hoop earrings nearly big as her head.
Panel 1: He takes a giant butcher’s knife and splits
the cake down the middle.
Panel 2: Santa pushes her cake half in front of
MIZ stick figure, whose heart jumps out of
her chest with joy and relief.
Caption: After centuries of slavery, servitude, share-
cropping, poverty and privation, you Blacks
have earned your share of America at last.
Panel 3: Big lick of icing missing. Santa sucks glob
from his forefinger, having sampled her side
of the cake. MIZ stick figure licks her lips.
Caption: Ummmmm. Tastes gooood. You’ll love it.
Panel 4: Stick figure draped in mantilla appears at
table as Santa lowers the knife, cuts MIZ half
into fourths.
Caption: BUT—of course we don’t want to forget Maria,
over here, who’s scrubbed my floors for years.
Panel 5: A stick figure in coolie hat and another with
giant feather on knot of head appear. MIZ-half of
the cake is cut into eighths.
Caption: And we certainly can’t forget Asia and Cherokee!
Tri-Panels 6 through 8: MIZ stick figure surrounded by
clamoring throng of various other stick figures.
The knife in rapid swing as Santa, suit shirt
sleeves rolled back to his elbows, furiously
chops away at MIZ-half of cake
Insert: Close on MIZ stick figure in sweaty daze as
question marks snake-dance above her kink head.
Caption: We are a nation of ignoramuses!
Panel 9: All the others have taken their share of cake and
skedaddled. Confused, MIZ stick figure bug-eyes
CRUMB which is all that’s left of her cake half.
Santa has ALL of his half.
Caption: Racism has ended. I gave you all YOU deserve
and all you’re gonna get. Happy days are here
again!!! Hohohohoho.
I Ain’t Yo Earthmama
boogers are not my forte
my sky is painted to look like a ceiling
when under it, i wear a raincoat for
protection from acid tears
some of my islands are imaginary, some composed of rock
fallen from the cliffs above to create
this unstable terrain. i am all fire, ash
and water as far as the gypsy sees—water largely
those who have sunk complain in their fleshlessness
rankled, they rile against the chill of fathoms
where is Poseidon when you need him? off somewheres
and leaving you to Hades
who knows where the stats end and the i begins?
(speaking of the untrained lover of iambs
so-and-so may not be able to distinguish the difference
between bad sex experimental sex or the perverse.
often questions of orality take on an unnecessary complexity.
how does one shape the tongue or apply the tongue
where at what precise moment of excitement. to stimulate
discourse, truncate or conclude?)
everything i vomit is used against me
to squeak. perchance to scream
to yield—to take coffee with one’s crème
all smooches are accidental
and cut my lips. what smiles come, when they come,
come bloody. i suffer bouts of bra fever
my nipples peel and flake as if savaged by lovers
should you have only one life,
live it as a taboo
cold duck and a hot bath queer the urge
for an all-nite doctor with an all-nite pill.
when i manage enough equanimity to approach
sleep, i sack out in a bed of tongues
(mantra: it’s better than the streets)
what does not materialize melts into
banal jealousies, stymied ambitions first fire
then rot stomach throat & good sense.
’twixt my big toes, a pool of snot
his sticky lies bloop to the surface. i go for the squish.
wet feet and mucked-up ankles
once a spook always a spook
(on those solitary walks in paths of fire
the old woman picked up perfect stones found along
the side of the road, near the bank, filled her pockets
and, later, used them to violate the plate glass windows of
upscale boutiques in the dark dawn of the big sale)
endless rumors of unification & justice
require us to live with suppressed histories
and broken treaties, our losses tallied in
the bones of our malnourished children
he spirits off
my blood-stained confidence
to orchestrate the laughter of
his friends
while in my bush he lies as trust’s
last virgin dies
art’s traitor licks my thighs
with snickers in his eyes
there’s a solid rap on the door. a beat
and then it opens.
modest expectation is met
with epithets fists squawks
i have been stuck
in the infernal mud of the same river twice
water as far as the gypsy swims,
this unstable terrain is all fire fallen
from sky to create islands of imaginary rock
shush shush shush
deary dear dear put yo head down here
and after i’ve burnt it off
we can relax in the cool thereafter
Pseudo Dickinsonian Cento Blues
to some extent
consider the history of a person
the approaches discussed so far
for instance cannot always be taken to refer literally
every blossom on her bush
adjusts its humbled head
to take the ride within her stride
the resonance of lead
no one would deny that value, but it is not the only value
altho we have seen, it is sometimes argued
personal reference may creep in
although it is sometimes said that
it would be a mistake to think
she laps the miles to see its likes
and up the valley licks
what assumptions are implicit?
we could generalize further
this is a troublesome matter
several patterns of organization are possible
with broken rabbit ears
and in a soundful throe
pop the corn and ice the beers
and in a snit of woe
let us listen to it mow
the same ol’ changes
bad money bad love scuttle bugs & cracked ceilings
I Ain’t Yo Earthmama 2
pardon me, but you’re standing on my stomach
those aren’t grapefruit you’re squeezing
and certainly not papaya
and niggahplease! don’t you dare speak of coconuts
if you must insist that this is a gold rush,
there are planes leaving hourly for South Africa & the Yukon
there’s nothing beneath this sternum but
blood vessels rib bone & a significant muscular organ
which gives off no feelings unless malfunctioning
and when
you get tired of syphoning off my sweetwater
and pillaging my salt lakes maybe we might discuss
conservation and recycling
until then
i suggest adventure be omitted from the equation
this ain’t the jungle, jim
so quit stickin’ your tarzan in my jane
Letter to My Older Sister 4
dear Georgiana,
i’m sorry i haven’t written till now
but i’m terribly embroiled
and i’m having these headaches caused by grinding
my teeth in my sleep. plus all the bullsquat
as usual. i want so much to be involved
in worthy causes, but i can barely manage to
keep the hand to the mouth.
i hate disappointing friends & potential
friends. i haven’t had a party in years. i owe
scads of people invitations and am unable
to return them. it’s very hard
to put one thought in front of the other.
i had to force myself to work tonight. a hissy fit
overcame me. i toughed through it. i’m here
by myself. i hated to pick up the phone.
who would i call? who wants to hear it? who
has the time? who isn’t burnt out?
so i worked worked worked till the furious
tears dried up. i kept remembering
that scene in A Streetcar Named Desire—you
know the one?—where Blanche DuBois
is about to be taken away and
flutters against the dinginess of that dirty
window like a moth trapped in a mad gleam.
that scene plays over and over
in what’s left of my mind.
o sis, i work and i work and take
aspirin for the headache and drink coffee to
fight off drowsiness and take a bite of
something sweet for the sugar rush.
i still believe in myself. and i want to do
my best to honor those, like yourself,
who no longer have the privilege of work
yes. it is getting late. i’ll close. i hope you
don’t resent my sharing this sort
of stuff with you. but
you know how it is with Mother. . . .
Zed Chronology
june the starlings have eaten the cat
june rereading Trilce
june psychic snow fell last night,
an outside transmission. an old
passion was cloaked in a new
philosophy
june agate eyes were found under the pillow.
slow to warm
june the exhausted controversy refuses resolution
june when i went to rake up the disgusting
fur ball, i found a dead baby possum
june my eyes hurt
june the interloper is leaving shit
all over my life
june spent the evening talking to the walls.
nobody showed, not even my guest list.
june watched Gilda one hundred and sixty-five times
june they say i should forgive America, but
they’re the ones hiding behind
bulletproof glass
june the squirrels have eaten the plumber
Essay on Language 6
dear Greenie,
there are those who have no passion but who
are sensitive enough to sense the void within
and therefore must imagine passion. i often find
that among that kind, there are those who
detest the truly passionate out of an envious rage
that has always faced us passionate ones. ever will
a man who is jailed for his passion gone awry
arouses in his kindred a simple but deep
compassion. for we, too, reside in our own inward
jails built of the conflicts passion inspires
we clang at our bars in silence, out of public view
like Paul said, you can’t judge the depth
of a man’s passion by looking into his eyes. it comes
on the aura of the skin, resides on the throne
of presence, crackles on his breath
as with a woman as in a woman’s heart-eye
likewise is the display in a spectrum of tones
and not merely the cliché of purple
(sort of gives new context to one-eyed purple
people-eaters, doesn’t it?)
it has always struck me funny,
that often the least passionate people are poets,
contrary to myth. perhaps it’s a case
of the poet giving all there is of passion
to the verse leaving those who hunger
outside it sucking up air
i’ve certainly been a witness to
the kind of passionless entity who must create
chaos out of calm
and thence extract the passion
from the moment with the forceps
of their ravenous intellect—prodding, pulling
and causing everything delicate to bleed
giving no consequence to damage. because now
they have the passion from which to shape the poem
i’m sure you’re familiar with that kind of psyche
i so in your retreat, consider—those drawn to
Just Plain God-awful Poetry are not only drawn to it
out of ignorance, but to the pools of unskillfully
spilled passion they find brimming in the tongue
they are distance-sick, made ill by the world
in which violent passions are subsumed/made perverse/
outlawed. they are made ill by the word turned in on itself
as constraint against release/dangerous abandon
i am always struck by the “safe” poetry
the most bloodless, banal crap i’ve ever had
the misfortune to read assembled out of the
need for foundation money, the fear of risk,
the need to be free of dolor, to create,
these pathetic versifiers have drained all
passion from their words—the lustful
or the didactic—lest they be rejected. or
in peripheral ways, oblique and skewed.
one is forced to plow through reams
of coming-of-age musings and death-dying
musings and musings mundane and stale.
reams and reams of the cutesy-wootsy
the wootsy-pootsy and the gamesteristic
so that by the end of the process one is dying
to pick up a page of Jeffers, Kaufman or Poe
Keats for Kkkkristsakes
go to a movie—anything to get
neck-deep in some goodlikkity trash
because that’s where the passion
is dicking around fresh and alive and
delivered on a paper plate seeping grease
yet honest in its salty pleasure
hot baloney and American cheese
that’s why i find it so difficult to critique
poetry. i realize that passion seeks its own heat
so to speak. and that the bardic bad serves in its way
as well as the good. E. B. Browning or Edna St. V
then, Greenie,
there are those like me besotted with passion
when touched lightly passion oozes
to the skin’s surface and runs earthward
passion leaks from ears eyes mouth gummy with passion
crusting at the lips clothes passion-stained and
unwashable passion in every step and gesture pashzuhn
overcome and overwhelmed and sickened by and
with it. passion. and desperate for the soul-letting
given no consequence
Letter to My Older Sister 5
dear Georgiana,
trying to do something to shake off this
post holiday boohoohoo.
as you know, i’ve been poking at baby sis again.
she looks like
strawberry shortcake, but watch the hardtack
underneath. it’ll
crack your teeth. it would be victory over
raging hearts
should we manag
e to become friends. but that’s
going to take more
vital stuff than i have to bleed. put that on hold.
besieged and collapsing under the weight
of my gift. love
as i live it seems more like Mercurochrome
than anything else
i can conjure up. it looks so pretty and red,
and smells of a balmy
coolness when you uncap the little applicator.
but swab it on an
open sore and you nearly die under the stabbing
burn. recovery
leaves a vague tenderness and an India ink-red
splotch that’ll
vanish between one scrubbing or another
Mama’s favorite lipstick used to be a sultry
red violet
that segued into the hue of sangria when
applied to her
full rose-brown lips. i liked watching her
slick moves as
she studied her face over the dressing
table mirror, but
best was how she briskly slipped it
from her purse
while sitting in the car, cupping her compact
in one palm while
she uncapped the tube with a flick. One twist
of the brass
canister’s butt, and the stick rose for duty
Wicked Enchantment Page 14
