silenced it in overlarge clothing
but the body speaks even when we don't want it to
It takes up space, even when we think ourselves nothing

And I am sorry now for all the times I asked my body for a divorce
And grateful now for all the times my body said no
It doesn't work like that
We don't get to be incorporeal: this is not a practice run

One day I ripped to ribbons the books I wrote on how not to be heard
I took a sledgehammer to the bricks I threw through my own windows
And a machete to the paintings of the times I made my body a carcass instead of a holy place
And I didn't think anything would be left.
I thought if I stopped hating myself I would run out of passion.

But what remained were the ingredients for paper-mache
And an insistent burning that reminded me
I can make of my heart a black hole
Or a solar system

I am made of stars
I give off heat and light
If you come close enough you can feel the warmth
You can see the glow

Envie

My favorite color is aubergine,
which is French for eggplant,
which is really just purple with delusions of grandeur.

A close second is merlot,
which is French for merlot,
which is really just wine with similar misconceptions.

These colors are rich,
probably more self-important than they ought to be,
which I find simultaneously familiar and attractive.
Short things that think themselves tall.

I thought, for most of my life, that what I wanted was aubergine and merlot.
Beautiful, round-bottomed vegetable
and full-bodied, fruit and pepper wine.
Soft, dark, quiet intensity.

A visit to Appalachia in the fall
and a week of missed phone calls
taught me that what my teeth crave is not softness,
but ferocity.

We work, dear friend, because you are loud, brash, hungry.
In all the ways I am a soft place to land,
you are a war cry and spit on the stoop.
You are not tame.

My darling, color of fire,
I found you among the autumn leaves,
vibrant and truculent in the Appalachian landscape.

I picked an orange and yellow bouquet,
set it on the table.
I ate eggplant, drank wine,
and missed you.

The Rug Doctor

You can rent one at the grocery store for twenty dollars.

A bargain if your dog, like mine, is frightened of thunderstorms,
and you happen to leave Austin during the single two-week period in which
it rains ten days out of fourteen, never mind that the rest of the year
is dry as toast, and it just so happens that your otherwise beautifully
house-trained dog's favorite mode of expressing his fear is to pee,
emphatically, on your bedroom's most absorbent surfaces,
read: duvet cover, plush pillow, and at least nine different spots on the carpet.

The pillow and duvet you can toss in the wash, but the carpet is a different issue.

Your roommate, bless her heart, will have sprayed some of that
pet stain-remover on the carpet the morning before your return,
but this job is bigger than a spray.
This was two weeks of what appears to be your dog's entire body weight
in fear-induced urination, and it will require a whole bottle of white vinegar,
a family-sized box of baking soda, the lavender water you got from your
hippie neighbor, and yes, the Rug Doctor.

At first you will be irritated: irritated that your obviously neglectful roommate
was not home every minute of the day to comfort your poor, terrified pooch.
Irritated with the aforementioned terrified pooch for not having a more
constructive coping mechanism for what most people would consider
arguably harmless weather. Irritated with the weight of the
Rug Doctor itself, as you lug the machine by its red plastic handle
across the parking lot of the H-E-B, into your house, and clunkingly
up the stairs to your bedroom, where every moveable object
has been stacked into precarious towers atop the bed or dresser.

You will cuss after misreading the fully-illustrated instructions that come
with the Rug Doctor, because you will have, with almost comic inevitability,
managed to fill the wrong tank with hot, soapy water.
When the man at H-E-B had laughed and said that the Rug Doctor
was idiot-proof, he evidently was not thinking very creatively.

But once you turn the machine on, and slowly pull it backwards
across the carpet, you will find a sort of meditative rhythm:
the rock-step-pull, the rising smell of soap, and the realization
that you have been wanting for a long time to feel really clean.
As you pour out the tank of dirty water into the tub,
you will take pleasure in having removed that dirt
from your bedroom sanctuary. You will wish that all stains
were so easily rendered innocuous.

It will storm again, the night after you clean the carpet,
but this time you will be home. You will hold your dog,
press his shaking body to your chest, and remind him
that he is safe. But even if he forgets, gets scared,
and pees on whatever is handy, it's okay.

You can call for the Rug Doctor in the morning.

Rapture

Yesterday I was doing some earnest procrastinating on the interwebs.
It started with looking for a synonym for the word torture--
don't ask me why--but that led to one link, which led
to another, which led to a website called
After the Rapture: Pet Care.
It's a site where a network of Christians has organized
a network of non-Christians who have volunteered
to care for the pets of the recently-raptured.
So, for a small fee, you can have peace of mind knowing
when all of a sudden the believers disappear,
somebody at this organization will basically start the
Atheist phone tree.

Hello, Patty? Denise here. Yes, it's happened. 
Can you pick up Coco and Peanut on Thursday? 
Great, I'll just give a ring to my buddies
At the Ladies Tuesday Book Club and Agnostic Society. 

It makes sense, if you think about it.
I mean, if you believe in the rapture, and you're not a total jackass
You would want your dog to be in good hands
After you quite literally go with God.
And it seems that the Bible, while saturate with
lurid imagery of teeth-gnashing and just punishments for the wicked,
is a little sparse when it comes to how to plan for poor Mittens,
trapped in your 5th floor apartment, with
all of her hunting instincts bred out of her
and no opposable thumbs to work the can opener.

I had heard before, from Pentecostal friends, that
the sinks would run with blood and the rivers would boil.
I had heard that once the rapture happened
the unbelievers would lay awake,
unable to sleep because the skies would be thick
with the wailing of those left behind for the time of Tribulation.
There would be massive confusion, pestilence,
and violence from our own hands.
Any day now, they said,
the rapture would happen. Be ready.

But here's the thing:
I already can't sleep. Long after the clock
has trudged back into single digits
I lay awake staring at the popcorn ceiling,
looking for constellations, stars to wish on.

And there is wailing, too. When I turn on the news
there is some turgid politician or overpainted news anchor,
giving me more reasons to howl, to keen, to tear out my hair.
Every day in Damascus, Kabul, St. Petersburg,
Detroit,  New Orleans, Austin,
someone's sink does run with blood.
There is enough wailing and gnashing of teeth,
to send chills up any listening spine.

The very idea that the worst isn't already happening seems silly.
I think the Tribulation is here, and we have made it ourselves
with no help from the Anti-Christ.

It's not that I don't have hope.
But if it gets any worse, and you disappear
I just want you to know,
I will take care of your dog in the aftermath.
I could use the extra warmth.

Whale Bones

Did you know that whales have hip bones?
They do.

The hip bones of whales are vestigial structures: evolutionary
leftovers. Some creature wiggled out of the ocean
and became an amphibian, and became a reptile,
and became a bird, and became a mammal,
and looked around at the land where it walked
and breathed and gave live birth
and decided it would rather be rocked by waves
So it slid back into the sea

The hip bones are still there.
Remnants from a time when
legs were required for jumping, dancing
They don't serve a purpose now,
but I guess they don't do any harm either.
Nature is replete with vestigial structures--we humans are no exception
Our tonsils, tailbone, appendix and wisdom teeth
are all vestigial.
They're our parts we don't use anymore
Leftovers from a time when the world was different
Or we were different in the world.

And I wonder, how long does it take
for a structure to become vestigial?
Is it possible that it happen the moment we evolve past its use?
If I have not been in love for five years
does my heart become vestigial?

I have adapted.
I have a sweet dog for snuggles
and dear friends and caring family.
I have purpose in my work.
And if it has been half a decade
since I have been wanted by a partner,
maybe that ache is just appendicitis
A flareup from a part of me that hasn't been useful in a long time.
Some days I would rather be rocked by waves.

I would trade in my own hip bones for a tail,
Let the ache fade into a fossilized memory
for scientists to puzzle over.
And if, in the meantime, someone
comes questing for me, searching out my heart,
all she will hear is a baleen sigh.

I have gone back to the sea.
I am swimming away.

A Love Song to Carmen Sandiego [Expanded]

I fell in love with a woman who was addicted to leaving.
We met at a museum.
I was staring at a piece of modern art, feeling stupid,
my head tilted quizzically like I was a dog that had just been given an unfamiliar command.
Ghost-quiet, she appeared beside me and said, "You couldn't pay me to steal that shit."

I said, "People pay you to steal things?"
She grinned.

Maybe it should have been a red flag when I asked where she was from, and she said, "I'm from everywhere." Maybe it should have been a red flag when she took note of all the emergency exits.
Maybe so many things should have been red flags, but maybe I'm the kind of person
who sees red flags and thinks, "Oh look! A parade!"

She was very interested in my stories about the stage makeup classes I took in college.
"Wouldn't it be fun," she said, "to take a train out of the country
and pretend to be somebody else?"
So we adopted fake Scottish accents and declared ourselves to be
Mary Maceachran and Sorcha Lilliputz.  Her wanderlust
fueled us from Reykjavik to Buenos Aires, from capitol city
to capitol city, a delirium of hotel rooms I could never have afforded.

I woke up one morning to a note that said,
"If I could see your smile, I would never need to steal the Mona Lisa."
The echo of her laughter resounded in the empty hotel room
like the bells of Les Saintes Maries de la Mer.

Carmen,
Where you going next?
I've got my suitcase packed and I'm ready to leave with you.
And there's nowhere in the world I wouldn't go,
So don't leave me here so lonely in Cairo.

I would meet you in Minsk and kiss you in Kiev
And hold your hand on the banks of the Thames
I would fly from the Mojave all the way to Skopje
And never look back

You have ten different passports, I know
Hidden in the pockets of that beautiful red trench coat
But since you're on the lam, let me run awhile with you
Carmen, where you going next?
'Cause I've got pesos by the purseful
And this handy Finnish phrasebook
And two pairs of dark sunglasses
And a box of fake mustaches
And no one will know our faces.
I just need to know, where are you?
Where in the world are you?

Two Open Letters to the Pope, Or Variations on a Theme

I.
An Open Letter to the Pope (No, Not That One)

See, my parents' next-door neighbors just had a baby,
whom they named John Paul. So my parents,
whose sense of humor has always been a bit dry,
have been calling him the Pope.
During one of my recents visit home,
the neighbors stopped by my parents' house,
And I got to hold the little Pope while they chatted about bathroom remodels.

Dear TinyPope,

Holding you makes me feel so many things at once.
Sleeping, your eyes are blanched cowry shells.
I press my nose to your head and breathe in.
Damnit, does somebody put heroin in baby shampoo?
I don't understand. WHY do babies' heads smell so good? Is it creepy if I just keep smelling your head?
My parents joke about how delectably fat your cheeks are.
They say you are a sack of potatoes
And while it is true that you are adorably lumpy, I have never felt I would throw myself in front of a bus for a sack of potatoes. Not even mashed potatoes, which I feel are the highest achievement a potato can hope for.
But for you I would. I have just met you and you are not even mine,
but I want the world to be good to you. I want the world to be good for you.
MiniPope, you make me believe the world can be good, even as I remember how empty my womb is. Holding you, my body aches to make life. Instead I make poems in the shape of babies, and pray that they are enough.
One day, LittlePope, I believed someone who told me I was not enough, and I have been working every day since then to un-believe it.
Hear me now, BabyPope. You are enough, and the world is good.


II.
An Open Letter to the Pope (Yes, That One)

Dear Actual Pope,

OK, I need you to not screw things up for this kid.
You have made me hopeful. I mean, I haven't felt Catholic in a long time, but you've been making some statements lately that make me suspect you might be different from your predecessors. And here's the thing:
The Catholic Church left me long before I left the church. I was Cain, with an unacceptable offering of a queer heart and riot grrrl tendencies. I walked away, broken-hearted, from a God that only wanted me if I promised never to fall in love.
But that doesn't have to be the world that this kid grows up in.
This papacy thing you have going, you have a chance to make it right.
I held the PintsizePope in my arms, and I want you to help make the world for him. Together, you and me,  we are enough, and we can make the world good.

Baby Fever

It started in earnest when I turned 24.
But maybe it started way before that
When I was six years old and somebody gave me a babydoll
And said, "Look at you! You are going to make such a good mama one day!"
And even though the memory is a smidge fuzzy
I imagine my precociously sailor-mouthed response was something like:
"Yeah, fuckin right I will."
Because "gonna be such a good mama one day"
is something I have known in my bones for as long as
I've been aware that I had bones and that they could know things.

And I don't think all women feel this way, nor should they.
I have friends who refer to children as "spawn"
And fetuses as "parasites"
And I totally respect that. This poem is not prescriptive.
It's just an attempt to explain to you
That in the last three years or so, something has happened
to my brain.
And it re-happens at least once a month--
You might even say cyclically.
I see a pregnant woman walk by and I go all melty.
Even worse, I see a man walk by and I'm all,
Mmm tss tss, mmm tss tss, mmm
You give me fever
I mean, not actually the Peggy Lee kind
Because, men...no...
I mean Baby Fever.
I've got baby fever. I've got it bad.

I start having a conversation with my ovaries.
Like I'm on the bus and a man sits across from me
And they're all, "Look! There's a sperm!"
And I'm like, "Shut up, y'all!"
And they say, "Make a baby! Make one now! He can help!"
And I'm all, "No! Guys! This is not a good time!"
"Not a good time? You don't need a full time job,
or health insurance, or a savings account! There's a sperm! Right there!"
"NO. That's a dude. And I'm pretty sure he's either homeless or a vegan.
And you have NO idea how drunk we would have to be
to think it's a good idea to have sex with a dude."

It's like my ovaries don't care that I'm a lesbian.
Frankly, it's a little insensitive.
But I guess they don't have to care because it's not their job.
Apparently, what their job IS, is to make sure that
every time I see a onesie with a frog embroidered on it,
or those tiny, tiny sneakers with velcro straps,
I'm droppin eggs like I'm the fuckin Easter Bunny.

I mean, I'm not saying I'm going to kidnap one
I'm just saying that if you have a baby
And it goes missing, and my oversized purse
Is looking a little full and a little squirmy
It's probably better if you just think, "Oh it's cool, I'll make another one"
And don't ask me about it.

Because it's getting serious up in here.
It's getting to the point where I HATE opening up Facebook
Because I went to an all-girls Catholic high school, which means
That everyone I graduated with is pregnant. Again.
And I scroll through the mommy blogs and the pictures of the cherubic,
Bright-eyed creatures with their culturally literate names
Like Escher, and Anais...and I feel like I'm doing something wrong.
And now I am begging the universe for confirmation that I am bigger than my biology--
That it's not just about survival anymore--that we are ALL bigger than our biologies

Even if sometimes I don't want to be.

In Defense of Delilah

I want you to know, Samson, I would do it again.
Even though it means the ruin of all of us. I would
Purr at your heels, take your head in my lap,
And slice those curls right off.

But not because they paid me, darling.
You and I know better than that.
We both know there are few things so expensive as falling in love
How it costs so much more than you ever think it will.

No, not because I was paid.
There was a night, Samson, I knew
What strength was. You breathed into my ear
And whispered, "Woman, take me in."
And I did.
You were heavy in my arms,
Draped like a dress across my torso.
You shuddered and slept, a pile of raw sinew, but
My hands were wide and consummate. I held you
Like Atlas holds the world
And in an instant I knew what it was to be strong like you.

But do you know what it is to be weak like me?
To have other men believe that you exist for them,
That you are edible, conquerable,
That they can legislate your body.

Tell me, Samson,
If you could unroll your veins like a scroll
What would I find written there?
I do not believe it would be the same story people tell these days.
I think it would say you loved me because you could bring me to my knees

Tell me, Samson, did the bible ask your consent when it told our story?
It sure as hell didn't ask mine
And I want to set the record straight.
I cut your hair because
I wanted you to wake up and face something Byzantine
That claims to protect you from your own decisions
I wanted you to try and fail to tear it down
I wanted to make us the same kind of vulnerable
And, Lord help me, I did.
I am not proud.

But history will paint me sinister.
Put me in with Jezebel and Bathsheba.
I stand with them as I stand with Eve saying yes to the apple.
I will link arms with other women
And we will cut off our hair too
Because our strength comes from someplace deeper.
And our blood will answer the cry of thousands of Philistines
And our blades will not be stilled.

Samson, I don't want to be this angry.
If there were any other way, I would take it.
But until another option presents itself, this is where I stand:
Razor in hand, I would cut your hair ten ways to Sunday
If I thought for a minute it would make us even

Dépaysement, Take II

Austin, I love you. You are warm and strange, and you are always creating, creating.

Austin, I love you. But there's someone else. There always has been. And I couldn't get her out of my hair, even if I tried.

See, it's not as simple as roux and hurricanes. It's her brown skin and saunter, the way she electrifies straight hair. Louisiana drips down my back and wedges herself under my fingernails, under my tongue. Louisiana is damp and panting.

Beyond the flash of sequins and tease of feathers and the allure of misbehaving on Bourbon Street, Louisiana spits at local color. It's rust from her mouth into her Gulf, and how she is the deep groan of a pier settling into the murky spillway. And oh yes, Louisiana does spill. She flops into the queso, the tortillas, the fried avocados I eat here. Fat and gorgeous and sweating, she purses her cypress lips and rolls her moonshine eyes at East Texas--where don't nobody make groceries--and says a novena for your sister, the one whose husband ran off last August, the hottest damn month of the year.

Louisiana takes herself a beautiful vat of brown gulf water and serves up an etouffe. And maybe she's dirty, swampy, and alligator-eyed. Maybe the races she's winning have names like "Incarceration Rates" or "Most New Cases of Gonnorhea and Syphilis." But maybe you're just embarrassed because despite all that, she still sways her hips. 

Because just beneath her surface is a glorious and profane heritage of Haitian voodoo queens, French-Catholic bacchanalia, devastating slave labor, and sweet, backwater coonasses. And if you slide on past New Orleans, into Acadiana--into Church Point and Mamou and Eunice-- for the courir, the Mardi Gras run--you'll see where they make community matter. They go door to door to door to door, asking for ingredients for a gumbo everybody shares. To every person in town, they say, "We need you. What you got that you can give? You give us an onion, a pepper, a handful of flour, and we'll turn it into something that feeds us all. 

So Austin, what are you going to do when I show up at your door and ask? Cause you know I'm going to ask. I'll feed you, baby, if you answer when I call:

Donnez que'que'chose pour le Mardi Gras!

Truth, Counter-Truth, Dare

The first time I recognized a woman as simultaneously beautiful and fat, I was 25 years old.

For a quarter of a century
I had this fucked up theory
I believed that every fat woman was secretly
A vessel for shame and disgrace.
That the judgments of America were written on her face
That she could be sweet, or funny, but not sexy
That all the room in her personality, was taken up by being heavy
And I was afraid that if I talked too loud or too much
All of a sudden people would notice the way my thighs touch
As though those things were in any way related
Like somehow playing smaller would keep me inoculated
Against the photoshopped princess I was supposed to be

But when I met Allison, that lie slipped out from under me
Everything about her was big:
Her hair, her eyes, her belly, her thighs
Her arms, her lips, her breasts, her hips
Allison was not afraid to take up space
From the moment her smile radiated from her face
Allison glowed: I mean light shone from her
This woman didn't just walk to her own off beat drummer
She danced, and when she picked up a tune
Her big honey voice could hush up a room
I met Allison, and for the first time
I realized a fat woman could also be fine
And maybe, just maybe, that fate could be mine

Things I used to believe, I'm taking years to unlearn
And I still have good days and bad days in turn
So I make it a game to make it easier to bear
For the things I have to remember to choose every day, I'll call it Truth, Counter-Truth, Dare

Truth: When a classmate pointed out how my belly stuck out over my waistband, I threw my lunch away untouched. And then at home I cried for hours and ate an entire box of powdered donuts, a block of cheese, half a jar of Nutella, and a tupperware of leftover spaghetti. I fell asleep in my closet, covered in crumbs, and marinara, and shame.
Counter-Truth: It is not actually insulting to be perceived as fat.
Dare: The next time someone asks you if you're pregnant, say, "Oh, I'm not pregnant. I'm just fat. You're right, though, my skin is glowing from all this excess of awesome."

Truth: Sometimes being big means you are invisible to salespeople at retail stores.
Counter-Truth: People much more actively oppressed than you have had to walk up to unfriendly counters and ask to be served. You got this. Yes, I know invisibility hurts. But invisibility you choose by pretending yourself away is even worse.
Dare: Do not play small. It doesn't suit you.

Truth: Kate Moss said that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.
Counter-Truth: Kate Moss has clearly never eaten a single meal in Louisiana. If she'd ever had good jambalaya, or hot fresh beignets, or a fully-dressed po-boy with that rich brown gravy that drips all the way down your chin...homegirl would know what a foodgasm feels like. And it doesn't matter what size your jeans are: when you're done, you gonna want to unbutton them.
Dare: Eat good food. I mean, eat good food.

Truth: I have slunk out of dance halls and aerobics classes with my head hanging low, feeling that I was too fat and too slow, that I must be the only person in the room who didn't get it.
Counter-Truth: All bodies are good bodies. Even the ones that sweat a lot. Even the ones that don't step-ball-change real smoothly. Those bodies can still shimmy like nobody's business.
Dare: Move your body. Every day. Even if parts of you keep jiggling after the rest of you stops. You were made to dance. You were made to shine.

Truth: My mother cupped my face in her sweet, caring hand, and said she worried that because of my weight, no one would want to date me.
Counter-Truth: Even the most well-intentioned parent who loves you with her whole heart can sometimes also be wrong.
Dare: Fall in love with yourself. Until you do, it won't matter whether or not anyone else has. Fall in love with yourself. You are worth loving.

These are just a few of the gifts that Allison gave
My daily prescription to help me be brave
It's the game I play, and you can play too
Be unafraid. Love yourself. Take up space. I dare you.

Fugue in F-Major, Ending in a Sonnet

I know it's cliche to have a thing for musicians
But let me just say...I have a thing for musicians.
Cause, you know, someone puts their mouth just right on a reed
It makes sense, that's a mouth that knows what you need
Yeah, give me a woman who plays flute or oboe
Cause she knows how to puff up her cheeks and blow
And you cannot underestimate the importance of rhythm
Your own metronome going to tick tick tick'em
It takes patience and attention to know
When it's time to kick it up and time to decrescendo
Because let's be honest, ladies: timing is everything
Ain't nothin' offbeat gonna make your bell ring
And if you want a love to produce a volcano
Set me up with a friend who plays the piano
It's a quick damn trip from sonata to bed
I think Tori Amos put it best when she said:
The piano is a passionate instrument... a sensual instrument, and, um,  you can hide men in it
... So there's that
You want to seduce me? Start in Bflat
Stretch out those hands, and honey you are golden
Cause nothing works faster than Asharp to F7
It's about running your fingers over the right keys
That's pretty much all it takes to make me week in the knees
Cause there's something beautiful, both aural and visual
About playing percussion on my favorite triangle
And I promise when I say this, I'm not trying to be porn-y
But who can resist when a woman gets French horn-y
And oh, heaven help me, if she's got a harp to pluck
Those fingers moving so fast, I just wanna...have a conversation with her
And the cello, sweet Lord, do I even have to say it?
It's shaped like a woman and you gotta open your legs to play it
Oh and one more, I realize it's common
But there's this woman that I have my eye on
And I, so often, wish that I could
Be made of only strings and wood
And have her hands begin their trek
Pressed lightly at my arching neck
And make a slow but steady trail
By working down my major scale
So stringed melodic I would croon
And then my eyes to her eyes tune
That nothing could be so easy
For a bright minstrel, such as she
To wrap her arms around my hips
And strum me with her fingertips
And I would find it bliss by far
To be but used as her guitar

Feast of St. Erzulia

Let the wind carry this sound up and far,
From my lungs and yours, the yes
Of bees' wings thrumming
And orchids trumpeting delirious with color

You were never meant for oubliettes
Or fainting couches, but for dancing
In wide places (how you shine, flossy thing!)

And free, now you are
From the dread of needles and prongs
And grave-faced doctors,
Let us chew up our orders and
Steal napkin weights, and try all manner of magic,
And in the beats of the pounding bass, know
We were made for the swell

Will

I leave you the cottage,
the book about fungi, and the broom.
The goat with her ruthless teeth
will belong to you also.
I leave you better sense than your mother had,
the deck of cards, the herb garden,
the tea kettle and cups,
and the rabble of people who do not like witches,
but who will brave the brambles
hoping you have a remedy
hidden somewhere, maybe under your shoe,
in your cupboard, or in the escargatoire in the root cellar.
Which reminds me, I leave you, too,
the cupboard and the escargatoire.
And the root cellar.
Yours the roughened hands and the logolepsy.
Yours the prescient dreams, the beeswax candles,
and the will to deliver, no matter the hour,
whatever must come bleeding and squalling into this world.

Don't forget to feed the goat.

Selkie's Girl

Mam used to tread on seashells in our house, with feet that
never quite fit her. Only later would I see how she was meant to move.

Once I woke in the small hours and felt her gone. Peering
across the strand, I saw her kneel by the waterline. She drew clawfuls
of sand and flung them out, baying and barking
from her throat. The moon made an oil slick
of her skin, a wildness she could not give me. 

She wept when I asked her to teach me
to swim. "Little thief," she said, "Don't you know
that seashells are bones?" I knew, but I wanted
her to cast me in skin. I wanted my hair to knot
like hers, like seaweed. I wanted my body to look
like hers, the roundness of her womanself,
the damp and furry places. "Foolish child," you will say
and you will not be wrong, for I was the thief
whose love trapped her here, the thief that freed her, too.
I could not look like her if I tried. In hungrier times, I make
the same moaning sounds, barking like questions she will not answer. 

Lately I feel the stirring of wildness
Mam left behind. You will tell me, and you will not be wrong,
to find the seed of that wildness and seal
it in. But if I cannot go back to the sea
as she did, I will spend the rest of my life learning how.

The Bird Nest in the E

There was a Texaco station
at the first stoplight out of our neighborhood.
Vivid capital letters across a black ribbon
advertised fuel to us and free housing, we would learn,
to others. Our mother saw it first,
the nuisance of twigs protruding from the lower
lip of the second letter. Not the cozy O,
nor the safe triangle of the A, nor even
the the protected valley of the X, but
the narrow slat of the E. The
sparrows abiding there had chosen a home with a ledge.
It swiftly became the fashion for all
present 5- to 11-year-olds to declare,
"The bird nest in the E!" upon the passing
of any Texaco station. Bonus points
if you said it first. And my mother,
whose ears had been used to exclamations
far more grating, would only blink her patient eyes,
knowing she had hinted to her children
at the unpredictable gifts of occasionally looking up.

Salt Dissolves

This inchoate dream I had

was sprinkled into warm water. White, 

iodized grains lilted and settled on the bottom.

I wanted to taste the salt on everything. 

I lost it, split lip dripping. 

(I should know better, I should know better.

It was never going to be the sort of undertaking

I could waltz up to on a whim.)

The ocean rolls into my mouth.

Among the jellyfish, reef sharks, brittle stars, limpets,  

the taste is still there, changing the water.

Spilt dreams tossed over my left shoulder,

they brace me, balast against the incalculability of the sea

and the un-alonest I will ever be.

Season for Osmanthus

At home this very minute
the sweet olive is flowering,
turning the air heavy and heady (how
did you get so sticky with want?)

Stay outside too long and you
get drunk on it, go zigzagging
through the neighbors' yard and avow

you will sleep in the grass
because you want to keep smelling that smell
until the small apocalypse of the dawn

Approach the sweet olive tree directly
and you can't smell a damn thing
because redolence is a gift
(so sidle, breathe, wait)

Meanwhile you expand,
hippy as a rosebud and just as knockout
I could spend days in awe

of your melliferous mouth
as we wait for the breeze to bring us sweet olive
(a secret
that flies to the corners
of your mouth and turns them
slowly
upward)

Sufjan Interjects Again

What makes a belly good is not its girth
—sneezing the sneeze of short snouts—
Or its ability to be disguised by an empire waist
—snorfling into my armpit—
But whether you can lay with it exposed
—careening through patches of tall grass —
Inviting adoration or showing submission
—nearly rolling off the bed or stairs—
And either way trusting the flesh to be exactly enough
—closing alien-large eyes to better feel
the relief of short nails on furry, imperfect skin.

Mercy of the Clarinetist, Libations to the Glass

Lauren was patient as a fern.
She did not even laugh when I said the sadness felt like a cylinder of frozen peas,
But made me sit with the thing so plain I couldn't make a metaphor of it.

That's what was left after I hurled glass bottles into a concrete wall,
Hoping the itch would leave my golgothan hands.
Some of it did, but glass shards lurked in the weeds
And I could not gather them all.
It's the kind of cold that burns, I said. Not the comfortable cool
Every Louisiania-born fat woman longs for from March to October.

What clenches in my abdomen, what leaves long red marks
On my face when I wake in the morning
Is the loneliness of the small, round, hard things you microwave
When there is no one else to cook for.

Dare, Columbine

Pierrot, do not give me another damned rose.

I will not have it, sir.
Enough of unassuming sweetness.

If you turn toward the waxing moon and sigh one more time

I will smack you about the face.

Come instead, and sneak into this cemetery with me.
The resting souls there will not mind us, I promise.
They won't even notice if we tell dirty limericks,
Or, flat on our backs, look up the stone angel's nose.
And from there it is an easy distance to saying secrets and kissing.

I have always preferred you,
But I do not want to sit so long in silence.
Be daring, Pierrot, and use your mouth.

Speak, clamorously if you must.
Let's vandalize the night
With our clanging shouts to God.

The Wind Comes and Takes Thalia

The wind comes and takes.

I stand outside the apartment

And write your name on a dried leaf in mad, crabwalking letters.

When I close my fist, bits of Thalia fall from among my fingers.

The wind comes and takes

Those who are cowards in the face of emotional risk.

We trade chairs. 

I would write your name on the petal whorl

But then it wouldn't fly when the wind comes.

Instead there is ink on my hands

From when the leaf cracked

Under the pressure of the marker as I dotted the i

And black bled into the rills of my palm.

You remind me it becomes a comedy

If in the end we both are married—

Though not necessarily to each other—

And you laugh while you try to pry open my fingers.

I give my tongue to the cat

And open my hand to the wind, which comes and takes.

Drinking Alone In My Apartment on New Year's Eve

A) Would not be half so embarrassing
If I didn't feel compelled to write about it
But here I jolly well am, aren't I

B) Tastes more like quinine
Than anything else

C) Is lit with a ring of sweet olive candles
I lean away from to avoid
Setting the place on fire with my breath

D) Is only depressing if I stop believing

That next year will be different

Somehow