the same one that kisses
each daughter’s cheek
and whispers, “I love you”
a thousand times a week
the lips that open and close
over organically local food
and delectable chocolate
that brings on the best mood
the crooked and aging teeth
that bare themselves in grins
filled with laughter and love
and inglorious sins
this mouth is surely sore with vice
though can just as easily love
because what I say is who I am
not just who you were thinking of.
in this moment
I can find the pace I need to get me there stronger
Mythili can “read” a whole page in her elaborate story
Riona can say “I wuv you” seven times
Isabella can brush her top teeth by herself
and someone on the other side of the world
or right across town
is giving birth to a perfectly healthy baby
while another lost soul is pointing a gun to his head
in this moment
I can hear Alanis Morisette motivating my pedals
my students can see twenty pictures on Google
of the cedar trees they’ve never heard of
the teachers can track me down for brownies
and someone right across town
or on the other side of the world
is pounding a woman’s skull into the drywall,
while another is handing a ten-year-old his first pair of shoes.
in this moment
I will live
I will love
I will remember what I have
what we all have
(somewhere within us)
Please tell me why
when I read books like The Middle Place
I think of you and want to scream,
to relive my childhood:
I want a do-over
I don’t want the rants and raves
the banging on doors
the sharks in your eyes
swimming at me with their
hatchets of hatred
I want a mother who could cuddle
with me on the couch,
read me stories while I curl up,
thumb in mouth,
and before the sun even sets
share a moment of joy with me
not one who’s so obsessed
with the food that has to
go on the table that she
trades her smiles for sour looks
before even closing the door at work
Please tell me why I can’t have
that imaginary childhood,
why I cannot gratify my memories
with some sort of happiness
that will last beyond
the closing of this book,
a place where I am comforted,
I am safe,
a place where I know my mother
loves me,
a place where she has shed her tiger’s skin
and wrapped her arms
around my aching soul.
I have seen you before
you are the one who has hidden
in the darkness before the dawn
the black so thick it blocks
you out of my wide-open eyes
my yearning for your explicit expression of truth
overcome by a sun that won’t shine
the bitterness sits
on my tongue like a cat on a fence
unable to determine
which way to pounce
because I am hungry for the truth
that you are too afraid to give me.
Instead you creep
as stealthily as the prey you think you are
hiding behind the curtain of obscurity
because you can’t bring your face to the face of
what’s real, what’s right here,
what we can all see
with the first streaks of a sunrise
that shines the same on all of us.
Am I too much like my father,
words spilling out of my mouth
as if a dam has broken at the
back of my throat,
flooding onlookers with whatever comes,
whether they want to listen
or would rather dash away,
scrambling for their own dignity
amidst the inundation?
Instead I criticize those who
keep their reservoirs behind bricks,
letting loose only small streams,
maintaining the walls
and freezing their vibrantly harsh
thoughts, never once
letting them pour out
for the rest of us to wade through.
But if I build it back, brick by brick,
trapping the intense waves
as the wind slaps and stings them,
as the rivers of my mind
pour deeper, darker water into the lake,
I know the dam will burst again
and I will gush through, swimming
with the words that make me who I am,
inviting whoever dares to join me.
I used to think that you and I were a covalent bond,
sharing our electrons in a Venn-diagram link
that could not be broken or shared with another atom.
But we are grown now, and I see the difference in us:
we are truly ionic, not connected in a way that we cannot break,
but handing electrons back and forth, giving and taking.
We are charged, sometimes positive, sometimes negative,
hovering around each other like fireflies in the forest,
our bond allowing us to gain strength from one another.
From the Latin concedere, to completely yield
1999-2002
stop here and I will upsell you
a giant buttery tub as wide as a hug
a soda that weighs as much as your baby
so much candy you might puke later
but you’ll enjoy your theater experience
that much more because I suckered you in
because you yielded to your desires
and footed $25 more than what you paid for tickets
and as you hand me your card or cash
I’ll ignore the stench of BIB’s and
the slippery tractionless popcorn-filled floor
and the palm oil that permeates the air
smiling all the while as I earn my $7.50,
paying my way through college with this
thankless job, knowing that I can concede
to your audacity because one day I won’t have to.
2008-2010
my era of admission has come full circle
as step after step I tread as carefully as a crane
just like the paper ones that dangled,
pale blue and innocent, along the church aisles
now both of us have shed our naiveté
and the truth seeps from our souls
through black and white keyboards,
drunken words, and the wrath of darkness
in my mind I have seen both sides of this story
each one conceding to the other in a series
of twisted images that I can neither sleep through
nor accept when my eyes, paralyzed, pop open
yet, from this moment I recapture the past
and though I cannot change the path I led it down
I see you in the shadows as if for the first time
knowing that I can completely yield to our love.
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