Poems for workshop: First drafts
Nothing matters more
than
a pair of big brown blinking
eyes
hidden beneath a wet
mass
of tangled, untamed black
curls.
Her straps, undone; the buckles gleaming
brass against the dirty blue denim.
She spits on the ground, unladylike, and not
at all the little girl who kissed your nose
at night, leaving crimson traces of failed attempts
at applying mother’s lipstick; your white wife
who loved you for your afro, but not your skin color.
She knows better, though, hipbone jutted out
with a fond and lazy tabby cat smile, smelling of
Exxon gas and the peanuts she’ll share with you later.
The gardener treats his flowers with care,
although he may forget to sometimes
pull the weeds; he gets distracted
easily, you know, and isn’t used to spending
much time outside in the dirt.
But he waters them when he remembers,
and smiles as he bends down to exhale life
onto their soft petals; he whispers grow.
The castle is a dark forest filled with wolves, the kind
Beauty used to run from when the moon was full and singing campfire songs.
Each corner seems to growl when she steps near,
and the taste of danger is always on her tongue
when she thinks she sees a stone gargoyle sneer.
The one she touched on accident felt as cold as her bed sheets
and invaded her nostrils with the odor of cold cuts.
She wishes the place would smell like the way butter cream frosting tastes,
like the cupcakes Snow White sent her from her honeymoon in Paris.
On the other hand, she hates butter cream frosting.
Beast told her to stop wandering the castle like an orphan,
but he’s hardly around, so she doesn’t care to listen to him,
except when he says strange words like “jiggy” which she doesn’t understand
because her father was often sick and her childhood was uneventful.
“Ya’mom’n’em,” he used to say and Beauty would tell him to hush.
But if she told Beast to hush, he was likely to eat her.
The shiny teeth of love tend to bite the hardest, after all.
And sometimes he smiled so sweetly, he looked like a murderer.
Beauty hid from him on the ceiling once, because he didn’t like to
look up while he walked.
Prince Ivy told him not to do that, and got eaten.
Beauty will try not to give him too many orders, or any orders at all,
and maybe he will surprise her one day, by becoming a vegan,
eating only sultry vegetables and fruits.
Beauty might marry him then, but only if he’ll eat turkey on Thanksgiving.
“Je t’aime,” he says, when he’s trying to be romantic, but Beauty
never took French, and the rug speaks only Chinese.
Beauty lives with the darkness of the castle, if only because
there is never any butter cream frosting on her birthday cakes.
i
if we lived in the ocean,
could we breathe air into each other’s mouths?
could we share bubbles like joints,
and get high enough to crash our fins into the coral reef?
could i be your mermaid or your angelfish?
could i be your sweet relief,
when the water you swallow is too salty?
could i force you to surface to see the sun?
and could you keep me from the roar of motorboats,
with your big eyes and pursing lips?
ii
i beat your high score at the arcade today,
and i hope you won’t be too angry. you see,
all i want is to be you, really. to be good at everything
you are good at, so we can talk sometimes
about being good at those things.
i do not know, after all, how interested you would be
in hearing about how good i am at noticing
the things that you are good at.
iii
today you tell me that you have dreams of
going blind while walking across a busy street.
does this mean that when we, together, are
crossing the street, you want me
to hold your hand until we are on the other side?
or are you waiting for me to tell you of my dreams,
wild dreams of barnyard animals that,
most times, have your face?
i am not proud of the sweaty state i’m in
when i awake from these dreams, nor of the
desire i have to visit a barn.
iv
if we lived in the desert,
could we fan each other with our hands?
could we shed our heavy clothing,
and lie buried beneath the sizzling and blistering sand?
could i be your cool tent or your canteen?
could i be your wet oasis,
when the sun begins to burn your skin?
could i bring you shade and help you live another day?
and could you treat me kindly with your hands,
petting sweetly at the prettiest of my green and leafy foliage?
v
i wouldn’t know what to do
at a barn. would you?
vi
i tried to find a present for your birthday,
and when efforts seemed fruitless, i thought seriously
of doing something romantic and
clichéd (and truth be told, you, my darling,
make everything i do clichéd) like
tying a red ribbon around my body
and giving myself to you-even though you
already own me, but i don’t think
i’ve ever told you so, aloud. but i
called myself foolish, and bought you
a crock pot, instead.
vii
today you tell me that you loved me
from the very beginning, before anything i ever even wrote.
and you ask me hypothetical questions
like, what if we lived
in the ocean, desert, or a barn?
and i could only wonder, because all we have is
this crowded city, should we be each other’s cloud
of smog or pigeons?
and you tell me not to worry because
i am yours and you are mine,
and that is all we need to be.
“And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where [are] the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them.” Genesis, 19:5
We want that golden flesh
that you let glide into your home-
smelling of heaven’s peaches,
a scent now teasing our nostrils into flaring.
We want those pure beings,
to taint them like this goddamn dirty town-
like the roofs of our mouths, stained
in wine and the taste of bodies.
We want to spit on their necks
and take their goodness away,
to move them to laughter, to tears-
we want to move in them.
We want the men that you
and your family of virgins are keeping
pure and clean and unlike us-
the filthy ones salivating at your door.