11-15: The Bearded Woman, or Lunch with Cleopatra

Uncastrated, she wanders through the parlor
with heels ticking like grandfather clocks.
Her pen made a blood-pool on each fingertips
but never again beneath her.
The false beard she wore rustling, making a corn-ear of her face
yellow-eyed, her knee highs worn like witch's familiars.
I found her reading Shakespeare in a Chinese restaurant one Tuesday night
and we sat down and Buddha's toes to eat General Tso's tofu.

"I think" she said, "I've moved on from beards to moustaches."
and I watched her lips move like barges across the Nile.
So she gave me a caterpillar in a jar
which is supposed to give me hope, I guess.
I'm not sure if it will survive in this city of hungry sparrows.

She knew the lion-headed god as well as I
the vampire that made me a hysteric,
the nightmare-man putting out cigarettes on my chest.
The sun that blistered the marble tombs within me.
She said: "You will find your moon, little sister
though now you are a wrinkled burn victim,
you will be the earth-water and I will be the basket that delivers you."

plastic surgery at the pearly gates-- 11/11

Plastic Surgery at the Pearly Gates

You were the picturebook bible devil
with your red beard and a smile that tugged at the feet of all the girls.
I watched your eyes roll as you looked up my guardian angel’s skirt
you told her she was tighter than me, so much better.
You almost tasted heaven
had she not rolled over.

But I’m going under Jezebel’s knife.
(god have mercy, christ have mercy)
She’ll slice my forehead open and, she’ll pull shut my eyes.
She’ll tattoo her name underneath permanent eyeliner.
She’ll make a centerfold of me
And I’ll wear her feather and glue wings.
But just like Lady Icarus I’ll fly too near the sweaty-headed sun
in his museum of phallic clouds
where he pushed into me like an elevator button.
(i went up
then down again.)

And I will tumble, eaten by crazed koi
into an emporer’s pond
Chinese water torture, a chorus of beautifuls to the peasant girl.
This must be what heroin feels like.
This must be some sort of hell they didn’t tell me about
in the basements or the attic of my skeletal aunt’s house.
Here there are no bloody statues
No miracles in your morning toast.
Just a discarded arab strap and a starry-eyed love drug.

Clockwork--10/31

Hellooooo high school.
I think I need to get out more.

**********************************
Clockwork
Because I couldn’t be your muse
I will descend
And ascend these stairs forever
Like a manic-depressive phantom,
I will turn on my heels at the exact exchange of the minutes
You could set your watch by me.
Like an iron-pressed soldier,
I am just as flat.

Because I am nothing extraordinary,
I will watch my face as it slips into change
like I slipped into that blood-stained kimono robe.
Turbaned and smoking cigarettes, 1-800 numbers
making what was once aching sting.
I cannot speak of abortion anymore,
I am not fortunate enough to be purged.
Someday I will be put in the chokehold of routine.
You might see me sitting at the bar in my coffee-stained polo
already a barfly and not yet 21.
Eluding photographs and stumbling away come 2:00.
Like clockwork.

Firestorm--10/26

Again with the Shakespeare project. This one is about the airy spirit Ariel from The Tempest.

Firestorm

In the end, I am only air.
You swallow me without thinking about it.
You letme deliver myself to your blood.
I am your grandmother's letter opener.
I am your grandfather's toothpick.
I am the desert you let strech through your fingertips.

I had nothing to do wtih you family tree.
I didn't draw the lines or paint their portraits.
(Some speculate
if I have hands at all.)
But I made you.
You can call me "god" if you want, you can call me
you ship-wrecking guardian angel. You can put me on a chain
if you want.
You can tell me to tear off entire ships
like pages from a notebook made to be burned.
You can tell me to rip your name into their sails.
Leaving it clean at the end like a surgeon performing on your addled organs.
Your yellow pancreas, resting on your stomach like your sleeping daughter.
The shipwreck of lymph nodes lodged in your neck and groin.
Your red, red heart.

Before the fire goes out, I have heard them whisper, I have heard them wonder
if they even existed at all.
Be it in the duke's fireplace with the pearl-eating duchess out-cold on the fainting couch.
Be it the forest fire painting the sycamores black.
Be in the end of a sailor's cigarette between bleeding gums.

stormchaser (shakespeare project)

This one is for Katharina from The Taming of the Shrew.

Stormchaser

Woman is a hurricane.
Tearing boards off windows and shattering glass.
Flinging picture frames across the room
ruining your sister's pillbox hat
the one she thought mader her look like Jackie O.
The one she thought made her look glamorous.
O senator's wife.
O daddy's favorite.
O linear Minerva.

Woman is a tornado.
batten the hatches, wait for the eye that never comes.
I don't blink
as I make ghosts of them.
I try not to notice
as you chase me in your Jeep
laughing into the wind and flying cows.

Woman is a flurry.
Even though she was predicted to become the blizzard of the century.
The children still have to go to school
and the weatherman smiles as the camera flicks
back to the anchorwoman.
She files her nails under the table, but she will be home by eight
to make hot cereal for Peter.

the imp (shakespeare project)

This one's about Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The Imp

I am an elf that has climbed into your ear.
I've stolen your honey and your peanut butter.
I've found you in your father's grove
whispering Freudian poems.
I'm not your hundred dollar tape recorder.
I'm not your Austrian maiden aunt.
I am not taking notes.
I am the chaise you lie on. I sit atop your head
eating pancakes in your hair
and swimming in your beer.

I am your computer generated portrait.
I am the glint in the pig's eye.
I am the robot ghost your boyfriend fucked.
I know you are the blue caverns in his acid trip.
I am the tree you climbed.

I bring back what was gone
the blinking, olive-eyed tumor
crawling out of the lake from which you were born.
I am every invasion, even the ones that weren't at all
aliens.

mr. venice (for shakespeare project)

The next few poems are what I'm going to be using for my Shakespeare project. Basically, we get to do any creative project and write a paper/do a presentation at the end of the course. I'm doing a combination poetry/photography for a few characters. This one's about Shylock from the Merchant of Venice:

Mr. Venice

In the ovens, the gold coins melt,
melting Venice and it's petty coke wars.
If you want to remember
do not keep our organs locked up in cabinets
along with yellow photographs and our mother's aprons
and thermometers and kitchen knives.
With swastikas for eyes, you cannot see:
(i am you)

We will tear out the baby-shoes
like we will tear out your hearts.
Christian soldiers in paper armor
swallowing barbed wire like communion grape juice.
With swastikas for eyes, you cannot see:
(i am you)

You stole my bread.
You stole my caskets.
You rearranged the letters in my name.
You stole my pillboxes.
You stole my half moon spectacles.
You squeezed my wife's ring on the sausage-finger of your whore.
You stole my daughter and made her your tinsel angel in your Christmas pageant.
You stole my daughter
bastards.