Hands

Souza was a child when she last saw him. Her step-father. Young. Virile. Manipulating hands. Now he is middle-aged. Haggard and worn, punished by the world. For armed robbery in his late twenties, drug abuse, self-inflicted wounds, instigated tavern fights, women with restraining orders. He had gripped metal bars, stepped over urine on concrete, read the bible and claimed salvation.
But Souza believed he had not been punished enough.
"Admit what you did to me as a girl, as your daughter," she demanded.
He stood there dumbfounded, a blankness to his eyes like paper without ink.
"I don't understand," he mumbled. Stuck his hands in his pockets and looked to the ground. Dry, arid earth at his feet. Wind whipping up dust on his shoes.
"You can't even look at me, can you."
He dug his boot into the dirt, shrugged his broad shoulders, looked again, for a moment, a boy of twenty-one. A new father. One she trusted and adored. Gripped her tiny fingers into his shirt sleeve as if he could fly away at any time, disappear as fast as bath water down the drain.
When he touched her, he loved her. When he struck her with the oak switch, she deserved to be punished.
"Look at me, you coward!"
He did not look up. Did not see the dark thunder clouds enveloping the blue overhead, rushing toward them swift as a river's current.
He did not see Souza's alcohol dependency, her years of trauma therapy, panic attacks that kept her from opening front doors, scars on her wrists, the men she let use her body like a Raggety-Ann doll.
He saw only the burying of his boots, the dust turning to carmeled mud as the rain sheeted down, drenching them.
Souza lifted her face to the sky, opened her mouth and swallowed the rain.
"I should go," he said, turning his boots, his shoulders, his covered hands away from her.
"Wait!" Souza yelled, swallowing what water was left in her throat.
He faced her, then. Eye to eye. Adult to adult. Victim to victimizer.
"What is it you want from me," he said cruelly. Clenched, tense fists out of pockets, spine straight as an iron rod.
She stepped back a foot. Fear resurfacing. The tow-headed girl in the bath with her barbie dolls, holding her breath underwater so the sound of boots mounting the stairs, the slow creaking of the bathroom door, the sharp, ridged sound of a zipper being yanked down could not be heard.
Souza stepped back once more, puddled muddy rain reaching her ankles. She dipped her head to the ground and whispered.
"Everything."

The Rising

Stretch like a feline, spine
curved, tailbone up, an urgent
humming of the skin--Oh,
let's give a name to all the outer
parts--infectious, protruding name,
a name the prods the outer edges
of the sheet, loosens tuck,
spills a cup of wine on white--
a name that lengthens teeth,
toenails, dark roots on the scalp,
a name along the lines of inner roaring.

Pedestal

It is time for me to think of my mother as human. For ten years I have miniaturized her into a precious, red-lipped porcelain doll and sat her gleaming down to the world on the highest shelf. She has sat there angelic and still in her floral dress and satin gloves, a fresh flowered lei hanging egg-shaped from her ceramic neck. I have replaced the lei every week, refusing to let the blooms wrinkle and brown, become stiff with age and lack of care. She has become the paragon of human life, of motherhood, of martyrdom. She can do no wrong sitting calm and scented on her shelf.
For ten years, since her death, this is where she has been, where I have placed her in my adult life. It is time now, as much as I fear it, to use my hollowed hands and bring her down.

To be continued...

I'm finally writing!!!

Dilated To Eight

(revised poem from 5 years ago)

Gravel-etched, worn hooves scrape the ripe
insides of my womb like unruly, unbroke
Stallions thrashing in a caged fence being
branded by red iron. I buckle over on all fours
to the slick floor and scream as a candy-striper
grips my monstrous girth with nails razor-edged
and painted like a Rodeo Drive hooker. She lifts
me into the wheelchair and barks incoherent
slang into my ears as a Sheltie would yap
into the fur-trimmed ears of sheep. I am wheeled
into the delivery room, botched metal wheels slanting
sideways, the scrape of metal on tile, tile on top
of wooden planks, wood covering concrete mounting
a full foot above soil. New surface upon old, synthetic
upon nature. Stinger-nosed needles fly in front
of my eyes and prick my skin sweating a sour apple
vapor. They puncture the shape of a semi-colon below
my bicep, grape-veined as if a hookworm drenched
in Chianti crocheted it with a drunk thread. The nurse,
an impatient dame of unmentionable age yanks
my legs apart and props them in the stirrups. “Push,”
I hear. “Bear down, girl,” I hear through mechanical
pulsing of blips on screens, the crisp rustling of curtains
opening, closing, opening again, screams of death
and life behind partitions separating rooms, distancing
our donations to the world. We shriek, thrash, lay
defenseless on our backs like grasshoppers turned
onto their wings in the grass, dependant on unskilled
hands to turn the feet back to ground. At last,
a frame, a hairless pointed cone, violet-seamed eyes,
prune-skinned toes, testicles the size of plums pushes
through my boned barriers into the nurse’s knotty-
pined hands. Dusk has crept in through the blinds,
smearing copper shadows against the wall once
a seedless melon hue. “Hello, you.” Who will you be
besides this mesh of thrift-store limbs, recycled
from my loins as an arch-angel with veiled wings
and a halo resigned to taper off as you age?
I will bundle you in woolen quilts before the frost
of night can chill. I will, my love. Lavish you
with lullabies, the sweet humming through the softening
of my throat. All, my child will be soft now.