Sumo Wrestling in the Time of Trump

Come here, darling,
bring your giant underbelly,
four hundred years of pain
stuffed inside. Here is mine,
too, jiggling with the dark weight—
millennia of white woman servitude,
we two burdens no longer enslaved
in black body or angelic mind.
Trembling with engorged pride
grown over centuries to protect
our fragile kindness, our kind,
confused in our new little powers,
we advance on each other,
misdirected rage coalescing
in a farcical, rippling spectacle
of flying sweat, hugging grips,
crumpled faces, cartwheel flips,
shifting feet, crushed belly flesh,
until the ring becomes a bed
and exhausted we collapse
each into the smallest dolls
of our nested selves. Wooden
histories shed, we search: bones
stretched over by thinning skin,
eyes—liquid gifts asking somehow
to enter the other, be forgiven.

For further reference, read Rudyard Kipling’s“The White Man’s Burden” (1899) and CoventryPatmore’s “The Angel in the House” (1854).2020

Reluctant Inhabitant

A Danish woman with blond dreadlocks drives up
in a newish Subaru, its bumper dent a concave bowl, to buy
her barefoot boy—also blond, curly echo of my grown sons—
a breakfast burrito. Hermit I've become, I see her each time

I drive through town to pick up mail or milk: there she is
perched on low walls across the street from the pub,
or on a coffee house bench, bright summer dress flowing,
sipping matcha, calling to her children in a sister tongue.

Early motherhood granted me a similar, darker beauty,
that lonely freedom. I hungered for any confirming glance
for proof I was more than untouchable mother-flesh,
reluctant inhabitant of that mortifying ambivalence.

Big Boy

A small boy crawls expertly out of the back window
of an expensive SUV with its share of dents,
a twenty flapping in his outstretched hand, shoeless,
padding into the heart of a town that loves him.
A man at the gas pump calls hello, his name,
and the boy waves the bill at him joyfully,
disappears into the belly of the organic grocery.
He emerges with three large bottles: two orange juices
and kombucha, manages to waddle back to the car,
successfully pass them up through the driver’s side
to his beautiful mother, who takes a big swig
before passing one bottle back to his sister
in her car seat and the other to him, her big boy,
already past the sill, safely strapped in, reaching.

striae

grasses mingle with cactus
smoked light striates a flat peak
horizons shift at every step, small losses
thin mantle of damp desert cracks
exposes dust an inch beneath my boots
enough wet for a bit more August green
thunder walks me up hill a new way
to happen upon a peeling almost stupa,
stop, cautiously bow to sacred neglect,
someone’s vague religion, follow
my tracks back to the fork where I left
the usual trail to meet the ponderosa
who daily receives my pause to inhale
the sweet bark, a backwards prayer
of wordless promise, protection
for the three who broke off of me

good grief

six feet apart
is not
six feet under
with breath
a horizon
hummingbirds
him

Apologia for Pavement

When the moon is barely a crack
or dead, an ovary that has released its
last shining egg, and the night is black-black
with sharp stars, split by that splash
of cosmic godmilk no one really knows
until one lands here in Crestone,
I pity city streets, kids closed in by buzzing
light and door to door concrete. Still,
here, on such a night, I prefer the paved
gentle curve, the slow, tarred arteries
of lights-out wide mountain roads
over narrow winding trails flanked by cacti
yucca, tripping rocks, and low piñon.
Such threats require some kind of lamp,
render me myopic, eyes down, dirtbound.
Why be a body tonight? I walk eyes rolled up,
space-drunk, in wide wobble stride.
Silent. Unoccupied. The dog does not strain
the leash, walks close at my side.

Sonnet for Bras

Forty plus bucks a pop, a frugal woman
knows to keep them out of the dryer.
Electric heat pills, puckers, kills.
Of this prudent ilk, come summer,
I drape them across patio chairs,
like plump eighth notes on the staff
of my sunny, free-swung noon,
or, like a too uniform diorama
of a range of purple, white and black
mountain majesties on the edge
of this desert plain. Come winter,
I hang them on night’s doorknobs,
slingshots itching to be filled with me,
launch my heart at the day.

(My Job is to be Strong)

When chest lightning cracks

His brow and soaks my pillow

My hands beg the sky

Writing Subject

Is a subject loving a subject alive
an act of objectification?
These are not remote Gauguin eyes.
My love for you is not confused.
To notice is a word shrine,
my alms exchanged for your long life:

Your scent, incense evolved
from night to sunrise, fresh soap
of a bedtime shower, clean sweat
in sleep’s dawn sheets, waking heat,
I lean in. Your neck joins my breath.

Loving Day: June 12, 1967

Let it be our day
Loving, honor them
Mildred and Richard
Foreordained
A fortunate name
Loving against the law
Caught sleeping
Side by side, yanked from bed
By police, love felons
D.C. marriage certificate
On the bedroom wall
A guilty plea
Cohabiting as man and wife
Against the peace
And dignity
Of the Commonwealth
Brave Mildred wouldn’t stop
Robed white men caved
Gave her Richard, she gave me
The possibility of you
Four years before my birth
At forty two, new with you
My father’s ancestral bigotry doomed
We loved despite old Virginia
Mississippi, walk
Hand in hand, nearly 50 now
Almost as old as their law
Salt and pepper haired
Spiritual descendants
Of the Lovings, interlocked
Our fingers a long piano
Mute with the finest American tune