why do you need me to be a Woman?

if you go mining in my vagina,

it’s not what you find that will blind you.

i hold no knives.

the surprise is what you won’t find—

i stow no eggs waiting to become lives.

surprise: you won’t mind.

my vagina still shines.

There is a fire in the City of Peace.

א

I am the fire in the City of Peace.

I am bent on indiscriminate destruction.

All those who fight have ravaged the City.

In fighting, they destroy what they fight for.

I shall bring their efforts to their honest conclusion.

The City shall die.

I am the fire in the City of Peace.

ב

I am the fire in the City of Peace.

I know what brings together people who are at each other’s throats.

Mutual disaster, caused by neither side, brings together people who are at each other’s throats.

In fighting me, they shall stop fighting each other.

The city shall be saved.

I am the fire in the City of Peace.

ג

I am the Fire in the City of Peace.

Fight me not, lest ye not see Me for Me.

Thou shalt see Me.

I, the Lord your God, am the City of Peace.

I am the Fire in the City of Peace.

ד

I am the City of Peace.

The fire purifies my shame.

My shame is not my scream of pleasure in the forbidden.

My shame is my feigned scream of pleasure in the permitted.

I am the City of Peace.

ה

I am the City, purified by the Fire which is God.

Why then cannot I stop also being the Firefighter?

Why can't I stop fighting the fire in the City of Peace?

This is a monster’s dream, conveyed to me by phone:

I sculpt the missing parts of a dog out of leftover pizza. He whimpers when I make him eat it.

It’s the custom here, so I try not to pause when I see youths floating in formaldehyde.

What poetry? I can peel the poetess, layer by cling-wrap layer.

What’s-Left-Behind speaks. This is what he tells me:

"Do you want to know how to control poetry?

Every third day I lose my middle toe. And on that day I’m sure I’m not a poet."

Paschal

On a pilgrimage with my brother
to pay homage to our sister’s new child.

A path around the mountain, past tiered adobe houses
dusted white, dusted tan,

dusted with powdered sugar and cocoa,

climb the right ladder to the white hut, and there,

on a bed on stilts that rests on the dusted floor,

she is.

My sister’s daughter.

Eyes oval and complex like a fly’s,
rainbow sheens across the countless facets of their lenses,

facets arrayed like tiles on a roof.
She’s big, too, and learns quickly.
It seems like a secret,

a bond, because I remember the interminable wait
for my little brother to learn to speak,

but this one already understands.
Quick to learn,

and already trying to soften things for other people.

Even if no one else can, I can see
that Fly already knows how to move out of the way,

to put the broom within my sister’s reach.
It seems like a sweet, if sad, trait,

but my mother, Fly’s grandmother, speaks.

Marked.

By her eyes, she’s marked.

I knew about that, but not about the way Fly’s skin scars,

tender to the touch like a the skin of flu patient.

Marked, but so what? I’m marked too.

But my mother the witch, the wise woman --
she says it’s a sign of no good,

like Fly’s cleverness, too. She’s a changeling.

And I can already see my sister fading
as she foresees that the child will get taken away.

I can see now why Fly tries so hard to please even on this,
her second day of life.

I understand about being different,
about the cleverness you develop
in trying to pay off a guilt that was never your birthright.

Whose guilt is it? And who will pay for the loss of this one?

Semi-Crown of Sort-of-Sonnets for Sasha

I

I met a girl named Sasha yesterday.

She asked me how her blue-gray eyes appeared

when she stared through me to the wall beyond.

“The mirror doesn’t show me how they look,”

she said. I knew, because I too had tried

to see my eyes unfocused in the glass.

“I know,” I told her, wondering, because

who knew another person thought of eyes?

Of retinas and focus length, and how

observers classify one’s crooked gaze?

“I like you.” That’s what Sasha said. “I like

you too,” I said, and leaned into her arms.

Meditation upon Wondering Whether My Brother Will Visit Soon

It’s hot in the department store.

My mother’s mission: Buy a Shirt for Brother.

My brother’s mission: Thwart Mom's Mission.

I am a loyal sister who cries when my brother gets a spanking.

My mission: Be Brother's First Lieutenant, i.e., We Must Leave the Store Shirt-Free.

The sooner we exasperate my mother, the sooner we leave.

I broadcast my conspiratorial boredom by wandering off a little,

among shirt racks and ties

and beige new-clothes-and-metal-poles smells.

My brother marches indignantly towards me

holding a shirt that’s on the teal end of sky blue.

“Do you like this shirt?”

I do, but I remind myself,

We Must Leave the Store Shirt-Free.

My answer is clear.

“No.” Ummmm, “Too plain.”

But wait! I spy drooping hope.

“I thought you’d think it was pretty.”

But—the mission—………and yet,

“Oh, yeah, I mean, I do think it’s pretty—”

Too late. Nothing I can say will take it back.

All I want in the world

is for him to know

that I’m on his side.

Ten summers afterwards,

I will still rewind that conversation

wishing I could get it right.

But by then I will believe my brother

when he reminds me that the best way

to be a good first lieutenant

is to believe my own eyes.

Betrayal

In the summer you write me a letter

about the smell of porch wood in the sun.

In the winter

you and I

stand in the blistering cold

and sing a duet at a bus stop.

When winter comes again

you say

“I don’t like to sing with you

and I never have.”

I ask myself

could it possibly have been you

who noticed the smell of wood?

I don’t believe you exist.

I don’t believe you have ever existed.

The porch-wood you.

I tell you this.

Do you have an opinion?

The phone rings.

You’ll tell me your opinion later.

It’s later

and you have found me in my room.

I ask silently,

What is your opinion?

You offer me a pack of unwanted

yellow flowery tissues.

Is it a peace offering?

I don’t want them

but would rather take them than waste them.

You know this and

sneer at me for it.

Not a peace offering, then.

What just happened? asks my roommate.

Laughter rips through me like retching.

Violent,

unexpected,

unwelcome,

unquenchable.

It’s later still.

A spider jumps into my life like an

unmet deadline.

I leap away and stand back breathing hard, wielding a

yellow flowery tissue,

this my bayonet against my harmless opponent.

How silly;

and yet I can’t let him go,

can’t let him inhabit my bed like a

forgotten errand,

lurking at the margins

unseen but at times suddenly

urgent.

I lunge and hold my breath,

willing myself absent for the moment of death.

But even though I hold my breath and close my eyes,

I am still far too present at the moment when

a tiny spider infrastructure

fractures under my thumb.

The crunch,

like a bite,

makes me jump and shiver.

I am shuddering. But I

revel in the

fate of your

yellow flowery tissue.

How quivery it looks now,

faux forty-cent optimism

lined with something dead and

leggy.

How crystalline.