10/30 O G Will

Shakespeare doesn’t give a flying fuck

if you like his sunglasses.  Doesn’t care.  Wears them

cuz he wants to, cuz they feel good, cuz he knows

he can rock some fukkin pink.  Shakespeare

likes to wear his pink wayfarers

down to the market, lean up against a wall,

leave everyone wondering whether

he’s looking at them.  Shakespeare likes

to stare at people with his head turned away

so they’d never think, likes to dissect

their characters with no repercussions; this way

he can stare as long as he wants.  Shakespeare

can’t write without his sunglasses, can’t fuck

without his sunglasses, refuses to come to the door

if he can’t find them.  Shakespeare never wore that collar

until he got them sunglasses, and even then he only got it

cuz they looked baller as fuck together.  Shakespeare wore

his sunglasses to meet the queen, no lie, spent

the whole time face tilted toward her perfect shoes, his eyes

burning straight into hers, unabashed. 

day 9 pome 9 / 30: the feminist cooks

Writing this poem is a feminist act.

This poem starts in my mother's kitchen, the way she showed us to cook
from scratch, to set the table, to host, to care
for and about every person's needs.

For unrelated reasons, I had to divorce my mother.

Divorcing my mother was a feminist act.

Picture me,
5'11" broad shoulders long feet
standing tall and strong and proud
barefoot in my kitchen at home.

Because damnit, that's how I like to be.

I still cook from scratch.
You want soup?  Let me get some bones
and roast them for stock.  Ravioli?
I'll get the pasta mold and roll dough.
Moussaka?  Don't even threaten me
with a good time.

I like the food you got to put your love into
for it to come out right, I'm about that
cook all day type shit, the kind of recipes
that leave your whole kitchen covered
in trails of flour kisses.

And while there may never be
pitter patters of smaller bare feet tugging
at my apron strings,
I do still have apron strings.
My grandmother's green checkered apron
is my habit, my holy robe.

My grandmother was not a feminist.
My grandmother was a racist.
Speaking this truth about her is a feminist act.
I thank goodness she died
before I realized I was queer.

My grandmother wasn't even as open minded
as those people who say, "Oh, I believe in equality,
but I'm not a feminist."
"Oh, I can't be a feminist, I don't hate men."

Definitions are fucking hard, y'all.

Define love.  Define orange.  Define space.
Define feminist.

Dame Rebecca West said:
"I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute."

My man gets hungry, y'all.
And I show my love through food.
He's having a tough week, I'll pack lunches to go in the nighttime,
leave them on display in the fridge,
pizzadillas, chicken salad wraps, sandwiches
that would make Dogwood cry, mother fucking
fruit roll ups, y'all.

Feminism, to me, means doing what the fuck I want
how the fuck I want
when the fuck I want
and may any preconceived notions about what it means in relation to my gender
fuck themselves right off.
Feminism means caring for others, too.  Others' needs, others' rights.

And when I stand up here tonight and say goddamnit, yes,
I cook from scratch for my man barefoot in my kitchen,
because I choose to,
because I love to,
goddamnit,
that's a feminist act.

day 8 pome 8 / 30: feetsies

at night
in bed
in your sleep
your feet
hug mine:
toes wiggle,
heels nuzzle,
arches cradle;
you moan-
but never wake.

in this moment
i listen
for the words
i don't hear;
the mouths
in your heels
whispering
to the ears
in my arches:
i love you
i love you
even
in my sleep.

7/30: ghost line from Melissa May

The day I killed my mother, I got out
my Sunday best, washed it again, just
to be sure, pressed it with starch,
curled my hair, flossed.  I wrote her
a love letter and wrapped it
around the blade.  I ate well,

two eggs over medium, bacon medium,
toast and gravy, orange juice, coffee, hot
and black.  I went to the chapel and prayed
for the first time in years.  I kissed
a stranger and stared directly
into the sun.  The day I killed my mother,

I went to her house, rang the bell,
placed the love letter directly into
her heart and then left, cut off
all my hair, didn't cry, burned the clothes,
didn't cry, tore the pages from the books
she'd given me, carved her name
into the soft flesh of my belly, didn't cry.

6/30: It's Okay.

It’s okay to eat nothing

but cookies, or boxed macaroni

and cheese; you’re grown now,

an adult, as they say, and now

you can stay up late, you can watch

all those films your mother said no to,

you can brush your teeth or not

brush your teeth, you can have dessert

first.

You can take candy

from strangers, you can go home

with strangers, you can fuck strangers

until they are no longer strange.

You can confess

intimate details of your life

on the public transit

or on the stage, or on

the blank page.  You can cuss

to yourself, or in front of children,

you can still

dream about becoming an astronaut,
a mermaid, 

You can find sneaky ways to get

on top of buildings, you can stand on the roof

and scream at the clouds,
I am here, look at me,

you gods and devils;

I am arriving

all the time.

5/30, just before midnight, from an accidental ghost line by Sonya Renee

I love that there is an answer to all things.

Look long enough, hard enough, look

in the closet behind the box of your father’s

ashes.   Look inside your father’s ashes.

Under  the graduation cap

and gown, try flossing, who knows,

it could be tucked inside a popcorn kernel.

Answers like Of course you can and No,

it will cost too much.  Answers like blue and tomorrow

or never, answers like thundering rivers,

like the smell of yeast bread, like drinking

to forget, like oak.  And so, I know, there must

be an answer for me there, somewhere, I love

that there is, I search when you’re sleeping, peek

between your knobby toes, the chaos of covers

twisted around you, a shelter of turmoil, run

my fingers through your hair, search behind

your earlobes, sift through the smoke

of your dreams and find,

just there, in the right corner

of your primal,

godly mouth:
YES.

4/30: To The Coworker

To The Coworker Who Said, Loudly,
In His Man Voice In His Man Body,
In The Kitchen When Her Song Came
On The Radio, "Rihanna Deserved
To Get Beat," And In That Instant
Became My Abuser:

NO.

You do not get
to hold our names
and our fates
in your great
and terrible mouth.

Ode to the Scar on my Hip

(after a prompt by Jon Sands)

In these ways you are like myself: you are obstinate
and ornery, slow to heal and forget, a survivor,
victorious, particular about when and how
and by whom you like to be touched.  You
are a beautiful testimony of survival, you,
so like a tiger, a dragon, a snake, your softness
and hardness, your teardrop shape, the way you perch

on my hip like a lover, as raw and pink
as a baby's first wail.  Do not be afraid
of lasers, I would never threaten you with them.  Do not
be afraid of reopening.  You, so like a medal,
a ribbon, raised like a ridge, a mark
of exclamation.  You talk shit on oceans
and riptides and rocks, your makers, you tell them
then will never take you down.  You drink tequila,
neat, no salt, no lime, no
back, while you do ballet stretches in front
of a mirror.  You paint.  I remember

the days and days it took you to heal, as you lay
open, stayed open, shining like an overripe strawberry,
still pregnant with the ocean's salt.  The world teaches us
we should hide our scars; instead, I framed you
with a tattoo, you deserve a frame, a parade, a star
on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a star
in the sky, maybe that one there, on Orion's belt,
just at the hip, a cake, defiant
with ten dozen candles.

The atom bomb apologizes (2/30)

I am a song of death never meant
to be sung.  I did not write myself
into being, I was collaged, Frankenstein-style,
by men with minds
like sunshine, angry and not angry.
I am a rain of ruin, a crash
of becoming, a ballet of regret.
I am so hungry all the time.
I only meant to breathe and now
there are entire parts of the world
in which you must not stop the car
or even drive it at all.
Give me your hair, each precious
twisting strand, your white blood cells,
proud soldiers, one by one.  In return I will give you
cell clusters like constellations, exploding fast
like supernovas, like myself, will give your children
extra legs to run.

1/30: Telling jokes with the moon

If you want to tell jokes to the moon, you must
abandon all your old tricks.  She's heard them.  Knows
the one-two-jab, the dance and punch, knows
them all.  You'll have to be clever, but not quick;
the moon does not like sudden.  Her changes
come on slow and heavy.  She is an expert
on fear and patience.  Tell her a joke
that is mostly sad.  Start with sorrow
before you move in for the laugh.  Finish
with something sparkling and she'll love you
forever, call you her favorite, promise never
to turn her face from you, and her laughter
will ripple like the waves she's always moving
and she will never let you drown.