30/30 Day 18

Pocketing Change

1.
City street barefoot, shoes in hand, lipstick
smeared jaw, no nothing to say I wasn't just
there where you think I was. I am practiced
in eye to eye with 4AM's pious glare.

2.
The definition will say no one knows
a call girl is a hooker-- that she wears
the damage like caviar or knee socks
It will say she takes cabs home.

3.
One day I'll buy a window for my bed
a bathtub with feet for walking away
and a fireplace for my hips-- they stick out
and get colder than the rest of me

4.
Unlearning a good day's pay is like

5.
looking up at your mother's burdened
nipple the day you're born and deciding
to weave your infant hands around her ribs
executing a meticulous ace bandage binding

6.
I know a girl who thinks a cup of coffee
right dance open lap gripping hair quick wit
bump and grind pony ride patience
costs a shard of glass to street bare feet

7.
How quickly you'll forget there's no
standard dowry-- your weight
in childbearing hips or shiny quarters,
There are ones who want you to stay the night.

30/30 Day 17

I'm still railing against titling-- 30 names in 30 days feels like as much of a challenge as the poems themselves. I'm behind on posting, but luckily not behind on writing-- I'll fill in the days between 12 and 17 ASAP. Can't explain how gratified I am having made it through the halfway mark. Can't explain how full I am having all of this amazing poetryenergy to access everyday as people are posting.

Hungover

Confession Some days you wake up
Singing-- half sleepy moan gone to
brazen off melody bellow yourself
out of the sheets These mornings
should not be your secrets These

Are poems too What are the stories
you don't want to tell The eyes
you avert out of real want to dance
What tongue do you say yes with
in faith you'll leave able to tell
the next story?

30/30 Day 12

To My Lovers' Grin
When I Tell Them My Family's In
The Restaurant Business

It is a dirty magic in these walls
Duck fat and mouse traps
Tonic water, butter. The restaurant cats
Prefer hand whipped cream to rodents,
The chefs-- vodka to their children.

To make my point,
I would tell you I was born
On the dish room floor
But you'd only think it
Romantic and blush.

I was born two weeks
Late five pounds too small
In a Catholic Hospital corridor
Nuns hand-etching crosses
At my mother's thighs.

I am a dirty magic, showering,
Perfuming against the kitchen smell
Of my father. You'd like to think
I can wash away one,
Preserve the magic for you--

I would offer to take you down
Into the basement-- undress
In the wine closet. Let you
Suspend me with twine
From a meat hook in the walk-in

But you'd giggle and choke and
Stop reading the poem. I am tired
And magical and running
Out of soap. Not the kind of
Dirty you're grinning for.

30/30 Day 11

She Asks Me

What I'm going to do about ageism in the community.
I look at her from behind the safety of long panel tables
Face skeptical, wrinkles accusatory. I call on
The elephant-- look eighty years straight in its eyes--
The word is pressing. My jaw looses
It death. She considers me. I am more afraid of my mouth
Than she looks. Sixty years my elder, I address her
In the we. We have gone on will go on unbelieving
That our families are real. The way I came this morning,
Flimsy under fingers of another woman. Desire
Not real. Need-- lies. And one day we, you and me,
Really won't be. Those lines in your face-- the time we wasted
Unbelieving ourselves real-- arrive here
At the shrieking or bellowing fear-- they'll forget us just the same.

30/30 Day 10

The Only Thing Here

1.
She drink coffee
She laugh at tea
She wear steel toe boots in the dessert
She will only watch me touch myself
She throw her head back and laugh at my hands cramped
She no one I know
She got hair on half her head
She got thick lines in her lips
She don’t let me want to feel them
She birth mouths and teeth and leave them in the oasis
She the only thing here

2.
I am the woman at the end of a beach town dead end street
Who knows exactly when the slap board walls are going to salt.

I am afraid of hurricanes
Family photos gone with the rip tide.

I cannot dance with my mother inside me
I cannot come undone from our body.

I am scared that my frame is a failure
That I was used before I even came out.

3.
Wind makes me panic,
Litany everything that could be lost,
Scramble to measure mother’s weight
In ratio to the knots of gusting clouds—

Hurricanes find me watching her feet
A small nest I am to tend.
Single blink of my obnoxiously long lashes--
Her stolen opportunity to spring up

A woman’s desire
To be swept into the storm,
So transparent to a child’s
Always racing heart.

30/30 Day 9

Last night I watched a dozen firefighters casually remove a dead man from the subway platform over exchanged jokes and giggling girls. Sometimes I need a form to contain a too messy moment. The cinquain was the only form I could totally remember offhand.

Cinquain for the Ride Home

Late night lonely blond smiles pretty over the dead man's frame
Firefighter on the other side grins a good old boy grin
Throws a white sheet down, and tying up the limp feet asks her name
No blood contortion crooked white cotton shrouded-- it's always the same
Just want the train to come, get back on his truck, make good of her skin

30/30 Day 8

The last few nights I've stumbled home way too late to type up my scrawled on the subway 30/30 pieces. Today I am mustering all my best bondage skills and knotting myself without mercy to my resistant thesis. I'll type up each of my last three pieces during two-thesis-pages-written breaks.


Polite Invocation of Women

This time last year
Was walking through snow
Smelling like a pap smear
And talking just as fast

Wet-- not owning
Snow boots. This year
Invested in waterproofing.
Faster tracks. I hate the snow.

This time last year
Lied. Claimed calculation
Of the blackout drunk-- slept
With its ex-wife mock-planned

This time last year
Took enough hours
To go to work,
Come home, spike

Medicine fever, cry
Maroon alone in bed
Before it believed
Doctors hadn't forgotten

themselves inside it. This time
Last year sounds like
miscarriage or bacterial
balancing acts. Really

It's just about snow
And the walking talking
Speed it takes to create
Friction that melts

The path revealing
Sidewalk cracks
And decisions about
What's worth stepping on.