9 months of things i did instead of writing

 

 

i met your mother and bought her sugar candy and pretended to be the virgin mary. i laid in your bedroom with my legs sewn together. i practiced spanish and let it wash over me like someone else’s river. i forgot how to walk, tried to do yoga. told you i did yoga. let you get off at the thought of stretching me like a rubber band.

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i celebrated the sabbats in silence, let my witchcraft become passive. i ate whatever you brought to my mouth. i forgot how to ask for things. i kept saying sorry. i looked at the moon and thanked her that i was in love. i prayed for you. i kissed you when you were sick. i looked at my body and said hey i am, i am flesh and bone and spit. i forgot.

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i cried when you touched me the first time. i let you ignore me. i let you name me dog wife and heard you cry sorry on the phone. and when you tired of my body i said well at least i have cranberry juice, at least my mother’s lap is forgiving. i didn’t ask for permanency. leaves fall, trash burns. arizona is 99 cents so i drink myself silly and my body becomes so liquid i swear i am almost blessed.

 

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we all burned to feel something

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i.

 

at 14, my nana swallows a peach pit.

she raises it up biblical, nurses

 

the whine of her stomach with birthday cake.

her body is not far from a broomstick,

 

she will snap during her wedding ceremony.

the prelude for pregnancy is sharp.

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girls are smashed on floors for good luck.

at 16 my nana spits the peach pit out,

 

sweet fibers disintegrate into old hunger.

there are other things to do.

 

she births a baby girl, starts

planting tomatoes.

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ii.

 

at 15 i lighten my hair with drugstore golden

blonde. coils collapse down ginger, edges spit

 

back platinum. somehow i walk the world both cutting

and soft. somehow i forget how sweetness always bleeds.

 

a boy calls me strawberry seed and unbuttons me

slowly. plants sprout up dead and too fast.

 

i am too much for myself to stomach.

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iii.

 

my mother, 17, thinks she is in love when pork curls

fatty and harmonious in a pot of collard greens.

 

when a boy in a letterman jacket breaks her collarbone

and lets her keep the bruises.

 

her body serves as conditional evidence.

her body serves as a flowered cage for already dead animals.

 

my mother walks home, chapped teeth in her pockets

she is always still smiling, always still laughing.

 

my mother, linen-bound, girl-dammed.

destined to be pregnant as a wind chime.

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iv.

 

i, 17, think i am in love when i taste a new tongue for the first time,

when i kiss a girl under her home state tree,

 

take the lines of her ancestry down my throat,

choke on the dusk where her hands are absent.

 

i cannot configure my own body.

lift the hyacinth from the root, sort the tomatoes into boxes.

 

i cannot find any practical uses for the seeds of my lineage,

will probably bury under them under some old ache anyways.

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Dad Poem

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in my dreams you are the perfect

african american father

and your hands shake

only at the sky

 

only at your own unknowable

man who has catapulted you

like a yellow watermelon

against sidewalk

 

the sky wrinkles

like the thick creases

by your eyes and mine

 

the skin is dry

the air is dry

and you have never killed

a woman

 

imagine that

a man who stands

in the kitchen wringing

out rags and making

spaghetti

 

who says corazon

and goodnight chica

and can stand the sight

of blood on a pad

 

watch the perfect african

american father

kiss baby girl

kiss baby boy

look at wife and see

good people

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