On Your Third Night in the NICU

Here is the great matter:
that whatever I plant
it is not roses that bloom

My sister's child,
that angelbaby blinking slowly as a cow,
that fat cheeked cherub,
was never to spring from my chalice
placed upside down upon the earth

I will take you from the legs
of an entowered princess
She knows of dragons
She knows of spells
She knows of want
I cannot undo it

And you will scream for her
from the want
But I have been greedy too

Here, stolen child,
be comforted

I am there in your gums
Red as the promise of a dragonbaby
Caterwauling
Mauling maw at incompetent nipples
I am wailing with you

We will bloom like wild roses
like cummings' heaven of blackred roses
Ransom for beasts
and broken as spells
and dangerous as loving
and sure as the moon

Lindworm

i.
I have shed for you, Peaches

For you I am diving into a fair-complected pool of cream
Thicken my arteries, pale ideal

Your arms a soft mellifluence
Be cradley
Be motherly
Cover my slithering sins

Let me lay my head against your breast and feel the subcutaneous flow
The white rising to the top
No jaundice, no despised gristle, only honey hair

Coat the teeth and line the throat
Soften the scream I have loosed for you, Peaches

ii.
There was a daughter
That was the promise of the crone
Red for a boy, white
For a girl
What horror when we do not look like they think we should
I have gnashed up other girls in my indignation

iii.
I will come out of this milky
Match the roses in my cheeks to yours
Bathe in our sameness

iv.
When they find us in the morning will they think me pure?
If my skin is the color of cream, will they mind the rest?

Sleepytime for Rafa

Great Cinnamon Bear lives among the stars

He comes from his world and down into ours

And though his teeth be long and his claws be sharp

The Great Cinnamon Bear has a most noble heart

He lumbers through the night, looking for dreamers

And stops when he finds some fast asleep sleepers

"Come with me!" he calls, and if you dare

You can ride on the back of Great Cinnamon Bear

Up, up you can fly straight on to the stars

Soaring towards a new world and right out of ours

To the Dream Land you'll go, a place without compare

As you ride on the back of Great Cinnamon Bear

You'll leap over asteroids and feel nothing finer

Than brushing the tails of Ursas major and minor

Past planets and comets, on through nebulae
You'll swim through the star-clouds of the Milky Way

And then glide away from the moons and the stars
Away from the Dream Land and back down to ours
For when adventure has filled up your head
Great Cinnamon Bear brings you back to your bed

And if you are afraid of the dark or nightmare

Worry not! These are breakfast to Cinnamon Bear
He eats up bad dreams and anything that will frighten
And keeps the night safe, 'til the sky starts to lighten

So dim now the lamp, and draw up the shade
It's time to depart to where dreams are made
Just close your eyes tight, and a sleepy smile wear
For you're off to adventure with Great Cinnamon Bear

A Reading From The Book of Timothy

It was explained to me
That at the Austin Poetry Slam
Among the regulars
There are 3 types of poets:

Writers, Competitors, and Performers

And if you aim to do well here
To win the love of audiences and judges
The esteem of fellow poets
You gotta be a little bit of all 3

But everyone's got a strong suit

Take the writers
These are the ones who think in metaphor
Who never once in their lives have just woken up in the morning
But who every goddamn dawning are wrenched from the oblivion of somnolence
They never see a stop sign on the road without thinking of the syntactical signification ... of pausing
If you tell them your heart is broken they will help you understand
By way of clocks, drums, shattered glass, oceans, demolition crews, Muhammed Ali, chemistry, or Pokemon
Bless their hearts.

And then there are the Competitors.
They are here to win. They are not here to not win.
If they do not win, they must know why.
Was it score creep was it a biased panel of judges
In the next round should they make the audience cry
Or should they make the audience pee themselves with laughter
What liquid should they elicit from the audience
They acknowledge that slam is a game of strategy
And they are tactical geniuses
Bless their hearts.

And then there are the Performers
I count myself in this number
We are the former theatre and debate kids
Who aren't into improv but who cannot wait
For three more minutes of your undivided attention
We thrive on the "Hey Girl Hey" and the "Spit Poet"
And the "I like your dress"
Because we wore this dress hoping you'd like it, and it's not a costume violation if you say it
We are in love with the microphone
And we can be exhausting to be around, but we are totes worth it probably
Bless our dumb, adorable hearts.

And while cataloguing poets this way might be slightly oversimplifying things
I have seen it born out in my time here
And if you think about the poets you know
I think you'll recognize most of them in this list

I say most of them.
Because I would like to offer up a 4th type.

I will call them the Heart poets
Because they are here, week after week,
To share their hearts with you
And to listen to yours.
These are the poets
Who offer first a kind word
And second a kind poem
They see hurt in the world
And they don't spit about it because it's trendy
Or because they hope you'll applaud
They're here to say love aloud

And sometimes they sing a poem
And at first you're like "That's weird"
But then you're like, "FUCK YEAH. MORE OF THAT."

If it were not for these poets,
We might sometimes get lost
In the search for applause
In our ambition
In gazing at our own navels

Heart poets make us purer
They remind us why it is important to be here

Thank God we have a Tim
Bless
Bless
Bless his heart

Tarot for Tara

Ten of cups

We overflow

There is family here and joy

He is the sway in your hips

And the whirl of your hurricane heart upward burst forth into a rainbow

Some presence you have never had before,

Your yes to life

The hanged man

Is this not what we are here to learn?

How to be and hang

How to glow, at peace in a moment pregnant with possibilities

(Look upside down! See how we dance!
How we tree our way into breaths

We are tall for the coming sapling

Heart open, chest broad, in the now)

Six of wands

A victory

Health and a crowd around you

A tribe, your tribe to wave you forward

Keep them near, honor their love

For you and for this new life

They buoy you up

Nine of swords

What keeps you up at night

What good life is worth staying awake for

What tiny-lung caterwaul says you

You and you, the protector and the light

No better cause for worry, this Lilliputian miracle

Nine of pentacles

Now in a garden replete with growth

Redolent in the overflow of a toddling consequence

Perhaps there are snails

Perhaps some weights heavy on your shoulders

And perhaps the garden is not unencumbered as it once seemed

But the truth of beautiful harvest remains

When you have brought forth life

What you reap is love

And love and love

Gloria, In Excelsis

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

“She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.”

"In cases such as these, a good memory is unpardonable"

I have seen Pride and Prejudice, the one with Colin Firth, approximately eleventy-zillion times, give or take.

And not because it's dreamy to watch Darcy broodingly swim in a lake at his estate at Pemberly in a way that is totally extraneous to the plot but allows him to emerge from the lake disarmingly dripping and attractive.
No.
Rather, I've seen BBCP&P so many times because it is the best way to spend time with my grandmother. Two decades ago, she began to go blind, and decided to to re-watch movies she had seen before so that she could still see the movie in her mind's eye, if not on the screen, and like a homing pigeon, she always returns to Pride and Prejudice.

So for many years now, if I wanted to chill with grandma, it meant watching this movie over and over again, to the point that I see your ability to quote scenes from The Princess Bride or Napoleon Dynamite, and raise you the entire 6-hour BBC mini-series adaptation of Jane Austen's most popular novel.

We watch Darcy scorn Elizabeth, and she says, "Oh he's proud, but just you wait."
She knows that everyone who is proud eventually gets taken down
We don't get to say how
Sometimes the eyes go first, sometimes the bowels
Sometimes the memory.

She forgets now.
Pieces of her life get wrenched out like pulled teeth
They're pulling all her bottom teeth out next week.
She'll be under anesthetic when it happens but when she wakes up there will be throbbing holes where bones used to be.

She asks if I remember my uncle, her son who died when I was twenty. If I remember Russell, her second husband who died when I was eleven. If I remember my grandfather, who died just after my mother told him she was pregnant with me.

I tell her I will remember.

I will remember that she was a Sicilian matriarch. A New Orleanian survivor.
And when she dies I do not expect to inherit anything but this:
I make gumbo the way my father does, the way she taught him

First you make a roux
And you stay with it. Don't leave. Stay and stir. Watch it.
Don't leave or it will burn.
Don't leave.
Don't leave.
She is going anyway. I cannot stop her.

So as she goes, I will let my memory become selective too. I will forget how she shat herself at the airport and I tried to clean her up without making her feel embarrassed. I will forget that I never wanted to know whether or not she had lost most of her pubic hair. I will forget that there are so many things now she can't remember. I will forget how scared I am of losing her

I will remember her calling me her baby. I will remember her humming Sinatra. I will remember her saying a rosary for me.

And anyway, in cases such as this, a good memory is unpardonable.

Little Lullaby for JackieRose

The whistling dove tucks her head in her wing
In the morning she'll rise up and fly and sing
She'll meet all the gifts the new day will bring
But for now she tucks her head in her wing

The lion cub begins to snore
In the morning he'll rise up and pounce and roar
He'll prowl as he never has prowled before
But for now the lion cub starts to snore

The arctic fox nestles in her burrow
In the morning she'll rise up and stretch and go
She'll bound and she'll leap in the pillowy snow
But for now she nestles in her burrow

The gosling sleeps under his mother's breast
In the morning he'll rise up and leave the nest
He'll peep and he'll flap and he'll swim with the rest
But for now he sleeps 'neath his mother's breast

And you, my love, are tucked in tight
In the morning you'll rise up and greet the light
You will play and grow be happy and bright
But for now it's time to say goodnight

Upon My Return

Hey, denizens of the ballroom,
How's it going?
I haven't talked to you in a minute
More than a minute
It's sloppy language, I know
And that's one of the cardinal sins, sloppy language
Maybe not as cardinal as wasting words
Which is what I'm doing now...
I'm stalling...

I asked for this microphone, and someone lent it to me
Along with three minutes
Three minutes to speak my heart
My sandpaper knees knocking about so that I can turn
To you, unlace my stitches and say
"Here is where I have been hurt"
or "Here is my dream for how things could be"

And it's possible. You beautiful body of strangers
You listen, take in, snap or give scores
Hiss only in the case of true jackassery
But mostly you uphold

And so I got to thinking I was good at opening up
Because I have told you secrets
About the important things in my life
Like question of God, my fear of fat,
my unquenchable baby fever,
and my lust for musicians...
The important things...about how I am trying to be better at being a human.

I thought if I showed you my weak spots
It meant I could claim confidence, like
I AM AMAZING AT VULNERABILITY.
Eat it, Brene Brown!

But I'm seeing this girl,
Have been for a minute, ok more than a minute
And she's really talented at being a human
And one night we're having a conversation about biting
--you see, I'm a biter
And I don't just mean for sexy times
I mean, I bite often, as a way to say hello or I missed you
It's actually pretty normal, I read online how
there is evolutionary cause for our urge to bite things that are cute--
Anyway, I'm stalling. We're talking
And she says, "I trust you."

Like it's easy
Like falling.

And I want to say, "Is that a good idea?
Do you know how many times a day I get lost driving places I've been before?"
Getting lost is like falling. It's easy.

But trust...to open up to a person who is inches away
Without blinding stage lights or the expectation of snaps
To tell someone whose breath heats my cheeks
That I'm afraid of infertility or that when I hear Catholic hymns I ache like
There's a dull thud in my teeth and a heavy door closing
The kind made of old wood and carved with images of saints
How I believe she is a miracle
And that she loves me is a miracle
And how strange it is to be a person who doesn't really believe in God
but does believe in miracles

To say those things is like falling in a different way
Like falling in.

And I think I'm here tonight because, comparatively, it's easy
To give away pieces of myself to strangers
To pretend we know each other, only to go home in separate cars
is easy.

So I'll consider it practice.
I will say things to you until it's less scary
to say them to her.
I am a work in progress. I am often afraid.
But I'm here. I trust you.
It's like falling in.

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

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.