Hey Mama

My friend Kayla is a midwife, and when I see her she says, "Hey Mama."

And I remember working at a restaurant
when I was nineteen.
Half the kitchen spoke Spanish
and the other half spoke Arabic,
but they all called me "Little mama."

I liked to imagine it was because I carried
the things they made,
brought them out to the world,
but I'm pretty sure it was because
they didn't remember my name.
"Order's up, little mama."

But this now
it's different from how Abdullah and Santiago said it.
I show up, and you say, "Hey Mama,"
I feel lit up like an angiogram. Like you can tell
exactly what in me is about to burst.

I want to say, "No.
You got it wrong.
I am empty real estate. Toxic assets.
I never gave my marrow to another human.
I'm not awake like mamas. Strong like mamas.
I'm not choke out weeds and tiger rake like mamas."

I thought I would be by now.
I thought my hips were wide for a reason.
and I was meant to split open like a watermelon
to let life come swimming out
But my juices run for nothing
and I bleed a little more every month
And the only thing pregnant
is the pause, when I don't know how to answer.

What does it mean, Kayla, when a midwife calls you Mama?
Does it mean you see all women this way?
Are we all this kind of hale vessel
You know, I've been mistaken for pregnant before.
It wasn't nice.
And I realize that's not what's happening when you say, "Hey Mama,"
But all the same, I need you to know that I'm a salted garden
Nothing grows here
And if I cannot grow things,
then what is all this bosom and baking and active listening for?
How woman am I?

So I've come up with a list of other things it can mean
when you say "Hey Mama."
Like, it could mean,
"Your boobs look amazing."
Or
"Your skin and hair are glowing
and you have the patience of a thousand
red-vested Buckingham Palace guards."

Or maybe it could mean,
"The thing you're carrying is heavy and it hurts
And if it needs to come bleeding and squalling
into the world, I will hold your hand while you scream
and remind you to breathe."

Hey. Mama.
It's ok.
Keep breathing.

Just In Cases- The Language Barrier Poem

Used to be, when I was sad, my moose of a brother would squish me. I mean literally, lean his entire torso on me until I was flat on the floor, all of the air pressed out of my lungs, and then he would say:
"HEY DANIELLE. What did the big volcano say to the little volcano? I LAVA YOU!"
And prone on the ground, unable to breathe, I would know, unequivocally, that I was loved.
Even if it wasn't comfortable or helpful, it was true.

These days it seems it's not so clear.
I say the word love thirty times a day.
And half the time I don't even know what I mean
I love my mother
I love breakfast tacos
I love those earrings
I love Arrested Development
I love that Lorde song, And we'll never be Royals (Royals!)
I love Grumpy Cat

According to the internet
and this guy Gary Chapman,
there are different ways we express and receive love,
Called the five love languages,
Gifts!
Quality time!
Words of affirmation!
Acts of service!
Physical touch!

And we don't all speak the same one.
No wonder we get confused.
We're all tower of Babel, giving our preferences and declensions in different tongues
My mouth is guttural, a churning fountain of mud
And you're waiting to hear "Kiss me" in Italian
When the only verb I know in Italian is "eat,"
So I tell you "Mangiami!" and hope you don't slap me

There are times I am trying to say to you,
"I'm lost and I just want one thing to be sure of"
But you hear,
"Can you hold my purse?"

And other days you say,
"Rawr means I love you in dinosaur!"
And I hear a fucking cute cartoon
But what if you meant something
with more hot breath and claws?
How would I even know?

I have stood atop the clock tower,
Calling until my lungs would burst
"Que je t'aime, que je t'aime, que je t'aime!"
Like one day you'll just wake up knowing French

I'm exhausted by this language barrier
So I'm hiring a couple of translators
Ones who speak the love languages
I know how to work in.
So our next conversations will go like this:

Il est arrivé lentement
It happened slowly
-I preheated the oven to 350 degrees-

Si lentement, je ne l'ai pas realizéSo slowly, I didn't realize as it was happening
-I took from the pantry my containers of flour, salt, yeast, nutmeg, cinnamon, pecans, white sugar and brown. Butter, eggs, and milk from the fridge.-

Je suis arrivée comme une éléphant dans un jeu de quille. Lourde comme le plomb, et maladroit, je n'savais pas quoi faire avec mes bras, mais tu m'as rendu lègere comme le papier.I arrived on this scene like an elephant in a game of bowling. Lead-heavy and clumsy, I didn't know what to do with my limbs, but you made me feel light as paper
-I combined dry ingredients with dry, wet with wet. And then all together. I kneaded the dough until my fingers were webbed and sticky. There was flour in my hair, under my fingernails. Patience lets all things happen in their time, so let it rise.

On dit, qui sème le vent récolte la tempête. Mais toi, tu étais le vent violent que je voulais laisser rentrerThey say, if you sow the wind, you will reap the storm. But you, you were the gale I wanted to let in
-For the filling, I mixed the butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and pecans, spread it out over the dough, and rolled it up tight. Again I let it rise, and then bake. Sometimes waiting is the hardest part. When was cooled, I drizzled the sugar and colored . The entire house smelled warm and yeasty.

Tout ce que je veux c'est que tu me renverses. Trempe-moi jusqu'à la moelle.All I want is for you to blow me over, soak me to the bone
-"Here," I said. "I made this for you."

Cookie Monster

The idea behind Skinnerian Neobehaviorism,
or operant conditioning,
is based on positive reinforcement.
The surest way to reinforce a behavior
is through a system of rewards.
My dog Sufjan is a big fan of Skinnerian Neobehaviorism.
Example: when Sufjan refrains from
jumping on guests entering my house,
he is rewarded with bits of hot dog.
My life is better because my guests aren't being assaulted,
and Sufjan's life is better because hot dog.

And though we humans like to think of ourselves
as far more complex creatures
the truth is that operant conditioning works really well with people, too.
Humans are more likely to continue a behavior if they
are being rewarded for it.

Example: when I was a kid, I had a chore chart,
and I got stickers for doing things like cleaning the bathroom.
Today I clean the bathroom not because I'm dying for
one more Lisa Frank rainbow tiger cub, but because
I actually believe in the importance of personal hygiene.
But it took a little while for that understanding to evolve.

I bring all this up because I was recently left with a bitter
taste in my mouth from an encounter I witnessed second-hand.

The argument was that it's annoying when people in positions of privilege
acknowledge that privilege, and then get rewarded for it.
That they shouldn't get cookies for that.

At first I was offended. As a white person having realized the ways she has
unwittingly benefited from institutionalized racism, why shouldn't I
have a forum to discuss wanting to reject that system, and
to discuss the process of sussing out how to do that?

And then I remembered how I sometimes get annoyed when a guy stands
at this very microphone and gets mega-audience praise for
saying that violence against women is unacceptable. I roll my eyes
because women have been saying that for a long time, and why
should he get a cookie for saying these things? He gets rewarded
because it's so novel for a dude to acknowledge the patently obvious
fact that rape is a terrible idea. Oh good. You figured it out. Yay.

I have these inclinations, too. The instinct to expect that everyone
has had the same life exposures I have.  But the truth is,
not everybody got to take Discourse in Feminism, or African Diaspora
Studies courses at college. Not everybody got to go to college.
Some people did go to college and it reinforced their shitty opinions.

So I've decided. When a person gets up on this stage and states a truth,
even if that truth has been crystal clear to me for a long time,
I say, they get cookies.

I mean, we're speaking metaphorically here. There's no finite number of cookies.
It's not like we're going to run out.
There is no limit to the praise we can give our fellow humans.
No limit to how we can lift each other up
when we get better at seeing each other as people
wading through a thousand different labels of
race, gender identity, ability, sexuality, nationality, language,
We're just people trying to navigate a world we inherited
and want to make better.

So yes, dude who is JUST NOW figuring out that "bitch"
is not a respectful way to address a woman.
Yes, friend who recently stopped adding the phrase "No homo"
to the end of every paragraph.
Yes, white girl who wants to change a system that rewards her for being white.
And yes, dear friends who have been screaming your throats raw
trying to make these truths heard for a long, too long, time.
You get a cookie.

And if somebody tries to say that you don't, come over to my house.
I'll be baking all evening.

Gallows Birds

The dog made a jail break while I was away.

He dug under the fence and went exploring the drenched avenues.

My neighbor caught him, dried him off, and brought him into her house.

She called the number on his collar and demanded a reward for his return.

I paid the dog's ransom, laid bricks in the hole under the fence,

Deposited him in the tub for a thorough rinse.

His only regret of the evening, I think, was the bath.

How tiresome, these humans, with their rough and patient scrubbing.

Gluttony

From my infancy I wanted to taste the world
Try out everything on my tongue
Grass and tables and mama's hair and
educationally engineered teething rings

I know I am not unique in this,
in wanting to find out fox holes and mirrors
and electrical sockets
(which maybe explains some things)

Today, the window of what I will allow in my mouth
has narrowed, which is, arguably, for the better.
But there are tastes I have missed.

I  have let in sugar and starch, syrup and sauce,
sluiced prodigally in place of the salt of someone else's secrets
I let savors come slushing down my throat
hoping to hush what hungers there
But it will not be stilled, this fevered yen.
It's not enough, maybe never enough
but what's enough?
I don't think in this lifetime I will ever feel
Full
but in the meantime there is taste.

Have you ever put something in your mouth
and known it was holy?
Come to my house some evening.
Bring a bottle of whatever you like.
I will show you how I pray these days.

There was a moment in my life
I stopped believing in God
and started believing in salt.
That whatever is alive grows
and dies and nourishes something else
And that includes me
I have only so many years
to let the world in through my mouth
Before I am served up cold
So instead of praying, now I have learned to add heat.
I braise and boil, and roast and broil
I steam.

I cannot promise you salvation
But come into my kitchen
It will be redolent with the sizzle of onions and hymns
There's voodoo in my tenderloin
Don't you fall in love with me
And say I didn't warn you.

We will offer libations and smash our glasses
And learn what it means to open
You will taste like Alleluia
and I will taste like Amen
And maybe that's close enough to holy
for now

Beauty Sleep

Days like this I want to stay asleep,

so I do.

I've become almost gruesome, microwaving single-serve

bags of frozen peas and letting entire 

crock pots of gumbo and pulled pork

turn to penicillin in the refrigerator.

But I'm running out of fridge space, so I've come up with a plan.

I will hire a construction team to build me a tower,

and a landscape architect to cover it in ivy.

Then I'll knock over a Walgreen's pharmacy

and steal a year's supply of Ambien.

Someone promised me, this is how 

you end up happy. Perch high in a campanile
and learn to be beautiful in it. Every so many hours,

take a pill and fall back asleep. Dream

of almost nothing but tintinnabulation. 

Stay drowsy until someone wants to kiss you,
and then up and marry
the first person to fight through your brambles.

It seems as good a strategy as online dating.

But what if it's some brute with a sword

who is the lucky winner? After all, the easiest
way to hack through defenses is with a sword.
I would have to prick my finger. I'd bleed for a hundred years.

But maybe instead it will be someone soft enough

to slip quietly through my protective ivies.

Someone who will not mind when I cry

about crises I should have gotten over in high school.

Maybe she will be drawn to me

not because I have more warning labels 

than the Ambien I stole, 

but because we like the same species of caladium,
broad and pink and reaching,

and she sees familiarity in my imperfections,

and I see in her a good reason to stay awake.

But I could be waiting for a really long time.
Who even knows what caladiums are?
I certainly won't find her sitting in this tower.

No,
I will flush the pills nobody ever prescribed me
and I will leave the tower via the stairs.
I will learn to ask for what I need
instead of hoping it climbs up to rescue me.
In fact, I will be outside after the show.
Come talk to me?
We can stay awake all night.

Thank You for the Offer, ADT, But No

I will bar the door tonight

Figuratively, I mean

Nobody uses doors with actual bars anymore when a deadbolt will suffice

and is more aesthetically pleasing

But sometimes the part of me that misses things I never experienced

(like soda jerks and speakeasies and hoop skirts with six-foot diameters,)

also misses having a stout blockade, a perpendicular palisade,

to bar harm from the house, an arm thrown across what is sacred

And somehow gazing with milky nostalgia
it's easy to wander backwards, disremembering
the past, through decades I never lived in,
and finally through ones I did;
how my father used to throw his arm across my chest

in the car, if he had to break suddenly;

how he stopped when I grew breasts

instead his hand hovering over the console

caught between propriety and protection;

how I never had occasion to learn

whether his arm would have made a difference

in the event of a three-car catastrophe

Maybe tonight I will not slide the deadbolt into place,

Because really, any earnest assailant with slender shoulders

could easily slip in through the doggie door,

and even if I were to outfit my house with everything
from medieval iron barricades to high-tech alarm systems

I still would not feel as safe as I did

in my father's car, with his arm outstretched