Day 10: polka dots

(gracias a tim laux por la foto)
--

we saved the lucky charms marshmallows, divided and conquered them
into little enclaves of shapes, like politicians watched their colors ooze into the milk
and marble into mulattos, the cosmic race our parents would never want
their grandchildren to become

she warned me of the biting ants, and oh how they stung
our tender feet until she taught me to decorate the sidewalk
with their innards, to stomp them like crabapples, splattering
remorseless red and brown and death and flies until our parents
taught us it was wrong to kill

she and I, we were always different. we threw tantrums about
those blue plastic chairs, ostracized the wobbly one with the crack
and she wept inconsolably when, on rare occasion, our parents
rewarded me for my quiet with the intact throne and i always felt
a little silly because deep down i always loved the underdog
and knew she was too beautiful for anything less than ken

two little indian girls in white america
dots on their heads, dots on their dresses
their parents lost in this land where love flows
in such foreign, unpredictable ways, which scrapes your knees raw
as you beg for the familiarity you can only find in dressing up
your dollfaced daughters in matching dresses
each one more identical than the last

two little girls retaliated, never to don those dots again,
vowed to be distinct, to perform their difference, and grew up into
a cornbred feminist and a plantation belle who made their parents so proud
and destroyed them in the worst of ways because america made us and ruined us
seduced us and ravaged us, and she and i,
we ended up as clones, fighting for the losing teams,
dotting the same ashes on our foreheads
wearing the same clothes.

Day 9: al cielo

their sweet beginnings, their infertility, his castle of balloons
brought tears to her eyes, and her friend sputtered out a throaty laugh
abrasive, delighted that such silly things evoked such sentiment

and the second time the daughter hid behind her father's shadow
silently choked down the saltwater in the dark

the final time the allusion itself was enough; the tears were already there
just waiting for their cue to spring to life on her cheeks
the arm, placed gently, tentatively around her shoulder, snaked in
a little closer, predicting, anticipating, unsurprised and comforting
when she buried her head in her palms

Day 8: heartbeat poem

boiled vegetables and a few laughs later
you tucked yourself into bed
i listened to the nothingness
the whirring blades of the fan
the creaks and groans of an old building
adjusting to the humidity of the day,
the charged air of the storm

my chest rose and fell and i felt
lucky.

Day 7: water under the bridge

our beginnings and ends were train stations

your broken glasses, the grease of the foodcourt
seeping into our clothes, effacing the familiar,
an unfinished goodbye drowned out by loudspeakers and luggage carts
a harbinger of paths that could be traveled
but not followed

unfinished movies and meadows, apricots in spaghetti,
stacks of library books and calloused power chords later
botanical gardens and broken nails, gins and tonics later

eastbound, the sterile metal doors snapped open and shut
the summer wind hurtled past grand
tears on the pavement cooked and evaporated

and time marched forward.

if I'd capitulated to the west, I'd be under a harvest moon
pondering Ernest Hemingway's run on sentences
poorer, lonelier, fighting without screaming, but dreaming in semicolons
watching the earth tremble in the drink in your hand

Day 6: an attempt at presence

letting the oxygen rush over old feelings,
old friends, old lovers, old enemies,
revisited at peaks of discipline
and abandoned in valleys of preoccupation
and self-deceit

my toes graze the shallow sand,
shoulders submerged, water enveloping every pore,
the shore and the sun promising gritty rewards.

ballerina feet on smooth stones,
a sudden cliff, free falling into
old feelings come friends come lovers
plunging into an abyss
cold but fiery, dark but molten, eternal but ephemeral

what would it be to never wake from this paradox

Day 5: portrait

gray skies, decrepit buildings, brick factories
revamped into lofts. trees bursting into little white blooms.
spring on the familiar sidewalks of six-years-home
etched into the soles of so many shoes
i thought i'd never own, but womanhood molds us
into things contrary to our nature.

red hoodie, cane, bow-legged limp, plastic bag dangling
from a hand wizened beyond its years, teetering on the edge of
gentrification, your skin out of place, your southern love
out of place, your "hello, sister," expected and unexpected at once

my six-years-home, my feels-like-many-years-world taught me
not to show my love, taught me hypocrisy, and the dust of self-loathing
settles as I recognize that quick wish
for complacent uncaring that will never come

hello, brother
my heart is paralyzed for what I am, what I become
you know me not as one of the thousands of
walkersby on fast feet who could carry your bag
but as your own

Day 3: Elegie

here's to the death of a salesman
the end of innocence, the creaking closet doors
the short circuited sins and skeletons
that made me the muttering father
his infidelities
and his disappointed son

here's to the death of
the baby's red fist wrapped tightly around the unsuspecting
index finger of an adult hardened by the world
baffled by love, indiscriminate love
the kind we are trained to forget
the kind we unlearn

here's to the depth of
feeling those words, those rhythms, those songs once evinced
and the dull currents of muscle memory that have replaced them
my lips remember and my heart is stoned
in by what is rote

the world whittled willy loman down
into the toothpick we all become

the difference between being and becoming
the conduit
we call age

his haunting escape, we call redemption

here's to the death of my salesman