Poem a Day #3 – Asthma

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again, thanks to Janet Aalfs for her amazing workshop, with this writing prompt:the source of my breath is a pathway through fear, is the courage I share

Asthma

source of breath is source of breath
is source is breath is breath is breath
is source, breath, source, breath breath breath
is the source but breath is source and breathing
is sore sore once sore always sore sore once
more sore again breath again sore breath
poor breath poor breath sore breath
breath at the source is sore poor breath
poor breathing poor sore poor source
poor breath at the source is sore

poor breath breath wanting breath wanting
breath wanting to breathe breathe breath
poor breath sore breath breath wanting
wanting breath not to be sore at the source
wanting breath wanting breath wanting
breathing breath wanting breathing
wanting not to be sore
breath wanting wanting waiting wanting
breath wanting waiting not to be sore
breath wanting waiting wanting
to soar

Oh breath! Oh breath! Oh breath!
Oh wanting breath oh wanting wanting
wanting to soar time to soar wanting
time to soar past time past time
past time to soar always wanting
always past time time passes breath
sore breath poor breath breath wanting
to soar breath waiting to soar breath
wanting, waiting, wanting, waiting
waiting past time waiting for time
breath waiting for time
to soar

wanting, wanting, wanting at the source
wanting at the source, breath wanting wanting
wanting at the source to soar
breath wanting at the source the source
is wanting breath the source of breath
is wanting to soar wanting to soar
is the source of breath so much wanting
wanting at the source to soar wanting
breath breath wanting wanting breath
breath wanting wanting breath wanting
breath breath wanting wanting
at the source
wanting
at the source
wanting
at the source
breath wanting, wanting,
wanting
wanting at the source
to soar.

Poem a Day #2 – The Third Thing

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with deep thanks to Janet Aalfs for an amazing writing/movement workshop.

The Third Thing
1.2

There is fear and there is freedom
there’s the fear
and there’s the freedom
There’s the fear
and here’s the freedom
Here’s the fear
and there’s the freedom
And somewhere stands
the third thing

There is power and there is shame
There, power and here, shame
Here shame, there shame,
everywhere shame shame
And power is always there
there’s power over there
And shame is always here, hiding
from the third thing


Freedom cannot live where fear rules
WRONG
As you learn to embrace your power your shame
will fade and disappear
WRONG

The third thing is both things,
neither thing, anything
outside of easy answers
The third thing stands
at the junction of all other things
The third thing
isn’t compromise, may be
in the middle, but only
of another place altogether

There’s the fear and there’s the freedom
but here there is the freedom to fear
and still find freedom and fear here

There is power and there is shame
and then there is the third thing—
learning not to be ashamed
of power, not to be ashamed
of shame

There is this and there is that
Here I am—third thing
Pick or choose, win or lose
Deep breath in—third thing
On the one hand, on the other
Palms together—third thing
One step forward, one step back
Waiting, still—the third thing

Bill

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Bill
for Cindy

It was his nature to run
so he ran.
Ran in hours, not miles,
with no map other than
genetic memory.
He ran deep.

His hip had never healed.
He ran with a leg-dragging gait
mistaken as disability.
He ran with no gesture
that could be taken
as bitterness.
He ran true.

He ran for days with
the even clip of
a wind-blown boat.
He didn’t need to tack.
He ran direct.

When he tired, he still ran
until the need to run ran out
and then he’d find a porch
by a door, usually a woman’s door—
he preferred women—
and sit and wait to be found.

Having learned to suppress
her panic, Cindy was waiting
for the call. Your dog
is on my porch. I don’t know how
he got here, it’s so far. Sometimes
she had to look up the town
on a map, although she’d lived
in Rochester for decades

Bill was waiting when she’d
drive up and open the door.
Settling into the passenger seat,
he’d smile, nuzzle her hand.

To love any being with its own
purpose, its own work,
you learn the compromise
between how you think
the world should be and how
your love needs to live.
And if you are lucky
these distance between these
is only as far
as a husky can run.

A Few Reasons to Oppose the War

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A Few Reasons to Oppose the War
Lisa Suhair Majaj

because wind soughs in the branches of trees
like blood sighing through veins

because in each country there are songs
huddled like wet-feathered birds

because even though the news has nothing new to say
and keeps on saying it
NO still fights its way into the world

because for every bomb that is readied
a baby nestles into her mother
latches onto a nipple beaded with milk

because the tulips have waited all winter
in the cold dark earth

because each morning the wildflowers outside my window
raise their yellow faces to the sun

because we are all so helplessly in love
with the light

From Geographies of Light (Del Sol Press 2009).

Lisa Suhair Majaj, a Palestinian-American writer and scholar, was born in Iowa, raised in Amman, Jordan, educated in Beirut, Lebanon and in Michigan, and after spending many years in Massachusetts currently lives in Nicosia, Cyprus. Her poems and essays have been published in more than fifty journals and anthologies across in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East, and have been used in art installations, photography exhibits and political forums, as well as in more traditional venues. Her recently published poetry volume, Geographies of Light, won the Del Sol Press Poetry Prize. She is also co-editor of three collections of critical essays: Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers (Garland/Routledge 2000), Etel Adnan: Critical Essays on the Arab-American Writer and Artist (McFarland Publishing 2002), and Intersections: Gender, Nation and Community in Arab Women’s Novels (Syracuse University Press, 2002).

Mud, Apples, Milk

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Even though I didn’t grow up milking cows myself, I grew up with people who did, and I knew their connections to the cows, and I knew some of their cows. This poem makes me homesick for a childhood I almost, but didn’t quite, have.

Mud, Apples, Milk
Michael Walsh

Of all things to miss, it’s silly
to miss how cows drowse in mud.
They blink slow as toads.
Instead I should miss
light on the blond corn
or trails of gravel dust
that rose like kites and vanished.

But I don’t miss that.
I miss how I could bring
bruised apples, press them
like smelling salts
to sleepy noses.
You had to let go
real fast or risk a finger
to the lick and snap.

I miss their udders too,
the mud fresh as wax
on the swollen skin.
Each day I broke the seals
with hot rags, and milk
flooded my palm—
a white creek down
the gully of my wrist.

from The Dirt Riddles. © University of Arkansas Press, 2010.

How Lightning Strikes

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How Lightning Strikes
Mary Ann McFadden

When hail beats down the ripening wheat
as it sometimes does, where can we turn our despair
except on those we love? When we’ve kicked the cats
and split hairs, and spat at our aging faces int he mirror,

what have we done? The weather isn’t fair.

It’s also true that we don’t deserve summer.
Here summer comes, ready or not, and though we may hate
loving it, this pup the size of a grizzly bear that romps on us
and licks our necks, there’s no escape,

nothing to pay for the pleasure.

We stand here looking out to mountain peaks
in air so clear our eyes ache, considering how a hunk of chalk
scrapes against the slate, and how the days remark,
how nothing stays the same, there’s nothing we can keep

and how lightning strikes, and isn’t a punishment.

Philadelphia Cunt (revised)

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Philadelphia Cunt
(1.3)

Andorra Cunt
Bridesburg Cunt
Bush Hill Cunt
Brewerytown Cunt
Fishtown Cunt
Nicetown Cunt
Callowhill Cunt
Crefeld Cunt
Cobbs Creek Cunt
Cresheim Cunt

Center City Cunt
Logan Circle Cunt
Old City Cunt
Tourist Cunt:
Liberty Bell Cunt
Franklin Court Cunt
Ducks Tour Cunt
Rocky Statue Cunt
Love Statue Cunt
Independence Mall Cunt
Nation’s Oldest Zoo Cunt
Big Rusty Clothespin Cunt

Chestnut Cunt
Walnut Cunt
Spruce Cunt
Pine Cunt
Market Cunt
Cherry Cunt
Arch Cunt
Vine Cunt

Broad Street Cunt
South Philly Cunt
North Philly Cunt
West Philly Cunt
Northwest Cunt
Northeast Cunt

Mainline Cunt:
Bala Cynwyd Cunt
Bryn Mawr Cunt
Gladwyn Cunt
Ardmore Cunt
Haverford Cunt
Baldwin Prep Cunt
Rosemont Cunt
St. Joseph’s Cunt

Conshohocken Cunt
Connawingo Cunt
King of Prussia Cunt
Manayunk Cunt
Moyamensing Cunt
Passyunk Cunt
Pennypack Cunt
Poetguessing Cunt
Schuykill Cunt
(Sure-kill Cunt)
Tulpehoken Cunt
Wissahickon Cunt
Wissinoming Cunt

Kensington Cunt
Mechanicsville Cunt
Ninth & Lehigh Cunt
Ogontz Cunt
Oxford Circle Cunt
Powelton Village Cunt
Queen Village Cunt
Rittenhouse Cunt
Saint Martin’s Cunt
Spring Garden Cunt
Spruce Hill Cunt
Squirrel Hill Cunt
Strawberry Mansion Cunt
Tacony Palmyra Cunt
University City Cunt

Cornerstore Cunt
Diner Cunt
Traffic Circle Cunt
Dogleg Cunt
Mummer Cunt
Philadelphia Lawyer Cunt
Christ Church Cunt
AFSC Cunt
Painted Bride Cunt
Italian Market Cunt
Reading Terminal Cunt
Flower Show Cunt
Kimmel Center Cunt
National Constitution Center Cunt
Please Touch Museum Cunt
City of Brotherly Love Cunt

Amish Cunt
Catholic Cunt
Jewish Cunt
Quaker Cunt
Main Line Presbyterian Cunt

Cheese Steak Cunt:
Chubby’s Cunt
D’Alessandro’s Cunt
Pat’s Cunt
Geno’s Cunt
Jim’s Cunt
Cheez Whiz Cunt
Scrapple Cunt
Hoagie Cunt
Water Ice Cunt
Soft Pretzel Cunt
Naked Chocolate Cunt
Black Cherry Wishniak Cunt
Tastykake Cunt
Butterscotch Krimpet Cunt
Pignoli Cunt
Cannoli Cunt
Cannoli Cunt
Cannoli Cunt

My Horse Body (version2)

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My Horse Body
version 1 draft 2

My ears, soft, tall, all movement
and knowledge,
grew in first. I felt them
swiveling on my head,
attuned to sounds in all directions,
shuddering if a fly landed.

Then my tail—long, black, hairs of thin
steel cable. Then my mane, and with my mane
my muscled horse neck.

A few months after, eating
my Cheerios oats, my muzzle
appeared, causing me to lower my head
into my cereal box feed bag.
My mom could not fathom
an equine daughter,
could know me only
as an untamed thing.

Soon my horse eyes opened,
my new peripheral vision
giving me access to boundaries
my world wished to be blindered.

My horse body flailed, all awkward foal,
then gangly filly slowly
filling out to glistening chestnut mare.
I would have been a three-year-old,
primed for the Derby, when I was 12,
but it was 1975.
Ruffian was dead.
I gave up racing,
more crippled by my grief
than she had been by her courage.

My horse legs came back, muscle
and tendon, at 16, when I bought
my Trek. The bike was a horse,
I was a horse, two horses racing,
a pair of horses, harnessed
by toe clips.

I gave up the bike
for a boyfriend who needed
my constant attention,
and my horse body
grew wane, grew specter—
even the memory
of its mass, of my power
faded as shadowed as the Polaroid
of me at seven on a pony
for the first time.

What does strength do
if we forget we had it?
Where does desire live
when the body is boarded up?

How is the snow queen vanquished,
so water, the blood of the land,
runs again and sun warms muscles
back to movement?

A single gesture
can be enough. My lover’s hand,
held flat, finger first across my lips
then shoved hard into my mouth,
pulling my lips tightly back,
my tongue down—a bit,
of warm flesh, but still I tasted
cold iron and was again horse,
shaken by the speed
of the metamorphosis
by the ease of settling in
again to my four-legged body.

And now I’ve dyed
my gray hair bright chestnut.
When I feel skittish
I head-bump her, nip
her neck affectionately
with strong horse teeth.
When I feel hungry
to run, she mounts me
bare-back and we ride,
two women together,
a horse and a human, harnessed
by desire.

We ride until I am lathered
and winded, until she
leads me home
and rubs me down
and covers me with a blanket
woven with her initials
and I doze, standing,
until I am ready to consent
to again be human.

When I was a Boy

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As I’ve been thinking about imaginary bodies my mind has wandered to the Dar Williams song “When I was a Boy.” on her album The Honesty Room. Certainly one of my imaginary bodies as a child was a boy—not so much in terms of sex as of gender privilege. I wanted what boys had, all that freedom and independence and roughness that was praised and not scolded.

When I was a Boy
music and lyrics by Dar Williams

I won’t forget when Peter Pan came to my house, took my hand
I said I was a boy; I’m glad he didn’t check.
I learned to fly, I learned to fight
I lived a whole life in one night
We saved each other’s lives out on the pirate’s deck.

And I remember that night
When I’m leaving a late night with some friends
And I hear somebody tell me it’s not safe,
someone should help me
I need to find a nice man to walk me home.

When I was a boy, I scared the pants off of my mom,
Climbed what I could climb upon
And I don’t know how I survived,
I guess I knew the tricks that all boys knew.

And you can walk me home, but I was a boy, too.

I was a kid that you would like, just a small boy on her bike
Riding topless, yeah, I never cared who saw.
My neighbor come outside to say, “Get your shirt,”
I said “No way, it’s the last time I’m not breaking any law.”

And now I’m in this clothing store, and the signs say less is more
More that’s tight means more to see, more for them, not more for me
That can’t help me climb a tree in ten seconds flat

When I was a boy, See that picture? That was me
Grass-stained shirt and dusty knees
And I know things have gotta change,
They got pills to sell, they’ve got implants to put in,
they’ve got implants to remove

But I am not forgetting…that I was a boy too

And like the woods where I would creep, it’s a secret I can keep
Except when I’m tired, ‘cept when I’m being caught off guard
And I’ve had a lonesome awful day, the conversation finds its way
To catching fire-flies out in the backyard.

And so I tell the man I’m with about the other life I lived
And I say, “Now you’re top gun, I have lost and you have won”
And he says, “Oh no, no, can’t you see

When I was a girl, my mom and I we always talked
And I picked flowers everywhere that I walked.
And I could always cry, now even when I’m alone I seldom do
And I have lost some kindness
But I was a girl too.
And you were just like me, and I was just like you”

My Horse Body

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another early draft of a poem that’s growing out of the “Fatty Girls, Imaginary Cocks, and Vaginas Like Bookstores” workshop at Split This Rock. If you weren’t one of those horse-loving kids in the mid-70’s, you can learn more about Ruffian here.

My Horse Body
1.1

My ears, soft, tall, all movement
and knowledge
grew in first. I felt them
swiveling on my head,
attuned to sounds in all directions,
shuddering if a fly landed.

Then my tail—long, black, hairs like thin
steel cables. Then mane, and with my mane
my muscled horse neck.

A few months after, eating oats
in the form of Cheerios,
my muzzle appeared, causing me
to lower my mouth into the cereal box
feed bag. My mom could not imagine
a horse body so knew me only
as an untamed thing.

Soon my horse eyes opened
and my peripheral vision
was from that morning vast.

My body then was all awkward foal
then gangly filly slowly filling out
to glistening chestnut mare.
I would have been a three-year-old,
primed for the Derby, when I was 12,
but it was 1975.
Ruffian was dead.
I gave up racing,
more crippled by my grief
than she had been by her courage.

My horse legs came back, muscle
and tendon, at 16, when I bought
my Trek. The bike was a horse,
I was a horse, two horses racing,
a pair of horses, harnessed
by toe clips.

My horse body has always held
my strength. My horse body held
my secrets. My horse body kicked
and fought when cougars threatened,
when safe, my horse body munched apples
and rolled in the grass in the sun.

This winter I dyed my gray hair chestnut.
I’ve resumed head-butting and affectionate
neck-nipping with my big horse teeth.
If you dare, offer me a carrot, sweet hay,
oats, a bare-backed ride, hard and fast
and long and sweaty. Offer—if you think
you can handle a horse.