Girls in the front yard

Turning cartwheels
Feet to the air
Hair to the ground
Turning sky green, grass blue
Flipping narratives on a sunny afternoon

Don't let anyone tell you you're not allowed

Catwalk, spacewalk
Overqualified for the Ted Talk
Girls, for you it's just a cakewalk

Homemaker, humanitarian
Risk-taker, octogenarian
They can't say you're not allowed

Corner office door: your name
Tell them you deserve to get paid the same

They may try to buy you, sell you
Sell to you, buy for you
But you're priceless
You're priceless
Don't mince words, no niceness
Say it with me now,
"I'm priceless."
You're allowed

Bad at Love

After Halsey
(A 3/4 Drabble)

If you were more beautiful
Had a shinier personality
More golden-hearted
Perhaps you could inspire love
But as you are?
You can only move him to anger
You deserve the ire, have earned the neglect
Choose loneliness if you wish to avoid the accusations
Liar, traitor, screwed-up
Or suffer like a heroine
You didn't leave because you were stupid
You're alone because you are unlovable
You're lucky he never hit you
The next one will

Logic 1-800-273-8255

After Alessia Cara and Khalid

I can't say I know
Even though I know
Cuz things that happened that long ago
I just smothered
Slicked over like butter
People can't imagine me sad
Why should they
When my life's never been that bad?
But even people with easy lives feel worthless
Experience loss, disappointment, can't handle stress
And when I look back 20 years, what have I done?
No major accomplishments, haven't saved anyone
And I've been in that place with no friends for my phone
No use to anyone, no Building and Loan
Trust me anyway, Dear, we need you here
Life is better

Untitled Drabble

They didn't teach me about Puebla in school. Nothing about Hip-Hop culture. I read Allen Ginsburg and Zora Neale Hurston on my own. Didn't learn to change a tire. Have that same learned helplessness as the women I wonder at who don't pump their own gas. I'm not trying to appropriate, just compensate. I'm always behind the trends. No, I haven't read that book. I haven't heard that band. I read the headline, but not the story. I can't relate to you using the means of your favorite TV show. I'm excited about the movie everyone forgot 2 years ago.

Nice For What

After Drake

They chose not to write your name in the history books

Called the streets after Johns and Roberts

They can deny, but they can't change

That you reinforce the concrete, 

You be the bones of these buildings 

You the mother of this city, raising it

A crane taller than a skyscraper

You quiet your footsteps? Keep anger out of your voice? 

A woman who isn't angry?

Don't make me laugh

Boy, you walk in these heels,

Silent while others speak, and tell me you won't resent a single thing 

O, a nursery rhyme told you our disposition?

Honey, you trippin' 

Finesse

After Bruno Mars and Cardi B

I never had it going on

(too awkward and ugly)

And it didn't feel good to be me

(depression/self-loathing)

And still I miss it

The sparkle jeans I never owned

The butterfly hair clips I still own

For a hairstyle I couldn't create

It's passed me by

I could dig out my tattoo choker

But I'll look like I've never been 17

And am jealous of those who are

And I miss Alternative Rock

(I miss Alternative Rock)

I remember running on a treadmill with a discman

And that now I've been alive longer without you than with you

New Rules

After Dua Lipa

I can see how much this is hurting you. We’ve blurred the lines between pleasure and self destruction.
How long will you keep doing the same thing, expecting a different result?

Someone has figured you out too well. Don’t be afraid to change the rules of their game.
Don’t feel like you have to finish a turn before walking away.

Do you believe you have to make these decisions alone?

I know you neither want nor need my advice. But darling, you know I have to tell you.
I see flames rising around you. Drop what you’re holding and run.

Havana

Havana

After Camila Cabello

What, you never listened to “Copacabana?” The first rule of exotic locations is, “Don't fall in love.” You may wish to be followed back by a daydream, haunted. But the truth is, you will become a ghost in a memory. Mornings riding horseback on the beach, nights salsa dancing under colored lights, they won’t make you interesting. Just frustrated with your dead-end job and boring Tinder dates. You can live for the next trip, but you can’t plan the next romance. And if you could, it wouldn’t give you significance.

I could have told you, if you had asked me.

The Children (a ¾ drabble)

Underneath the rubble, the children are climbing. Up from beneath the rocks they are climbing. Through crumbled school buildings, past the crushed remains of desks upon which they wrote their names. Out of their homes and playgrounds under fallen cities and mountains they climb, into twilight of murk and waste. Still higher. Above the clouds of dust taller than buildings. Higher than the cries of their mothers and fathers can reach. Higher to the sun.

Photograph

My brother and I built cities in the dirt under the swing set when we were children. We dragged the hose through the backyard, created waterways, built structures out of clay, and drove the matchbox cars on paved streets. Each day we would look forward to adding to our metropolis. We delighted when we woke to find the dirt covered in raindrop craters. Then we could rebuild and we knew each time would be better than before. If we left to play tag, the walls of our houses stood sturdy until we came back.

My mother never took a photograph.

It All Comes Down to This

It all comes down to this

Someone happy to see you when you arrive

A hand to hold while you pray

The kitchen occupied

And the bathroom sink is always wet

And there’s a stack of tires in the extra room

And you sit in patio chairs

It’s not choosing the sofa so much as laughing in the furniture store

Not choosing a movie so much as staying at the end of each night

Nowadays many couples prefer separate sinks

We are just excited to be brushing our teeth together

And that is what it comes down to, my friends

Determined

Perhaps you carry the weight of a broken heart

Still under its heaviness, dance

A boring life seemed choreographed for you

The painful steps predetermined

Keep time to the quicker 1-2-3’s

That you hear from the life inside everything

When you have no music, tap out the rhythm

Hear the snap of fingers and the clap of hands

Maybe the lyrics didn’t give you joy

But no tempo has ever torn you down

You never forgot what the spotlight taught you

And no one believed your final bow

Take to the stage again, my friend

The crowd is awaiting you

Ang

          You never had any talent for dancing. No talent really for any of this. Doesn’t everyone presuppose that a hooker can never lose her job?

          You didn’t become your mother then. She could keep you alive. But she worked so hard to purge herself of invisibility that she forgot to make sure she hadn’t passed it on to her daughter.

          Her body would wave from the pole like a banner. It seemed she could rally them from the ends of the earth.

          “Keep love in your heart.”

          “Love is a work of the imagination, Mother, as you very well know.”

Angel

She used to say her men smelled like water. They wore colognes with names like Ocean Blue and Pure Ice. “They’re lonely,” she would say. This one lost his mother recently. That one’s wife doesn’t give him what he needs.

Mother, where did you find these genteel men? All of my men smell like piss. I cannot help but wonder. If a mother is missing, if a wife is not enough, what are their visits to us but motes of dust with which they try to fill their emptiness? Mother, won’t you get out of bed and answer these questions.

Empty Spaces

The burner where the tea-kettle used to sit
It's empty now just like your heart
(You never loved me from the start)

The rectangle on the wall where our picture hung
It's blank now just like your mind
(I can't believe you thought I wouldn't find)

The hiking boots that you always hated
(They left dirt on your pristine floor)
You won't be sad they walked out the door

The air that moved when I spoke hello
Didn't you always want it still?
(Empty words, but silence filled)

When you come home tonight here's what you'll see:
Empty spaces instead of me

Angelic

When we would walk past them, the girls would taunt at me. “When will you join us, sweet little lady? Don’t you think our resolve was just as strong? How much longer will you be able to say you are too young? We know you don’t believe us, but the city is beautiful by night and the work is not so difficult as you think. You too will seek the streets, when your babies are crying with empty bellies. You will leave them alone to hunt with us then, and you will creep back to them at dawn with bread.”

Angelica

“Keep love in your heart,” my mother used to say, “And it will always be returned.” She loved her audience, but they forgot her with the next exquisite performer. And she loved her men, but they only knew how to devour. And she loved me, but I grew increasingly to despise her. I could see she no longer did it for the money but out of desperation. She did it just to know that she could be felt. Just to know that she could be seen and had not yet dissolved into the sweat and smoke of the ugly air.

Forteana

            When people ask what my dad does for a living I tell them he’s an astronaut.  Because if you tell someone your dad’s an astronaut they say, “O, really?”  Then you say no.  So it isn't lying.

Mom and I came to live next to Bad Luck Pond at the beginning of summer. We used to live in Colorado.  We drove the whole way, north and east, and Mom chain smoked.  Don’t worry, she doesn’t smoke anymore.  She caught me trying to light one up and after that she threw all her cigarettes away.  Now she eats potato chips instead.

At the Nail Salon

What was the quality of the woman’s voice trying to tell?

“I’m from Vietnam.”

“I traveled there in 2008.”

“Did you see the Ha Long Bay?”

She is from southern Vietnam, which isn’t as cold as Hanoi. She used to go back every two years, but her parents have passed now.

“Do you have any children here in the U.S.?”

“No children.”

And her eyes flicker.

Perhaps she could not conceive. Perhaps love forsook her, though she longed to hold them: husband, children, grandchildren. Perhaps they ran from her, swiftly, beyond her reach into the deep jungle of her heart.

Gravestones and Epitaphs

Gravestones and epitaphs

Gravestones and epitaphs

Forgotten voices, no longer heard laughs

See them walk up the hill

See them lie in the grass

On the rock faces their firsts and their lasts

Gravestones and epitaphs

Gravestones and epitaphs

A silent stone angel delivers the mass

Green are the tree buds

And greener the grass

Let go the memories you had caught and held fast

Gravestones and epitaphs

Gravestones and epitaphs

Watch as the future slips out of your grasp

Do not miss the present

Do not lose the past

Someday you will find your own stone in the grass