the coolness of morning enters
it drifts into the veins
chills feeling for a time—
when the hummingbird perches
to drink the fresh sugar water
I made for her that morning,
I smile.
Category: metaphor
Hair part II: Untamed and Ugly
I grasp this beast of kinky
curls that sits upon my head,
attempting to tame it into submission.
First, the wire brush stretching strands
straight as concentrated hot air
dry the water from the beast.
Slowly the taming comes.
Finally dry, frizz left there,
making me aware who the boss really is.
I break out my next weapon
against this frizzy beast:
The flat iron.
And while it heats,
I tune the speakers to a podcast
about the missing women of Juarez.
Sectioning my beast hair as I listen
about women missing,
women found dead,
women to whom no one paid attention
because
they were
women, girls
because
they were
brown
because
they were
poor
women, girls
brown
poor—
The things
that do not grab attention
that fade away in the media
easy to say of these—
They ran away.
They ran away with a boyfriend.
Oh, she’s a drug addict. Who knows where she went?
And on I go to straighten another section
Of hair with my hot flat iron.
My beast neatly tamed.
I think it would be easier to braid my hair into rows.
Decorating the braids with small beads,
a bead for each missing woman,
a bead for each murdered woman,
a bead for each missing, murdered, indigenous woman of color
in this land, across the globe.
Each tiny bead
with a name microscopically etched
and then braided into my hair
as beads of grief,
a bead for each woman, each girl—
If I could then even lift
my bead heavy head
like the mothers who carry
sandbags of grief searching
the world for daughters
gone missing—
what could I, one person, do?
The world spins on.
Despite the burden of beads,
these beads braided
into the fabric of motherhood
across the globe
for girls gone missing,
girls glanced at, ignored
by a society that sends up invisible prayers
then turns forgetting what it deems valueless,
girls marked by the violence of poverty,
Then I think of 22 year old, Mahsa Amini.
dead in the twisted irony
of morality police custody for a hijab violation.
I should shave my head in solidarity
with the women of Iran
who protest.
But what could I, one person, do?
Would beads or a shaved head here make a difference?
Would anyone know the meaning?
My neck cannot bear the weight of braids with beads enough for each woman.
My bald head would not be understood as sign of solidarity.
So I send out my chicken scratches of a poem
into the world, and I choose to leave it as it is,
Untamed and ugly.
Hair (Part One)
Women, we are tortured by our hair.
It is never what we want.
It never obeys our desires.
A mischievous heathen,
it laughs at our attempts
to bend it to our will.
We grow it, cut it, dye it,
curl it, straighten it,
treat it with carcinogenic chemicals
to beat the mischief making
blasphemer into submission.
All the while, it laughs at us
as our enemies, humidity and wind,
destroy in seconds the cooperation
we thought we’d earned
with our torturous machinations.
Hair:
Too thin,
Too thick,
Too curly,
Too unruly,
Too straight,
Too limp,
Too frizzy,
And the color—
Too…too…too…too-too little
and too-too much of everything—
Never exactly as it should be.
It will not follow our will.
Pull it into a ponytail.
Shove it under a baseball cap or a sun hat.
Why don’t we just shave our heads
And let it be done?
This woman’s crowning glory,
a temptation enough to make angels fall
from the heights of heaven at the sight it,
necessitates head coverings and wigs for women,
according to some.
After all, who wants it to rain angels
into the streets of the world?
That’s a sight I wouldn’t mind seeing
since I’ve got questions for those angels.
For one, why do women have to help angels
control such lusty impulses?
But I digress as I begin my morning battle
with my own head of hair.
Seeking
I fled from days
of standing under your patchwork roof
offering no protection from the rain,
least of all my own rain pouring out of me,
threatening always to drown in its leave taking.
So I learned to float, flowing along the curves
others presented in my efforts to find
time, love, home,
the back roads where berry bushes
grow in abundance.
Yet I never tasted,
never picked any berries,
fresh off the branches.
Instead, I always found
the snakes hidden, lying in wait
beneath the berry bushes,
for the seeking,
and I, always bitten,
never learned my lessons
of serpents who lay in wait,
or the lessons of Eve,
I still sought,
in spite of the venom,
in spite of the bites—
I found the rains pouring out of me
once again
to travel on
seeking
Prism
washed clean
in orange sunsets
drenched by
lavender sunrises
so the dust
and the grime
can no longer
cling inside or out
of a me
freed, freed
of all of you
I am the prism
of beauty
I always was
yet never was
with you
Freed
As a child,
I survived the explosion of dreams
that left hot greasy remnants
dripping down the four-inch squares
of avocado green ceramic tiles,
marring their mirror like shine.
As a grown woman,
I survived the eruption of dreams
that poured down an encasement of hot ash
over all of life’s plans in the moment of diagnosis,
leaving monumental statues of grief.
Thus, I chose to live
where silence drones,
a rumble in the ears.
Nothing left--
a hole, a void
made by echoes
of desires held long ago.
So, I have taken a corn broom
to dance with me
in time to music
only I can hear
to sweep away the dust, the cobwebs,
the fuss of other’s opinions and ideas
of me, my doings, my words.
Yes, from my words,
I shake loose all the years of dust,
the years of ash, the years of grease.
All words, oh, so many words
I never loosed upon the air
to float free upon the winds,
tumbling away, up, around,
then returning once more
to spring up as wildflowers
when things turn to green.
I begin to loose them now,
freed to scatter where they will,
root, spring up where they
find a place to rest.
Time of Year
It is the time of grey skies and dead brown grass along the roadsides. The time when the trees are seen shivering, their limbs quivering in their nakedness. When even many of the evergreens drip down brown, bloodied from the lethal knife wounds of a sharpened frenzied freeze as they sag into their deaths. Yes, it is that time of year when I yearn for the green of spring, for limbs to wrap myself within, for a renewal of promises I once longed to make. The time of year when I empty forty years of myself.
The Dirt of Chimayo
As if you erupted
from an eternal spring,
an immortal thing,
I gave you away
when last I prayed
here at Chimayo.
When kneeling
I scooped the healing dirt
as I spoke silent prayers of thanks
for my heart bravely facing
shocks of resuscitation
after years spent
barely beating
in stuttering grief.
Upon return today,
I kneel to scoop
the healing dirt,
asking in silent prayer
a blessing of forgiveness
for giving you away
too easily—
thus, killing you,
bleeding you of all hope,
beyond resurrection,
beyond resuscitation.
In the dirt of Chimayo,
this healing earth,
from this place of faith,
sifted through my hands,
I bury you, a mortal thing,
I gave away too easily
to an undeserving faith,
in this dirt of Chimayo.
The Body of Christmas
Image courtesy of Patch.com
The body of this day scribed
in the giving of joy,
sacramental life found
in a bowl full of jelly
shaken by the deep belly laugh
of a white bearded fat man,
remember the truth meant
to be kept in the day,
so, turn in mind
to those who cannot share
in the giving abundance–
thus, are paid in the blessings
of holy lip service, the emptied garbage
to fill the landscape with
glittering wrappings of the day’s
leavings to leave a day
of a soulful mask searching for a soul
it lost long ago
in eternal hungering for fulfillment
never filled with ever more consumed.
Ghost Marks
Image courtesy of depositphotos.com
Before morning, she wakes, adrift still in half-remembered dreams, dirtied by ghost footprints upon the waking to muddy tread marks ever present, no matter the hours spent in scrubbing— the marks indelible— tattoos of mud. Leave her to the simple tasks of morning, to her daily reckoning, preparations of covers and cases required, all the hiding away, layering as if for winter, this bandaging of tender spots.
