I want to be the lip you bite down on when your nerves curl you in like the edges of an aged photograph.
In the wine-dark thickness of the room your girlhood grew up in we nested like herons.
On and on, until the sun birthed in us, the gaping dawn a blooming flower.
A flower:
Dried in my windowsill,
A moment caught, plucked from inevitable decay
And the progress toward,
Pressed flat between heavy words from "zeitgeist" to "zenith".
A snapshot of a first kiss:
Two girls loving frantic like ants to sugar.
I am a sweet tooth, a molar at the back of an unhinged aching expectant jaw.
You are so many daisies in a chain, gathered together in a bird's beak for home.
And then –
An inhale: a swallow diving down my throat.
Hungry for air, I am famished, salivating as though rainfall was born in the roof of my mouth.
Nourish me, please.
Let's feast.
I will peel one hundred pomegranates, dark red fruit-flesh under my fingernails. I will not wash my hands: leave the sticky stains for later so I can remember the color of your lips.
And I will feed you the seeds.
And we will grow new mysteries in the pits of our stomachs, archival fruits that know old names
For love that we will never learn with our tongues.
Leave me with the gauzy pallor of your cheek:
And I will blend paints from an infinite palette.
And I will count your eyelashes with an abacus.
Sing songs of the softest silver spikes and the densest and heaviest cotton.
Sing songs sticky like pumpkin innards.
Sing songs as gentle as virgins braiding hair with their avian fingers.
Sing songs as loud as your touch, loud as the moment all my blood vessels opened and electricity coursed through my veins and filled me full-to-bursting.
And I can promise you this: I will wrap you up in blankets of refrains and choruses.
And I can promise you this: you will have whole swimming pools of paper scraps frantically scrawled for you to dive into.
And I can promise you this: I will lay with you until your fever breaks, rubbing ice cubes on your chapped lips.
And I can promise you this: I will hold your hurt like a wish buried in the earth, sacred somethings for safe keeping.
Show me your spine. Lay it down like a ladder for me to climb in and find you.
Showing posts with label queer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label queer. Show all posts
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Getting BENT
I'm happy to reveal some exciting news today! In ten days I will be leaving for a month to head to Seattle to study at Bent writing institute! Some of my favorite poets (including Tara Hardy and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha) have taught there. I'm totally thrilled to be spending the next month there and will be posting my writing from that experience throughout the month of May. Look out for it!
Saturday, June 27, 2009
thoughts on femme
One of my new favorite quotes:
"People associated short skirs, frenetic dancing, shared flasks, and public necking with feminism" - Linda Scott, "Fresh Lipstick"
People don't like femmes because we're dangerous.
We can fuck your shit up with our stillettos, the same ones we wore when you were checking us out, and we let you know that we could see you looking just by staring you bold in the face.
we're dangerous because we want you to look, and because we are that type of girl.
We're dangerous because our black as tar, brown as clay, lily white, fat, thin, curvy bodies make your dicks hard and your pussies wet.
We're dangerous because we don't really give a shit who shaves and who doesn't, and where they do and where they don't.
We show our legs, bruised from our romp with last night's mistress, or rollerderby, or dancing, under our sundresses, Carharts, lycra micro minis, and pantsuits.
We're flirtatious, we're coy, we're bold, we're direct, we're innocents and we're sluts. we are all of these as once, and don't see them as paradoxes, but as more chances to expand our arsenal.
We can change a bike tire with the best of the boys and the butches. And if we can't, we're not buying the bullshit that says that it makes us less radical than you.
We play dress up with our girlfriends, our girl-friends, our boyfriends, and our boy-friends.
We take care of one another's kids, and let them play in our makeup, if that's what he, or she, or ze wants to do that day.
By the way, that look that's on display in Forever 21? Yeah, We found some shit in a free box and handcrafted it about a year before they were mass producing it at the Gap.
"People associated short skirs, frenetic dancing, shared flasks, and public necking with feminism" - Linda Scott, "Fresh Lipstick"
People don't like femmes because we're dangerous.
We can fuck your shit up with our stillettos, the same ones we wore when you were checking us out, and we let you know that we could see you looking just by staring you bold in the face.
we're dangerous because we want you to look, and because we are that type of girl.
We're dangerous because our black as tar, brown as clay, lily white, fat, thin, curvy bodies make your dicks hard and your pussies wet.
We're dangerous because we don't really give a shit who shaves and who doesn't, and where they do and where they don't.
We show our legs, bruised from our romp with last night's mistress, or rollerderby, or dancing, under our sundresses, Carharts, lycra micro minis, and pantsuits.
We're flirtatious, we're coy, we're bold, we're direct, we're innocents and we're sluts. we are all of these as once, and don't see them as paradoxes, but as more chances to expand our arsenal.
We can change a bike tire with the best of the boys and the butches. And if we can't, we're not buying the bullshit that says that it makes us less radical than you.
We play dress up with our girlfriends, our girl-friends, our boyfriends, and our boy-friends.
We take care of one another's kids, and let them play in our makeup, if that's what he, or she, or ze wants to do that day.
By the way, that look that's on display in Forever 21? Yeah, We found some shit in a free box and handcrafted it about a year before they were mass producing it at the Gap.
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