My daughter will not crawl from crib to tanning bed.

She will learn
the terms “unnattainable beauty standards” before she learns the alphabet.

She will never compare herself
to anyone.

She will never compare herself to Britney, Christina, Selena.

She will never compare herself to Cinderella, Ariel, Belle,
Hell. No.

She will never aspire to be the sultry *** kitten taking seductive showers in shampoo commercials.
No.

My daughter will be named Venus.
The goddess of love, beauty, fertility,

The most beautiful woman I ever saw.
She is plump, fullfigured barebreasted wide hipped with curly hair covered mons

Goddess.

My daughter will grow up to be ******, poisonously beautiful

With long locks of goldenrodred hair, like her mother.
Greyblueblack eyes and shoulder freckles, like her father.

And if I can never become pregnant,
my sisters daughters will be my daughters
skin the color of cinnamon or chocolate, or vanilla ice cream
and just as sweet.

Men, women, boys, girls will pine over her, fall in love with her radiating skin
that will never look photoshopped, but always real.

As if the sun came down from the sky to give her the glow of all the light in the universe.

She will love her body the way that my mother taught me to love mine.
I will show her pictures of Whoopi Goldberg and America Ferrera and Margaret Cho and Marilyn Monroe

And she will know that beauty
is not a synonym
for skinny.

Beauty
is not a synonym for
****.

Beauty is not defined by size
or color
or texture, no.

It is defined by how she distributes
her love
and light
to everyone she meets.
no exceptions.



and she will never doubt that she is lovely.

I have wide hips, a wide waist.
chubby cheeks and
short legs
given to me

by my mother.

she is not a witch.
she has wrinkles, yes
but they do not define her
nor would she let them.

I have no interest in making friends with fish,
small birds,
candlesticks or clocks,
or rodents.


I need human contact to survive.

If you put me alone in a house in a forest,
I will not clean.  
I will not wait to be saved.
I will not ask for your permission to go outside.

I will leave.


I do not need a prince to live happily ever after.

I have short bushy hair
and a ******.
yes, it's there.
underneath my cotton underwear and long lace skirts
that no one is telling me to wear.

I have a sister.
I go to her for advice.
I look up to her and I talk to her about
Everything anything everything

I do not need a prince.



I look up to my mother.
She is not a source of fear,
she is a source of comfort
and relief.


what are We teaching our daughters?

these imaginary princesses
teach our babygirls

to have long eyelashes
to have two inch waists
long luscious hair
*** appeal


and if they don't,

they will never live happily ever after.

If I need all that to get one,

I do not want a prince.

I do not want to be anyone's
cinderella.

I will not chase after anyone
if they choose to leave.

I will weep into my sister and mother's shoulders

But that poor,
poor
princess

will always be chasing
squirrels
to talk to

and men
to be saved by.

When will we teach them to save themselves?


When will they teach themselves
that there is no such thing as perfect

at first when you take off
the world just looks small

a dollhouse, a miniature world
an amusing punchline to an old joke
a fantasy tinged with g-force and sprite in clear cups

but as the sky darkens and the plane lifts higher

the world seems to drown in blackness
an inky clarity of night not confused by clouds
and suddenly it is as if you are at the top on an ocean
looking at a far away ocean floor
crawling with foreign creatures with all of their bones lit up
over coral reefs of light and movement
parking lots like stationary jelly fish and highways like currents
of neon veins pumping lights and cars

all of the world's exoskeleton is illuminated
and it is beautiful and movable  
it is nature's patterns played out in electricity

but the farther out you go
the more the sharpness and geometry of the roads and cities
attack the eye

and the coral reefs turn to computer motherboards
all of man's ingenuity and beauty no longer draping the world
but ordering it

into squares and jagged lines
into distant pixel pinpricks
into maps

until you're not traveling through the world
but over it

When she turned her gaze upon me,
I was a mote of dust
caught in a beam of sunlight
I was huge and beautiful
and bright.

I laughed and danced
and shone.

And when she turned away,
a cloud moved across the sun
and I was extinguished.

poetry is heart speaking
her deepest wisdom
or lightest whimsy
traditional form or free verse
let souls sing
sprinkle metaphor and simile
if you are a poet, write like one
words are music
let them breeze like a melody
color with mix-matched sensory
don’t stay inside the lines
see sounds with eyes closed
hear flickering of fireflies’ light
smell beauty in distant mountains
taste majesty of flowers’ bloom
touch forgiveness
bring personification to life
“she” is much sweeter than “it”
and a seat cushion may have a roundness to her
throw in some high speech
make someone grab a lexicon
delete those extra words
‘I’s and ‘the’s especially
alliteration can create cacophonic chorus
while similar sounds of assonance
tie hoards and scores of words together
although there are no rules
try your best to use poetry’s tools
with this above all else:
let your truth ring
let your insights and revelations
be a healing to self and reader
let experiences resonate in hearts
and harmonize voices

We sat.
Thigh flush with thigh.
Such absolute silence, I swore
I could hear our cigarettes burning.
Such absolute stillness, you swore
you could see the world turning.
One arm draped around my shoulders,
you pointed the other
towards the trees, glowing by the stars.
"Look," you murmured, "fall
has finally caught up with us,"
and we stared at
a hint of color–
the leaves had at last begun to blush.

Your quiet breaths whispered
the unspoken words– that soon,
the trees would stand naked.
Your heavy eyelids blinked
a silent message– that soon,
the moon would set, hailing morning.
And my feeble body knew,
in every ache, in every crevice,
in every inch of skin, pound of flesh,
in every frail bone and every drop of blood–

in every touch,
my feeble body knew

the wordless truth– that soon,
the ashes would fall to our feet
and our cigarettes
would gently die.

But at that moment, we sat,
thigh flush with thigh,
and heard no ashes drop,
saw no morning come,
watched no leaves fall,
and pretended there existed
no plane waiting to take me back
to where cigarettes burn
too slowly.

As long as it doesn't affect me;
as long as it's not immediately relevant
and something I have to immediately worry about;
as long as it doesn't **** up
my credit score
or my
shiny
new
house
then,
**** it.

And
*******,
for bringing it to my attention.

how dare you.

this was promised to me,
it's predestined,
my two-story, three bedroom, two bath; the foreign workmanship and american artifice; the creamy halo of vinyl in the sun; the wrath of windexed windows and their hard missiles of bright, reflected sunlight; the soft lips of my children; my wife's pillowy, warm stomach and scratchy *****; our retriever that eats his own ****, picking apart tiny specks of feces from the sun-pricked tips of our rug of fescue; these are the works of God, this is the land of God. You are marring this flat earth