Language of Silence

Like images clouds suggest,
shadows on the wall form words I know
but have forgotten.

All day I trace strange calligraphy,
lips taste impossible vowels,

fingertips learn only
smoothness of wood,
the testure of plaster
tough as a cat’s tongue.

Posted in 1986 | Tagged , | Comments Off on Language of Silence

Two nice girls (for Cynthia Ball-Williams)

He calls us lady-poets
but our words
are not pretty. 

Our voices
are not pink sighs
to fold neatly and stack
in dresser drawers.

Woman poetry screams, bites,
fucks until dawn,
does not know shame.

Like jungle cats they stalk,
bloodhungry
and ready to pounce.

Posted in 1986 | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Two nice girls (for Cynthia Ball-Williams)

Currents

You enter my mind, insistent
as high tide claiming sand
and broken shells.  I came
to the cape running
from you, from dreams
heavy with salt and impossibility
stinging my eyes.

Here
your absence shouts
in wind that shakes
windows, fog
that slides between fingers.

Ten times today I wanted
your voice long distance
to melt me like a cat
in strong sun.  Ten times
I wanted you impossibly here:
Dorothy tapping toes
of red shoes together, body taut
with hope.

Again, the tide
reminds me.  How beautiful
to live inside your cycles, to expose
and cover gently
jagged edges; your rusted metal,
splintered wood fears.  To live
wide open
part of the time, secrets
offered casually, then covered
quickly.

I want to walk into you
smooth as glass, my arms
open to need
clean as acid, your hungry
undertow.

Posted in Poetry 1988-1990 | Tagged , | Comments Off on Currents

Sleepless

Night moves over me (weight
I do not want),
presses itself against my lips
in a cold kiss, mouth sharp
as a knife blade.

Leaves move against the window,
so many hands sliding open-palmed across glass.
Hands made to hold precisely nothing,
like my hands,
hands that move through air
eloquently,
tongues shaping questions,
beginnings, asking
to be let in.

Held inside my own arms
I cannot be warmed, kneel
in the center of a bed
no longer safe.

 

Posted in 1986 | Tagged , | Comments Off on Sleepless

wichien-maat

He balances,
an unlikely
longlegged parakeet
on my shoulder

rasping threats
to his blueeyed reflection;

perhaps she is mine
or stay on your side
of the glass

thin question mark tail
straightens to snake
around my throat
for balance
(or is it really
possessiveness)

such a small cat.
Slender,
dark & exquisite

as the princes
his ancestors
owned

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life begins at menstruation

in some states
the bloody slough of cells
exiting unneeded
from the chalice
of  this body
14 days before

half of the equation
adding up to life
breaks free
& looks for
strong-swimming sperm

is now the moment
life begins

legally.

funny;
in the old days
life began at ejaculation
because we women
were simply vessels for seed
& wasting that
was the sin

now,
we are so much more

or should be

more than walking,
willing incubators
waiting to be occupied
valued only
for what we expel,

the life in our bodies
numbered before it begins.

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

my mother’s baptism

this was no Pentecost
tongues of fire wrapping the faithful;
simply a baptismal service
where she waited in line
with the 12-year-olds,

but she waited 42 years
to step into
water chest high
her hand gripping the baptistery ledge
as if that could stop drowning

he said the words
& took her under

in an exercise of faith
fighting fear
she let him

tears crowded my own eyes
as hers opened underwater;
an everyday transcendence

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , , | 8 Comments