Articles

When it’s over, I wash
prayers and curses out of my hair.
I stuff them into a pillow.
I sleep.
There are no dreams.
I’m not haunted by the lives I take.

In my dream, we’re all
in bumper cars—
some blue, some red,
some a mix of orange and yellow.
The cars have huge front
and tail ends, like a ’59 Cadillac,
except they’re encased in rubber.

it means son who is of my right hand
it means that the son, who let’s face it,
has been ignored until now, is stuck inside
a telephone booth. He is being used and
taken into the back freezers to trim raw
chicken he is slicing off the wobbly bits
being picky and calculating if the hen’s
breasts are worthy with his right hand he tests
himself the left one could go on forever and he
wouldn’t come like a king

the glass woman is an empty feeling and an enactment of power
the bubbling up of a spectacular nasty
the pink velour fabric that cools the hairs on your thighs
the hairs that stick out of the black tights and itch so damn bad

You bring out the emerging QTPOC poet in me.
The only fits in a three dimensional Venn diagram in me.
The she hasn’t taken an English class since high school,
who does she think she is, in me.
The woman-loving-woman, yes also married to a man in me.

These two dead painted themselves
before a mirror, but now, flour-dusted, they blush

under the powder, less than bloodless,
and, yes, eyeshadow shadows the draws

they sucked into their cheeks, but those hollows
also shimmer, belied by porch lights-

You drove this way once and found God, or re-found
Him (and who wouldn’t?)
a splintered table, through-bolted, and the wide Pacific,
gray clouds layered three fingers thick atop. If you were here,
you’d carry a bucket and a heavy rod
to the surf edge and cast long.

I thought I understood time,

how a day began at five,

how I began in 1954

after the war and before

the war and during the war

my father fought alone each night,

like everyone else–

Blue-black hair against skin like milk. She leaves red lipstick prints on all my drinking glasses.  Chipped-tooth cherry smile, tattooed wrists, golden-downy-hair on arms and thighs, breasts like apple dumplings. Just look at her. She is mine.

I am driving. My daughter is in the back in her booster seat. My husband is up front beside me. We’re on an on-ramp to the I-8 somewhere between Gila Bend and Yuma. My daughter is screaming, kicking, and pounding her fists against the upholstery. My husband is trying to soothe her by singing Itsy Bitsy Spider.