30 April 2011

Good Friday

mama earth
swollen in the right places--
wind fingers stroking
new seeds planted.
tender are faces that surface,
new and fresh.
somebody told me angels cry
on good friday.
do sunflowers greet the tomb?

these ideas--
love, baby's breath,
lack the esoteric.
minds are stormy that way,
strangling the night
out of the windows.
if only hearts weren't tombs.

13 April 2011

Afraid of Boys

His name was Adam. He was around my age. He lived a few doors down from my grandmother, in a small, yellow house. My sister and I would play with him and another mean boy named Nick. We never legitimized why we played with them, because they were violent and cruel to us. We played with them because they were the only children around, not because we actually liked them.

Adam would dare us to do things we did not want to do. Once, we jumped into a dirty pool in front of him and other adults, because we were intimidated and did not know how to react. Another time, he spray-painted my sister's new dress, that she had just received as a birthday present. And on yet another occasion, he pushed me down, lifted my skirt, pulled down his pants, and rubbed his penis on my panties. He then tried to rub it on my mouth. He was obsessed with his penis, with peeing on fences, with flashing it to people. He would laugh and give passers-by the middle finger.

His name was Adam, and he was the reason why I was afraid of boys. He and his friend Josh made fun of me in school. They called me "Cow," and mooed when I walked past them to turn in my math homework. To mess with them, I willingly dressed as a cow for Halloween in third grade. My teacher had dressed up, too, and we both got our pictures taken for the local newspaper. I posed mouthing the word, "moo." I confused my classmates with this behavior, with my getting bigger and laughing loudly and playing off by myself at recess, by the fence that separated the old factory from the school, the boundary between adulthood and childhood. I played alone because I felt safer that way. And, truth be told, I am still afraid of boys.

07 April 2011

Maria

Her shimering face had no teeth. She only dabbled in mystery, sent smoke signals, and often forgot to be angry.

"Why did you draw up such an elaborate plan?" I asked her. "Don't you understand your own breath?"

But her face faded into the soft, and her shadow traced a memory I couldn't see. She became an orange light bouncing in the dark, following a path she found strange.

I tried to see her eyes, but they were gone.

06 April 2011

It's a shoegaze kind of day, caps lock--our limbs
are fridge-cool, numb from poking.
We suddenly stare at a little light
in the back--not at an exit sign,
but that's how it translates:
how the image rearranges,
once upside down,
once,
the reflection in spoons.
Our disorientation is a warning label--
even though it's obvious, we need
a reminder, that small voice rattling.
We are faithful and abstract,
the crazy and the stupid. We make animal noises,
clawing at what makes sense, the contours of the intimate.
Keeping our heads down, we become the possible.