Junkyard Quote 1-2, Week 11

1. we have feared the pieces in you..as if they could be pieces of us.
2. plush pincushion, somehow related / to the statues that wept.

Improv 3. Week 11

To the Lady Who Called Me Racist

though our skin hums the same hymn,
though our shoulders buckle from the weight of chains
our ancestors carried, shackled
and shipped like Wenge to forget their roots
in the Americas, Lady, fuck you. Lady,
to hate you is to hate myself.
Or part of myself. Like Whitman
I contain multitudes.
I contain Spanish beaches and the endless roll of white sand on sea.
I contain San Juan, the history
of seventeen siblings and my abuelita
combing her fingers through the snapping spine of chicken feathers,
never imagining that one day she might mix her hips
on an army man from the Caribbean.
No Lady, I will love you as I've been taught to love,
deep and forbidden; my great-grandmother
snuck in her home a white man pretending
to be a salesman so that he might hold her
against him, seek the inside
of her uterine spaces and pillow talk
of wedding bands the law would not allow. Oh Lady,
later, I will snake my hand down my boyfriend's jeans
to feel the creamy heat of his inner thigh and it will be then
that I will know you,
raw and aching like a rusted link cast
around my neck, wrapping
until the length clasps, tightening.

Improv 2, Week 11

Ode to the Thigh Gap

You have eluded me these last ten years
though I have sought you out in leg planks,
or the whizzing whirl of the elliptical--a spinning wheel
to turn you to creation.
You are only seen when you are missing, felt
only when you are filled with the raw rub of skin
and polyester--jeans look so much better with you,
and I love you as I know you--pinnacle
of feminine, stretch of sex, every woman's
dream come true. You're no whore--
anyone who wants you has to work for it.
I imagine you under him, your heat
intermingling, smooth like fine silk
along the hem of his hands and I want to thank you
but I remember all those days I starved for you,
all those girls that starved for you
until their hip bones popped dangerously
against air and the round joints of their knees
worked up and down like needle heads;
I wail and the daughters echo my woes,
Olds, Rich, Bishop.

Improv 1, Week 11

Dad

I have been letting you down since I burst,
slick with birth from my mother's gut.
Bellowing, whisped with rust-red hair,
you knew I was yours, but somewhere
in the take-order of genetics, I forgot to claim
those dangling parts of men--
how disappointed you must have been...

Improv 3, Week 10

When you curved that gnarled paw around me,
and wrapped me in your sunshine hug, I couldn't forget
all those times I hated you
from across the desks and at home,
huddled over some truth you meant to enlighten me with,
how I whispered it every time you turn to me
and split that ancient face with smiles,
my God, I'd take your eyes with me to lunch
and stab their mental image with my fork,
gnawing through burger patties
and strands of meaty rib, pretending
it was the corner of your soul.

Improv 2, Week 10

Believe me when I say
I do not do, I do not want
to be you, the buzz
that hums incessantly above my shoulder blade,
nipping at my neck with your noose tongue.
You'd hang me
if I hadn't stopped answering
your late night calls, your persistent push
until there was no edge to stand on.
Mother you are not the truth,
there's no truth left in you,
save from the miraculous birth sometime before
you said I do.

Improv 1, Week 10

The touch of something silly.
The need to squeeze, to pull until the joints pop.
To feel it all give way.
To smell the aching, the longing to be
let go, let off the leash that's slowly
tighter now, that's pressing in around
the carotid and the bobbing Adam's apple,
pushing like a mallet through this carnival
of tightening, it's tightening
and not much longer now we'll feel
it all give way.