Mexican Poet

You lay the Mexican poet down between us
on the fading blue moon and stars of our overwashed sheets.
You told me, open as a new bottle of wine,
how you loved him,
how he wrapped his words around your heart
like a morning glory vine around a nested stinger.

I should have listened to the skinny about bi women--
they will always leave you twice.
There is a reason why
sun and moon rarely share the sky,
and when they do, it is always in half-light--
that darling of killers, clergy, and affected stand-in bullshitters.

I know it was just a book,
just a moment,
just translated soul settling inside our skins,
turning them to sandpaper. 
The real blame belongs with my jar of hoarded scorpions,
scattered in our hair,
blooms on two brittle garlands lovely in any language
but never meant to last the night.
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for Real Toads mini-challenge.

Once & Again

jealous jealous jealous
of how she looks, that face, those ways--
gah! the perfect woman.
but wait a minute,
she survived divorce, like i did.
she survived old-school parents, like I did.
she still believes in love, believes in following her heart
and her instincts, just as i do.
she even dresses like I do.
Maybe I am a little bit of remarkable...too.
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I don't know that this is really a poem, but it is my response to Isadora Gruye's Out Of Standard challenge. She asked all of us over at Real Toads, to do the "Cliff's Notes" version of our favorite book or movie or such as that.  I love the old tv series "Once & Again", in which Sela Ward plays Lily Manning, a divorced mom of two who finds love the second time around with architect Rick Samler. Life is never smooth for her, but she finds her way and keeps her heart right there on her sleeve, and shows a lot of courage and soul. Besides that, she's fricking gorgeous. 

Sela Ward also played the character of Teddy on the old nighttime soap opera "Sisters." As a black sheep and a recovering person, as her character (eventually) was, that role meant a lot to me, too, even though "Sisters" was never very realistic, and "Once & Again" is.
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Fireblossom Spills

Izy's Out Of Standard challenge wants to know our guilty pleasures. Not some simple-time shit like eating sweets. Not the stuff you giggle about at the office party or the ladies' lunch. The real stuff, the stuff you're not so comfy telling. But that you liiiiiiiike. 

I've written two. They're both true, but one is sort of goofy and the other goes a little deeper, a little darker. Easy one first.

WHICH WAY TO NEW ROCHELLE?

Laura,
jokes are fine.
Jokes are one thing but 
those double beds aren't funny anymore

Honey,
open the door.
Forget the casserole and the radar range.
Forget Millie, she's strange anyway, and most of all
forget men, at least for this afternoon.
Forget it all and let me in.

I've loved ya since i was five.
Why would I lie?
I wanted to be you, but now I just want you,
and if I can't be with you then I guess I'll just die
and you'll have a lesbian,
a broken hearted pretty damn cool lesbian
dead in the drive.

Laura, baby,
let me in.
You'll never have to see Buddy and Sally again.
I can show you things the network censors won't allow.
I can show them to ya now,
but sweet foxy black and white woman of my dreams Laura,
you got to open that cardboard set door.
I'll light your Kent
and pay the rent, 
but sweetheart, you got to put down the oven mitts 
and come and let me in.
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SAFE, SANE, CONSENSUAL

I gave it up.
Honest.
(too dangerous
too demanding
too thrilling)

I gave it up
and
nobody who knows me
(unless they know me really well
or, unless they knew me
then)
would guess that kiss-this independent me,
little sugar-lipped my-way me
was ever into
such stuff.

But oh, when I least expect it,
(when I've almost forgotten
all the sweet and the rotten)
some woman says
(she doesn't say it sweet)
some woman says
(she doesn't say it cold)
some woman says
(she says it like she just naturally expects it)
"come here"
or
"hand me that"
and

oh the shiver that slides up my back.
Oh how the air gets too thin to breathe
and I know,
I know,
she's recognized me.

But I've given it up.
Honest.
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Girl Jox

Like the frequency that only dogs can hear,

Something hums in me, in here,

At the sight of these

Swoon-worthy women,

The girl jox.



So ok, all right, maybe it isn't exactly my heart

That goes a little tilt, a little faint

When I'm around all those ponytails and high fives...



Guy jox are like too-loud music,

But girl jox are like baby bear's frappuccino--

Just right.



Girl jox, where do you go

After the game,

After Pizza Hut,

After torturing ones such as I

With your golden

So kissable

Thighs?



Home with each other, I suppose--

Or to a boyfriend? Say it ain't so!

But never to the starstruck poetess

With the glasses and the library card;

Never to the girl with the black-cat remove,

And the chalk lines drawn around

Her stupid

Hopeless

Endless desire

For you.

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(This is a new edit of an old poem of mine)

photo: Jessica Mendoza

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Malus Domestica

When I was a child,

I was just eyes in the dark

Scaring myself;

And I was just arms in the dark

Trying to comfort myself

When I was a child.

When I was a girl,

I thought, a girl is no thing to be,

Not here;

And so I turned to a silent woody tree--

Wearing my white blossom dress in spring

With an apple for a heart

When I was a girl.

Everyone said,

"You are not even really a girl,

Nor a wooden doll;

You are just the black in the night,

And the space between dreams,

That's all."

When I heard their words, I wept

And let my leaves fall.

When I found love,

I came back into bloom

And my white blossom dress

Was the envy of the stars, and the lovely distant Moon;

But when I leant to kiss my love,

She was gone, never to come back...

With my single apple in her apron

And the night sky laughed

When I lost love.

Now I am a woman,

And, like all women, my eyes see everything;

My arms reach

To comfort and to keep

My creatures, my garden, and me;

I still wear

My white blossom dress in spring,

And in autumn I weep--

Bring your baskets, for my branches are full with a thousand hearts, both tart and sweet...

Now I am a woman.

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Each stanza has one more line than the one before. Like growth rings in a tree. ;-)

The Burn

As some of you know, my creative urge has been extinguished for about a week. Since I operate in something akin to dog years, for me that's a long time. But I quite literally dreamt this one up, about an hour ago. Not in lines, but then, dreams are their own special poetry.

In my dream, there was blood...

Bright red, like words you can't take back.

It was woman's blood, that routine and slightly shameful miracle,

And it was mine.

That's how I know it was a dream--

If I bled now

It could only be tears,

Colorless and common as salt.

In my dream, I'd been with someone else...

Someone nicer than you, probably,

But when I put my mouth to her in that familiar prayer, she was calm as a Madonna,

And so I came back here to you.

You had ordered breakfast, chocolate chip pancakes drowned in butter

--so unhealthy and so sweetly delicious--

And though you'd clearly sated yourself while I was away,

It was the sort of easy, loving gesture you're so talented at

When your heart is generous and your claws are sheathed.

In my dream, I wanted to tell you

--as I trailed along after Your Majesty in the way that believers must do--

That I was so glad to be back with you...

That it felt like coming home, even if the house is on fire,

Even if nothing can be saved,

Even if the next kiss has to be the last.

When I woke up,

On cool white sheets in the silent night,

I knew it would be all right;

I knew why unrepentant witches smile through the smoke with their hair on fire;

Despite blood, belief, sweetness and loss,

I'd seen the face I love

And the burn in my bones was back.

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