oh, and it's my eighteenth birthday
we put the rad in radical
act 1. in concert.
i am the queen of fidgeting.
everyone else stands feet steady, face forward,
and i move like there’s a beat no one else listens to
face damp from hot air we are breathing through
to pull breath in
pulse in pulse in pulse in
beat pulsing subsonic
‘cause there is always more than noise to this music
and last night i stood surrounded by beautiful children who
found their feet splayed on a solid ground of steady
a common language of beautiful
common tune to be true to
this is a place for the new you
and i need to be new ‘cause ever since puberty hit me
like a semi on an open freeway i had been this
stocky creature too solidly earthbound to ever look skyward
i used to climb trees climb swingsets climb stairs but then i just
swayed to be beat too scared to really move
but there is constant movement in me now
and i am a movement and we are a revolution
and everything is borrowed from some nineties punk anthem and it is all so beautiful.
it is all so beautiful and hearts are found in two-second conversations
edged between opening acts and headliners, like
why did you come tonight? i asked her.
i wanted to hang out with those kids, she said. what about you? did you just come alone?
yeah, i go to a lot of shows alone.
that’s brave, she said and went to get some water.
i gotta say it surprised me, not ‘cause this girl with
pink fishnets dyed black hair mother gone two years now
has never said something kind to me,
i just never thought that solitude had any bravery in it
and i go to shows alone ‘cause i got halfway through high school before
i realized i hadn’t become who i’d intended to,
and i remedy it by straddling genre
like free verse on a sugar high crossed with insomniac socialist prose
all tangy riffs and heavy backbeat
even so my words take a backseat to my sprouting
but it’s when i need to sleep so badly that i forget how these days end in dreams
how these sleeves end in seams
how i am anything but seamless-
every tear and skipped stitch shows clearly now
and that’s how i like it.
nothing comes easy these days,
it’s all the hard way and just in time
my eyes leak hope and music like a new age oil tanker
and it will be years before you clean me up-
my breath is carried on the tide and
there is nothing clean about me but my hands.
same hands kept out of pockets and empty
while beat pulses subsonic and hi-how-are-yous fly like paper airplanes
and i am new but anyway welcome,
sitting next to strangers and someone has a loud laugh and everyone has a new friend
and the girl with the camera told us to smile,
so we all leaned in and grinned.
act 2. in movement.
red hot traffic flowing north in winter
and we were screaming like sirens
for those years we weren’t alive to remember, for coat hangers and back alleys and
we were screaming for the rights to these bodies they wanted us to be ashamed of owning
and we weren’t ashamed of anything
not our hands or our feet or our wombs or our faces
so young and fierce in midday sunshine
i have never been told so many times in one day that they were going to save my soul,
that i would go to hell and worse
believe me, i screamed back, my soul is so safe.
i knew because to my left and right stood girls who were armies,
hearts sized like cities, and we were not trying to be simple or blameless,
no, there is nothing clean about this.
you’ll never win, they told us, but victory has nothing to do with it
it is all about resistance, bodies, and friction, sore feet, cold water, short skirts, long coats, trouble, red curbs, and diction, street signs, sharp pins, soft lips and
and it is precious but so uncomfortable,
hard edged and almost beautiful.
we are told that marching is irrelevant.
we are told it is all about economy
that nothing will change except through corporate channels and corporate gain
but these legs end in feet and it’s where they meet the ground that sparks start to fly
and there are birds and there are flames but no one is going anywhere
migration is getting old and we are standing our ground
‘cause it is common and it is concrete and after all everyone needs something to believe in.
so let me tell you this:
all energy lent to protest, i sat later, exhausted, waiting for the bus
when i looked up saw a girl with a camera who took my picture
and said something sweet as the streetcar door swished shut
i was suddenly the young protester, the little radical,
pro-choice balloon wound round wrist and backpack slumped at feet
someone much stronger and more certain then my own small shoes hold daily
these pictures of me are strings round my fingers reminding me who to grow into
they float out in the world like seeds from a dandelion
and i make a wish on every one and i am three-quarters fight and one-quarter give
and i do things slowly. like an ocean.