wifebeater

if you permit it
you promote it
if you don’t condemn it
you condone it
so if you say it
you should mean it.

if the girls laugh
it’s okay
jokes are dumb, they’re
not serious anyway
and when you laugh
at hate and violence
it’s not making it okay.

bitch – lighten up, don’t
take offense
it’s not like women are
really victims of violence
we can laugh about it
and it doesn’t mean shit
because jokes are stupid
and no one means it.

triumph

anxiety fluctuates
with the occurance of special occasions
with the reoccuring frustrations
that come with affection
she felt it was a lost cause
she felt it was a curse
until she walked into a room
and beneath her elasticine waistband
there was direction
someone showed her
someone told her
what to do
someone who knew
and by slowly stretching her limits
by slowly expanding within it
she's laughing and she is thinking
this is more like it
and roses unfold in her hands,
suddenly she understands
why everybody's doing it
when roses unfold in her hands

green pool at night

she is standing on the edge of the pool, her skin illuminated ivory from the lights on the back of the house. shadows trace dark shapes behind her neck and knees and elbows. from the house the water looks still and calm. there is no wind, no waves, no natural movement tonight. but to her the water is hovering and shifting below her, a transparent green moving mass. it would make her visible, draw attention to her uncertain decisions, send out splashing soundwaves to the world. poised over it, she remains unseen, she can walk away bone dry invisible. there are so many reasons not to get wet; her hair will stick together tomorrow, her bandaid will slip off her skin and get stuck in the filter, her eyes will sting and form tiny white light halos around the lights when she gets out. she stands outside for too long and the lights on the house disappear. it's windy now so she goes inside.

forget it

you're sticky sticky always in the same place
grow up just grow up just sever those roots
run away just run away or jump up and down

the daring book for girls

My father worked shifts and my mother refused to get her license so most of the time when us kids would have soccer or swimming lessons, scouts or girl guides or play dates or emergencies my Uncle Drew would drive us. Uncle Drew was some kind of policeman, a crime hating, robber fighting good kind of guy, my dad used to say about his brother-in-law. I don’t know what Uncle Drew did exactly but he had a radio in his special undercover car that he freighted us to and from in. It was secret, he wasn’t supposed be carrying children around while he was on the job chasing down the bad guys.

“What kind of bad guy are you chasing Uncle Drew?” My brother would ask from between the duffel bags of equipment in the back seat of the van. “The kind that wear all black or the kind that wear a disguise?”

“Today,” Uncle Drew would say to us, speeding the way only a cop can speed; knowing that he is the rules, the law and the enforcement and therefore he is invincible. “Today my job is still a secret Michael, and I still won’t tell you.”

Michael would sigh and then quickly revert to not paying attention to such notions of secrecy and exclusivity that he could not participate in. “Can I see your gun Uncle Drew? I know you have one, all cops have a gun. Cops probably have six guns each.”

The radio would crackle and voices interrupted, calls to Uncle Drew and calls to other roaming police officers. “The boyfriends back,” the radio might hiss. I was always jealous that these anonymous people who lived between frequencies in some kind of fictional city had their lives broadcasted to the police. Their shards of glass lives digging into everyone’s palms. I thought that these radio people with their dangerous boyfriends and drive by shootings lived in a television world, with gunshots and accidents, sirens and smoke inhalation. I had people who cared about me, but they got to have extra people care about them, like my Uncle Drew. I knew when I grew up that I would be a character on the policeman radio show. I would move into the dirty gritty city and watch buildings fall and men in black ski masks hold up banks and try to grab old lady purses. Later my Uncle Drew changed departments and sat behind a desk all day and brother lost interest in guns and bad guys and we were old enough to take the bus. I thought that in order to get more people to care about me I should do dangerous things. Thus began my summer of wild.

confetti made from cheerios

“Count all the good things that happened in your day, not the bad ones,” he told me.

“But I had a bad day,” I told him. “Bad things happened all day. At breakfast I spilled my cereal on my lap and mom yelled at me because I was late for the bus –”

“But what good things happened today?” he pushed me. “Count the good things.”

I am having a bad day and I recall this conversation. Adding up every single thing that was bad in my day, the dirty looks and sharp turns and crappy news and shitty lunch and rolling eyes; I feel guilty. I should count the good things. The good things that peeked through the curtains and pushed at the corners of my mouth. It’s a bad fucking day though. What did he have to be so goddamn happy about? But then again, he was probably high. Ghost floating father, anchored to the couch and wandering in the forest blazing trails all over the place: through the trees and over his lungs and through our family. Count the good things, little girl. The bad things I did won’t count for shit.

Books I Will Read In the Summer of 2008 Or Eventually

Maureen Johnson - Suite Scarlett
Ashley Rhodes Courter - Three Little Words
Margaret Atwood – The Handmaiden’s Tale
Margaret Atwood – Oryx and Crake
John Green – Looking for Alaska
Ann-Marie McDonald – The Way the Crow Flies
Philip Pullman – The Golden Compass Trilogy
C. S. Lewis – The Chronicles of Narnia
J. K. Rowling – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (repeat)
Miranda July – No One Belongs Here More than You
Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

Any Suggestions?