The Year Riordan Rode a Red One

This is my ode to Kate and her year in Philad.  Sigh.  

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Goodbye Roadmaster Scorcher, my

salvation from SEPTA, my

frustration fieldtripping to Firehouse.  

Please,

don't 

forget 

our eleven months as

that stringy-haired, Freitag-toting,

Ray-Ban, lumbar jack-plaid-wearing

hipster fixes your once-functional ten gears,

reshapes the black seat which, for a time, I

daily molded and melded to make mine.

Would 

you 

recall 

the curves of my ass if

we were fortunate enough to again find our

gears grinding together along the Schuylkill?

Born and bred of the same era, 

could be my

fourth sister   [if not for steely bones and 

inflatable treaded sinew.]  

Could be my 

born-again 

childhood friend   [if not so confrontational, with 

pings and dings and dents.] 

An audacious vixen, you are.

Less audacious, 

less vixenish, 

yet pinged and dinged

and dented am I, too.  

Here, learning the perfection 

of scars:

drivers behind wheels of off-the-assembly-line Fords 

honk and howl exasperated admiration as my helmeted self 

minds the right-of-way in heels and a pencil skirt while 

determinedly moving through jammed traffic from Osage to 

Ayuda with a second-hand, chili-pepper-red tour de force 

as my compass, map and guide.

As you shift and reshape, 

teach new tricks to 

the next import,

chase different boys 

from 

different bars, leaving red lipstick

stains on untouched lamp-posts and bike racks, 

will you 

forget 

the curves 

of my ass?

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You or me?

So this semester I'm learning with the super cool Traci Brimhall. Our assignment this week was to assume a persona, write in a literary or historical voice that is not our own. I'm not sure I succeeded with that, but I kind of like how this turned out. At least it was fun writing.

I'm trying to use form more, and I'm disappointed as my lack of savviness in conquering blogger's tyrannical formatting.
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Disney's Insemination of Grimm

Doc says, y-y-y-you mean old s-s-s-son of a bitch,

like achrondroplasia hasn't fucked with his plans

and I'm the only one with a 4'9

problem. I look in the soot-covered mirror in the hallway

and feel God laughing at the dirty dwarf who was made

not in His image, a recreational-sex side-project, a dare

from P.T. Barnum He just couldn't refuse.

He waits

behind

that mirror,

wanting me to ask the question one-time small-town beauty queens and

imported Manhattan models binge and purge for.

He sent her, like an apparition, out of the looking-glass,

her 44" stocking-covered legs, her baggage and the

LPA brochure.

Won't you join? (I am without a home.)

Her smile sweet like the sex I've never had because

I've slept 37 years lying next to a brother, next to a brother, next to a brother, next to a brother, next to

a brother, next to a brother after days standing

shoulder-to-shoulder-to-shoulder-to-shoulder-to-shoulder-to-shoulder-to-shoulder mining

diamonds tall women gleefully accept from

tall men on days they decide

filing joint taxes is just more economical.

Won’t you join? (I need a place.)

Her eyes soft like she’d drag a chair from the

kitchen for me to stand on so I might caress

her gala-apple cheek with my coal-pellet fingers.

Won’t you join? (I will do anything.)

Beauty, probably used to selling by the inch, saving

for college so she can study Chem 101 and make a

dead step-mother look like a dead step-mother.

Doc pushes me aside before I can slam the door in her

grossly unblemished face, before I can point out with my

fists and furrowed brow that, she must be too dumb to see:

my chromosomes already signed that petition in 1971.

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The Smell of

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Learning the smell of my sweat

3 days a week.

Lungs, unattended balloons at the mouth

of a helium tank

filling with the dull sobering sweetness not

of Secret or Dial or Dior, until

lungs, mother's kitchen sink sponge

squeezed dry of last night's 

smoke and frost and sex.

90 minutes a day.

105 degrees.

26-position sequence.

Dew-like drops my traveling companions

forming small creeks

seeping down the rolling hill of each calf, 

the sharp slate of my chest, 

forming small pools in the two fault-line crevices

of my two straining shoulders.

Hesitant to gaze down, 

resistant to hear pools' reflections, if instead I could

stare up at the soft white lights twinkling

just above the sweaty statues on platforms of

purple, blue, grey, green, brown, 

beside

behind 

the flushed pulsing mannequin 

that is the me in the mirror.

Dimmed lights, lowered lids,

only our bodies, our soaked spandex and our laboring confrontational mutations:

Marcus Aurelius, my pulse insists on pounding in my ears even here.

Carla says

something about 

balance, and

the edge,

verbs swallowed by the humidity racing

in and out of my nostrils, a train

passing the platform as you tell him goodbye

for the last time, so that you have to say

goodbye at least once again.  

More than breath in lungs

needing breath vibrating cochlea,

proof of life when your world

aches to stand silently still at the edge

in dandayamana-janushirasana for just one 

out of ninety minutes.

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The St. Christopher Medallion on my Chest

I've been having trouble with beginning things that don't lead anywhere, finding myself with a phrase or a line that seems so lovely, but no other words want to be its friend, and I can't seem to coax them.  This feels like one of those, so this might just be phase one until I find something better to do with it.

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Obligation looked me

square in the face

two laser beams locking sightlines

securing antiquities [not worth their weight in bones]

establishing panoptic enforcement like

each hair counted by God himself shone with

a seraphic something where his hand stroked

strand one hundred twenty nine thousand sixty one

strand one hundred twenty nine thousand sixty two

strand one hundred twenty nine thousand sixty three

strand one hundred twenty nine thousand sixty four

[ten year old toast-face of Virgin Mary cost $28000]

[chocolate mold of Jesus sold for $2.25]

[mothers took daughters at $8.25 admission each 

  to be moved by sebum and malassezia glistening 

  behind 2" of glass and fluorescent display lights]

Nightly Ines came to wash the day's fingerprinted smudges

from the translucent tomb, each greasy oval removed with

meditative offering before she knelt to pray for her dying son;

the most living thing between the custodian and  the reincarnation 

Windexed away in delicate circles, 

stroke by stroke to remember his first cough

[Oré poriahu vereko ñande jara]

his first fall

his first scan

his first injection

[Oré poriahu vereko ñande jara]

She brought him to my encased feet

laid him at my bronzed pedestal, before

setting off the alarms

sending in the guards

with one small, tired hand

pounding on the glass she'd just cleaned,

keeping pace with her wails, vibrations

confusing security strategies, beams scattering 

giving my brown eyes a red rest

giving my congealed thoughts a blue fluidity,

flexibility to stay still as they cuffed and carried her away

boarded and covered him up.

Mary in the whole-wheat toast.

Jesus in the chocolate.

Ines in the jail.

Me in the museum.

Only Enzo granted room to breath 

in the Paraguayan ground.

International Exhibit of Rubber and Other Tropical Products

Heart-holes, like James'

can be grown out of,

can be grown into.

He talked of the 1921 World's Fair,

his tongue forgetting the 

picket-fence front-teeth buried

behind the cemetery gate,

beneath the granite headstone,

so that as he "wrrrrr"ed, by the time

he "llllll"ed, it was too late: the unruly

tongue would be punished by the

moonshine in the brown bag he kept poised

just above his bouncing paper-thin brown-trousered knee.

A baby.

His baby.

He, as baby.

My heart-hole expanded and shifted

to make room for James and 1921

the world

the moon

the water

the me

Space for a universe stood

still.  Breath barely moving my

hallowed frame.                          Waiting.                                   My

emptiness starving, its jaw

disconnecting

acrobatically back-bending to encapsulate me with

James

1921

the world

the moon

the water

midnight foxtrots and toddles 

skating on prohibitive ice sculptures

November - December - January - February - until

we lost our teeth

Don't go without ( )

The coffin disintegrated around me, me reborn with

golden locket stitched to sternum: inside

a heart thumping: then, closed and clasped, kept safe, soon over-grown with

woman's breasts, mother's breasts

breasts milking bathtub moonshine to 

infant conductor of the racing, 

desperate jazz band.

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Anthology of Elegies

Should have put this up a bit ago...our last assignment was to write in another student's voice. We drew names. I should hassle the gal who got mine and get that up here. It was interesting hearing other people talk about a style they found in my writing.

I took about half a dozen pages of notes trying to figure this gal's form out; she's super talented and didn't read that much in class, hard combo. The predominant theme I found was vocab, she uses this great vocabulary, but I'm not sure how much she says. This is based mostly on the century she read in class and I remember getting totally lost and had no idea what the point was, but I felt in a very beautiful place all the same.

I still feel like a jackass that 'big words' was my guiding tool to writing Vania.
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Closeted, the anthology of elegies I've sewn on your many sleeves while standing tip-toed to transcribe the rhythms of your chest. These oxygenated eyes see aching groans of inhales and anhedonic cries of exhales beneath woven fortresses, beyond epithelial stone walls, through marrowed prison bars. We pass cacophonic codes through needles, via emergent transfusions, clandestinely; tattletaling guards stand at every gate. The tactility of my tasteful tongue speaks Braille better than I. The shifting tectonic plates, active fault-lines of your otological structures hear signs better than you. What lengths, what languages, simply to ask how your head rested last night.
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Ed and I Chew Differently

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always biting off more than i can chew becomes
hazardous when locked jaw has no key and
i must learn how long egg and hooks take
to disintegrate in cavern of spit and milk and 'spro.

knowledge never wasted.

happy holidays from brownie-blinged grill.
happy birthday from champagne-shined enamel.
aloysius lilius' calendar replaced by
columns and rows of bottles and brews and
bins of dirty dishes. they say 'monday'
some say 'makersday.'

(what is the need of shooting-starry colorado nights, with sheetcake and coffee to rest beneath?)

soft diet keeps jaw loose, keeps

secrets public record, keeps teeth receptive to etiquette tips:

* smaller bites, more food

* swallow, then speak

* back of hand to cover front of mouth when

laugh/sneeze/yawn cannot be temporally displaced

*molars for leafy mastication, not revenge

*tongue to distinguish savory/salty/sweet/sour,

not to lash/discipline/howl/hang

must be his ancient ancestral blood, grace in marrow that

does not fortify my bones,
bones of aryan hand stretching

skin's napkin, porous enough to wipe

renegade sauce from gaping corners of

renegade aryan mouth,

mouth full of half-chewn wisdom and rice.
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