Sit down and begin to
unravel the secrets you tried
to bury inches deep
within your thigh.

Remember the giddy hollow of
after. How ringing out sheets
and watching Polaroid skin
as bruises, slowly, did sprout and spring
was almost enough to quiet it some nights.
How if only for a breath
you could relish in the rapture
instead of only diving through ash.


Discuss the way it felt to throw
yourself away from the inside out-
reaching and retching and clawing
with chapped twig fingers at all
those vile bits that bloomed inside of you.

You were just uprooting weeds.

You were just casting out veins.

Tell them how it was just like
tossing a coin into a city fountain-
but in reverse.
(and how it's okay to admit
that you still miss the wishes.)

swim until you can’t see land

until names etched deep in cardiac tissue blur

and fade, scored over with seasalt and creases of a million maps,

a secret stash of maps. absurd and hoarded and crumpled under carseats and

rolled neat

and boastful in umbrella holders or worse, framed and hung

Maps jotted freehand on napkins stained with tea and mustard and left

to be bused with the crusts and pocketful of change.

swim until you can’t read the maps.

the lines to here from there are arteries

on your fresh, clean heart.

It was the summer my
feet tanned like a gladiator,
my coliseum was more a
city piled on dirt, dust, trash
and under that; sand. It was
a desert summer though pollution
and global warming stole the
'dry heat' notion, burned it
up between layers of humidity and
buried it under the city-
down to sand that touched jewels
and biblical lust.
sometimes I ate pigeons and
sometimes I ate McDonald's.
sometimes I was in love and
sometimes I cried myself to sleep.
my eyes were brown, my skin was dark
and my accent was convincing.
I could have been anybody
tiptoeing between past-dead
hatchbacks and stray cats-
any lonely girl with sleep in her eyes
and fogged up sunglasses,
so why did I stay me?

in two days there will be eight -
no. nine children spilling in
and out
back in again.

maybe they’ll build a snowman
in our backyard, this yard
that is our own we have it
we claim it we want it
it’s ours alright

in two days the snow might have
melted. gone. vanished.
in two days we’ll see
our house full
of people, my people,
not really our people
not really mine

I did leave them.
they were mine, though
back then when there wasn’t any our
no our house our yard our life
family, this one, ours.

back then I yelled
washed dressed
hugged ignored
tugged at

fit into the sum total
fact of ten children,
two parents,
assorted pets,
God.

Hi, love muscle! The weather was dull and gloomy yesterday,
and many guys spent their weekend at home
frying marshmallow in their gardens.

But my hot friend and I went to the seaside for having a swim in the wash waves.
The beach was totally empty. We made a stunning bare skin photoset of two Little mermaids.
I have just uploaded most gripping pictures!
See my profile and contact me online in a chat –
we shall discuss some piquant moments.

i will wade out
                        till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers
I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
                                       Alive
                                                 with closed eyes
to dash against darkness
                                       in the sleeping curves of my body
Shall enter fingers of smooth mastery
with chasteness of sea-girls
                                            Will i complete the mystery
                                            of my flesh
I will rise
               After a thousand years
lipping
flowers
             And set my teeth in the silver of the moon

"Why one writes is a question I can never answer easily, having so often asked it of myself. I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me – the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.
...
"We also write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely … When I don’t write, feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing."
('The New Woman', 1974)