I love it when you
talk grammar to me,
correcting my verb usage,
un-dangling my participles,
refitting my prepositions,
clarifying my pronouns,
correcting my spelling.
You tell me you cringe
at the sight of a split
infinitive and my pulse spikes
knowing I taught you
that lesson. Oh, baby,
I’ll let you capitalize
all my proper nouns
if you’ll let me
fix your punctuation.
We can copyedit
each other today
for tomorrow’s presses.
The rules are clear,
not to be broken
by us, raw disciples,
our lips tingling
with the sweetness
of the perfect word
choice. Whisper it
closer, in my ear.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Pieces of Winter (poem)
Undercover, you ask:
Is there warmth left at the core?
But I ask the same.
We drape blankets across
our thick sheets of December-land,
our bodies the known geography
bound under this bedridden winter burden.
Snow falls like tears from the stuffy clouds
above our physical map and I see
the rocky soil of your face has thinned
and paled in the cold. Mine is chipped.
We are tucked into the earth, frozen
to the fabric of our listless lives, suffocated
and dry in the burning, chaffing winds.
I open my hands wide beneath the atmospheric
covers while you twine silent
frost through my fingers, over my tongue,
binding me to you, to the choking
avalanche of our new winter, discovered
and explored from the comfort of our bed:
absent and empty of natural warmth
and overstuffed with these uninvited
pieces of winter, but still
the only place where we can
burrow or hibernate
or surrender to our core
Is there warmth left at the core?
But I ask the same.
We drape blankets across
our thick sheets of December-land,
our bodies the known geography
bound under this bedridden winter burden.
Snow falls like tears from the stuffy clouds
above our physical map and I see
the rocky soil of your face has thinned
and paled in the cold. Mine is chipped.
We are tucked into the earth, frozen
to the fabric of our listless lives, suffocated
and dry in the burning, chaffing winds.
I open my hands wide beneath the atmospheric
covers while you twine silent
frost through my fingers, over my tongue,
binding me to you, to the choking
avalanche of our new winter, discovered
and explored from the comfort of our bed:
absent and empty of natural warmth
and overstuffed with these uninvited
pieces of winter, but still
the only place where we can
burrow or hibernate
or surrender to our core
In the Event I Want to Frequent a Show (poem)
I am the last one
You pull close
to your sweaty body to say
thanks for coming out on a Sunday night
and you hold on to me
a little too long. There is a woman
standing nearby who you have failed
to introduce as your new girlfriend.
But we all know that’s who she is.
She is watching you press your body
against mine and she sees my face,
happy and loved, and she isn’t reacting.
We finally draw back and you say we will
talk tomorrow and all of us leave you
behind with her. I get in the car
and smell your spice everywhere all the way home.
You pull close
to your sweaty body to say
thanks for coming out on a Sunday night
and you hold on to me
a little too long. There is a woman
standing nearby who you have failed
to introduce as your new girlfriend.
But we all know that’s who she is.
She is watching you press your body
against mine and she sees my face,
happy and loved, and she isn’t reacting.
We finally draw back and you say we will
talk tomorrow and all of us leave you
behind with her. I get in the car
and smell your spice everywhere all the way home.
File it away: (poem)
Martha was born
on March 28
(the Day of the Child
in the Week of Innocence)
which makes her
an Aries, fiery,
like my mother.
Leigh thought
that made her
a Gemini, like me.
He returned my call later,
after sending me straight
to voice mail, responded
to my laughing plea of
Where the hell are you?
I need to talk
about The West Wing
The drama! but he
only told me about Martha
having something in common
with his leaking tire.
(Except he called her
“the ex.” X. ecks.)
He said she can’t
make a decision
to save her life,
that she’s losing air
as quickly as his tire.
And I wonder why
he’s called me back
to talk about her,
and remember
he’s a Leo, born
on the Day of the Double
Agent, the Week of Balanced
Strength. Sneaky. Like
he couldn’t take my call
in front of her, but he’s more
than able to spend
his time with me
sliding her name
through his lips.
I’m in a weird
place tonight, he
finally said, abrupt.
I have to be up
in five hours
cuz that’s when
the water is best.
I want to remind him
I was born on the Day
of the Entertainer
in the Week of New
Language, which makes me
a daughter of the Air, faithless
to waves. But I’ll remember
what he’s said, I think.
I’ll file it all away.
on March 28
(the Day of the Child
in the Week of Innocence)
which makes her
an Aries, fiery,
like my mother.
Leigh thought
that made her
a Gemini, like me.
He returned my call later,
after sending me straight
to voice mail, responded
to my laughing plea of
Where the hell are you?
I need to talk
about The West Wing
The drama! but he
only told me about Martha
having something in common
with his leaking tire.
(Except he called her
“the ex.” X. ecks.)
He said she can’t
make a decision
to save her life,
that she’s losing air
as quickly as his tire.
And I wonder why
he’s called me back
to talk about her,
and remember
he’s a Leo, born
on the Day of the Double
Agent, the Week of Balanced
Strength. Sneaky. Like
he couldn’t take my call
in front of her, but he’s more
than able to spend
his time with me
sliding her name
through his lips.
I’m in a weird
place tonight, he
finally said, abrupt.
I have to be up
in five hours
cuz that’s when
the water is best.
I want to remind him
I was born on the Day
of the Entertainer
in the Week of New
Language, which makes me
a daughter of the Air, faithless
to waves. But I’ll remember
what he’s said, I think.
I’ll file it all away.
Support Local Musicians (poem)
There are lyrics
unwritten
on the spine
of my courage, prickled
and unwavering and horribly
cliché.
What if I want
to sing
about porcupines
or paper hats?
What
if the sound of ice
in a glass
stirs more romance
in my gut
than a well-
executed kiss?
What if there’s nothing
original
to say
with my mouth
open?
God, I fucking love everyone who came out tonight.
unwritten
on the spine
of my courage, prickled
and unwavering and horribly
cliché.
What if I want
to sing
about porcupines
or paper hats?
What
if the sound of ice
in a glass
stirs more romance
in my gut
than a well-
executed kiss?
What if there’s nothing
original
to say
with my mouth
open?
God, I fucking love everyone who came out tonight.
Strange Things (poem)
You whistle at me outside
Stata, wave your arms
in a salute. I cock
my head towards you as I move
away from a sign post.
I say: Was that for me?
And you say: Well, I saw this
hot chick. If I was in my car,
I would honk. We laugh until
we are close enough to touch
and then you swallow me
in your arms. I say: You give the best
hugs and you lead me in
to the maze of the MIT monstrosity
on the corner of Main and Vasser,
let me try out your thousand-dollar
chair, and for the next twenty
minutes, we live like we are what
we never and always were: together.
You show me the uncomfortable
couches after I reenact shoving
shoppers. You teach me
the new word you made up
while I spoof the dialogue on Sex
and the City. We spend more time
in back story, limitless jokes taped
to our insides, barely finishing
sentences, letting phrases linger,
finished off by deft winks. On our way
out, you say I like strange things
and I shrug under Stata’s awning
and smile only for the you
who whistles and holds me tight
Stata, wave your arms
in a salute. I cock
my head towards you as I move
away from a sign post.
I say: Was that for me?
And you say: Well, I saw this
hot chick. If I was in my car,
I would honk. We laugh until
we are close enough to touch
and then you swallow me
in your arms. I say: You give the best
hugs and you lead me in
to the maze of the MIT monstrosity
on the corner of Main and Vasser,
let me try out your thousand-dollar
chair, and for the next twenty
minutes, we live like we are what
we never and always were: together.
You show me the uncomfortable
couches after I reenact shoving
shoppers. You teach me
the new word you made up
while I spoof the dialogue on Sex
and the City. We spend more time
in back story, limitless jokes taped
to our insides, barely finishing
sentences, letting phrases linger,
finished off by deft winks. On our way
out, you say I like strange things
and I shrug under Stata’s awning
and smile only for the you
who whistles and holds me tight
In Concert: Boston/November/2002 (poem)
Suddenly I hear my guitar singing
and so I start singing along
and then somewhere in my chest
all the noise just gets crushed by
the song... Ani DiFranco, “Imagine That”
The tickets have seat and row
assignments, but when we get inside,
it is standing room only,
and we are pressed, body against body,
to get close to the stage. I stand back
six heads deep from the microphone
and think this, this is good
enough and wait for another
hour in a sea of bobbing lesbians
who pride their spiky hair and unnatural
piercing and seem excited to be
close enough to other females to brush
their asses or touch their arms under
the guise of “crowd.” But it doesn’t bother
me tonight -- me, who despises people
in general, let alone mobs of girl-on-girl
love, allow the lesbians to yank on my pigtails
and step on my toes because I get to see
Hammell on Trial. At least, he opens the show
and makes the first round of solo guitar magic
seem beautiful and grotesque as he
offers us his pulse because he thinks it
will be useful, sings a song about killing
his girlfriend’s son and then another song
about how god said “thou shall not kill,” and I
am glad that I understand the irony.
His guitar looks like the only true victim
of his homicidal tendencies: battered
and babied with what he repeatedly
calls “Berkeley Tough Love,” whatever
that is. He shakes his face like a bowl
of jello and at the end of his set, sticks
his guitar pick on the peak of his sweaty
forehead. “Give it up
for Ani,” he says, before jabbing
his guitar in the air one last time.
The lesbians cheer, and so
do I. It is another twenty
minutes of female compacting
before the main event. And I
think I’ll die from the exhaustive
heat of standing, still wearing my coat
because there isn’t even enough
space to lift my arms to take it off.
I listen to a groupie behind me tell
her cohorts about how the crowd has changed
since Ani got married -- to a man, no less --
how now straight couples have the nerve
to ruin the air of raucous, liberated women
with shaved heads and a taste for cunt. And I
almost want to turn and apologize
for the intrusion, except I am there
with my female roommate and am not
the obvious sore thumb in the audience she
is referencing. How dare the
straight people invade their bisexual
musical goddess’s inner-space! I shift
my weight and try not to laugh at her
blatant unacceptance of heterosexuals
and bounce jokes of reverse discrimination
off my brain until the lights fall
dark and the pressed body of the crowd
cheers in one breath, with one arm reaching
towards the stage as the lights come up
to reveal a hobbling Ani DiFranco, apologizing
for breaking her foot last week, and then sitting
with her guitar in her lap, playing “Back Back
Back,” one the lesbians and I can sing
along with and the true concert is underway.
I close my eyes and tongue the words
in the back of my throat, think about how
I’d used them like a one-night stand and left
a line from the song on the digital doorstep
of my would-be boyfriend, tell me boy boy boy
are you tending to your joy or are you just letting
it vanquish? And I scream those same words now
into the back of the neck of the tiny lesbian
in front of me, wondering if the simple phrase
had meant as much to him as it does
to me, but I lose sight of him
in the sweaty pulse of the crowd
gasping to the beats of a single woman
on a stage with a solitary guitar, her
hair in twisted blonde dreadlocks, her
fingers banded with black duct tape
and plastic nails that provide her with a pick
on each finger, ultimate artistic control
over her guitar. One nail breaks
and she takes a moment to bow her head
and pray towards the Mecca of Crazy
Glue, saying “It’sallgood” and winking as
the nail sticks in her thick, knotted hair.
She talks very little between songs
because she’s left with nothing new to say
since she says it all in her songs, since she hides
nothing in her lyrics. Her words are like vitamins.
Her life is as open as her sexuality, and why should
she rhapsodize between songs when she can
put her life into lyric and beat her tough fingers
against the steel flesh of her guitar? She sings
and invites us all to sing with her, smiles
with an open mouth and dilating eyes, throwing
her entire body, as restless as her mind, into
her melody, even though she can’t rise
from her chair. I take in the scene, smell the sound
of a felt song waft through the air and see
what I’ve heard for years in her captured/
recorded voice. She’s almost too honest to trust,
but I’m sucked in, and I rock with the current
of unity in the space. I feel the words, even
the ones I don’t recognize, from within my skin
and want to take up room because I can, want
to sweep the sea of the room into my pocket
to take home and swim through later when I’ve flushed
the salt from my eyes and taken the time to see
that she does, indeed, have the kind of beauty that moves
and the capacity to level me with her words. Magic
is cliché but the sentiment is not. There is an amazing grace
about this woman, this performer, this artist
who doesn’t think it’s right living for what she
can’t define. All that’s left for me is to sing
with my eyes turned up towards the smoke-infested lights
and allow myself to get lost in the sea of bobbing lesbians
in the middle of a dance floor, standing room
only, to see Ani DiFranco, live, in concert,
one woman, one chair, one guitar, one night -- god,
this could never be long enough...
and so I start singing along
and then somewhere in my chest
all the noise just gets crushed by
the song... Ani DiFranco, “Imagine That”
The tickets have seat and row
assignments, but when we get inside,
it is standing room only,
and we are pressed, body against body,
to get close to the stage. I stand back
six heads deep from the microphone
and think this, this is good
enough and wait for another
hour in a sea of bobbing lesbians
who pride their spiky hair and unnatural
piercing and seem excited to be
close enough to other females to brush
their asses or touch their arms under
the guise of “crowd.” But it doesn’t bother
me tonight -- me, who despises people
in general, let alone mobs of girl-on-girl
love, allow the lesbians to yank on my pigtails
and step on my toes because I get to see
Hammell on Trial. At least, he opens the show
and makes the first round of solo guitar magic
seem beautiful and grotesque as he
offers us his pulse because he thinks it
will be useful, sings a song about killing
his girlfriend’s son and then another song
about how god said “thou shall not kill,” and I
am glad that I understand the irony.
His guitar looks like the only true victim
of his homicidal tendencies: battered
and babied with what he repeatedly
calls “Berkeley Tough Love,” whatever
that is. He shakes his face like a bowl
of jello and at the end of his set, sticks
his guitar pick on the peak of his sweaty
forehead. “Give it up
for Ani,” he says, before jabbing
his guitar in the air one last time.
The lesbians cheer, and so
do I. It is another twenty
minutes of female compacting
before the main event. And I
think I’ll die from the exhaustive
heat of standing, still wearing my coat
because there isn’t even enough
space to lift my arms to take it off.
I listen to a groupie behind me tell
her cohorts about how the crowd has changed
since Ani got married -- to a man, no less --
how now straight couples have the nerve
to ruin the air of raucous, liberated women
with shaved heads and a taste for cunt. And I
almost want to turn and apologize
for the intrusion, except I am there
with my female roommate and am not
the obvious sore thumb in the audience she
is referencing. How dare the
straight people invade their bisexual
musical goddess’s inner-space! I shift
my weight and try not to laugh at her
blatant unacceptance of heterosexuals
and bounce jokes of reverse discrimination
off my brain until the lights fall
dark and the pressed body of the crowd
cheers in one breath, with one arm reaching
towards the stage as the lights come up
to reveal a hobbling Ani DiFranco, apologizing
for breaking her foot last week, and then sitting
with her guitar in her lap, playing “Back Back
Back,” one the lesbians and I can sing
along with and the true concert is underway.
I close my eyes and tongue the words
in the back of my throat, think about how
I’d used them like a one-night stand and left
a line from the song on the digital doorstep
of my would-be boyfriend, tell me boy boy boy
are you tending to your joy or are you just letting
it vanquish? And I scream those same words now
into the back of the neck of the tiny lesbian
in front of me, wondering if the simple phrase
had meant as much to him as it does
to me, but I lose sight of him
in the sweaty pulse of the crowd
gasping to the beats of a single woman
on a stage with a solitary guitar, her
hair in twisted blonde dreadlocks, her
fingers banded with black duct tape
and plastic nails that provide her with a pick
on each finger, ultimate artistic control
over her guitar. One nail breaks
and she takes a moment to bow her head
and pray towards the Mecca of Crazy
Glue, saying “It’sallgood” and winking as
the nail sticks in her thick, knotted hair.
She talks very little between songs
because she’s left with nothing new to say
since she says it all in her songs, since she hides
nothing in her lyrics. Her words are like vitamins.
Her life is as open as her sexuality, and why should
she rhapsodize between songs when she can
put her life into lyric and beat her tough fingers
against the steel flesh of her guitar? She sings
and invites us all to sing with her, smiles
with an open mouth and dilating eyes, throwing
her entire body, as restless as her mind, into
her melody, even though she can’t rise
from her chair. I take in the scene, smell the sound
of a felt song waft through the air and see
what I’ve heard for years in her captured/
recorded voice. She’s almost too honest to trust,
but I’m sucked in, and I rock with the current
of unity in the space. I feel the words, even
the ones I don’t recognize, from within my skin
and want to take up room because I can, want
to sweep the sea of the room into my pocket
to take home and swim through later when I’ve flushed
the salt from my eyes and taken the time to see
that she does, indeed, have the kind of beauty that moves
and the capacity to level me with her words. Magic
is cliché but the sentiment is not. There is an amazing grace
about this woman, this performer, this artist
who doesn’t think it’s right living for what she
can’t define. All that’s left for me is to sing
with my eyes turned up towards the smoke-infested lights
and allow myself to get lost in the sea of bobbing lesbians
in the middle of a dance floor, standing room
only, to see Ani DiFranco, live, in concert,
one woman, one chair, one guitar, one night -- god,
this could never be long enough...
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