the right to choose is also the right to regret

If It’s a Woman’s Right to Choose—

Am I just my mother’s enduring mistake?
A wrong choice of man, of time, of place—
Too late to turn back. With every breath,
Did I steal another dream from her grasp?
Is what I do meaningful if it should have never been?
Is it  mine if it should have been hers?

Even now, with her years gone,
I bear the weight of who they could have been if not mothers—
My mother, and her mother, and her mother's mother.
Quickly blame "a few cells," as if every body is a burden,
Not a person brimming with potential.
Can’t a bad choice become something good?
To believe mistakes can turn fortuitous
Is the only way I can carry on,
Since I am the mistake of a woman now dead.

If It’s a Woman’s Right to Choose—

What love will I never have in my lifetime?
With this bastardless womb, cause I'm always choosing
What’s deemed right—cherry-picking my desires
Instead of embracing what life naturally gifts?
What dreams linger, never realized, because
I chose myself every damn time? I mourn
The world we’ll never see, the people we’ll never know,
Their dreams lost forever because of me and my choice.

I will never know what is right or what is a mistake.
I will never know the mother I could have been.
I will never know the child I might have had.
Dare I admit I might rather no choice at all?
Too late to turn back. With every breath,
All I can do is carry on—
Carry on the regrets of what was or was not,
Just as women kin before me have done.
But no child after me will carry on — I chose none.

If It’s a Woman’s Right to Choose; It's a Woman's Right to Regret—

a plea to god

The city was beautiful  

and wanted me too—  

me to fall in love with it.  

So please soften me  

so I can slip life on  

 

like a leather jacket.  

Crack open my chest  

as you would a bug  

underfoot and eat  

all the spots of tar  

on my heart. Remember  

 

who I am, but first  

who I could become.  

Open me up so you  

can rebuild me again—

So that even I may be

ready for the city someday.

at the art museum

In a room with people  

speaking French and Spanish,  

                German and English —  

A girl to my right sniffs sterile air  

and says aloud to no one,  

yet to the lot of us packed in the room,  

           "Renoir is too saccharine.  

            Even in grad school,  

            that was the consensus."

Put up and shut up and show me another

         plump, round, rounded mound,  

with a pink strawberry macaroon nipple,  

          or chocolate or lavender.  

I’ll bask in any flavor. Make it sweet,  

like a mushy ripe white peach tit.

Show me more renowned art  

     and its many nude women,  

     kneeling, bathing, sleeping,  

     rubbing their feet, reading. 

Naked a thousand years ago  

and naked fifty years ago—  

breasts in paint and

                     asses in stone.  

Let me stare slack-jawed at

what we all traveled the world to see—

Picasso's hot girlfriend naked and

let us pretend Picasso made fine art

and not our sticky-floor fantasy.

I was not in costume but everyone else was

Rode the train to Chinatown,

with a grown man in a Garfield onesie.

We arrived to buy a lucky kitty,

but I was still haunted by tiny turtles

sold in small, barren, plastic boxes.

An Asian girl, dressed as a Playboy bunny,

let me pet her Border Collie,

named Ember. The sun can shine again

as we ride back to the hotel,

passing a man in a Batman suit

riding a bike.

At the hotel, the familiar doorman,

whom we didn’t know five days ago, 

greets us by name.

Nothing is real as I crawl

into this rented bed

for the last time.

love like Fannie Flagg

Southern heat, Southern sun,

Sticky and steamy in the kitchen,

Deep frying something all day,

In salty, golden cornmeal crust,

Tangy, sour, green tomato juice

Dripping down your chin.

I know right then, for you,

I'd kill a man and happily die

With the secret for the rest of my life.

the hierophant vacation

Where is the lesson I need to learn?  

Is it beneath the river rock, in the flowerbeds  

beside the hotel, among cigarette butts  

and dirt? Is it hidden in the placard  

next to the Picasso, or buried in my thoughts?  

        Is every shade of blue a sign of sorrow?  

       What other colors wave their red flags,  

        a spectrum of warnings flapping in the wind?  

               I had liked blue once.  

Or has the lesson slipped past me?  

Did I miss the chance to learn?  

Is it left behind in the bowl,  

when I pissed in three different states?  

In the past, that was a Herculean feat—  

today, it’s two short flights and a full-sugar Coke,  

all in the company of two new friends.  

We three girls, strangers, so polite, felt like sisters  

in less than two hours squeezed together—

arms touching the whole plane flight.

Maybe what I learned is that everything has changed, 

leaving me behind. Like that first airport,  

where I arrived too late for my flight,  

still forty minutes to spare—  

only to pay $80 for a carry-on,  

now an extra. Everything life

once included, is now a premium charge.

dreaming of eights

Round, round,

a top and bottom—

touching, kissing,

meeting in the middle—

A  snatched waist

beaconing—

inside so gooey like

two hot chocolate chip

cookies overlapped—

a tongue, infinite swirling,

dip it in milk

and I ate.

this place

This place we visited once  

before we were married  

and now we revisit again years later.  

But past phantoms flicker present.  

Ghosts emerge from fog;  

Libra season is still here.  

How I recognize the streets as the same  

as before but do not recognize us as the same  

as before. Remember? It was eight years ago.  

How you bought me a new coat—  

since you deemed  

my nicotine-stained, used,  

old, orange corduroy coat unfit  

for this vacation.  

How I was a girl who straddled absurdity—  

still legally in her first marriage,  

waking up next to her second husband,  

but back then I did not yet know we would marry.  

I just don't relate to that little,  

proud-of-her-new-jacket girl anymore.  

The city's still windy and cold;  

you're still an old man, but I'm not still a little kid.  

The journey I made is so far—  

that old orange coat's journey,  

from a sweatshop in Indonesia,  

to Target, to various owners, to a thrift store,  

to me, to a dump with only its two cigarette burns  

for its tangerine company. Only one cigarette burn  

made by me. I am now more like that second coat,  

new from Macy's, special for a trip,  

I feared I took too long to pick out and  

was entirely too nice for me. That coat  

now lives in our closet still; its button,  

resewn and ready for this night,  

a night in this place,  

this place we visited once  

before we were married.  

dusty trinkets

Sending you little mental tokens,
hoping that someday I can
cradle you in my palm,
nestle you in my pocket,
seal you in a cabinet,
among the porcelain dreams
I’ve gathered and kept
resting on my dresser.

My fingers brush dust
that lingers on each one,
blanketing clinking wishes
in glass jars filled with petals
and stones—lit candle heartbeats,

a fragile relic of what’s to come—

You held in the contours
of my thumbprint.

If only I could hide you
among the other trinkets
adorning the fringes—

like the angel figurine,
with it's broken wing,
watching from my night stand.

what is unstoppable?

fleas never sleep,

but they can lie dormant—

days, weeks, months—

until the right host appears.

rattlesnake fangs grow back

if pulled and

the river freezes in winter,

but the water flows still,

waiting beneath the ice for spring.

though priests may retire,

can they truly step away,

or is it just paperwork? 

some things remain in us, part of us,

forever, even when ink fades

and paychecks turn to pensions.

time—

time is unstoppable,

expanding like the universe

into the big and unknowable—

plowing us down or

leaving us in the dust.

but me? you can stop me.

better in hindsight

consider the fall

off the cliff, off the cuff,

like old, faded tattoos,

feathered letters blending.

time blurs—

past, present, future,

not clear dots but ripples

in a man-made lake,

like a man-made diamond,

too perfect to be real.

nearly a decade and a half,

I remember the dead,

pristine, flawless,

clarity immaculate,

while my skin and body

and mind are a waning

moon beside a comet,

tails touching,

morphing into a

cosmic body that doesn’t exist

except for here.

progress not perfection

Remember last quarter
when I straddled
the barbed wire fence?
With only my bleeding hands,
I clung on as the sky darkened,
the winds grew fierce.
The harder I fought for life,
the more I bled,
as if it wasn’t the work
or the effort, but the pain
I could endure that made a difference.

It feels distant, yet it’s now;
my fingers still scabbed,
I type, pretending
this is a new day—
the mountains and fields
are calling, the depths of the lake
beckon me to visit,
the last wild horse tamed,
flowers still bloom for us,
and I’m typing this for you.

Please accept this—
            my progress report:

            "I'll do better next year."

not a favorite toy

Accept the things I cannot change,
Like how I’m not your favorite toy.
You cling to sweet innocence,
While I’ve built a home with sturdy walls,
A roof in a color I adore.
Isn't it time for me to live
In this big-girl house I built?

Accepting what I cannot change—
How I wished to be your favorite,
Siphoning your time with new accessories,
Hoping to be picked up again, held close,
Longing to be just left behind at a gas station,
Not discarded, just lost and missed.

But I’m not your favorite toy.
Not a contender, not an afterthought.
I’m tucked behind the dresser,
Next to unwrapped candy,
Dog hair-covered, never found
Or touched again. I’m learning
To accept the things I cannot change

Like accepting me as I am, where I am,
Even if it is so far, so far, from where
I began.

just for me

It's okay if this is just for me,
like a pair of period panties
stained with yester-month,
or the Saturday to-do list
written on an envelope back,

the drive alone to home,
or like this. This is just for me.

my husband teaches me how to shoot a bb gun

"Go grab the aught eight."

        I don't know if this

                    is a proper term or a tongue-in-cheek joke.

"See that red?
    Red means the safety is off."
        Red means safety's off.

"Now, Squeeze the trigger."

        Wow. I did it.

"That's a little high. Try again."

        The pie pan pings.

"That was almost dead center."

         Oh my God. This is fun!

shoes in the house

Shoes on feet in the house,

Shoes in piles in the house,

Shoes on shelves in the house,

Shoes in boxes in the house,

Shoes tracking mud in the house,

Shoes smelling bad in the house,

Shoes with heels in the house,

Shoes with holes in the house,

Wet shoes, dry shoes,

Your shoes, my shoes—

So many shoes in this house—

Our house.

sleepless

Sleepless night,
up since 3 AM.
By 4, I’m
deleting emails
from a previous life—
10,000 so far.
So many unread newsletters.
Years ago,
I thought I’d read
how different
nine years could be.

a girlish commute

Tears punching holes in my memory  

like a page bound for the binder  

where I save all I haven't said.  

Pinterest my heart like a voodoo doll.

Smile, maybe the salt will dry out my acne  

as I take the detour, avoiding police cars,  

only to notice my cuticles bleeding,  

when I had been so good, been so good,  

been the mother or the child of every lover  

I've ever had  

              — Oh fuck, I ran a red light!  

No time in my schedule for regrets,  

spicy noodles for dinner and forget  

how there were spicy nudes of me,  

baby shampoo clean, lying in bed.

I'm ok cause no one alive will see &

ingrown hairs don't  hurt the dead.

                    That's just girly things!

dreams or memories (i'll never tell)

A phone number written on a Lucky Strike.
I never did call because I lost it years ago.

A former boss wrapping a diamond watch three times

around my upper arm; its meaning I could not know.

A girl I fucked on a couch outside in the rain;
& the wet, wet cushions shouldered the blame.

Pissed by a grocery store & faded into the highway's roar,

 said you looked like a golden shower angel; maybe I lied.

Vomited in a bucket I threw away the next day,
with that dried-up flower bouquet I didn't want.

downstairs, a church basement, with youth group boy eyes

staring me up & down, I am askin' which door is unlocked.

I smelled sweet & rotten, like molding honeydew;

world turned on it's axis while I turned off again.

tired, thin, and often hungry souls

Girly boy

on your bike and

in a pink skirt,

pink as the blush

of your smile.

As I, a grown tomboy, walk

in my crimson pants and

loafers,

almost sideswiped

by you—

Don't stop,

Don't pause,

Don't hesitate.

Our paths

weren't meant

to overlay.

threadbare

sweating in a sweater,

a threadbare lineage,

like women weeping

in their groups, always groups,

with sorrow like turtle heads

bobbing through soft wakes

even if the water is silent.