Friday, April 11, 2003

Once apon a time
Mother was a fistful of sticks propped in a corner. To steal her hard tiny face she had broken Mona’s kewpie doll. When we were hungry we slept. While we slept our hair grew into one dark pillow. Spiders built and lost kingdoms in our hair. Once a month our mother caught fire and beat us to put her out. The sparks got in our eyes and we would cry while she hit us, rubbing our dirty lids with dirty fists and hiding behind our faded blue hoop skirts. She lay whimpering for days on the floor with her eyes rolled up. She wouldn’t move when we poked her. In our dreams she was made of cotton and many-tiered cakes. We were always hungry. We learned to chew twigs and each other’s hair. Sometimes, when she slept, we broke off bits of her and made soup. The next day our vomit was black. The boys eventually got tired and wandered off. The girls stayed longer. Some of us are still home with mother.

Friday, April 04, 2003

this is one I sort of stole, it's kinda' like a found poem, I reworked

Graduation

Phil and Jonnie and I used to push our boat
and its engine about as big as my fist
through the back swamps of Lake Lagunita,
shooting guns,
drinking beer stolen from our parents.
Sometimes two of us would stand in the shallows,
scum around our knees,
holding a cotton rope fastened to the back of the boat,
and Phil would drag us around the lake.
I got blisters and rope burns, skinned my knees on floating things.
Jonnie squealed dolphin noises,
sometimes made it up to his feet,
walked on water.

Jonnie got in a wreck
the other day, some girl was driving
on good old Red Ridge road,
the road we used to take to 7-11 to sneak a few
more smokes before going back,
back to what was home,
what we called home, then.

The girl was wasted, so drunk she couldn’t stop
talking about the blood and her hair said the cops.
Jonnie was thrown out the back window of the truck.
broken jaw, broken clavicle, broken
wrist,
possible
high femur fracture, punctured lung;
other things inside flattened or gone.

I haven’t visited him yet at the hospital.

I can’t see it--
flying out the back window of a truck.
I’ve had to break into mine
when I locked the keys inside, cut my arm on the glass.
Squeezing through that
small window is impossible:
I’m telling you.