Loveliness that hides

A line from "I am more than this" on April 22 that takes quite a different turn. Inspired, in part, by all the horrific "you deserve rape" stuff I've been seeing. It's appalling to me that the way a woman dresses or looks could ever be "asking for it."


Behind the burka
is a face
too lovely

Beneath the skirt
is a treat
too tempting

Between his legs
is a beast
too savage
to control


April PAD Day 29 - a line from a former poem

Palm reading

I used to
hold your hand when we
crossed the street.

It was warm
and firm, unlike the bony
fingers I hold now.

April PAD Day 28 - shadorma

Morning routine

Snooze button pauses
my morning system start up.
Where is the coffee?

April PAD Day 27 - mechanical

Making the cut

When you came on the
scene I knew
the search was over

April PAD Day 26 - casting

Everybody bleeds

There's a story for every line
striping her forearms;
a name for every slice,
for every time they called her
slut or dyke or wetback.

There's a tear for every cut
she now covers
with long sleeves;
for every time she believed
the lies of the unloved.

April PAD Day 25 - everybody (blank)

Autocorrect

I do not
think you meant to say
what you did

April PAD Day 24 - auto

Summer Solstice

The sprinklers were cool in
the summer heat,
spraying slivers of rainbows like
holograms hovering above
the thirsty summer grass.

We frolicked through the fountains
bathing suits sticking
to our slick skin, tanned
by our afternoon
forays in the yard.

We peeled the wet fabric
over plump bellies
filled with laughter and lunch,
shimmying and tugging
our bare-threaded bikinis

tossing them into the bathtub,
relishing our nakedness
ready for the next adventure. 




Poetic Bloomings #104 - time flies

The fragments

Sometimes it takes
a big explosion to remember
together we're whole


April PAD Day 23 - love or anti-love

Complexion

"It's a bit complex," he says.
She staring in the mirror,
analyzing her pores, tugging
at the laugh lines that make
her want to cry.

He's in the bedroom pulling on
his pants going on about
some scientific discovery he
read about yesterday, oblivious to
his own uneven complexion.




April PAD Day 22 - complex

I am more than this

I am more
than a dark
loveliness that
hides between
thick grown
womanly thighs

I am more
than a disposable
plaything that
fulfills all your
secret little
pubescent fantasies

I am more than
a played out
stereotype that's
perpetuated in
every rapper's
uninspired lyrics

I am inspiration,
secret stereoscopic
fantasies that
grow thick
with love and
groan for more.

April PAD Day 18 - I am (blank)

Coo coo

Her lips curl to smile
with the baby on her lap.
"I want one," she says.

April PAD Day 21 - senryu

Beyond the horizon

I waited as you wandered
through the confusion
to an oasis of calm

You dipped your hands into
a river of
my tears, cooled your head

and wet your throat with
the sadness of
the dark desert between us

April PAD Day 20 - beyond

Singed

The slow simmer
of your indifference has burned
straight through me


April PAD Day 19 - burn

"Words can't express ..."

They were waiting on her front porch
when she walked up the driveway
after a long day at the shoe store.

Their uniforms were crisp and clean.
Even from here she could see the shine
of their polished brass-colored buttons.

Even now as the sun was setting, she
could see the glints of light bouncing off
them as they waited for her.

They could have been there for hours,
standing somber and still, just as he had
for so many formal occasions.

And in the military, it all seemed formal.
They always stood so tall, proud, patient, official.
These two were the same, brothers

in a family she didn't yet understand,
staring at her and knowing perhaps
that she had expected,

no, dreaded, the day that the man in
the crisp, clean uniform on her front porch
was not her husband.

She wished she were back on the express
train, back at work, surrounded by the stale
smell of socks and sweat,

anywhere but here, walking this impossible road


April PAD Day 17 - express