11/30: Another year, another ghost line from Morgan Coleman

Whole heart

-edly.  No half measures.  No

holding back, nothing barred.

Altogether.  Completely.  Not

without fear, but without letting

fear win.  As though I’ve been doing it

my whole life already.  Like a rock star.

Like a natural.  Like my life depended

on it.  Because my life may depend on it.

Because I don’t know how

to do shit halfway.  Because you

are worth everything I’ve got I will start

as I mean to go on.  Because I mean

to go on.  Because within

this spark I have found

my whole self.

10/30: Gospel of La Poderosa

Praise the scooter.

Praise the little motorcycle that wasn’t,

praise learning to think in kilometers

where you once reasoned in miles, praise

filling up a tank for less than five US dollars

and it lasts for weeks.

Unless

you decide it’s time to go kissing the wind again,

praise the rushing wind, the way it feels

like no other home you’ve known, praise

learning to lean into turns, praise the zigs

and the zags and 125CCs, praise travel that keeps you as

in and of the land, praise the banana groves,

the bin lang groves, the roadside shrines,

the corner temples, praise the stink

of fermenting tofu and the savory steam

of mutton.  Praise the rains

when they come and soak through to the bone.

Praise pushing your limits, and the machine’s

limits, and feeling freedom and glory, praise wanting

nothing more than to rip off the helmet and lean

headfirst into the atoms as they race past your face

except to arrive alive so you don’t.  Praise

the full coverage helmet, praise every single

involuntary time you imagine what would happen

if you leaned just a little too far.  Praise the wreckage

you see that keeps you from leaning too far.

Praise parking on the beach.  Praise breathing in

the smog.  Praise driving on the sidewalk.  Praise knowing

every inch of this island is now within reach.

Shout out and promo

I'm not anything even remotely approaching a big deal, so when I have supporters, they mean a lot to me.  I think a lot about Renee Dillon, who I met at a camp we used to go to, who says the sweetest things and always buys my books.  I think about Andrea Milligan who every year sings my praises and posts a link to my blog talking about how she likes what I write.  And now I have a new foreign internet friend, someone named Taidgh Lynch whose blog is Raging Planet Fire.  Stats show me where my viewers come linked from, and since Taidgh linked to me after trying his hand at a chopped-and-screwed poem, I've gotten like ten whole people come over.  That may not sound like a lot, but it means a lot to me.  So check him out.  He's poeming this month, but he also does wicked mail art now and then which anyone would be lucky to receive.  Go give him like at least ten links back, okay?  Thanks, friends.

9/30: Dear Veet: #notbuyingit

(Backstory here)

I still vividly remember the first time I shaved my legs.

It was being granted the permission more than anything, honestly, having watched

the other girls shed their peach fuzz one by one, congratulating one another

as it happened, and me, I mean

come on.

Look at me.

They had peach fuzz but I was outgrowing most of the boys,

and of course that carried plenty along with it.  But my iron mother,

who ruled the house and my body from hairy head

to hairy toes, said no, said

I needed to keep my childhood, my innocence, a little longer.

Whatever.  Eventually she caved and who knows why

but it happened and I wrote her a thank you letter afterward

in which I described how the only thing that felt finer than my clothes

brushing against one of my new naked legs was the other leg.  I stood

in the kitchen rubbing them like some diva cricket.  I went to school

and no one said a thing.

Whatever.

Fast Forward.  And there’s angry red bumps, painful stubble, cuts and bleeding;

razor blades get dull and need replacing and I’m less pretty 

than the other girls because of my stubble, my red bumps,

my ingrowth, then someone said

try Veet.

I did.

It didn’t work.  At all.  Whatever.

When I moved to Wisconsin I quit shaving.  A girl from Arkansas

dabbed smack into winter, I mean come on.  Of course

I took what extra insulation I could get.  Then I was married

and who cares at that point, right? But after the split I was working

in the UK and my friend said

try Veet.

I did.

Different formulas in different countries?  Who knows.  Oh, it worked.

Diva cricket was back and wearing bikinis all across the Mediterranean

even taking her top off here and there, so hairless and proud and sexy

and woman and sexy and woman and hairless and proud.

Then my stems and I were back in the states again, where it didn’t work.

Again.  Whatever.

Until a woman taught me to epilate and the pain

was real

but worth it.  No hair and no stubble and it stayed gone

for weeks but when it came back it came

ingrown and I had to pick

at the bumps to get it to break through

and there were angry red bumps

again and sweet merciful fuck all I ever wanted

was a sexy, hairless, thirty four inch inseam

to outshine all the other girls because this

is what we do, right?  Our lot

as women, we change

we alter we torture we fix we improve upon

because we are broken and wrong and naturally

not

desirable and it’s so so important

that we be desired.

Whatever.

I reassessed.  Decided function was so much more important

than frivolity.  Let it all grow in, everywhere, all of it

for learning, for science, found my armpits

were a huge disappointment.  It grew in short

and sparse and only made me stinkier.  So that came back off.

My downstairs?  I keep a trim welcome mat

because I like having something that differentiates me

from a nine year old but beyond that

it’s hardwood floors baby because when company comes calling

I want to make sure no one ends up flossing, and my legs?

Well.

They’re just as Atheist Jesus made me because there is literally

no function served by getting rid of all that and red bumps

can shove off except now,

Veet,

your commercials have told me that if I have hair on my legs

I am actually an actual man.

In actuality.

That’s right.  The commercial starts with a handsome gentleman

waking up to his lover’s leg being thrown across him and he reaches

down

to rub hair.

And jumps up.

And shrieks.

And grabs for the covers because his lover is now

a man in a silk nightie apologizing, explaining,

“I just shaved yesterday.”

Bitch I ain’t shaved more years than I have, how much

of a man am I now?  Does this mean I don’t have

to be afraid in parking garages at night

any more, can I get equal pay now, can I wear

what I want to a party and drink

as much as I like and not watch the glass?  Can I cut

in line?  Take up too much space
on the train? Can I interrupt women and explain things to them

that they already know?  Can I get called on more

in class ?  Can I get promoted

more easily and without being asked

who I fucked?  Can I be 49% of the US population but 83%

of its government?  Can I choose not to have children

without being asked why?  Keep my surname without

being interrogated about it?  Get better funding

and sponsorship for sports, be angry and justified rather

than “on my period,” drive carelessly without

having it blamed on my sex, can I fuck as many partners

as I like and be applauded rather than branded?

Can I now be told by Almighty God that I deserve

to be head of my household, that no woman

may try to teach me or even speak when I’m talking?
Hey Veet?  Can I now be the same gender

as Almighty God himself?  Hey Veet --

the man who wakes up in the bed in your commercial?

His chest is hairless, his face is beardless, is that man

now a woman?  Hey Veet, let me offer you

some direct quotes from my male lovers who I began

to ask, after fucking, what they thought

about my legs:

1)      “I didn’t even notice.”  That’s from the man

who actually squatted next to my legs

as he cuffed my ankles to a spreader bar before we spent an evening

exploring boundaries together.  He was probably lying

but that night was amazing.

2)      “I just figured it was part of your whole thing

you got goin’ on.”  That man fucked me four times

in one night.

3)      “When you fuck like that, who cares?”  That’s

my personal favorite.

Which is to say, Veet,

not one of them squealed

or grabbed for the covers

or pulled away after their hands brushed

against my legs; these lanky cricket legs

have been wrapped around more heads

than it took to approve your bullshit

BADvertisement campaign and each face

is left with a smile.  Hey, Veet

your series of commercials checks so many

boxes it may as well have come straight

from the first season of Mad Men, talkin’

misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism --

oh yeah, there's an Asian pedicurist, too --

but WHATEVER:

I'm exercising

my VEETO.

I'm fucking perfect

just as I've grown.

I ain’t buyin’

yo shit

and no

you cain’t even

have a sample

of mine.

**drops mic, leaves stage**

8/30: For Noah, who tried to run

I may have my detractors, but you must
give me this much, at least:  Never
were any children more clean,

more well behaved, more perfectly still,

more faces of angels, more Sunday best,

all arrowstraight and godliness.  What is a bathtub

if not a baptismal font, scrubbing every speck

of sin away?  My three boys, the disciples, John,
Paul, and Luke one by one and then Mary,
sweet Mary, the baby that broke

this camel’s back.  Noah saw her there, floating

face down in the holy water, Noah my firstborn,

my eldest, my king

                                         of troubled seas
and he was afraid.  I sang to him to coax
him back, and I sang to him as he struggled

beneath the waves, then placed him there

in the waterstorm he was named for, holding Mary

in his arms, my Alpha and Omega together

and my three straightarrow boys laid out

in the quiver of the bed where I made them.  I loved them
more than I loved God, so I sent them home to him
so nothing could come between us.  Their earthly father

loved me still, told people he wanted me to smith
more for arrows for him and for God.  But I failed him,
failed our quiver, failed God.  My babies stumbled

because I stumbled and when I let their souls fly

I gave them that gift at the cost of paradise, knowing

full well that eternity shall deliver my reward.

7/30: it isn't as bad as it sounds, i promise.

On the days when she does not come, at least

she sends a note.  More Dear Sweetheart than
Dear John, less rejection letter and more regret

to decline the invitation.  It’s fine, of course; I’m used

to the days without her, go about the apartment

just the same, step over the laundry, occasionally wipe

the dirt off the soles of my feet, don’t even look

at the neglected mop - how is it any of the mop’s business

what I do with my time, anyway?  Because the days

when Joy doesn’t come round are not really days, after all,

are they?  Just extensions of the nights when we both know

I won’t be doing any sleeping.  Here, the trash

I should take down to the street, there,

the sand I shook from my bag after the beach

and never swept up.  Now and then an empty glass

with a faint film in the bottom which I will not wash

before I fill it back up.  Who does Joy

think she is anyway?  How is she so fucking

special that I need her around to get anything done?

Maybe things are better left undone, because who am I

if not a to-do list forever unfinished, a love note

never unfolded, a single woman more comfortable

with Dirt and Despair at the end of the day, who wouldn’t

even know what to do if Joy called.

6/30: the rooster photo

Yesterday I took a photo of a rooster in the street.

I live in Taiwan now.  Things happen like that here.

When I show the photo to my friend, he says,

“Did you ask him why he crossed the road?”  No,

I say, but I did watch an old woman try to catch him.

When I asked if he was hers, she said no and grinned.

I liked that grin.  I understood it entirely, in the way

that anyone who has tried to catch something not hers

can understand.  So crow, rooster, and puff up

your pretty white feathers, and strut, and scratch,

and preen all you like, because I got my eyes

on you and I've been practicing moving

with the precision of a wise hungry crone, and one day

soon

I will get my hands on you.

5/30 chop and screw a quote

4/30: traveling so no typing

3/30, prompt from Megan Falley

Write about the past in the present (simple, continuous) and then chop and screw the sentences.

We are holding hands in a cup of hazelnut milk tea.

I smoke your profile as the sun sets.

We are drinking the dead coral.

The sand is changing what I thought I knew.

I suck rocks on the balcony while you watch.

The waves are crashing against us in the bedroom.

I am climbing on your skin like seaweed

You are unzipping my soft belly.

My skin is your new jacket.

Your hands are invading everything.

The wind is gripping us like a hungry snake.

Your eyes are shaking the trees around us..

I marvel at the taste of your ocean.

Your lips are cradling me in the dark.

My legs unravel when you touch me.

The music is threatening to knock us down with every step,

but we are exactly everywhere we should be.

Your sea is foaming at my belly.

We are naming the stars and then dancing among them.