How To, page 3
and i prayed for him in the new moon park
and i called to him with my poetry
but perhaps i was not yet ready
because he did not come
instead the girls danced along with their arms
full of flowers
songbirds on their shoulders
they made me strawberry smoothies
decked with parasols
and photographs of fairies
and they told me that i had helped them
now we want to help you they said
their tears were like the rain that washed
grief’s memory
from my back step
we put on my grandmother’s tattered silk kimonos
and my eight-inch platforms
took photos of each other laughing and glamorous
and ate red velvet cake on rose petal strewn plates
they were my sisters and my daughters
and in those moments i forgot he was not there
and i forgot to fear
that he might never come
pain is like an onion
remove one layer and the next is there
keep peeling, my beloved
peeling and chopping
putting in the pan
fry it to translucency
and eat it
let it digest
it’s only been a year and a half
since he took your heart from your chest
peeled it chopped it fried it ate it spit it out
eventually a new one will grow back
eventually
the tears
will stop
ornate
what makes you think you can be so ornate,
my darling?
even your name means princess
even your hair with its long black curlicues
even your eyes such dark blue as to be violet
what makes you think you can use such words
paving your poems with jewels and lights?
and your heart!
desiring that much
as if it were a victorian valentine in your chest
polished pink quartz chambers
or even an elizabethan pomegranate rose
a rococo clock all golden and decked with cherubs
ornate and especially your sorrow what makes you think?
this is what—
your birthright
your sorrow a guide to lead you on your journey
it says go forth be bold be brilliant
desirous of what is yours
for this is who
you are
teenage fairy: for m
i didn’t feel like i was enough
so i changed my nose
and i changed my skin
and i changed my bones
and i changed my blood
and i changed my home
and i changed my love
and i changed my clothes
and i changed my belly
and i changed my friends
and i changed my mind
until the man i wanted came to me
but after a while he left anyway
and i was alone with this new self
we slept in our bed with the roses she and i
and we sat by the pond waiting for water lilies
and we wrote poems to each other
and we photographed ourselves in the mirror
and i was still lonely, rummaging in the bed
in my sleep
seeking someone who had never been there at all
then this big-eyed, long-legged
fourteen-year-old fairy wrote to me
and she said she didn’t think she was beautiful
and i told her not to let her pain confuse her
trick her into thinking untruths
and i told her that her pain was not her fault
but that she could use it to make beauty
instead of to hurt herself
and that night i slept peacefully
in my own arms
the little mermaid: for ama
you dreamed of gills so you would not drown in the
sea of him you dreamed of a tail instead of legs to
keep him out you gave up your voice hoping that
would bring you the casing of green and silver scales
layered over hips shining your long legs fluttering
into fins where once were feet in shiny mary janes
you had the right hair already white lighting your
face you had a strand of your mother’s pearls
beneath your pillow you had the right dreams of
blue-green water faraway coastal cities where you
belonged instead of those parched towns where the
men hunted creatures like you and mounted them in
their living rooms but you did not get your fish tail
and your voice was gone even your legs didn’t work
quite right anymore you hobbled away from home
leaving a trail of blood and pearls men and women
followed you wanted to touch you and you let them
hoping one would know the spell but it was not until
you reached the pacific and flung yourself naked
into the surf your hair writhing like seaweed on the
water your eyes turning greener with the reflection
your breasts and between your legs finally your own
this is when you grew gills to really breathe this is
when you grew a tail prettier than your best french
gown this is when you found your scream your
poetry your voice
neptune’s daughter
confused by her fish’s tail
she wanted legs to walk with
a womb to birth a child
she blamed her father for this impediment
to her true nature
something she had inherited from him
like the potential for illness
oversensitivity
a tendency toward depression
but oh he had also given her so much
twinkling eyes an insatiable
love of life
the ability to turn sorrow into incandescence
you are an artist he had told her
though he had never shouted
what she really needed to hear
and what, given her tail, was questionable anyway
you my darling, cherished one
are a beautiful
woman
miniature mouse
miniature mouse knows these things
she is still young enough to remember
that once she had a boy attached to her body
their very viscera entwined
their kiss just a natural proximity of lips
and even the roses and the little animals
were further extensions of them
so when they were ripped apart it hurt her more
than those who have utterly forgotten
and she must record the travesty of separation
again and again
the amputated limbs
the gouged out eyes
the double heart torn asunder
this is the task of the young, the artist
who remembers
for valentina
value your musical name your fashion sense
your strength
your light and dark your uncanny ability to appear
resurrected from the dead
believe him when he tells you you are beautiful
it will only hurt you both not to
(it is true besides)
dress as hard-core as you fancy or as sexy
wear black while your skin has enough light
not to absorb it
show off your belly and your breasts
as much as possible
someday when you have wrinkles
you may want to wear the clothes you sneer at now
spit swear dance fuck just don’t smoke cigarettes
and do wear sunscreen
(i wish i had listened to opinionated old women)
don’t be afraid to age
you will be more self-assured thus just
as fabulous as now
(except that then you will know it)
hold on to kind men don’t let them go
searching for the ones who will prove to
you the untrue things
you believe about yourself
choose to believe the ones who see
what you may not
choose to believe in your own myth
your own glamour
your own spell
a young woman who does this
(even if she is just pretending)
has everything
valentina screama
valentina is a doll with a spun sugar pink
pompadour
streaked with white lightning
eyes like ink melting pooling from the pupil
to the iris
to the slashes of lashes
marilyn monroe skin
dead-girl blue fingernails
she comes dressed in a replica of the egyptian gown
that a female vampire wore in the original dracula
long silvery pleats skimming her hips
and a midriff top
held with a giant scarab
but in her black coffin-shaped box is a pair
of tiny black converse
torn black jeans and a joey ramone t-shirt
for her more casual moments
valentina also comes with a tiny silver pistol
that shoots red glitter hearts
like a glam goth cupidette
she has another secret weapon too
every girl wants a valentina screama doll
every boy secretly does too
they don’t know that at night she steps
out of her black box
and watches you sleep
if you have been cruel or false
she bites you with her other secret weapon
the charming fangs hidden behind
her mysterious lips
it is not an unpleasant sensation
more like a tingling chill
like a spider bite that swells with venom and itches
to remind you
of who you might someday be
as i remember it: for lily
because now as i remember it
there was almost always a smell of flowers in the air
all i had to do was read poetry and write
run through the low green hills
once a pack of us walked across town
to a chinese restaurant
ate mu shu vegetables the thin pancakes the thinly
cut strands of cabbage and carrot
and tofu the lovely plum sauce
a dark moonless night
the porch lights of the old houses on
the leaves whispered threatening rain
but we got home dry
my boyfriend stayed in my dorm room he was sweet
as kind as a girl
on weekends we took a train into the city there was
music there were white wine beat
poet bars with sawdust on the floor candlelight
through the glass melting golden
colors everywhere pink taffeta thrift store dresses or
cream lace ones with blue
ribbons spreading out around me like petals
turquoise satin pumps with pointed toes
john doe and exene signing my t-shirt
chinese pastries and vases decorated with dragons
and peonies
a beautiful black-haired girl
who was studying medicine and painted lilies
emerging from darkness
bought me sushi shaped like flowers
told me she had a crush on me
though i didn’t know how to reply
just as i didn’t know how to stay with that sweet
sweet boy
though when i dropped to ninety-five pounds
he put his woolen arms around me
and held me close
trying to keep away the cold
and my father’s cancer
though we never spoke of it
for karen: whose last name i can’t recall
i was afraid she would take my boyfriend away
the one with the wounded looking mouth
pale child’s eyes with starry lashes
like he’d just come out of the bathtub
he wore a white shirt, levi’s and black shoes
wrote me poetry
we went to hear punk bands in dark basements
in the city
stayed in a hotel gray as the mist gray as doves
i was convinced he would fall in love with her
her white blond hair her germanic features
that was before i had discovered my secret
wound the story of a triangle my father loved
my golden mother
my mother loved my father i dark haired
and invisible
so i starved myself as the excuse
and ran away before the boyfriend
with the hurt mouth the star eyes could
and when i returned to berkeley a year later
he was in japan meeting the woman who would later
be his wife
and the blonde?
she was in a class i had and when we shared
our poetry
hers was about a thin girl in cowboy boots
and an antique peach silk slip
that showed the outline of her legs beneath
a girl so much more fragile than the poet herself
who stomped fiercely in black
both of them lost in a land of earthquakes
she was the second person ever to make me poetry
maybe i had it all wrong
maybe i was the one who was supposed to fall
in love with her
and now i can’t even remember her name
joanna: wood thorn fairy
skin white roses hair like red
she chose a body that was still small
to help her remember who she really was
she refused to walk
danced everywhere
on solid feet
the men she found could not keep up
staggered and fell
behind
so she waited
skipping down the streets of the big
dangerous citadel
rearranging the silver bells
and cockleshells
and pretty maids in rows
in her apartment near the park
of angels and rapists
birthing books instead
they sat at the table
drinking tea from china cups
with faces and feet
they slept in the white four-poster bed with her
they danced with her in the evenings before the fire
and read her their stories at night
later, she began to give
birth to other things
tiny tables and chairs
made of twigs
acorn beds with mossy coverlets
miniature bouquets of violets
in miniature baskets
life-sized paper dolls with their souls
painted on their torsos
these reminded her of who she was
and kept her happy for a while
until a plane crashed through two towers
and the terrorized
city
burst into tears of flame
he had twinkly
eyes and a gap between his teeth
was a bartender downtown
where bankers and publishers soiréed next door
to the corpses of cows
he poured her a drink and told her
about his paintings
he danced the whole dance with her
and then another and another
loved her soul, her voice, her breasts, her legs,
her skin, her hair
but by now
under the roses her hair was silvery
and her eggs mostly gone
this did not mean a baby
was not possible
they had to feed it
it cried just like a real one
they called it boo and bobo and baby bee
it needed to be suckled and nurtured
read to played with
loved until it grew
and learned to dance
when they lay together in rooms
overlooking the park
the sweetness nestled between them
they remembered the secret green world
they had come from
and knew they could return to it
as only elementals can
they forgot for a moment
that the city was
or ever had been
afire
selene: the dress with the cigarette burns
remember college
did you once wear silk or satin
slips with black boots?
did you once smoke
in the basement of a new haven punk club?
did you ever burn your skirt?
precisely
just so
little holes gaping prettily
around the hem
like mouths?
now you like to curl up at home
