That Thing

Excerpts : © 2005

“If I love you, is that a fact, or a weapon?” ~Margaret Atwood



Apotheosis
I like stalkers. What can I say?
They spend months beforehand merging—some
downright ferociously—some with tenderness so abject
I imagine I could abnegate and still retain sovereignty—a union
so complete I am nearly obliterated—oh I like the illusions,
the lies, the stories of redemption, joined reincarnations,
happily-ever-after and I need do nothing beyond attend.
I like the forever pacts and promises created out of imagination,
a couple of stiff drinks and maybe a good kiss.
I like my ability to maintain agreements made in haste
while waving aside the not-so-fine print.
This is bravado and blindness, but god bless them,
I do like the stalkers.
The way they hold sacrosanct those pacts
even after I banish them. I like the way they hover,
showing up where I least want and most expect them—
trailing me on dates where they measure themselves
favorably against surely another user—loser.
Committed with a vengeance—they park outside my back door
and chain smoke on the stoop in the front,
offering armistice and possibly absolution
for my string of elaborate, fanciful betrayals.
I become almost aroused when they copy my keys—
when they break into my house—rearrange the relics of our love—
make it clear they still hold title.
You should see how greedily I open their hate mail,
like a child rooting through Daddy’s pockets for candy and nickels;
I read romance between every line.
I search them out—I snare and harness them—men
who will role play priest, then marauder—they make me feel good;
like I am pretty enough—that after I go
they will track me for months—proving my imprint irresistible.



To Wrestle

It seemed I would never tire my ruthless resolve to recruit
endless enlistees to perform self-degradation
that had become too burdensome to do myself.
Maybe I found wrestling an external agent more tangible
than with my internal demons, or maybe I was just afraid
to castrate my own balls.

This last man, my master, supreme, now gone, and I miss already
the way he framed our love like a case of Stockholm Syndrome,
the way he saw me as one slant thought from a personal affront,
my deviation from compliance as aggression.
In the morning he scissor-locked me to his heart
so I could not rise to read or write until he rose first.
Restlessness was outlaw. Sighs hastened his hauteur.
Some days I’d adulate, others I’d cede.
Those times he massaged my feet it felt just like daddy’s
occasional toy to offset the beatings and lockdowns.
Then it all went wrong.
Perhaps he found my life held some esteem
for he created fictions to pummel me with.
And with whom could I verify my own story?
We’d sent all my friends away. On my own I had to wonder
if I wasn’t that vile, perhaps I wasn’t wicked at all?
In that mis-measure of my character, though stifling
as I imagine a third-world prison, where, were I allowed to speak
we still could not even begin to bridge the other’s language.
There I could think whatever subversive thought I liked,
So I did: constant minds-eye playbacks where he knelt
repentant, realizing he wronged me by refusing to know me.

I want desperately to replicate those feelings I felt
when he laterally pressed, sunk inside me, whispered
that I was his dirty little slut, a rotten possession,
for in our mutual perspiration and shudder
I found my milk and butter and my self-loathing a temporary reprieve.



Jonquil
I liked it best when he yanked off his t-shirt
and masked my face, his scent so fierce
even my perfume became inconsequential.
Liked it best when he tied my ankles with his favorite tie,
a perfect jonquil he wore for power presentations.
He saved his belt for my wrists.
Looped over the door it wedged in the jamb.
All I could turn, really, was my head,
as I listened for his breathe to close our distance.
For a while he would just stand there.
I tried not to squirm, feeling too naked, demoralized
like a child feels when overwhelmed by an inexhaustible tickler
until finally he growled, “show me you want it”.
I never knew if he would relent, find some way to bend
and fuck me, or if first he would find another belt
and raise welts like script across my thighs,
or if he would finger-lock my hair, pin my face
to the hollow door that rang back the filthy names
he snarled into my ear, or if he would pinch or pull or tug or

if he would just reach around and nuzzle my throat with his lips.

Once he stood there so long I caught back a sob.
No matter how often we played I was certain, alarmed,
that he had abandoned me—until whatever action he took
came as the world’s most beautiful return.



Hooked

There was nothing else to do off-season in Victoria
so you settled us into a back booth at the Hotel bar.
You plucked apart the split in my skirt
as resolute as velveteen matinee curtains.
Since you were so genial when you said
you appreciated the appose of stockings and skin
I left my panties in our room.
You hooked one finger in and one finger on
and still managed to monitor the drunk watching sports
and the bartender reading romance.
Baby—I came exactly right
then closed my skirt with a gesture as orthodox
as reaching for pretzels, turned and smiled
to the approaching bartender and said
“Yes, please. I’d like another.”



Small Kisses
You used to wake me at one or two a.m.
with small kisses across my face until my own lips
rose to meet yours. I loved you then.
Loved, too, your rare decorum as you hunched
and swooped into bed, more like dropping your guard
than your drawers
Throughout our full five years I peeked over that quilt,
confirming the foot-long scar your right thigh wore
like a badge for bravery from childhood wars.
And I touched it, Baby, I touched it every chance I got.
I loved your arm lift, snuggling me in to sleep.
When I turned, you followed. When you turned,
we matched at hillock and gulch. If blue, you hunkered down
and suckled; your upward gaze made me coo.
You brought me water when you were thirsty,
and covered me when you were cold. Asleep—
I loved you asleep; your face without guile
no matter what vile thing you had said or done
while we were awake.



Machiavellian Maharishi

You crawled from under hell’s rocks—divinely sent.
You came, miserly heart and faithless,
knowing exactly how to ruin me.
Avaricious you crept into my bed and malicious climbing out:
if I had blood, you took it, my cunt was your cuspidor.

Dolorously stagnant, my life, and I
too courageless to change it.
Whatever god, goddess—great or grimalkin,
they will agitate those who do not stir themselves.
But no angel, not even in disguise, you Golem.

Your heart all shards and stone. So?
Your eyes counterfeited love.
Excruciating lonely I had volition to cancel my lease yet
adultery seemed an easy fix. I commissioned you to own me.

O Incubus, masterful pimp, devil under my skin—
you crawled in through my breath. I will never forget your fuck.
Perfect, perfect, perfect. Your promises—
gold leaf props staged on vacant lots,
disbelief suspended, awareness asleep.
I lingered until I forgot you were façade—a perilous spur—
the magic show was mere machination—

—played me out, you played me in
askew, ensnared, off-kilter, then pierced.
I censured augurs of dreams—instincts and intimates
as you drove your daggers in.

Whatever god, goddess—exculpate or excommunicate—
just take this Golem home.
This penance—this return of deception, violation, infidelity and lies—
the aggregate is too magnified. If this is how Karma feels
god, goddess, I thank you this bankruptcy,
and pray I’ve paid my debt in full.




Porn
The man with the camera told me to hitch my hem higher
so he could target plum-red bruises firecrackering my thighs.
Afterwards, he handed me the Polaroids. There I was, naked

arms clenching my gingham dress against my chest.
And there, my bruised back, one hand—fingers spread
like a toy fan—covered my panties.

Mother sat stiff as the chair, wearing her best coat
and her mother face, the one that looked like maybe she cared.
Another policeman inched over, secret-close, murmuring

the same question over and over as if I had lied. It wasn’t my father,
I said. It wasn’t mother. The school nurse had insisted that too.
I didn’t know them: that feral pack at the park who stormed

from out of the Scotch-Broom. I don’t know why they hounded me,
still—round after round I took their blows the way I took them at home:
my eyes, blank to mask confusion and bone-dry.



The Statement

Adam complained that my lack of lubrication made penetration difficult.
He didn’t use technical terms, still, it is hard to imagine
that a man who looked to be in his forties wouldn’t know
that foreplay is often a prerequisite to sex
and that a woman in the process of being raped
fails to find the stimulation necessary to become wet.

He was or rather is, an African male living somewhere
in the greater Seattle area, arriving here from Mali via Paris in 1996.
1996 is notable to me because that year I realized marriage
wasn’t what I had imagined. I divorced, returned to college,
changed my name. None of this is relevant.
I am trying to tie incongruities together, to make some greater sense
—even purpose—of the violence.
You will forgive me, I assume, for mixing trivia with tragedy,
in one futile attempt to distance those memories.

One of Adam’s native languages is French.
God knows I swoon at a French accent.
Once it is employed I am apt to turn off the conversation’s content,
therefore, numerous indicators of his predatory nature
as well as possible clues to his current status are lost.
I believe he may have told me where he works,
something about property management, or parking garage development.
I was engaged with the sight of his lips.
They were voluptuous and a scar, (a keloid scar?) rims his top lip.
I could recognize the Braille of it with either my fingers or my tongue,
but this technique is hardly used in police line-ups. Of the scar,
I am unaware of any Malian rituals involving scarification.
It seems there is more to what I don’t know then to what I do.
The additional scars, one quarter-sized above his left eye
and two riding his left thigh, one on the nape of his neck,

You know, I shouldn’t have been thinking about the fine drape of his
European trousers and his silk tee shirt, then maybe
I would have paid attention to my intuition which picked up
on the coercive way he pushed past me,
uninvited into my house and up to my room to settle in)
I could assume he was a member of President Keita’s People’s Militia,
which, like Mao’s Red Guard, was a terrorist youth organization in Mali.
The timing itself is right, for in the late sixties he would have been mid-teen,
and in some wars even children have been known to carry guns.
Adam wasn’t carrying a gun that night although he came equipped
with a weapon the proportions of which, I must admit,
under different circumstances would have unduly impressed me.
Referring to it, he asked if I liked Black men.

(And I knew that this was the moment I should leave,
even though it was my own home, that stating
I wasn’t going to fuck him tonight while reaching to pet that python
can be mis-construed as
I am going to fuck him tonight)
My preferences weren’t involved in this exchange. He had nothing to lose.
In any court of law rape is not a matter of female consent or refusal.
The court holds no acceptable definition to a woman’s rights
to her own bodily integrity. Husbands are bodyguards,
protecting us through ownership laws from a rape free-for-all.
In exchange we promise fidelity that no longer is based upon love.
In a patriarchal system all men benefit from rape.
So, do I like black dick? What I like is what I lack—
the total control of my own body.

I played dead, like the rabbit my neighbor’s dog pinned
to the floor with his mouth, the rabbit’s rapid heartbeat and glazed eyes
the only sign of life. That rabbit too, let the dog release it’s grip and lick it.

As Adam fucked me, all I could think about was AIDS.
Rapists are not the type of men to wear condoms.
Then, men in general are not the type of men to wear condoms.
You see, I keep forgetting that we are enmeshed in gender wars;
that women partner with soldiers.
As a wife or a girlfriend we become one man’s sexual access,
his breeding hole, guaranteed to pump out only his children.
If Adam was incarcerated it would be for stealing property,
for as an autonomous woman, he merely takes what no other dick claims:
legal protection is unsalable.

In the sub-Saharan desert one out of three women is raped.
I was not thinking this I was not caring about these statistics.
I was saying please put on the rubber—the rubber—please put on
the rubber—put it on, and I was making sure that I shed no tears—
because some men become enraged at tears and others
get excited and please put on the rubber
and I can’t figure out how to get all this into a statement
and I won’t be able to talk about this anyway
and I already know the court system won’t care
and what I want is to undo all my proper training,
find some will to crack him over the head with the lamp
or to slide a blade in under his ribs instead of begging him
to put on a rubber. I want to ram him with his car,

which is not quite white, a near beige, a rich off-white, something very new and expensive. No, I don’t remember cars. That’s a man’s thing. I did not note the make and model. It had a nice stereo. We had listened to Senegalese music. Senegal borders Mali and is yet another country the French Colonists screwed over before the World Bank and the World Trade Organization fucked it to death. I was not thinking about this. About how the world is built on rape. I was thinking about the goddamn rubber. But the stereo. Maybe I am confusing it with the one in the Cadillac or in the BMW. I don’t know. I’ve been accepting a lot of rides lately and men point out their stereos like they matter, like I care. The Cadillac, it could have been a Lincoln. The BMW it could have been a Honda. So how about if I just say Adam was a black man in an expensive white car. The police stop thousands of black men daily for no other reason than that they are black. He won’t get fingered but he will get stopped. Maybe they’ll recognize him. He is the one I fantasize maiming.

I did nothing like that. I was nice. Very, very nice.
I wanted him to go away. This was a first, no, a last date.
He assured me that he loved me, (that he loved me?)
and would be with me forever. He wanted wine, a foot massage
and was adamant about sleeping over.
I said get out. His day was hard, he said. Where was my sympathy?

Although it wasn’t transported in his car,
gold has been crossing the sub-Saharan since the fourth century.
Besides being pretty, what is gold really worth? I wasn’t thinking this.
I was trying, gingerly, to maneuver him out of my house.
Gold has been used to finance the building of armies, of acquiring arms,
of facilitating rape from Russia to China to South Africa,
from South America to North and all across Europe. Gold has been melted
into false idols, into wedding bands and earrings dangling
at concubine’s ears. It has proved useful in the slave trade
and for trading in general. Gold seems to be worth blood, though it is not.
Mali is landlocked and sits at the head of the Niger River.
It is known for its history of gold digging, of slave labor and slave trading.
If I had known all this just a week before
maybe I wouldn’t have looked upon this creature with the chiseled biceps
and taut stomach, with the shaven head and pedicured, sandled feet,
maybe I wouldn’t have seen him as golden, as something of worth.
Perhaps I would have pictured him Mandige—a man who’d sell his brother
and beat his sister, soulless as any colonizing Anglo.

In the aftermath the prosecutor’s office sent me a letter stating
that less than 50 % of rape cases are pursued. It was not to say
they thought I was lying; I was simply not worth the taxpayer’s money.
I was not worth any amount of gold.
In the aftermath my ex-husband asked me if I shouldn’t just move back
into the illusory protection of our marriage. I am not willing
to bargain away again my obviously tenuous, alienable rights
to express sexuality as a full human—to be imprisoned
by ownership laws and obligation. I refuse to let any man profit
by my being raped. My black ex-boyfriend asked me if I now hate
black men. Adam raped me–not because he was black –
or African—not even because he was a man–
but simply because in our patriarchal culture—he can.



Reborn
If we can be reborn, if we can ask the form
let us not ask for this. Let us try something different.
Maybe moss, deep in timberline up the slope of Index
where only the hardiest may see and leave us.
I could be a short-tenured fern beside the pine
upon which you entice in tactile emerald plush. Let us try
something that requires the courage only to survive,
that has only the weather to forgive. Let us try
something that does not require love, as humans know it;
surreptitious negotiations that bind us like a loose button
and a fraying hole. Too rare these moments of comfort
that filigree between sporadic reminders of your affairs;
photographs stuffed under the mattress, glove box condoms,
Hotel soaps. Our hearts navigate a minefield.
If we are required to learn the lesson of love, then let us lumber
back as dogs, loyal for life, whose tails never lie.



What If

What if there never was a Master Plan for my life, no destiny,
no purpose. What if none of the abuse or the neglect thwarted it?
What if I was never ruined?

Let’s say that my life has been just that, my life all along.
Maybe I was too full of shame, or maybe I mistakenly thought
it was somehow sexy, boldly defiant to always do less
than what was expected of me. What if it was
the overwhelming face of my own desire that crippled me?
Maybe I choose to love cruel men because I am cruel.
Maybe I merely want to appear kind, and don’t want to put in the work
to actually be kind. What if I’m not really unlucky in love, but shrewd?

What if my desires are two-faced, the side I tell you and the side
I nurse in solitude? Let’s say I don’t want world peace
so much as I want my own comfort. Let’s say I don’t want a partner
so much as a supplicant. That I don’t find satisfaction in a job well done
so much as I crave recognition and power. Let’s say beauty.
Let’s say fame. Let’s say, let’s say I will never be selfless, never humble.
Let’s say that there has always been some story, some Santa,
some Jesus, some firm hand slapping me down, keeping me in line.
That one time it won’t work—what then?

Maybe I am not disciplined. I simply distract myself with production
and have produced so many quilts and poems they’re worthless
even to me. What if I can not bear solitude?
What if I can’t find anything inside me to love?
And what do I do with these beliefs, these thoughts on how wonderful
my life would have been if only it hadn’t rained, if only I had gotten that job,
met that man, weighed less, had blue eyes, if only, if only, if only not this.

What if I am not flawed? What if I have simply just been running away?
What if I have been too afraid to take up the burden of my own life?



Toot Suite for Don, 1946-2003

Don, what does one say to the stars
when they go out? When they burst onto your horizon
then collapse into a shroud of night? When they distort
your sense of space-time? What advice
can you give us, what solace to me, we naive
who can’t comprehend meaning within the larger turning?

I quit believing in Heaven and Hell years ago.
That day you died I wanted that faith back—wanted
any faith at all. I wanted to know for certain
if you were taken to punish me for a life selfishly lived
or if of your volition you abandoned me.

Some say that’s how it went down;
that you had premonitions—that you knew your heart
wouldn’t last and preferring to leave while back
at the top of your game—you quit taking your meds.
Is that why you ended our phone calls with
“Please don’t forget me—please don’t forget me”,
instead of with “later, gator”? Son of a bitch!
No other man made loving me seem effortless.
If there is a Heaven it is ruthless the way it lets you linger,
haunting my studio and always, always just out of reach.

Don, are our souls finite or infinite?
Where do our stories continue when they seem done
and does anyone hold authority to re-write them?
Who pulls strands of memory from time
and where are they archived? Do we really end?
Don, will I always live in your absence
moving from emptiness to emptiness?
Please don’t let the point of despair
be merely to rework it into a beautiful despair.
The stars have gone out Don—
the stars have gone out—

I want to know the rules of the dead.
Do they write poetry? Do they only seem mute?
Suppose the dead play drums.
Don, is there even enough pressure in Heaven
to create wavelengths?
If the dying become mystics and the dead poets
I am sure you fit right in, slapping your congas
yelling “Fish Bones”
and “Corn woman, Corn, corn woman.”
Won’t you increase the decibel, improve the timbre
and pound out one more poem for me?
Don, is there a visitors room? Can I visit?
Suppose only Plexiglas separates us—
we could talk on some blessed phone—holding
our free hands up to the glass.
Are there some conjugal rights I don’t know about?
Can you send me a postcard?
Can you ever permanently come back?

I swear to god I saw you again this morning.
You were raking leaves down by Pier 70
in your Carharts and a baseball cap.
I nearly said hello, but so quickly you disappeared
and then it was someone else’s skin.
I think you like this: your Mardi gras beads glinting,
as you flash your unruly Pirate face in crowds—
at the market hawking onyon’s and garlic,
feeding ducks or strolling
and holding some other woman’s hand.
Always younger or older, taller or thinner than I remember
and every time I step toward you—you are gone.

Don, what can one do when they lose their axis?
When the constellations no longer come in order—
when Gemini replaces Orion
and even the solstices displace the equinox?
I’ve heard that stars grow old, decay, die,
but what becomes of their stories—their consolidation into brilliance—
their burst to radiance—
what becomes of the flotsam and jetsam gravitating in their orbit?
What did you choose to leave me
such a loose end in your story?

Suppose I knew the rules of the living.
Suppose I knew what to believe or how to behave.
I don’t want to think of my life as simply another story
hurtling to its end, propelled by fathomless questions
even if I could be like a star,
my luminosity visible long after I collapse.
I don’t want oblivion for the dead.
I don’t want the canopy—the spangled stars to fade.

Don, tell me, do you like the rearrangement of my chairs?
The way there is more room around the bed
so you can quit already
bumping pens and books off the side tables—
you can quit knocking down the photograph
of the cruel lover I returned to.
And why, why did you stand at the foot of my bed
and rattle me awake? Did you think I’d forgotten you?
Did you see my going back to him as betrayal?
I checked—that earthquake did not register anywhere
beyond my room—my bed.
Tell me—what were you trying to say?

Suppose you had no other way to get my attention.
Suppose what could be seen as rude here
is a gesture of greeting on that side.
Suppose anything.
I can’t prove your presence
and I resent your absence.
I am tired of feeling lost, feeling I failed you, feeling
there remains something important I must do for you,
and what is it Don, what?If you knew you were about to leave
then you were too evasive with your foresight.
Although I can see it now
how throughout our entire twelve-week romance
you were saying goodbye. Son of a bitch!
This is no consolation.

For twenty-five years you greeted me
across the poetry shows, at the Comet,
the cafés and bars, the small press lobby,
and you let me trade kisses for poetry,
kisses for cigarettes, kisses for beer,
and I was too young and too busy at being young.
How did you see past it?
Beyond the false bravado,
the mis-placed arrogance, beyond the fashion
and all the mean pretty-boys I managed to dig up
as though I’d have eternity to waste
and you forever to tease?
How did you see there was even a heart inside me?

If there is anything you can tell me Don,
tell me this—was it Heaven or you who fixed our romance
to be this tentative and confusing story,
rushed it toward a sad conclusion?
Did you realize you had some kind of Cajun magic
that could shake me from bad-love story projectory.
Did you feel I’d finally grown enough
you could Hoo Doo me?

Don you were too good for me.
That explains why you came to me so late.
But why Don, why did you leave me so soon?



Not Wanting
Imagine not wanting and it is okay to not want
the corner unit with more space and better light
streaming in each morning like the promise of a good day,
not wanting to fix or shuffle the aging furniture,
to paint the walls blue one year, then green like spring
grass or money, not wanting to camouflage the finger stains
and smudges that prove you live here. Imagine
not wanting a new dress or new shoes for every new
special occasion or special new man, being okay with
not wanting to shop the elite boutiques
with their unique, pricey versions of you.
Maybe you can’t remember, there was a time
you wore the same pair of pants every day,
loving the fit and feel and familiarity as though
they were comfortable as your own skin.
When you pulled them on they smelled exactly like you.
Imagine not wanting a man who doted, who cleaned-up good,
a man who made so, so much more money and was always
at least one degree or one promotion ahead of you.
And it is okay to not want that, to want instead
friends who enjoy your company, a few good books,
holding out for someone who, when you pull him on
like those pants, smells like no one else but you.
Imagine not wanting, or imagine wanting yet letting it go,
that wanting, being okay with sleeping alone,
the window open for air, your small space tidy, well-lit,
the single blue chair.



Heart Land
I quit driving because too often
I did not want to stop,
wanted to zip-past my turn-off on I-90,
and the next, and the last one possible
to get home somewhat on time.
I wanted to empty the loose coins and stray bills
in my pockets into the gas tank and go—
drive over Steven’s Pass, even as night fell,
even if I had to pull over and sleep on the road
using only my own arms as blankets,
wanted to debit card my way East
or North, it didn’t much matter,
but drive until my bank account was cleaned out
and the car couldn’t run anymore
and I was in the heart of something.
Maybe the heart of America
or more likely I wanted the heart of Nowhere:
no job, no money, maybe even a flat tire
or a busted axel rod, my hopes
broken down and nothing before me
but bleak road, small towns that might turn me away,
a blank-faced cow munching at the side of the road,
so empty I had nothing left to give
and no one to turn it down.



Squalor
What if I’m wrong about love and it isn’t about
two people building something together?
What if it is just accepting the squalor of the other?
What if the house was meant to collect dust and dog hair,
broken-handled cups left unglued and put back in the cupboard?
What if everything was meant to stink?
Maybe I was wrong all those years, putting the house
in order, cleaning the chairs, making room at the table.
Maybe even I am meant to fall apart,
to drink Chardonnay at 3 a.m. alone, my life,
like old newspapers, yellowed, torn apart and discarded.
In the end, maybe nothing stays shiny for long.
Bells lose their chimes and thud. All Angels fall.



Plenary
When is that moment when we are all asleep?
When early risers have not yet risen. When night owls
have finally turned in and even insomniacs have found peace?
That moment the whole world dreams. Streetlights
flash unheeded warnings. Rain stops. The sleeping crow keeps
one eye open. That moment Terra Firma dreams a landscape
devoid of litter and concrete. Even trees sleep,
neither budding nor dropping leaves in a flurry
of orange so dark it appears black. In that moment the insomniacs
dream about sleep, wrapped in childhood blankets;
early risers, about promotions and prosperity, their wallets
snoring on the nightstand. Night owls dream of love
returned tenfold. That moment is about completeness.
About finding our lack. That is the moment I dream
about you dreaming about me.