During my visit to the book expo in Chicago to pick up my copy of The Journal of Modern Poetry, I competed in the Green Mill Poetry Slam, the longest running live performance in the city. I didn't like what I'd brought to read so I wrote this poem while listening to the performers during the Open Mic and read it, instead. The poem is a picture of the evening and made real by the words I heard onstage: I took the lines "Hell is always personal" and "I love everything about you that hurts" from other poets, Marc Smith spoke of gambling in his performance, and Black Lavender is a regular at the Green Mill who read that evening. And someone who has never read in public? They're called virgin virgins.
Chicago where Capone once sat,
where history is beginning all around us,
and Marc Smith rolls the dice onstage.
Then a man walks by with his hair like yours
and his coat like yours
and I can't hear him rolling anymore.
Indeed, I see you everywhere.
And oh I need a way to lose
the words that brought me here:
Black Lavender,
prescription strength,
and doctor says
crush it with your teeth,
hold it under your tongue until it dissolves because
Hell is always personal.
I ran more than once to get away from you
and woke up drowning in a gutter
or huddled in a corner where
maybe you would notice me.
You broke me but I'll admit:
I let you.
All those cracks the better to draw you in,
the better to absorb you because baby,
I love everything about you that hurts.
Then there is this guy again,
the damned emcee who called me a virgin--twice!
He must have never seen your face,
He must have never seen me watching you.
My turn now to stand here,
a chance to feel important for a moment,
and maybe this time you will hear me,
maybe this time you will care.
And someone rolls the dice again.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
I have a poem in the 16th edition of The Journal of Modern Poetry. Read it here
wimmin’s rights
Have a morning fuck and
send the man home.
He wants to stay,
wants you to call him,
wants to introduce you to his friends.
You have shit to do.
Boil a potato,
eat it with some salt.
He wants to take you out to dinner.
You are not hungry.
There are some stale saltines
in a cabinet somewhere and
plenty of beer in the fridge.
Play some records,
put on an old sweater
and some stockings.
Get high and
dance.
You want to dance? He says.
Let’s go dancing.
You are already dancing.
Lay in bed and
read some poems.
Write a bit.
Work on that rug you’ve been making.
He wants to buy you a rug.
You don’t need one.
Maybe paint a little.
Maybe boil another potato,
watch it cook.
You need a television, he says.
You wouldn’t have to stand at the stove
watching potatoes boil if you had a television.
What in hell would you ever want with a television?
Fuck the man and send him home.
(from the guns get bigger and bigger and the girls move further away)
Have a morning fuck and
send the man home.
He wants to stay,
wants you to call him,
wants to introduce you to his friends.
You have shit to do.
Boil a potato,
eat it with some salt.
He wants to take you out to dinner.
You are not hungry.
There are some stale saltines
in a cabinet somewhere and
plenty of beer in the fridge.
Play some records,
put on an old sweater
and some stockings.
Get high and
dance.
You want to dance? He says.
Let’s go dancing.
You are already dancing.
Lay in bed and
read some poems.
Write a bit.
Work on that rug you’ve been making.
He wants to buy you a rug.
You don’t need one.
Maybe paint a little.
Maybe boil another potato,
watch it cook.
You need a television, he says.
You wouldn’t have to stand at the stove
watching potatoes boil if you had a television.
What in hell would you ever want with a television?
Fuck the man and send him home.
(from the guns get bigger and bigger and the girls move further away)
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Monday, September 16, 2013
a month of Sundays
you come home from
the bar again
Drunk.
Alone.
hoping he will call you,
know that he won't
for many reasons,
the most pertinent being
that he doesn't have
your new number,
no one does,
and that's how you like it
good and hard
with no chance for redemption,
I'm sorrys,
or even a good bye,
just you and a bottle
that doesn't help but
offers a pretty good
excuse
for being
so fucked up
and Drunk
and Alone
on a Tuesday night.
the bar again
Drunk.
Alone.
hoping he will call you,
know that he won't
for many reasons,
the most pertinent being
that he doesn't have
your new number,
no one does,
and that's how you like it
good and hard
with no chance for redemption,
I'm sorrys,
or even a good bye,
just you and a bottle
that doesn't help but
offers a pretty good
excuse
for being
so fucked up
and Drunk
and Alone
on a Tuesday night.
(from Se Refiere a Nosotros: Poems for You)
t bars
I
Slow night
at the cat house.
Women sit with their backs
against the wall and wait for
money,
compliments,
maybe a drink.
The men lick their lips and
take their pick of
sagging breasts,
broken smiles,
nervous fingers.
This is a loser's game;
This job gets better with a drink.
II
Slow nights
for fast women
don't end well.
Some get drunk
and some start fights
and no one wants to pay.
Men wait in the parking lot for
the women who will leave for pills.
All this pussy
just waiting for a buyer
and no one wants to pay.
Women leave with the men who
lick the powder off their noses.
It's better for business
to finish in the car.
They cost less that way.
Slow night
at the cat house.
Women sit with their backs
against the wall and wait for
money,
compliments,
maybe a drink.
The men lick their lips and
take their pick of
sagging breasts,
broken smiles,
nervous fingers.
This is a loser's game;
This job gets better with a drink.
II
Slow nights
for fast women
don't end well.
Some get drunk
and some start fights
and no one wants to pay.
Men wait in the parking lot for
the women who will leave for pills.
All this pussy
just waiting for a buyer
and no one wants to pay.
Women leave with the men who
lick the powder off their noses.
It's better for business
to finish in the car.
They cost less that way.
(from the guns get bigger and bigger and the girls move further away)
small favors
last night at the bar where
we sometimes see each other.
there is a show,
music fills the spaces left between
the bodies of all the people who
come and go through a little place like that.
i am working in a club across town
so i do not hear,
until i am home,
and from a boy who did not see,
about the the someone who was struck,
the man who is a man no more
because a car sent him from this world to the next
at the corner just outside the bar.
and i do not know
his name or even
the color of his hair,
only that a body lies in a pool of blood
in the middle of the street--
it could be you,
it could be you.
and the news won't say a thing
and the boy wants comforting
but his body makes too too much noise lying in the bed beside me while
maybe you are expiring on the pavement
and i am not there to collect you.
no, i cannot sleep
next to this whole and breathing body
so i leave it in the other room
and curl up in the darkest place i know
wrapped in the blanket we once wrapped ourselves into.
and as i sleep my dreams are
Empty,
when so often they are
full of You.
and in the morning,
waiting for a word
and there it is:
You are alive!
Alive!
And breathing and sleeping and alive, somewhere,
it doesn't matter where,
and now I know that I can live without you
no matter who you live with
or where you keep your body,
so long as you do
and so long as your noisy breathing
keeps someone up at night.
I make breakfast and it is the best food
I have eaten in a long time,
and really the boy isn't all that bad.
You are alive.
You are alive.
You are alive.
Thank God for that.
we sometimes see each other.
there is a show,
music fills the spaces left between
the bodies of all the people who
come and go through a little place like that.
i am working in a club across town
so i do not hear,
until i am home,
and from a boy who did not see,
about the the someone who was struck,
the man who is a man no more
because a car sent him from this world to the next
at the corner just outside the bar.
and i do not know
his name or even
the color of his hair,
only that a body lies in a pool of blood
in the middle of the street--
it could be you,
it could be you.
and the news won't say a thing
and the boy wants comforting
but his body makes too too much noise lying in the bed beside me while
maybe you are expiring on the pavement
and i am not there to collect you.
no, i cannot sleep
next to this whole and breathing body
so i leave it in the other room
and curl up in the darkest place i know
wrapped in the blanket we once wrapped ourselves into.
and as i sleep my dreams are
Empty,
when so often they are
full of You.
and in the morning,
waiting for a word
and there it is:
You are alive!
Alive!
And breathing and sleeping and alive, somewhere,
it doesn't matter where,
and now I know that I can live without you
no matter who you live with
or where you keep your body,
so long as you do
and so long as your noisy breathing
keeps someone up at night.
I make breakfast and it is the best food
I have eaten in a long time,
and really the boy isn't all that bad.
You are alive.
You are alive.
You are alive.
Thank God for that.
(from Se Refiere a Nosotros: Poems for You)
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