Martini
Girl
Her bathrobe is hot pink and covered in cocktails. Appliques,
not spills.
Creme de menthe in a delicate, stemmed glass. Bright tangerine
liquid with
two cherries in a short, squat tumbler. Classic martinis with
olives peeking
through the liquid. All-out, froufrou, fruity concoctions
with umbrellas popping out the
top. She wears it when she's hung over, and it doesn't even
make her feel sick. They're harmless, these terry cloth and
satin-stitched
drinks. And the miniature pink martini on the top of each
slip-on puff of a
shoe. She walks to the mailbox in this outfit, tall glass
of ice-water in
hand, Advil rushing to her brain, secretly purchased Valium
calming her. She
sashays, delicate like a bell-shaped flower. She doesn't care
who sees her.
She has moved to a dilapidated paradise where it is legal
to drink alcohol
in the back seat of a moving vehicle, to carry go-cups out
of bars, and to
walk, robe falling open, black sunglasses hiding Jeanne Moreau
eye circles,
hips shimmying, in a hot pink cocktail appliqued bathrobe,
down a jasmine
draped alley, to the street.
To The Other
I.
I slept on sheets stained with your blood. I ran my hands
over the scars of
your scratches. Where are you, out in the night, with whom
are you
sleepwalking? The beautiful child between you and a dark figure
- tell me
that man who holds your child's hand is not my love. You stained
his sheets,
stained my heart, yet I could never blame you. You're a girl
in the
darkness, a woman in the light, bloody fingernails, paint-streaked
hands. In
your dreams you teeter on the moat, castle walls, one moment
from leaping.
We're connected by luxurious tenderness, bruised and ripe,
connected by our
darkness, by our light. By stains on top of stains on his
sheets.
II.
I walk with him through 1000 fairy tales, dropping bread crumbs,
spinning
skeins of silk, unfurling golden hair and climbing towers.
Hunting clues,
surviving every hardship, eyes on the horizon. I never wanted
to be the good
girl, the perfect princess, but now I will pay even that fucked
up
patriarchal price. My magic is the good kind, dark priestess,
but even so
you must know that I will stop at nothing. My magic is love,
and the wayward
prince of elves is mine.
III.
Are you bleeding in your spiderweb hammock, are you bleeding
under a full
moon? What do you draw down, witchgirl, gazing up at the glowing
circle from
your Remedios Varo room? Do you want my lover in your hammock,
to spin him
into your web? Your web is blood and herbs and smoke and incense
and
mirrors. His web is hope and confusion and lust and love and
lies. Lies. His
web spins thick and frightening, and I will myself to remain
caught in it
until I die.
IV.
Nightflowers bloom around your cauldron, smoke and steam rising
in the
scented Southern air. You toss your herbs and chant your desires;
I hear you
say his name and I can never let you say it like I do. I can
never let you
say it while the center of everything ruptures, and the perfect
pain of the
perfect love explodes like a serotonin-flooded e-trip skyfull
of stars. Go
on, toss and chant and stir and watch it bubble. He and I
are making magic
with the primal always-present bodies of our own earth and
air and spirit
and water and fire.
After Happening Upon a Saved Postcard from a Rich
Aunt, 24 March, 2003
Oh, edifice, your tiny tiles sparkle in the desert sun. Such
a shade of
blue, dreamy and electric, such a gold, such yellows. Your
beauty stands
through centuries, unscathed by war after war, battle after
battle, years on
years on decades on decades on centuries on centuries on millennia
on
millennia of sand scraping, rain lashing, lightning and fireballs
and swords
and bullets and curses and kisses and prayers. Edifice, are
you trembling?
What is time to you? What is your perspective, bathing in
tears? Do you
understand good and evil? Tell us what you know, tell us pure,
give us your
wisdom. Would the most powerful listen, if suddenly a building
should talk?
Goodbye, beauty. I'd wish you luck, but luck won't have it.
Goodbye,
ancient. Goodbye.
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