I ain't ever belonged to no one--
not even those that came before,

those frightened immigrants and spanish tangerines tumbling
below deck, toppling into the scattered bed rolls that still smell
like cumin and tarragon, sea and spiced salt seeping through the strong lungs of every youthful San Fermin boy in Pamplona
the raised voices in Seville singing San Jose and my mother's
maiden name--

i fumble in the dark for things to keep me rooted
the strong arms of working men and their weak hearts
barely beating
secondhand boys breathin' dollars an' truck exhaust
lookin' for their match, someone that'll fit
or do 'em just right
sharp things that'll sit pretty and
look good in lowlight,

and me with my tulip bulb heart
plantin' myself in wax, in muck,
in Utqiaġvik, Alaska
during the Polar Nights,
in my palms, beneath pillows, sproutin out the lungs of
those unassumin' who think i'm healin' them
of all the silly, misplaced  ideas

but they got me creepin' out the sides of their cheeks
hookin' these delicate stems
leaving thin perforations all along their sheets
gratin and sharpenin they's teeth--

used to think i was the sun
real pretty and smooth like them stones
you find down near the river
or leaves just 'bout to fall, clingin
to low hangin' branches
just askin to be plucked or swept away
but i'm not any of those things

just a girl
lord, the awful truth
just a girl.

this is a love letter to my body.



this isn't a love letter to my body
because I so often hear people say that i
am a spirit with a simple packaging, someone
naturally without form but capable of so much
splendor.

they say love the skin you're in, but I say love
the spirit, hiding.  Love the spirit who came
to these fingers and said yes, who took
residence in those legs and cried out in
joy, who found richness in a gift without
precedent, love the spirit that reached
out with itself and grew a soul in
a shell, where you thought no roots
could gather, where you doubted the
integrity of a creator's hand,

Love the spirit, sitting here. A warm whisper
of a girl pulsing in the spotlight, who never
asked for your blame, for your guilt and
headstone, for the things you said when
you were mad, or the disgusted turn in
the mirror when dissatisfied with the
the coat for a never-ending winter
the vessel for without
she might seep into the very
earth and cease, be raw as
a blister against the wind
and seek shelter against
the other realms--

love the spirit, here.  Because
though the lights are dim and
the tunnel is long, train tracks
need a destination and birds
never fly without a place to
land.

love the spirit, here.
love the spirit here.

step 1: don't.

we all know words are alcoholic,
they can burn and they can treat,
I've gotten drunk on a moment, on a kiss
on the thin waist of a working man--

there's no use in wishing, on changing substances,
you can't domesticate a bear and tell her not to hunt
hope water will disinfect,
treat with pages out of a book, stitch cuts with sentences,
we all know words wound as much as they heal
try cauterizing with ink or
bandaging with i love you
you'll quickly learn that you are not a healer, you are a bartender,
you serve the vices, flip the switch, change the songs, pick up the drunks,

turn water in whiskey? turn whiskey into water.
help a man, hold him close, wake up and make love
clear a table, clear a mind, open a door,
leave the glass.

A stone foot down
and there I was,
In the dust

thank you for
listening even
when on easter
I said I hated
you more than
twelve times

I love the way books cannot be
unread, cannot erase the sweet oils
and thumbprints like black oak tree rings
they are there for all the slivers
of sunlight and literary cafune
soft knuckles pressed into their
spines
they remind me that while I am not new
I can remain unknown, that though
opened by some I am neither novel lying in wait
or closed into his old bookshelves,
a thin draft in a library of what-ifs
he did not get to k e e p you
however you did, you did
found your
way into other hands, without much grace, albeit,
baltering from home to home
a solivigant prose--

this way, and that, small bind
paperback.

These impurities
they have minds of
their own and refuse
to surface, i'm
looking for gold here,
beneath you
beneath you

he started sayin' somethin
about girls and cars and
that's when I tuned out
'cause i'd already considered
that,

not the showin up at his house
part, but the other girls who might
have kissed him in my absence

albeit something I've never understood
i'm not too good at cover-ups and my
libido only stretches for one person
at a time but
i couldn't blame him for things
he did when I wasn't his and he wasn't mine

who knows what happened in that time
but I can't care
and if other women
are on my skin then
at least i am on
theirs.

I had a dream last night
that you refused to talk
to me, and you stared
angrily at walls, burning
holes through bricks. You
walked straight into me and
your bitterness was a bulldozer
that i couldn't stop, couldn't
read the words ironed on
your shirt. So I started to
cry, tried your name on
my tongue but you wouldn't
hear me anymore. And at the
end i gave myself to you and
you pushed me off and walked
away, seething,

*that's what you get

I'm fond of those light touches
when someone knows how to
turn my cheek into their palm
in the maraschino hue, I like
that, I like that

I like that

I hate to see the life
you've created without me
because I don't think I've
created one without you

WHY'S YOUR DADDY GOT BLUE EYES?


it was never so much a question I heard
as much as one i thought, why's my daddy got blue eyes?

i used to peel this picture out
of the floral decopauge box
a sepia toned senior photo
of him in a varsity jacket
a wide spanish grin and
my full lips,
leonard scrawled on the
back, and why's your daddy got blue eyes?

I have always felt alone in this
body, a bit of my mother and none
of a father, have always
hated this brown
this skin filled with
shade, in the shadow
of girls with lean limbs
and long hair the color
of satin flower,
viridian eyes
that smile without tryin'
and long slender fingers
that'd be good for playin'
with children and kissing--

i have never
seen myself as anything else
than muddy water
always heavy, full
of sand, steaming earth
in the grasslands, dense
and bitter like orange rinds
too round, too full,
bubbling with all a manner
of pith and marrow
quick down in the mire
fixed into the silt

I have reached for the men
like the one in the photo,
dark and ethnic, pleading
for affirmation, that there
is beauty in brown, in
dusk, that I do not
have to be Rotomairewhenua
clear and effortless
that I can easily be
fresh and still
full of depth
and darker
hues.

why has my daddy got blue eyes, I wonder?

in battle they tell you to push on
grab your gun and move forward, advance.  advance
in one way or another I have always
been told to stop doing the things
that make me, myself--
but for your sake I won't
bring them up, i will avoid
the work, the big words.

we let ourselves where emotions lead
follow willingly into fleeting thoughts,
run desperately where there are lights
where there is sound, where there are others
when we should venture into the night.

Venture. Travel. Traverse. advance.

In battle they tell you onward
pick up your gun and fight, advance, advance
I have always lived up to expectation
until the last moment when i don't
when I have deteriorated into a
little girl, when I am the last straw,
the one that breaks your back (again)
but to bring this up is insufficient
because pretty words don't really
mean what I say or say what I mean,
right?

so our emotions take us where
they please, misguided and
utterly attracted to company
when we should venture into the night.

Venture. Rove. Peregrination.

but there's been so many
different ways to love since
then, and they've never been
as gentle as I dreamed

and ever since then, near everything
has been a threat, a reminder that
As myself is not enough, this girl
These hands, these surly smiles
The way I dance, my naked wiles
I've willed myself to adjust
To fit what locks I can unlock

I melted down and poured me out
Filled the holes around the house,
Into votives in the halls, Mount me
Up along the walls, lined the porch
Out in the night beside your boots
I've flickered bright---

But that is not enough.


That is not enough.