The dance is lost in translation.
My feet are visionaries,
The floor a diary poorly kept.
To the right,
A sprinkle of justice.
To the left a topographic map of indecency.
Give me all your semicolons.
My story is not finished.
Give me shoes of air.
I wish to dance in my own language.
Slim sunsets sink slowly.
I am a lemon. I am a thorn.
I hurl.
Water finds me grotesque.
Sometimes I sit under hospital beds
and eat away at lives
like bitter battery acid.
Was it because I loved you that I siphoned your contentment
or because I have a funnel where my heart should be?
Three feet behind Christmas
December 28 is trailing.
She needs a haircut desperately.
Her younger brother lives in New York.
Feted,
on the social circuit.
Dec 28 is sallow,
reminds her neighbors of a really long line.
I got her a job licking stamps at the unemployment agency.
No one sends her envelopes out.
Yet in her spare time she wins poker tournaments.
Her face hasn’t betrayed her in years.
I have been haunted by the voice of Autumn
taken the wind for a weekend lover,
argued with the reeking river.
I live in a castle of mattresses
and I take it sweet and slow getting out in the morning.
Bacon fries itself in the kitchen,
doing such fantastic somersaults in the bombastic grease.
The residue of angels drapes
like fine linen
over our hands
our language
our thighs.
Death and I do not care what time it is.
He is a delinquent
I am night’s dilettante.
A lighthouse is afraid.
The gray sea is a dancer and a whore.
Stop feeding the birds along
the craggy shore your dinner.
They are waiting for you.
Emerald air ripe before the rain,
The lightning waiting in the frightened trees.
What if the smoke came before the fire?
What falls cool and nourishing but rain and salvation?
She is stove-mouthed
and thinks hideously.
Between her teeth are scrolls
from cities asleep.
Death cartwheels on my lawn
mostly to impress her,
And because in his spare time he has a pinwheel fetish.
After dark she will write my eulogy and
I will thank her
and never know her name.
Last night Craig was sleeping with his head on my shoulder and I just realized I’ve been given a second chance at life. In another generation having diverticulitis and a hole in your intestines would be a death sentence. Your intestines would leak and you would get sepsis and die. But modern medical technology, as gross as this bag is, allows me to have a second chance to live my life and be with my husband. And that’s a beautiful thing because I can’t imagine being without him. And I can’t imagine leaving him alone to spend his days and nights by himself and raise our daughter alone.
Nonetheless I woke up this morning depressed by my bag. As I was sitting on the sofa feeling tired and depressed, Angelica randomly brought me one of my Bible devotionals. It was open to a page about guardian angels and I realized there’s an angel around me. I’m not alone. I have an angel watching over me. It gives me some comfort. Maybe my guardian angel was convincing me to go to the hospital on the day my intestines opened up. I was in pain, but I couldn’t imagine that anything was seriously wrong so I was on the fence about going to the hospital. I almost didn’t go. If I hadn’t my intestines might have leaked and I would have had sepsis and died. I can’t imagine leaving Angelica motherless.
Later on I opened the devotional myself to a random page and the page landed on was about trials and tribulations. It was about God rewarding you at the end of a trial. This is a trial to me. But if I can get through this I will be rewarded with abundant life when it is over – if I draw closer to God.
It’s funny how these devotionals can really speak to you and just the way you need in times of stress and duress. It’s the workings of God.
“You need to have a boy to carry on the family name.” “It is your responsibility to have a boy. We don’t need more girls. We need a boy.” But, I explain, girls are wonderful and I would love ten more of them. My father had two girls and was happy with them. “Well then your family is history. They’re dead then.”
These were a few of the remarks I got from my husband’s grandfather and his grandfather’s girlfriend. And I was really taken aback. Society has advanced so much but to hear that a girl child is not as welcome as a boy child really threw me for a loop. How could anyone look at my beautiful baby girl and see her as being less than the best? Why is a boy necessary or even desirable when we have her? And if I did have another baby why wouldn’t I want to experience the joy of raising a baby girl again?
My daughter is not a consolation prize. She is not what you accept when you can’t get something better. There is nothing better and I would not favor having a son over her.
Girls carry the family legacy just as much as boys do, and in fact girls are often the glue that holds a family together. It is women that knot the ties that bind. And many of us do carry our father’s names probably either by keeping our maiden names or using our maiden names as a middle name. Whatever accomplishments I may have in my life, whether it is getting a book published or something else, my father’s name will be emblazoned on me and I will do him proud. No, my children will not carry my father’s name, but what is the arrogance of man that he thinks he can pass down his label through every generation? Do men really think that when someone achieves something great six Generations from now anyone is going to look back and say well your great-great-great grandfather must have been a hell of a guy? You can’t pass on a name forever, and if you have posterity worth being celebrated and researched, their mother and her forebears will be researched also.
What we need are patriarchal family units, but a more matriarchal society. The roles and achievements of women are just as important as the roles and achievements of men, and we are as much part of our family lineages as males are.
So no, I don’t need a son. I have a daughter to carry my husband’s family and mine. She is as much a Minner and an Applegate as she is a McLemore, and she will be part of the McLemore line after she marries. It is time to talk about the legacy of daughters.
Miniature Moon 