It is funny to watch a poet at a funeral. Not funny exactly, but interesting – like watching geriatric lesbians purchase anal beads.
A poet will cry at all the wrong times, before the service even begins – like when some child-sized relative of the deceased starts to whine to their mother, the poet cries because one time, the deceased was a child. And look, there’s his mother sitting quietly in the front row, impeccably dressed except for her hair, which feels like the only honest part about her. She divorced her first husband and the Catholic Church with the same signature, but even after 15 years there is nothing like a dead child to give us the need to believe in something bigger than us.
See, a poet winces at the eulogy because of the bad grammar, and quietly judges the relatives in track suits, tank tops & blue jeans for their disrespect for the dead, while refusing tissues for her tears worried about her carbon footprint. See, a poet builds distance from grief so she can write like she was in the centre of it.
When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother, “What will I be? Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? What comes next? Oh right, will I be rich?” Which is almost pretty depending on where you shop. And the pretty question infects from conception, passing blood and breath into cells. The word hangs from our mothers’ hearts in a shrill fluorescent floodlight of worry.
“Will I be wanted? Worthy? Pretty?”
But puberty left me this funhouse mirror dryad: teeth set at science fiction angles, crooked nose, face donkey-long and pock-marked where the hormones went finger-painting. My poor mother.
“How could this happen? You’ll have porcelain skin as soon as we can see a dermatologist. You sucked your thumb. That’s why your teeth look like that! You were hit in the face with a Frisbee when you were 6. Otherwise your nose would have been just fine! Don’t worry. We’ll get it all fixed!” She would say, grasping my face, twisting it this way and that, as if it were a cabbage she might buy.
But this is not about her. Not her fault. She, too, was raised to believe the greatest asset she could bestow upon her awkward little girl was a marketable facade. By 16, I was pickled with ointments, medications, peroxides. Teeth corralled into steel prongs. Laying in a hospital bed, face packed with gauze, cushioning the brand new nose the surgeon had carved.
Belly gorged on 2 pints of my own blood I had swallowed under anesthesia, and every convulsive twist of my gut like my body screaming at me from the inside out, “What did you let them do to you!”
All the while this never-ending chorus droning on and on, like the IV needle dripping liquid beauty into my blood. “Will I be pretty? Will I be pretty? Like my mother, unwinding the gift wrap to reveal the bouquet of daughter her $10,000 bought her? Pretty? Pretty.”
And now, I have not seen my own face in 10 years. I have not seen my own face in 10 years, but this is not about me.
This is about the self-mutilating circus we have painted ourselves clowns in. About women who will prowl 30 stores in 6 malls to find the right cocktail dress, but who haven’t a clue where to find fulfillment or how to wear joy, wandering through life shackled to a shopping bag, beneath the tyranny of those 2 pretty syllables.
About men wallowing on bar stools, drearily practicing attraction, and everyone who will drift home tonight, crest-fallen because not enough strangers found you suitably fuckable.
This, this is about my own some-day daughter. When you approach me, already stung-stayed with insecurity, begging, “Mom, will I be pretty? Will I be pretty?” I will wipe that question from your mouth like cheap lipstick and answer, “No! The word ‘pretty’ is unworthy of everything you will be, and no child of mine will be contained in five letters.
“You will be pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing. But you will never be merely ‘pretty.’”
1 I got my first god from my father Before I even understood what one was. And even though it seemed centuries old And was more than a bit worn, I believed in that god, because I got it from him. He taught me to respect it, So I kept it locked up In a rosewood case Next to the kitchen table, And that’s where it stayed until Sunday When we’d all pile into the dilapidated old station wagon, And go down to town for the God show. It wasn’t till I got older that I realized It wasn’t so much about the gods as it was the community, A whole group of people gathered together to celebrat The one thing that that keeps them feeling safe
2. I keep my god in a steel box underneath my bed, Between the photograph of my mother And love letters from an ex girlfriend Scribbled in eyebrow pen. I don’t pull them out much anymore Except when I’m alone And the whole world seems to be slowly closing in, I’ll squeeze it between my palms Till my fingertips tremble, Or push it against my temple Whisper my fears to it And listen to the cold silence As it echoes in the shells
3. There’s a man down on the street corner With a sandwich board Who’ll sell you the type of god that’s illegal now, The kind that’s ready to kill a man at the drop of a hat, The kind you pull out when your woman cheats on you Or your sun turns out to be gay, The kind with hammer-cock like held prayer breath, With barrel like a pulpit, The kind of semiautomatic brimstone spitter They don’t allow in pleasant company anymore
4. Of course the founding fathers intended for us all to have gods! Look, if someone comes along with a god and threatens you, You don’t want to be the only one without a god, do you? And nobody wants us to be like England Where not even the police carry one! Really, what’s gonna keep people from raping and stealing If they don’t think a god will? That’d be like trying to take “in guns we trust” off our money! This country was given to us by our gun almighty So that we could have the freedom to carry our gods Where ever we gun-damn please. And a good conservatives knows that any form of god control is un-American;
5. You haven’t forgotten what happened, Have you? All it took was a few men with an unwavering faith in their guns To take down those two towers. And they didn’t even have gods. If everyone on that plane’d had had a god You know that never would have happened… It almost makes you doubt the power of your own gun.
6. The Safety Manual: Kids, Never point a god at someone, even to joke around. If you see a god in the area, please leave immediately. If your friend wants to show you a god, just say no! By telling a parent, teacher, or guidance counselor when you see a god, You could be a hero and save lives!
Parents, Keep your gods away from children! Children don’t realize That gods are tools, And might instead treat them like toys, To threaten people around them.
Remember: Gods don’t kill people, People with gods kill people.
Six hours like this for a few francs.
Belly nipple arse in the window light,
he drains the color from me. Further to the right,
Madame. And do try to be still.
I shall be represented analytically and hung
in great museums. The bourgeoisie will coo
at such an image of a river-whore. They call it Art.
Maybe. He is concerned with volume, space.
I with the next meal. You’re getting thin,
Madame, this is not good. My breasts hang
slightly low, the studio is cold. In the tea-leaves
I can see the Queen of England gazing
on my shape. Magnificent, she murmurs,
moving on. It makes me laugh. His name
is Georges. They tell me he’s a genius.
There are times he does not concentrate
and stiffens for my warmth.
He possesses me on canvas as he dips the brush
repeatedly into the paint. Little man,
you’ve not the money for the arts I sell.
Both poor, we make our living how we can.
I ask him Why do you do this? Because
I have to. There’s no choice. Don’t talk.
My smile confuses him. These artists
take themselves too seriously. At night I fill myself
with wine and dance around the bars. When it’s finished
he shows me proudly, lights a cigarette. I say
Twelve francs and get my shawl. It does not look like me.
“Standing Female Nude” by Carol Ann Duffy (via kidanoche)
You fold two loads of laundry. Your hands, once split by heat, are now calloused, invincible.
You sit at your kitchen table, masturbate next to a half-eaten bowl of cereal- swollen clouds floating in pink sugar milk.
You stand in your living room turn off the television, glare at the reflection of your thickened hips, wipe your hand across the screen tearing through static.
A garbage truck roars outside your window. You watch the barrels spit out the unwanted- exhausted light bulbs and soggy cabbage, a doll’s torso bruised by crayons.
You press your hand against the glass, shock at how the morning’s cold presses back, how even calluses do not deny this pointed chill.
It is in this moment that you see yourself. First, spot your left arm, pale blue stiff and reaching. It tumbles with empty milk cartons and a dead hamster zipped in plastic.
You see your heart waddle like a damaged plum as it drops against your breasts now sticky with syrup. You watch your blood crumble and fall like day-old rice, your face, thin and jagged, slides from the barrel like an oiled mask.
You turn away, once you recognize the sound of your legs slamming against the truck like twin corpses. This.
This is when you realize – you should have kept his number, should have stayed after he kissed you so hard it split your lip
when he chewed your nipple through your sweater and you nearly fainted by the shock white charge of it,
when he ripped your stockings grabbing your thighs, when you felt his fingers move inside you as if searching a coat pocket.
This is why the price tag still swings from your wedding dress, why you cannot fuck your husband with eyes open, why you dunk your child’s head too long while rinsing his hair.
This is why permanence terrifies, why your spine threatens to tear out and run, why you do not own pets but keep cages
this is how you haunt your own house, why your hands coil in hunger and why the sound of screaming tires burning away in the night is the only song that ever puts you to sleep.
Tonight my brother, in heavy boots, is walking through bare rooms over my head, opening and closing doors. What could he be looking for in an empty house? What could he possibly need there in heaven? Does he remember his earth, his birthplace set to torches? His love for me feels like spilled water running back to its vessel.
At this hour, what is dead is restless and what is living is burning.
Someone tell him he should sleep now.
My father keeps a light on by our bed and readies for our journey. He mends ten holes in the knees of five pairs of boy’s pants. His love for me is like sewing: various colors and too much thread, the stitching uneven. But the needle pierces clean through with each stroke of his hand.
At this hour, what is dead is worried and what is living is fugitive.
Someone tell him he should sleep now.
God, that old furnace, keeps talking with his mouth of teeth, a beard stained at feasts, and his breath of gasoline, airplane, human ash. His love for me feels like fire, feels like doves, feels like river-water.
At this hour, what is dead is helpless, kind and helpless. While the Lord lives.
Someone tell the Lord to leave me alone. I’ve had enough of his love that feels like burning and flight and running away.
“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. Thus in winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone, I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more.”
