The Poetry Marathon

ABBA and Shawshank, Revisited

The woman in my dream last night told me

she wants to give her husband away. Not on loan,

mind you, but for good. They have such different

tastes in food. She loves to eat dumplings

steamed in a pot of chicken soup simmering all morning,

she wants to drink mojitos all afternoon, the mint and lime

adding zing to her mouth. Who doesn’t want extra zing

in their mouths? She said she hasn’t figured out

what to do with her hands. So when she’s

on the road and comes to a stoplight,

she finger-dances to Abba blaring on the radio:

Ooh, you can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life,

the index finger on both hands kicking a can-can.

The mistake she made is the light turned green

and she stayed there dancing her hands without

gunning the gas and got rear-ended. Now the cop

(dressed neatly with no food stains on his lapel)

wants to know her reason for not moving. She tells him:

Ooh, see that girl, watch that scene, digging the dancing queen,

her fingers kicking in time to the beat, so he

handcuffs her and takes her to the pokey, and

as a lover of irony, she teachers her cellmates

to do the Hokey Pokey. But they only serve slop to inmates,

and she wants more (don’t we all?), so she takes the plastic spoon

and starts scraping in the wall. She figures if Andy and Red

could break out of Shawshank, she can break out

of county lock up. Protect the right for us to bear

dumplings, protect our homes with dough

boiled for 10 minutes, cover on. Anything will plump up

and blossom with steam and enough time. All she had

was an overnight, and it was back to the streets for her,

dancing with her fingers at every intersection, red or green

light shining their bright color on her like a Rothko.

Snow White AF

I wonder what choice she would have made

if she had a say. Surely that damned apple would top

her list of things to set out by the curb for Goodwill.

That apple messed her up as bad as an apple

bruised Eve and all the women since. I’m betting she preferred

to stay under that blanket, sleep for decades, growing

old with no eyes to notice when her skin grows crapey.

She must have known people prefer smooth young skin

to old, pale and free from the sun’s rays. Her one-woman

tribe of dreams is absent of all the little men

scuttling around her with their needs on display,

demanding her attention, like vampires sucking

the lifeblood right out of her porcelain neck,

not yet sagging to turkey neck, for then

she would hardly have been the Fairest in the Land.

Give the dear gal a carnation to pin next to her flawless

neck, the one red spark of life blossoming in her care.

Her home was her comfortable fort, but it’s been overrun

by seven little guys with odd names. Don’t get me started

on that scoundrel Prince Charming. What’s so charming

about being woken from the best damn sleep she’s had in years,

stirred from a dream where she’s the empress of her castle,

humble as it is with hand hewn furniture suitable for kids.

Oh, and wait till the Prince learns she doesn’t want kids.

What a whale of net he’ll be caught in. Ms. Snow daydreams

of having her own place, with no one for her to tend to but

her own desires to make beautiful objects and sleep.

Missing Tools

This is why women who’ve been hurt hoard the gauzy memories

in fields near their homes. They wait for the new moon

to bury those pains pell-mell near trees because trees

have strong hides that contain quantities of sap drumming

just beneath the surface, the way their own skin holds

volumes of lava inside. Their bodies are private chapels

filled with sinners, or their bodies have grown

into closets for storing lumps that reek like sponges of vinegar

when pried to the surface. Do the clouds in the sky

remind them of their own mothers? What kind of rain

do they need? Their mothers haven’t owned the battered goblets

their daughters hold, never had reason to shout

to the heavens: why did you let him get near me?

Their mothers were sold their own bag of goods, sent

home with samples of formula to feed their babies.

How can a woman be made to believe her own milk

is no good? These mothers could not teach their daughters

how to nurse, so how could they teach them to get out

of the way of the hailstones, how to get away

from the dented, broken cups their men were,

men whose fathers didn’t know how to teach them

to play fair and be nice and not hit. Sometimes

crowbars are the best tools to excise the lumps

creaking up just under their skin, or to fend off

more blows, those white sparks igniting

in their skulls from a fist or a knee battering them

like a crazed horny goat who’s come up to them

on the mountainside of a marriage that failed from the word go.

Spring Rite

Blue

skies, green-

leafed trees near

the playground. Pry

glitter from the dirt,

build a maypole of quartz

shards made smooth by countless children’s

hands, most having known only play

but not all. Some children’s hands have touched

what children should not be made to touch, some

hands have turned into peaches from shame they will

bear like the low-hanging fruit they became to some

uncle or father, easy to reach for, too jelly-

like to defend themselves. What do these children celebrate

around the colorful maypole with their exuberant friends?

Three Secrets, All Firsts

I met Daryl McKnight in a shack at the dump on my last day

in Greeley. The moving truck was already packed with our home.

What does it say that my first kiss was a goodbye kiss?

Should I have seen the omen? What did I want to give away

besides the awkward press of our lips? I barely remember

the kiss, but can still picture the Black Widow

close by in the corner of the shed. I’d never seen a Black Widow before.

It took years before I realized how dangerous love is.

The first time I had sex, Glen and I were at a friend’s apartment

in El Paso’s east side. We went upstairs to Baron’s room

and took a shower. Together. Naked. I can’t remember how we ended up

under that stream of water, but I remember the shock

of his penis – the first I’d seen, and this one I confronted

up close and in person. Do all young women find

a penis a freaky animal at first? The first time

I got married, the invitation said we’d marry

“under the desert sky” — it was January, and the willow tree in our yard

was barren of leaf, so I tied a hundred colored ribbons to the branches.

The breeze lifted lifted them slightly above us. No matter how much

we decorate what is barren, that doesn’t bring it to life. I stood apart

on the patio after the ceremony and thought I just made a big mistake.

Please don’t tell anyone I shared this. No one needs to know

I started my marriage with regrets.