A Girl Doesn't Always Know What to do With Her Self


not meaning to disrupt the clarity of your life, but
i am chewing hangnails underneath a paisley moon,
spitting & the taste of you runs cross country down my chin.

burnt sienna skies might offer me texture and color,
an emotional pallete to finger paint with,
but the insides of my cunt, the parts responsible for babies & gravitational blood shed
mid-morning pressings up against your bottom,
ache for something more substantial--
the eroticism of a word spread flat against breastbone
the offering of thought on thigh, a strange lick--an even stranger flavor;
lavender seeds smeared up and down my back.

you may not realize this, but timid me is the strongest me
swept up in bashful skin, feeding the cocktail queen
martinis & mystery, the occasional horse whisper & gems wrapped in tack cloth

it might be a long shot--but maybe she's underneath all this
crossing her ankles & looking up.

this time i'm gonna lay it all on the table
clean up when it's over, take a broom to the grit
listen to the quiet girl who sits in the corner
offering complexity in the form of ink & changing guitar chords, water bled buffet napkins
stolen from the corner marathon sometime last week.

this time i'm gonna listen to the quiet scream
which might attack
which might startle
which might throw back the blankets a 3 a.m., stumble over piles of dirty laundry
pull its hair or yours depending on mood.

which might finally hear its voice.

if big hips could talk, i don't think you'd understand their slang
or the exhaled boom chic a boom in 90 degree weather
when even fireflies shimmy shake and a-lines begin to
bounce above the knee.

what i'm saying is:  there is a sway inside this skin you will never be able to decipher.
a bright red bleeding that won't respond to your working man hands.
a peek-a-boo intensity that won't give, until i see a poem exploding in your eyes.

i'm playing dress-up and no one is looking.
living between the parenthesis.  attaching heart lockets
to a throat.  grooming eyebrows into brown arches of sophistication.
covering up dark circles.  pretending i've not earned them.
in front seats.  in back seats.  on tailgates.

there's not enough windex in the world
to clean my footprints off the windshields i've encountered.

& i'm telling you, in case there's any question
--this ain't your mama's poetry--

roughly scribbled underneath naked '78 interior lights
ashes jostled between tits, lifted in tribute to the mop & glo girls
who scratched knees scrubbing tile--

this is angry girl verse.
this is fed up verse.

we're pulling bobby pins from up-dos
shaking out stringy blonde locks
roaching with hair clips,
careful not to burn our lips on the inhale.

we're growling the way kerouac wanted to.
the way you wanted to before babies pushed through your hips.
we're growling the way you wanted us to growl:

from the gut

locking ourselves in bathrooms, both hands on floor next to white ceramic toilet style.
shaking out the indecision, donning flannel shirts for protection
deflecting eyes that might cut through the layers
understanding that this is all just a series of clenchings & letting gos.
gripping until knuckles whiten, uncovering what made it not work
searching for it or walking away, palms open

we are walking away.  palms always open.

trust me, i don't smile your mother's smile.
chain smoking heathen, bonafide--
my stockings always run, hair is a mess
& heaven help me, sometimes i can't remember to take my finger
off the button.

your button.

any button.

i don't want to speak plainly to you
plain is not beautiful, they say

if i tell you your baby's ugly
that i'm uncomfortable with the word fag
that i saw you hunkered down in the backseat of that lumina
that i think a preoccupation with your father keeps you from blooming
that sometimes i don't dream about you on top of me
that sometimes it's really not as good for me as it is for you

if i told you all this & all that
you'd swallow & ask for discretion,
possibly a glass of fruit juice to wash down the bitterness.

but i won't tell you these things.
because sometimes i have trouble expressing what might be inside my elbow,
keeping my eyelids open when the vision is not worth viewing;
when i'm trying to pass into transcendence
but the grit and grime of all this, the static of street corners, the moving and passing
the 5 dollar deals, the roar, the Roar, the ROAR

keeps me dangling by a thread.

maybe there are certain metaphors for the soul--reasons to break down
to tangle fingers into knotted hair, yank until the temples twist
& then sift out the stillness.

there is desperation hidden in this poem.
a tiny tone of i need you to understand hidden in this poem.
there is frustration in this poem.
a humbly uttered goddamn hidden in this poem.
a girl suspended between profound & not good enough hidden in this poem.

it doesn't seem to cure the silence.

this is my war poem.
this is my fuck you poem.
this is my hallelujah to the mop & glo girls of 1978 poem.
this my choking on swallows that won't go down there poem.
this is my storm cloud on the home front--slap it up or shake it out--poem.
this is my yell like a banshee, bleed out the rage poem.
this is my rip you a new asshole with the power of emotion poem.
this is my sidewalk in the rain, 58 degrees poem.
this is my anti-pretense, anti-bastards with a guitar & feigned sensitivity poem.
this is my feet stomping, snake-handling, gonna find me a spiritual orgasm poem.
this is my believing that beginning lasts only in the time it takes you eyelash to stutter along this page poem.

this my swept up in feeling poem.
this is my inner revolution poem.
this my teeth burning into & through the timid poem.
this my inform the front lines poem.
my somebody's gonna get hurt poem.
my--we are having a dilemma, write it all down--poem.

this is my not good enough for you
my not good enough for you
not good enough for you


the words will never be good enough for you



poem.