It started with her widow’s peak.
Bev took a razor to its edge,
Made a quick swipe at her hairline,
And voila! The blunt edge of black
Looked back at her, clean and neat.
The next week, when her gold watch
Ripped out a few of the hairs on her wrist,
She considered her forearms, the
Dark follicles reminding her of fur.
Her razor swept them clean of black,
Leaving only olive skin gleaming
And smooth, like desert sand.
Little did she know that she could not undo
This cutting, and when the sharp shoots
Poked their way through her skin
Like cactus thorns, kittens’ teeth,
She vowed to shave, to pluck, to remove
These dark, itchy pieces of herself.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009: On the Street…Plaids & Dots, London
A man once said that the memory of daffodils
Brought him more happiness than the actual flowers.
Is it true? Does the garden that (dances, he would say)
Haunts your brain rouse more than just the senses?
The cottonwood tree outside my elementary
School, for example, was tall and green.
Each spring, it loosed white puffs
To drift through the windows, through the halls
Like summer snow, feathers, tiny clouds.
What’s missing from the daffodil equation
Is the layeredness of memory.
I remember the tree, it made me happy
At the time, it makes me happy now,
Sure. But there is longing when I think
Of cottonwood blowing like snow across my face.
It’s not the tree I long for, not the rose
You miss twenty years after the man
Has gone, not your mother’s lavender.
I’m wistful for myself, for the wonder
Sprung from the cotton suspended overhead.
Brought him more happiness than the actual flowers.
Is it true? Does the garden that (dances, he would say)
Haunts your brain rouse more than just the senses?
The cottonwood tree outside my elementary
School, for example, was tall and green.
Each spring, it loosed white puffs
To drift through the windows, through the halls
Like summer snow, feathers, tiny clouds.
What’s missing from the daffodil equation
Is the layeredness of memory.
I remember the tree, it made me happy
At the time, it makes me happy now,
Sure. But there is longing when I think
Of cottonwood blowing like snow across my face.
It’s not the tree I long for, not the rose
You miss twenty years after the man
Has gone, not your mother’s lavender.
I’m wistful for myself, for the wonder
Sprung from the cotton suspended overhead.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009: On the Street....Hudson St., NYC
As a blackboard clings to the dim outline
Of whatever’s been written and erased before
As someone has traced a request in the grime
On my car’s window: Clean Me, it implores
As the logo for the lemon-lime
Soda summons the taste in the grocery store
As a voice calling out, Dinner Time!
Evokes, invents nostalgia (who knows what for?)
Of whatever’s been written and erased before
As someone has traced a request in the grime
On my car’s window: Clean Me, it implores
As the logo for the lemon-lime
Soda summons the taste in the grocery store
As a voice calling out, Dinner Time!
Evokes, invents nostalgia (who knows what for?)
Monday, February 23, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009: On the Street….Blue Denim, NYC
In the 80’s and 90’s, the family sitcom
Ruled the roost. Sometimes the family
Was unconventional but always, always
Unshakably wholesome (see Blossom,
Full House, Family Matters, Who’s the Boss
For clarification), give or take an episode
About a girl addicted to diet pills,
Or the distant threat of a divorce,
or vague concerns of unemployment solved
within thirty minutes, a swiftly-passing storm.
Where have those shows gone?
In their place, doctors and nurses solve
Medical mysteries, fool around in elevators,
And detectives luxuriate in the weird clues
That spell out murder (breakfast cereal +
Snowshoe + fingernail clipping=the girlfriend).
Ruled the roost. Sometimes the family
Was unconventional but always, always
Unshakably wholesome (see Blossom,
Full House, Family Matters, Who’s the Boss
For clarification), give or take an episode
About a girl addicted to diet pills,
Or the distant threat of a divorce,
or vague concerns of unemployment solved
within thirty minutes, a swiftly-passing storm.
Where have those shows gone?
In their place, doctors and nurses solve
Medical mysteries, fool around in elevators,
And detectives luxuriate in the weird clues
That spell out murder (breakfast cereal +
Snowshoe + fingernail clipping=the girlfriend).
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009: On the Street…Sixth Ave., NYC
My sweat-wetted jacket, my silk scarf dotted with pinprick holes.
Even the mossy, stained granite wall
that I skim with my fingertips.
Everything’s permeable, porous.
What do I absorb from outside in? Of course, unintended scents:
coffee, curry, bleach latch on for hours after exposure.
But what else? Does my cell phone
burn my brain, or the microwave shrivel my intestines,
should I happen to stand in front of it, waiting? One guy I knew,
his infidelity was discovered by his girlfriend
who kissed him, slapped him. You smell like a woman,
she’d growled. What has rubbed off on me,
leapt onto my skin like germs,
lice, moss, ultraviolet rays, bandages?
Even the mossy, stained granite wall
that I skim with my fingertips.
Everything’s permeable, porous.
What do I absorb from outside in? Of course, unintended scents:
coffee, curry, bleach latch on for hours after exposure.
But what else? Does my cell phone
burn my brain, or the microwave shrivel my intestines,
should I happen to stand in front of it, waiting? One guy I knew,
his infidelity was discovered by his girlfriend
who kissed him, slapped him. You smell like a woman,
she’d growled. What has rubbed off on me,
leapt onto my skin like germs,
lice, moss, ultraviolet rays, bandages?
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