Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns Read online

  by taking brutal belt to my hide

  ‘cause it’s hard to wanna survive.

  And all the great therapists of this world might say,

  “Maybe your anger is good.

  Maybe your rage is you emerging from the cage

  of everything you’ve been.”

  So I try to be Zen, singing mantras of

  om mani padme hum

  but god fears me too much to hear me,

  and my heart beats another kid in the candy store

  and his mother calls the cops

  and every time the clock ticks

  I start tick tick tick talking more shit,

  my voice sounding the crucifixion of everything holy.

  There are blisters on my tongue

  from pounding nails into hearts of prophets,

  and just when I think I can stop it

  satan resurrects inside me

  and everything around me turns to hell.

  Last night I stole pennies from a wishing well

  to buy rope to lynch the last inch of hope from the planet

  and all…

  because you have a new girlfriend and I can’t stand it.

  I wanted to be eighty together,

  wanted to birth poems like babies together

  and watch them grow up to save the world.

  ‘Cause girl, you’re the only one

  who could ever raise the sun inside me.

  And I swear the ground beneath my feet

  is only soft because you walk beside.

  There were times I thought I was so lost

  even god would never find me

  and then you came up right behind me

  and kissed a cross onto my back.

  And it’s things like that that got me going crazy,

  ‘cause I was thinking maybe the breaths we’d take together

  would make us live forever,

  and now you’re killing me.

  Look at me, I’m dying,

  not even trying to evolve when

  I wanted to be there forty years from now

  when the doctor called to say

  your mother might not make it another day.

  And I wasn’t gonna be just ok.

  I was gonna be perfect.

  Was gonna make my love feel

  like the first time you rode your bike without training wheels,

  kneel before you every day

  like there was no one else before you,

  ‘cause I’ve heard your heart beat

  like that breeze that could bring any violence to its knees

  and the best lines I’ve ever written…

  I plagiarized every word from the thoughts of yours I heard

  while you were just sitting in silence,

  staring up at Mars

  but you never wish on shooting stars

  you wish on the ones

  that have the courage to shine where they are,

  no matter how dark the night.

  And how now do I turn away from that light

  when I wanted to be eighty with you,

  birth babies like poems with you

  and let them write themselves.

  Was gonna hold your heart to my ear like a seashell

  ‘til I could hear the tides of every tear you’ve ever cried,

  then build islands in the seas of your eyes

  so you’d see there’s land to swim to.

  Hold your hand and say, “Storms are born

  from the same sky we write hymns to when the sun shines.

  Sometimes it takes tempests to wake rainbows

  that will wind our pain into halos.”

  Was gonna carve your name into my wrist

  so my pulse could kiss you.

  Was gonna love you so well

  I’d wake every morning

  and tell you things like this,

  “Bliss is the moments you’re with me

  when you’re gone my life hurts like hell

  but I’ll do anything to make you happy

  even if it means setting you free

  to be with someone else.”

  Swing-Set

  “Are you a boy or a girl?” he asks,

  staring up from all three feet

  of his pudding-faced grandeur.

  I say, “Dylan, you’ve been in this class for three years

  and you still don’t know if I’m a boy or a girl?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Well then, at this point I really don’t think it matters, do you?”

  “Um… no. Can I have a push on the swing?”

  And this happens every day.

  It’s a tidal wave of kindergarten curiosity

  rushing straight for the rocks of me,

  whatever I am.

  In the classroom we discuss the milky way galaxy,

  the orbit of the sun around the earth or… whatever.

  Jupiter! Saturn! Mars!

  “Kids, do you know that some of the stars

  we see up in the sky are so far away they’ve already burned out?

  What do you think of that…Timmy?”

  “Um…my mom says that even though you’ve got

  hairs that grow from your legs

  and the hairs on your head grow short and pokey

  and you smell really bad like my dad

  that you’re a girl.”

  “You’re right. Thank you, Timmy.”

  And so it goes.

  On the playground she stares up

  from behind her pink powder puff sunglasses

  and asks, “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Ohhh ” she says. “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  I say, “No, but if by some miracle twenty years from now

  I ever finally do, I’ll definitely bring her by to meet you.

  How’s that?”

  “OK…can I have push on the swing?”

  And that’s the thing.

  They don’t care.

  They don’t care.

  We, on the other hand…

  My father sitting across the table at Christmas dinner

  gritting his teeth over his still-full plate

  his appetite raped away

  by the intrusion of my haircut,

  “What were you thinking? You used to be such a pretty girl!”

  Frat boys drunk and screaming

  leaning out the windows of their daddies’ SUVs

  “Hey, are you a faggot or a dyke?!”

  And I wonder what would happen

  if I met up with them in the middle of the night.

  Then of course there’s always the not-quite-bright-enough

  fluorescent light of the public restroom,

  “Sir! Sir! Do you realize this is the ladies’ room?!”

  “Yes, ma’am, I do.

  It’s just I didn’t feel comfortable

  sticking this tampon up my penis

  in the men’s room.”

  But the best is always the mother at the market,

  sticking up her nose

  while pushing aside her child’s wide eyes

  whispering, “Don’t stare, it’s rude.”

  And I wanna say, “Listen, lady,

  the only rude thing I see

  is your paranoid, parental hand

  pushing aside the best education on self

  that little girl’s ever gonna get

  living with your Maybelline lips, Stair Master hips

  synthetic, kiwi, vanilla ’spilling beauty.

  So why don’
t you take your pinks and blues,

  your boy-girl rules

  and shove ‘em in that cart

  with your fucking issue of Cosmo,

  ‘cause tomorrow

  I start my day with twenty-eight minds

  that know a hell of a lot more than you do,

  and if I show up in a pink frilly dress

  those kids won’t love me any more or less.”

  “Hey… are you a boy or a… oh, never mind,

  can I have a push on the swing?”

  And someday,

  when we grow up,

  it’s all gonna be that simple.

  Tadpoles

  A tadpole doesn’t know

  it’s gonna grow bigger.

  It just swims,

  and figures limbs

  are for frogs.

  People don’t know

  the power they hold.

  They just sing hymns,

  and figure saving

  is for god.

  Blue Blanket

  Still there are days when there is no way,

  not even a chance,

  that I’d dare for even a second

  glance at the reflection of my body in the mirror

  and she knows why.

  Like I know why she only cries

  when she feels like she’s about to lose control.

  She knows how much control is worth,

  knows what a woman can lose when her power to move

  is taken away

  by a grip so thick with hate

  it could clip the wings of Isis,

  leave the next eight generations of your blood shaking.

  And tonight

  something inside me is breaking,

  my heart beating so deep beneath the sheets of her pain

  I could give every tear she’s crying a year, a name,

  and a face I’d forever erase from her mind if I could.

  But how much closer to free would any of us be

  if even a few of us forgot

  what too many women in this world cannot.

  And I’m thinking, “What the hell would you tell your daughter?”

  Your someday daughter

  when you’d have to hold her beautiful face

  to the beat up face of this place

  that hasn’t learned the meaning of

  STOP.

  What would you tell your daughter of the womb raped empty,

  the eyes swollen shut,

  the gut too frightened to hold food,

  the thousands upon thousands of bodies used?

  It was seven minutes of the worst kind of hell.

  Seven.

  And she stopped believing in heaven.

  distrust became her law,

  fear her bible,

  the only chance of survival…

  don’t trust any of them.

  Bolt the doors to your home,

  iron gate your windows,

  walking to your car alone

  get the keys in the lock

  please please please please open

  like already you can feel

  that five-fingered noose around your neck

  two hundred pounds of hatred

  digging graves into the sacred soil of your flesh

  please please please please open

  already you’re choking for your breath

  listening for the broken record of the defense,

  Answer the question,

  Answer the question.

  Answer the question, miss!

  Why am I on trial for this?

  Would you talk to your daughter,

  your sister, your mother like this?

  I am generations of daughters, sisters, mothers,

  our bodies battlefields, war grounds

  beneath the weapons of your brothers’ hands.

  Do you know they’ve found landmines

  in broken women’s souls?

  Black holes in the parts of their hearts

  that once sang symphonies of creation

  bright as the light on infinity’s halo.

  She says, “I remember the way love

  used to glow on my skin

  before he made his way in

  now every touch feels like a sin

  that could crucify Medusa, Kali, Oshun, Mary

  bury me in a blue blanket so their god doesn’t know I’m a girl,

  cut off my curls,

  I want peace when I’m dead.”

  Her friend knocks at the door,

  “It’s been three weeks,

  don’t you think it’s time you got out of bed?”

  “No, the ceiling fan still feels like his breath,

  I think I need just a couple more days of rest, please.”

  Bruises on her knees from praying to forget.

  She’s heard stories of Vietnam vets

  who can still feel the tingling of their amputated limbs.

  She’s wondering how many women are walking around this world

  feeling the tingling of their amputated wings,

  remembering what it was to fly, to sing.

  Tonight she’s not wondering

  what she would tell her daughter.

  She knows what she would tell her daughter.

  She’d ask her, “What gods do you believe in?

  I’ll build you a temple of mirrors so you can see them.

  Pick the brightest star you’ve ever wished on.

  I’ll show you the light in you

  that made that wish come true…”

  Tonight she’s not asking you what you would tell your daughter.

  She’s life deep in the hell, the slaughter,

  has already died a thousand deaths with every unsteady breath,

  a thousand graves in every pore of her flesh

  and she knows the war’s not over,

  knows there’s bleeding to come,

  knows she’s far from the only woman or girl

  trusting this world no more than the hands

  trust rusted barbed wire.

  She was whole before that night.

  Believed in heaven before that night,

  and she’s not the only one.

  She knows she won’t be the only one.

  She’s not asking what you’re gonna tell your daughter.

  She asking what you’re gonna teach

  your son.

  Love Poem

  You

  are the music of two grasshoppers

  making love in a school yard

  where four-year-olds ask me,

  what are the grasshoppers doing?

  and I tell them they’re dancing to the music of

  You

  are the gaps in my ribcage

  where the sunrise winds through to my heart and

  You

  are the part of the sunset that is so pink

  the grasshoppers think maybe we should stop and watch

  You

  are the moon when it bloomed for the very first time

  and a child inspired unwound the lid of a jar

  that set ten-thousand grasshoppers free and

  You

  drive me fucking crazy.

  I mean insanely.

  You make me wanna take a fork to my eyeballs,

  rip the hair from my armpits

  and shove it down my throat

  ‘cause I would rather choke

  than argue another minute with you

  but you are so

  pretty.

  And smart.

  You know
so many words.

  You’re every poem I would write

  if ink could ever hold the light

  that glows from your toes

  when you’re climbing up trees.

  Girl, I swear ya got sap running thick in your veins

  and I never love you more

  than when you’re mourning the death of raindrops

  falling forsaken on pavement.

  God, I love how you hate pavement.

  But you make me wanna smash my skull on pavement.

  It’s true.

  When we argue you make me wanna rip off my nose,

  bone and all like my uncle Billy used to pretend to do.

  He’d say, “Girl, I’m gonna rip off yer nose!”

  Then he’d tug at my face

  and hold up half his thumb

  and half the time he’d fool me and I’d start crying.

  But I’m older now and I’m not lying

  you make me wanna rip off my nose.

  Except when you don’t.

  Sometimes you make me wish I had an extra nose

  only to smell your hair,

  because I love how your hair smells like… hair.

  I always hated the smell of shampoo,

  Besides

  I love you.

  It’s true.

  The way you pretend to chew gum when you’re nervous.

  The way you stick out your tongue

  when you look in the mirror

  ‘cause you think your face is shaped better that way.

  And I love the way you pray

  and I love the way you chew

  and use chopsticks like you’re from Japan.

  God, you’re a woman of culture.

  I wanna eat you like a... not a vulture

  a swan.

  I wanna eat you like swans eat flowers.

  Baby, if swans ever ate flowers

  I would eat you like that for hours.

  Except when you’re sour

  and acting like a self-righteous grumpy old grump

  like ya do sometimes,

  ‘cause those times

  you make me wanna run to the edge of the fucking world

  and hurl myself into a black fucking hole

  and never come back ever.

  And then there’re the times I wanna

  be with you forever and follow you forever

  wherever you go

  if only for the freckle in the middle of your belly

  that’s just like mine,

  or the time you corrected me for saying man

  instead of human kind.

  I can’t believe I did that.

  Do you know how much I love your boobs?

  Almost as much as I love how