Poem from Extra Credit Assignment

Low Lust

Paintings overflow the halls and walls
While a microphone suit calls for social change.
Am I the only one that finds this strange?

A business suit knifes through the waves of barefoot souls – he is our leader.
He calls for the rappers to rap next to the easels and color palettes.
He calls for the brush strokes to conduct improvisational jazz.
He calls for the musicians to point their toes and dance.
He calls for the poets to pray while the espresso machine groans.
He calls for the hope of the didgeridoo.

He could be in a café or a warehouse,
Manufacturing or fracturing.
One part red dye number 3.
One part hope.
One part dreams.
One part thigh.
Two part lie.
Incantation.
Add fifty dollars.
Shake well before opening.

It is plastic. It is made in Taiwan.
It is hard. It is silicone.
It has roots in logic. It has roots in nothing.
Is this community? Is this creativity?

Take part in genuine collaboration for social justice education!
Make a donation to my future corporation!

Nudes

Lone Woolf

Nude #1: A Room

I wake up in a room
that isn’t mine.
There is a book on the table

so I open her up.
As I turn the pages, it appears.
I stare at a page of words

that look exactly like me:
full of creases
and coffee stains.

It is a letter written to my soul in 1929.
It almost flows waves out and engulf me
And I realize she killed me and only Shakespeare is left.

All because I did not have a room of my own.
But I am not dead –
And still, I do not have what is essential:

a room of one’s own.
So I wonder,
will I die tonight?

Nude #2: Lover

You are old until I melt backwards through time,
until I look in the mirror
and see my eyes are yours.

My face is unrecognizable, a ripple in the mirror,
but I know that deep release of heat under my skin
when I think of her,

the way you did when you imagined Orlando.
I know you did this to me,
back when I read your letters to Vita.

You planted a marble of truth
that sprouted with inevitability.
I know that if she asked me to write her a story,

I would wish to invent Orlando for her, too:
Unending time
and unending genders.

Nude #3: Classroom

I am wide awake in a women’s studies class.
I am so confused because everyone is calling me a feminist,
and I scream, “My name is Virginia Woolf!”

I can’t take it anymore, this world.
Carrying these weights like fuel,
I eat them into my stomach fire.

The oppression builds and builds and builds,
like steam with nowhere to escape,
I know I will blow.

This is what it feels like when female is irrelevant.
The world just keeps reproducing
the same prejudice over and over and over.

Synesthesia

28. Make New Words

Wake up when the cell phone puffles heavy perfume.
If it is still too tiring, find another place to mend your dreams
– but only for a Mr. Rogers timeshare
because your uncle is clucking through the silky cave.
Yup. He left an egg. So throw it back through the decaying hemisphere.
Are your eyes open? If not, step into the fresh scrimple
where the spicy sand will twinkle down to your toes.
Find a towel. Spicy sand has a tendency to stick like silent noodles.
Wear something tall, like a laughstring
and on your feet, something wet like carbon monoxide.
You may get hungry. Bitter bumps should help.
Make sure to shuffle your academic swords before you leave!

Down the hall, board the yo-yo box.
One of those shrill jellyfish tries to make you late.
He feeds on you and takes your time.
But you are stronger and can free yourself
from his voluptuous breath.
But you still lost time.
The spaceship is boiling now and only you can squish the heat.
So stick on that spaceship until the lunar modules burst a fragrant green
and ignore the whispering winkles – it’s just a show!
In general, avoid eye contact until you have eyes.
You can afford to be squid ink drunk
– the kind that makes you wretch with clarity.

Pretend you’re at school,
skipping and dodging all those nuggets
who stammer around with leafy giggles.
Their hopes are like gliplings,
eyes full of amorous despair,
mumbling the scent of earthquakes.