Monthly Archives: May 2017

Mountains in the teacup

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trace my hand along the delicate serrated line where the ridge meets sky, all white above and below the brown demarcation line where mountain ends and sky begins, a litany of snow falling  along the narrow path, the minuscule climbers, too small for naked eye, trudging through the storm, coats clutched to chests, never for a moment aware that the scene, the ridge, the world entire is just a teacup in the palm of the hand, held aloft, so fragile, prone to all sorts of risings and fallings, bone China, fragile to the touch

Leaves in water

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for so long now I have seen Ophelia’s clothes each time I scoop leaves from the bottom of the pool, of the well, of the teacup of memory she comes back to me with a plaintive song about the boy whose soliloquies broke into a thousand words over water, hovering over the surface of the deep, almost a song until you cannot swim, touch the bottom and feel only tangled leaves, no solid ground to stand on if only she could get herself…well-to a nunnery, of course…high walls, soft voices sorting who or what is safe if not the boy, the beautiful boy with all his talk of infinitives of being….being, just a leaf in water, weightless until it begins to rise over her incendiary last infinitive thought-to be or not to be.

J. crashes the party

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If you asked me how I knew it was you I would touch your face and say aardvarks!! Anteaters!! Warthogs!! Your humor as unmistakable as your wit, odd they all refuse to see you, you in the over-sized retro flippers, ducky float ring and wild Hawaiian print crashing the party, the holiday, the cozy churchy potluck making almost everyone supremely uncomfortable.  Everyone except the children who delight in your flamboyant honesty, your failure to adhere in any way to our sheepy ways, shorn and alone

You hand off the flowery shirt, the float, the flippers (none of which you ever needed)

seamless garment to sunblind guards

World go dark, pain and love

Set free

Rocket Girl

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you float for a time in the “even so,” casually, miraculously, inexorably growing limbs and features and organs, that all-important beating heart.  No one tells you meanwhile in “Houston…we have a problem” or that the problem is something you  cannot (would not)

unmake you

/girlness /not boyness, your binary /identification /of /gender 

Will be enough to terminate the mission

… when all along you have done your best in the beautiful floating weeks of the “even so”

You matchless irreplaceable girl-in-the-now, girl-for-a-moment

Until mission control

Aborts, aborts

Letting you

tiny dancer, rocket girl

Go.

The Countries I Have Lost

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A country, just like a single old-left-foot-house-slipper can be metonymous.  This-for that, quid-pro-quo, how-did-I-ever-lose-you?-metonymous. Hit me at 2 am, sharp intake of breath too hard to connect it all with proper punctuation metonymous.  I once accidentally cut your hand in a car window metonymous.  When I met you I thought you were the crazy one metonymous. Lost in Pittsburgh a million years ago metonymous.  With you the reason for years of silence had to be different metonymous.  

The countries I have lost all have proper names, stable addresses, no missing slippers.  Us-and-them, before-and-after countries cheerfully conventional, intentionally respectful, naturally leery of the once-familiar mendicant whose metonymic wholes have been for good or ill

Irrevocably set free.

The Cowboy of Lost Things

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his button-down shirt matched the color of his gun and his ten-gallon hat matched his jeans as he brandished his weapon with bravado in the the store-of-lost-things on the corner of the city named for the patron saint of them, poor Native Americans, at some point the irony of namesakes and saints’ days and lost things must have haunted them the way it haunts me as the Nissan with the cat inside next to the bustling night school faces its own lost place on the street named for flowers where a brown bottle will spread its broken pieces like water pooled on the edge of the sidewalk, so close to art, so close to lost on the very edge of the world 

jeop•ard•y

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orgin: Old French, ieu parti (evenly) divided game

ME- iuparti

The term was originally used in chess or other games to denote a problem, or position in which the chances of winning or losing were evenly balanced, hence-

“A dangerous situation”

From “jeu”-a game which derived from Latin “jest” see “joke” and “divide”

Taboos

200. What common crime against children is universally under-reported?

400. What is the FBI definition for rape?

600. What is Planned Parenthood’s policy on rape and incest victims?

800. What constitutes “consent?”

1000. What happens to fetal remains in rape and incest situations?

Famous Rape Survivors

200.  Who is Jane Fonda?

400.  Who is Oprah Winfrey?

600. Who is Tim Roth?

800.  Who is Queen Latifa?

1000. Who is Lady Gaga?

Rape Victims in History

200. Who was Joan of Arc?

400. Who was Elizabeth I?

600. Who was Virginia Woolf?

800. Who was Lawrence of Arabia?

1000. Who is Maya Angelou?

Feminism and abortion

200. What country has the highest number of gender-selective abortions?

400.  What cultural biases enable gender-selective abortion?

600.  What medical device is used to determine the gender of fetuses?

800. When is the gender of an unborn child visible?

1000. What are some common social problems associated with sex-selective abortion?

Current Events

200. What famous NYC newspaper reported on a 10 year old incest victim in India?

400. What famous British news agency reported on an Indian rape victim seeking a late-term abortion?

600. What is the common redress for incest survivors in India?

800. What state did the 10 year old incest and rape survivor hail from in northern India?

1000. What survivor counseling, services, and support can a 10 year old Indian rape victim expect from local and national governments?

Final Jeopardy

What are common stereotypes, misconceptions, and prejudices perpetuated in general which hinder the prosecution of sexual predators and marginalize their victims?

Mum’s Day 1998

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they will say focus on the positive they will say at least you gave her a good beginning they will say we have 25 families waiting, better than you like this is some kind of beauty pageant for adoptive families? 

…which was a weird lie of sorts…maybe there were 25 families …maybe 5000…in the end it was only necessary to know that it was never about the hypothetical 25, always about the avaricious pair, or pairs, -on-the-ark-come-two-by-two pairs of caseworkers, pairs of administrators, pairs of lawyers, pairs of accountants, coupling, uncoupling back and forth around a central lie, a few broken laws, and Entropy, the Mother-god, chained to the loss chained to the chaos of the loss…of her babies.

What was it 

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what was it, mute, inanimate object perched on the counter in the messy late-night kitchen as she finally sweeps up the spilled beans, tosses them out into the night, contemplates both what usually lurks there and if they will grow, sprout, tangle up into vines, vines to block the sun, spin to the clouds where the approximate-rhythmic giant dwells, mocking science, mocking long-dead Darwin, Glutton-clubbing, maggot-and-squirrel devouring Darwin whose mortal life has coiled to dust but whose immortal one is hot, vivid, fierce

Survival of the fittest…