16 notes

I Was Not Supposed to Remember

the smell of geraniums

what perfume penetrates nostrils not grown

from a bottle ‘n’ mother’s wrists ‘n’ just a dab

behind each ear I was not supposed to remember her ears

like mine, the earlobe without lobe really

the mole that marked her

mine.

I was not supposed to remember being she

the daughter of some other Indian some body some where

an orphaned child somewhere somebody’s

cast-off half-breed I wasn’t

supposed to remember the original rape.

I wasn’t supposed to remember

my whitedaddy and baby’s cry

my white father’s own orphanhood.

I was never to see my self reflected

in the cold steel frightened fluttering

I was not intended

to marry that man.
…..

I am a woman, childless

and I teach my stories to other
[p. 99]

childless women and somehow

the generations will propagate and prosper

and remember pre-memory

remember rose gardens thorn-pricked thumbs digging

into well-watered southern california soil kissing

the edge of steaming black-top

what is there left to remember

of those days

what is there left

to dirt How is it I remember

dirt when I grew up on asphalt?

How is it dirt means so much to me?

What is there to remember in a tree?

a tree

thoroughly tree

I, thoroughly hybrid

mongrel/mexicanyaqui/oakie girl.

“Yaquioakie” holds all the world

I knew as it shaped my abuela’s lips

calling in my breed-brother

thorough-bred primo,

sandy wool y pelos de indio

bent over bowls of albóndigas soup.
…..

[p. 100]

Mongrel is the name

that holds all the animal I am.

My legs split open straddling

the examination table she tells me

your fibroid ain’t no watermelon

just the size of a small navel orange

and I consider this sphere of influence

steadily growing behind my own navel

little satellites of smaller fibroids

floating inside its citric orbit.

I imagine the color/the taste of fruit/the bitterness

of peel and pleasure there is pleasured familiarity

as she moves her dark safe-sexed-gloved hand

up inside me a lesbian gesture

I, a lesbian monster

she recommends hormones

have you always been this hairy

yes, I say, I remember since I became a woman

with hair lots of it does that make a woman

or a lesbian

or an animal?

which brings me back to mongrel

and the hybrid sheep-goat I saw

in a magazine once

with pitiful pleading eyes

trying to bust out

of her genetically altered face
[p. 101]

and I saw my face in there

no matter how much I am loved

no matter how much woman

I am no matter how many women

hold and suck me

I am mirrored in those pitiful

lonesome

product of mutation

eyes.

19 notes

We gotta make a change…
It’s time for us as a people to start makin’ some changes.
Let’s change the way we eat, let’s change the way we live
and let’s change the way we treat each other.
You see the old way wasn’t working so it’s on us to do
what we gotta do, to survive