Category Archives: Poetry

lay your head here

07 Thursday Feb 2013

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It is snowing. The serpent that lives up
in the air must be cold. I feel sorry
for that serpent, for all snakes; snake worship
being out of style now. But the sleepy
serpent that lives in the air is my friend.
I’ll go and invite her in. In her maw
she holds all the hatred humans pretend
is high, mighty and righteous. The outlaw
knows a little of this. It is snowing.
Serpent, come down. Coil yourself in my bed.
Sleep the winter away. I am fluent
in old parsel tongue. Girls night in, laughing
the long winter nights away. Lay your head
here. Relax, Manasa, my dear serpent.

ghost dreams

07 Thursday Feb 2013

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ghost dream 1

ghost dream 1

ghost dream 2

ghost dream 2

ghost dream 3

ghost dream 3

ghost dream 4

ghost dream 4

A ghost is born naked, squinting and glum.

There is no mother to catch it, nothing
to cling to with a tooth, a toe or thumb.
There are no older siblings for learning
the ways of the night. If you can hear bats
sing you can hear ghosts sigh. Few ask, what’s wrong?
ask how the day went? What paramour chats
with a ghost — tea and laughter — all nightlong?

I don’t resent this coming to an end.
Now when I sleep I hide in a wall crack
and my face is modest. I don’t resent

rebirth; finding out that ghost dreams depend
on how forgotten we’ll become; flashback
to when we thought we knew what alone meant.

ghost dream 6

ghost dream 5

on the other side of that glass

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

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Some say our lives are what gets reflected
in our mirrors. How unsatisfying.
What small dreams. I can’t taste another’s blood
in dreams. I wake up without the scarring
I earned on the other side of that glass.

There is something sick about that, children
playing as gods. I can decode teargas,
know the best use of fennel and cumin.
Have held a meteorite in one hand.

If you must look in a mirror for hell
you have never seen hell. Nightmares must live

to be understood properly. Dreamland
erupts at your feet. You ride the groundswell
out of the dark, into light, into love.

moonstruck

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

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“You calmly hushed me,
taking away my barbarous ways.”
— Bunny Keiko (2005)

Bunny Keiko and her “mystical fuck”
reminds me of “The Woman Who Married
A Ghost Boy.” A widow became moonstruck
with a fey boy’s ghost. All ghosts need to feed
but what good is mother’s milk to the dead?
He hoped to please her, as any lover
would try; but he died a virgin, unfed
and lost and wasn’t much good with pleasure,
giving or taking. They didn’t despair,
though, with his wet hand prints in her panties,
her big ass, her small toes; she loved going
down on him, hard. Which is why their affair
makes me smile and reminds me of Bunny’s
poem on love and mystical fucking.

among alien gods

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

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Anaba and the Quetzal

Anaba and the Quetzal

“sinaháse nagée nagée alíli kat
bïtása/ a’yeyeyeyahai`” Navajo
protection song.

At the other border crossing I shall
be stopped and so shall we all. “Now, slayer
of the alien gods am I.” Quetzal
sits in my left hand. The jaguar’s furor
stretches far flung over us. “Now among
alien gods with weapons of magic
am I.” Now all the jaguar’s furor, flung
far out, am I. Now the quetzal, homesick
and blue, am I. At the other border I
shall be stopped by alien gods, foolish
in all that they do and try to condemn.
We all cross, one way or anther, why
make this hard? I pray: go in peace: the wish
I give your gods before I destroy them.

myth and porn

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

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Just like a Disney princess, Pasiphae,
cuckold King Mino’s wife, kept a wild beast
as a lover. A white bull from the sea. One day
the queen had built a great wooden cow, greased
herself, lay waiting in its oak darkness,
primed. The world is full of lore of women
who train beasts “to perform the services
of men;” real stud fees; again and again.
Ovid’s tale of the Minotaur was not
just a warning, he aimed to titillate
with the details; how a mother begot
her son with a bull’s cock, fiend at the gate.
Once done Ovid leaves her, pregnant, forlorn;
proving there’s scant difference in myth and porn.

ghostly needs

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

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If you can please a cat then you can please
a ghost, I believe. They’re so similar.
Cats. Ghosts. Sharks. Killers that love their bellies
scratched. I’ve touched shark snout, ghost skin and cat fur.
I could lie, tell you that I understood
what was under my hand. I could, perhaps.
Cats and ghosts both seek out love: that odd, good
human talent, but once they have it lapse
into indifference. Sharks are simply
curious and like to play. But knowing
that, I know nothing. I love mystery
but I can’t explain it. I can just sing.
Of cats’ ghostly needs, the kitten-like ghost
prowling, the shark’s soul that I love the most.

pat parker (1944-89)

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

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author of woman slaughter

author of “woman slaughter”

Dear Pat: I miss you! There are time, alone
at night, when I hope that your ghostly scent
will fill the air. You’ll laugh, say how I’ve grown
and I’ll laugh too, and say how you haven’t.
I’ll ask you how Audre and Adrienne
are and you’ll say just fine. Then you will read
something new you have written and I’ll grin
and cheer at all the right parts. Death has freed
you from many things, but not from a warm
audience. Pat, I wait, this fey, whitest
of white boys, who loves you, loves to perform
your work; calls you superfine, the dearest.
You taught me the power of words, laughter,
respect and why I miss my big sister.

delfy gochez fernandez

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Feminism, Illustration and art, Poetry, sonnet

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Delfina Gochez Fernandez (1979)

Delfina Gochez Fernandez (1979)

If you never knew Delfi, that’s too bad.

See, I was talking with her yesterday.
She was teasing me, calling me “Comrade
Gringo,” due to my accent. Anyway,
we were catching up, the way old friends do
when they haven’t seen each other in years.

“When you die,” she said, “that era’s hairdo
will haunt you like a ghost.” Delfi still sneers
at the dictators of El Salvador.

She was murdered when I was only nine,

but that hasn’t slowed my friend down. “I said,
how can the living or the dead ignore
all our people’s troubles? There are divine
struggles that don’t stop just because you’re dead.”

mujeres que hacen la revolucion

mujeres que hacen la revolucion

mujeres que hacen la revolucion

mujeres que hacen la revolucion

after reading a poem about how monogamy is “the bourgeois prison”

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

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“When lovers moan,
they’re telling our story.
Like this.
When Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he’ll put just his head around the edge
of the door to surprise us.
Like this.”
— Jalal ad-Din Rumi
(tr. Coleman Barks)

* * *

It’s so hard to transform monogamy
into wild verse. It just sits in your mouth
like you have been gargling balls. Prissy
folk are all for it in the same way drought
loves its sunny days. This isn’t to say
polyandry is much better. In fact
it’s just the flip side of the coin; cliche
among radicals. But if you subtract
your damn ego — if you’re doing all this
for your Friends, your Others, your Shams — your verse
will be wild, child; no matter what your bliss
looks like. Do not turn love into a curse,
like those who try to define it. Freedom
looks like nothing I’ve found in your poem.