Selected Poems:

I'm So White in Some Ways
Video Store
Pelvis Poem

I’m So White in Some Ways

I’m so white in some ways
kept tied up by doilies
and delicate dishtowels
engravings in my head of initials
scripted too fancy to read
illiterate in the ways of the rhyme.
Stuck up in my grandma’s china
with my legs crossed,
Mr. and Mrs., and Mrs. and Mr.
to everybody I meet.

I’m so stuck up.
My spine erect
too white to unfurl.
But my black Mary Janes,
my black patent leather Mary Janes,
now they got class,
some upper class?
Now that all depends
on how you wear ‘em,
buckled in and up, or slipped on.
You see, it all depends.

I’m so white in some ways.
Hopscotch on doilies
coloring my crayons in between the lines
on the good dining room table.
Trying never to make a mess.
Careful not to spill the milk.

Sooo stuck up, I mean it’s true
because we’re really high up
on the fourteenth floor,
in the penthouse
on Park Avenue.

Video Store

I keep noticing how black Goth
dresses itself like a robe
over video store workers.
Paled greenish skin, maybe a piercing or tattoo,
black laced boots and a vernacular
indigenous only to darkened rooms,
late nights and noon wakeups where the light
peeps in like an awkward stranger.
Conversations deriving from high school pig latin,
now ripened, all with endings
like ography and eorized.

In video stores, I am the one coming from the gym
all in white, wearing sneakers
coming from carrots and steamed fish,
even if I haven’t done yoga I am coming from yoga.
I am coming from this cardiovascular land
and instead of skipping, I get heavier
dropping my head, sulking my shoulders,

pretending I also wear a dark robe
as if my black heavy boots wait for me at home
to weigh me down
tongue pierced
manic panic in my hair.
Home to my Scorsese and De Palma collection
home to my DVD and VCR player
just pretending I’m a little bit like them.

Pelvis Poem

I’ve got a situation on my hands.
This silky white ribbon has my hips tied together,
gassy, shitty, blood all stuck up
behind my reproductives
and dinner with shrimp cocktails relaxing on china!!!
A Tiffany’s affair…four course meal, seated, for 50.

I’m numb from the waist down.
Can’t feel a damn thing
except the lightning rod shooting through my right hip,
must be the butter knife!

I strain to hear ancient Aramaic Hebrew
type voices whisper to me,
but all I hear is English
right through my sacred bone.
”Be good,” they say.
“Pull IN your snaky Kundalini and
your syrupy sweaty slinky.
Cross your legs,
put your napkin on your lap,” they say.

Outside Hathor and Aphrodite sway their pelvises
left, right and all around,
until the war begins…

until the war begins, there is room to move
carving large wooden bowls with our pelvises
making circle dances between the trees,

but too much juice in my Grandma’s Torah
rocks too many spirits restless in their graves.
In their sleep
too many voices wake and whisper
and my bottom basement bones freeze
like a snow woman
cold, paralyzed…in blistering winter wind.

BUT  MY…BUT  MY  SACRED  ME!!!

Outside, Hathor and Aphrodite sway their pelvises
left to right, back and front…
like a freedom song drumming…
unwinding everything on their minds.

Unabashedly I find the Nile and Red Sea inside of me,
I let them flow on and on and on…
hips like ores,
the stories, her wisdoms and everything forgotten
carrying you my sweet…rocking you
from century to century

back and front, left and right, all around
back and front, left and right, all around
I think we are a little bit alive now.