10/30: reasons to be angry today

1. Because I set my alarms for P.M. instead of A.M. and woke up just in time to not technically be late to work.
2. Because I can't use my air conditioner, because it pisses water all over my belongings.
3. Because I'm ovulating and there's no one around to Do Me Right.
4. Because I didn't see the sun set.
5. Because I never see the sun set.
6. Because Dove has a new Beauty campaign out that still doesn't address how much easier it is for white able-bodied ciswomen to claim Beauty than it is for their sisters in the struggle.
7. Because too many white able-bodied ciswomen leave their sisters behind in the struggle.
8. Because the struggle.
9. Because I make my students do their homework, but I still haven't finished grading their tests.
10. Because I don't know how to reach some of them.
11. Because I had to teach them about Ferguson.
12. Because Amerikkka.
13. Because maybe there is no good country in this world.
14. Because this world.
15. Because depression.
16. Because antidepressants.
17. Because infinite downward spirals of existential thoughts.
18. Because I didn't have time to eat until 10PM.
19. Because I've already stayed up too late again tonight.
20. Because tomorrow *isn't* another day.
21. Because I still haven't finished unpacking into this new place.
22. Because I don't know where my heart is.
23. Because I'm scared to visit home, because what if I don't want to leave, because what if I never want to visit again.
24. Because I want to be home now.
25. Because home is a place where companies turn the water off on poor folk.
26. Because home is a place where white men in blue shirts shoot black men black women black children black people who did NOTHING.
27. Because too many black family trees are missing limbs these days.
28. Because this makes me sick, but I have the privilege of being able to stop thinking about it because I'm white.
29. Because home is a place where businesses can tell me get out cuz I'm queer.
30. Because I'm queer and woman in a world that hates queer and woman and black and and and.
31. Because that should be so alarming that we all immediately understand how wrong it is and change it.
32. Because people don't find it alarming and don't change it.
33. Because at 10PM my alarms did in fact go off.

The John Cage Symphony

First, the trumpeting mountain.
The wise, winding road with its
venomous turns, slithering up,
then the motorbike, hunting through
the swarm of trees, the school
of leaves, such a thick flock
of verdance. Stop.

Switch the key
off.

Climb down into the fluttering clouds
that herd silent around.  If we breathe
a thing, does it become us?

The stream below is slippery, can't
be trusted, electric.  Watch it bubble
and nest. It's peppered with bits
of jade, ripe for the plucking.

Here, the insects choir, the birds
solo, and creatures I'll never name
spark their songs.

Now, the purring rain, sleep-
walking through the scene, warm
as an afternoon nap. It nuzzles
where it falls on my skin.  And last,

his arms: old bones with new tricks,
curled round my waist; his immortal chin
perched close on my shoulder,
his impeccable cloud-become breath
in my ear.

8/30: the first time i got tied up

He opened the drawer and somewhere
the cars of a roller coaster started ascending.
(click, whir)
(click, whir)
Allyship as reassurance: there's always someone
else in the roller coaster car. He brought out the soft
black purr of cord and I felt
(click, whir)
for the lap bar.
He wrapped my wrists like a gift.
Cradled them with hungry eyes as his hands did loops
twists
corkscrews
(click, whir)
my coaster car sunrise crescendoing up
(click, whir)
and up and there is a moment

(click, whir)
when the peak of the hill is in sight
(click, whir)
and I know (don't I?) what's coming.
(click, whir)
Seconds are lifetimes, look over my shoulder I can just
(click, whir)
see
(click, whir)
the danger:
where I came from,
(click, whir)
the earth, my home, my family, my death --
no one's ever asked at the peak did I check
the lap bar
(click, whir)
What a disarming question that would be
so I feel prepared for the plunge.
He surgeoned the last knot,
(click, whir)
tucked pretzled ends in
(click, whir)
with a mother's care, pushed my arms up
(click)
above my head
(whir)
and asked:

“Can you get loose?”
(click)

I tried.  Disarmed. And then:
Gravity unmade, stomach bloomed in my throat, heart
clung to my teeth, blood bullied my face I was there
in the car I was weightless, flying powerless and loving
surrender, feeling windthrilled and released, falling
elated with no net, we were waterfall and
rocks below, a most holy disaster, crashing safer 
than anyone
has ever will ever be whir click been.

7/30: almost made it a week without writing about my mother

thanks and bonus

Dear friends, I know I'm not writing up to my full potential this April. I'm not writing like I can, or should, or have in the past. But you've been so wonderful and supportive. You're leaving me comments, you're sharing my words with others, and that does my heart so much good. I'm sharing, as thanks, a piece with you I am proud of that I wrote in a workshop a month or two back led by the inimitable force named Rachel McKibbens.

I call it, "How I Got my Spots."

In this freckleless nation, my students ask why I have spots. Why. What a half-loaded gun of a word. I tell them my birth mother was a cheetah. They do not believe me and they do. It is a lie and it is not.

There is a song in my blood, a sonata in three movements, the cheetah woman put it there. The first movement begins with the particular onliest sound of her keys on their rings, the way the sound could make me snap to, and the sweetfear sourlove taste of the sound. In this movement I surrender one third of all future kisses and a handful of teeth. Ocean sound and the hotel room that night three sequential strangers came and left and could not epoxy me whole. The smell of sewer steam and the silence before a clap of thunder. In this movement I cannot love the mirror because it is broken, too.

In the second we hear her lacing her shoes, hear them so hard we see them, still pristine white after all those years of running away. In this movement I bury a flock of childhood memories in the soil behind our house, they will never sprout and I will not remember why not, I put them there and turn lose forever, kick dust over them as I turn my back. She turns her back and there it is again like it never stopped, the staccato crunch of driveway gravel, even the rocks sound angry. They will call at you caw at you claw at you tell you they know why you did it, they saw it, how you held on to a corpse for two thirsty years, they mock you for holding so long, they mock you for letting go, dare you to run for the cold comfort of the bathroom floor.

You won't realize the third movement has started at first. It opens with the echo of no more words, the wish to deserve the word home, the feeling of death tucked behind your left ear. Then a dream of flying, then rubber bullets, applause that does not catch on, the last glass he drank from before he left, sound of rain, unlocking, floorboards creaking, look, the cockroach is getting away before you can kill it. The tinkling of icicles, a spider's footsteps, an ecstatic eulogy, and behind it all, still, the echoing silence, overripe fruit hitting tiles. And the grand finale, the most dulcet of terrors, the sound of a cheetah hungering home.

Mom and Dad

6/30 still traveling, and remembering

5/30: forgive me, I'm traveling

4/40: foreign / black

The stars aren't going
anywhere.  Look down.  Look where your feet
are going place one, two, left and then right, keep
going.
Today another stranger took your photo just
for being a foreign face in a rural place remember
when you used to smile for them? Now
you just get angry, get thirsty for a fist, one and one
half short years and people wonder why black men
get angry even as they call them “thugs.”
Look down.
The stars are going nowhere, your anger
is spreading like wildfire, you swore the man thought
you were going to steal his bicycle, locked eyes with you
and shook his finger no but everyone
at the table was deaf, did you just catch him mid
conversation? Remember how your teeth
tasted the blood?  How your fists curled up
like nightmares?  Last night in the market
buying dumplings a three year old called a stranger
AMERICAN.  Rather than correct
his politics (USAian) you said in his tongue
some of us are Canadian, Australian, English,
Scottish, South African and he said no Africans
are black. What would you face here if your face
were black.  If your fists curled up
black nightmares if your teeth tasted
black blood, remember how
just a few weeks ago the police
let you go, remember how you woke up
the next morning, right here, on this earth,
not anywhere near
the stars.

3/30: from a few different prompts, trying to write about depression

It won't come up on you all
of a sudden like joy or spring
rain or the first time you held
someone's hand
because you liked them.
There is a place inside you
everyone hates.  It is not round.
This place is all corners, not warm
ly lit, but warm, too warm, stuffy
even. There is either a bed
or a puddle of pillows, and most
assuredly a blanket under which
you now womb.  “But, sunshine.”
“But, exercise.”  “But, Jesus.” “But--
”   But shut up.  You've paraded
every pill, waltzed every doctor,
spelunked every self-help source.
It is always Thursday here, and no
salesmen sell insurance
for this most unnatural disaster.
Silver dust on everything,
no crawling out.  There is a place
inside you even you hate. This is where
you live now, pay rent in feelings.
It will slip up slow, swallow you
whole, devour your want
to go.

2: Asa Cut-Up

This is a bill that in ordinary times would not be controversial. But these are not ordinary times.  This bill is not really complicated.  It's a balancing test.  The bill itself does not pick winners and losers.  It balances two competing constitutional obligations that our founding fathers gave to us.  But the issue has become divisive because our nation remains split on how to balance the diversity of our culture with the traditions and firmly held religious convictions.  It has divided families, and there is clearly a generational gap on this issue.  
--Governor Asa Hutchison of Arkansas on 1st April, 2015, announcing why he would be vetoing HR1228.


Balancing has become
founding.
This bill
is not ordinary.
These are
complicated times.
There is clearly a gap
between diversity
and religious convictions.
Split the founding fathers.
This nation is split: winners
and losers.  It's
controversial.  Test this bill.
This issue
is not really complicated.
Ordinary times?  Families,
traditions, convictions clearly
compete.  Our nation split
itself.  This bill is con-
troversial.  Test the times.  Really.
Two fathers are winners
and losers. and families.
and our nations.  and ordinary
culture.