Skinnylittlegirl

Her body is a third world country
starving for attention

Gold Medal

I found your Olympic gold medal
while I was cleaning my childhood bedroom.
I almost vacuumed it up.

I can’t help but wonder how it got on my floor,
how you must have not noticed it missing from your empty apartment.

I wonder if during one of those fights we used to have
I slipped it in my pocket, thinking you never deserved it.

I laid the medal on my old desk
next to a trick dog coin bank.

The dog holds the coin in his mouth,
jumps through the hoop, and hides the coin in a brown barrel.

This childish desk is a circus.
I can see the levers and
your Olympic gold medal is fading in the sunlight.

HIGH ART

Past is Present

I study the fall of the Sudanese,
the merciless killing of fathers and brothers,
the sacred calves butchered and sold.
I think of your mother, the stories you have told,
her secrets revealed to you by an electric third party
twenty years later.

You read about the murder of your grandmother,
the rebel army of your mother,
and the snide remarks from your aunts and uncles.

They blame the pregnant woman holding you,
who helplessly watched as the rebels slaughtered
the pregnant woman who once held her.

Your mother, as she lay on the floor in the hotel
watching her mother’s sinews rip and tear,
hid you, and now the memories,
still pregnant with the truth.

I asked you once,
after your family escaped,
and fled as refugees,
just how you survived in America.

I understand now,
your lack of an answer,
with the pain and honesty
that it is too hard.

I will not hurt you,
I will pour glass after glass,
and never ask you to fill me.

I will build a womb of security,
to hide you, if you’d like.
I will never ask you to come out.

American Legion

Woman preacher,
they don’t believe a word you say,
standing up there, talking.
Your breasts shifting when you raise your hands
in praise.
Serve him!
Preacher thing,
tend the bar.
Offer the blood and the bones of Christ.
You do so well,
woman preacher.
Give up your body
to the hungry
and their devouring looks.
Impregnate the world.
Girl thing.
No one is listening.
What God do you praise?
Which one?
Which stool holds the god-man
you serve?

Dead Man Words

Two weeks dreaming about my dead father has finally got to me.
He is not dead but I left him in the bathtub for three days and he is surely dead by now.

We drag his body. My mother and I carry him back and fourth through the dim hall.
We do not know where to go. He is dead saying my name but my mother is screaming no.

His body is settling, she says. Ignore his words. I’m sorry.
They are not words, just sounds, air pockets of gas. He does not say your name, she says.

But he keeps talking and talking and there is an ink drawing of me dead on his shirt pocket.
He is afraid it has scared me away, but how can he say? He has been dead for three days.

He knows I am dead in the ink picture over his heart and he is crying.
I am not surprised. I am dead to him. The picture is not pushing me away.

It’s the talking, talking. Dead man words I’ve never heard before. He is not alive.
My mother hums as she cooks dinner. She is used to the dead man talking. She is not afraid.

But I watch him. Wait for him to die, again. It is not real, but I feel I’ve been here before.
I want to help mother cook. I am not afraid that he is dead. He has been dead for three days.

But why all the dead man talking now? Isn’t it too late? Shouldn’t he be in his grave?
He is talking, talking. Crying and saying sorry. Dead man words I’ve never heard before.

Calamari

Remember the time mom said fuck when we were in the car and we were scared even though we whispered the word back and forth plenty of times before
behind her back listening to rap music and telling each other to go fuck a horse?
Well, we didn’t understand.

It was like ordering from the adult menu even though we had no idea what calamari was but it sounded cool and we spit it out on the restaurant floor as soon as mom told us it was squid.

But when mom said fuck in the car we could see that squid caught in green algae-coated ropes hanging below the large fishing boat
and the short silence after she spoke was a knife cutting all the porous tentacles in
bite-sizes to be dipped into batter

Three hundred and seventy five degrees frying oil as
our 1992 Chevy Camaro collided into the Astro van ahead of us

Sympathy

I do admit
I watched the neighbor’s dog
run and get hit
and felt bad a little bit
but he shouldn’t have been
chasing dreams and things
in rush hour

Barrel Cactus

I have been talking
to my Barrel cactus
for the last few days.

It reminds me of you,
an enchanting flower
protected by sharp spines.

It does not talk.

We do not touch.

I watch it grow
but it does not change.
I give it water it does not need.

I feel nostalgic.
I have been talking to my cactus
for a long time now.