LIPS
Yours, honey, were so perfect,
a little rosebud mouth, not
those puffed up blubbery
things, my mother says when
I pointed out the models’
collagen petals. “Roses,” my
mother always says, “That’s
what yours were, a nice
tiny nose. That’s from your
father. One good thing. Not
a big ugly one like I’ve got.”
I think of my mother’s lips,
moving close to my hair, how
her breath was always sweet.
“Too thin lips, like your father’s,”
show stinginess.” She was
right. A man who couldn’t give
presents or love, a good word
or money. I only remember
three things he told me and
all begin with Don’t tho my
mother said stories came from
those lips, that he brought me a
big dog. I only remember the
thinness of his lips, how the
death meant I wouldn’t have to
leave school to testify for the
divorce. Lips. When I came home
from camp I found Love Without
Fear in the bathroom and read
“if a girl lets a man put his tongue
on her lips down there, she’ll let
him do anything,” and then some
thing about deflowering. A
strange word I thought trying to
imagine flowers down there, rosebuds
not only on my mouth, a petal
opening, but a whole bush of petals,
a raft of roses someone kneeling
would take me away on, a sea of
roses, flowers and my lips the
island we’d escape to
LEMON WIND
all day
nobody wanted
to talk
the sleeping bags
were still wet
from the storm
in Cholla Vista
Nothing went right.
But later the
wood we
burned had a sweet
unfamiliar smell
and all night
we could taste
lemons in the wind
NOT THINKING IT WAS SO WITH YELLOW FLOWERS
At night I
dreamed that
same dream,
the one
full of muscles
and thighs
that aren’t you.
Later the fear
came back
crossing into
Mexico tho
at first
when I woke up
I thought it
wasn’t true
the air was so
bright and
yellow flowers
were falling
from the
pepper tree
like suns
SOME AFTERNOONS WHEN NOBODY WAS FIGHTING
My mother took out
walnuts and chocolate
chips. My sister and
I plunged our fingers
in flour and butter
smoother than clay.
Pale dough oozing
between our fingers
while the house filled
with blond bars rising.
Mother in her pink dress
with black ballerinas
circling its bottom
turned on the Victrola,
tucked her dress up into
pink nylon bloomer pants,
kicked her legs up in the
air and my sister and I
pranced thru the living
room, a bracelet around
her. She was our Pied
Piper and we were
the children of Hamlin,
circling her as close as the
dancers on her hem.
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