Tag: writing
Housewife
The following are 3 poems, all titled “Housewife.” The first is the original poem I wrote. The second and third are poems I created by translating the original poem to Afrikaans and Xhosa and back to English again, and then editing what I got. This is part of a larger project I am working on where I have my work translated to Xhosa and Afrikaans, and edit the results. It is a fascinating way to create new poetry, and the possibilities from these two languages are almost limitless. I sometimes like to play with other languages, like French or Hebrew or Italian or Farsi, but Xhosa and Afrikaans are my favorite. What do these poems say to you? If you’re a housewife, or your mother was, how do these poems speak to your experiences with housewifery?
Grateful skirts swirl in a breeze maybe meant for them.
Design is Holy,
is enamored of its Designer,
is a crossroads of means and ends.
A housewife manufactures sunshine in her laboratory,
the beakers from the store always having a sale,
her thesis supervised by green,
and critiqued by her children.
After 20 years who will know whether the
skirts were mended or replaced?
Just that they were infused with laughter
and smelled like mother in the living room
living with her eyes full.
Translated into Afrikaans and Xhosa, then back:
Skirts twirl in the grateful air
they were meant for.
Design and the Holy Spirit,
are enamored
of each other.
Is the intersection of the cross where it all begins?
The woman who produced the sun in her lab,
is studying all the ways you make happiness from the mundane.
Her thesis is green from watching her children.
After 20 years will you know that
the aprons can be repaired or replaced?
You will appreciate the humor.
She won’t.
skirts and gratitude for the atmosphere,
either of them.
Design and Holy Spirit,
make enamored designs,
are the ends on the cross.
The woman who makes the sun in her lab,
Her laboratory in Delaware furnished by a company
in Hong Kong.
Her thesis supervision is green.
So is the clock looking at her children’s energy,
their youth,
her youth.
After 20 years you will know that
the skirts can be repaired or replaced.
As you appreciate the humor in
And sort mothers by whether they baked cookies or used the microwave.
In her eyes you live fully,
live fully alone.
Juice Bar
Juice bar
I was Lysol scented
dark light opening doors everyone wanted shut.
She was a bursting gummy bear the woman hugged
then woman devoured slowly.
But no one eats poison.
No one devours a sour black light,
and no one hugs it either.
Mania
Lush lights linger lightly on my legs.
Excess ecstasy jerks in my finger tips.
I have too much of myself.
I am smoldering.
My old jeans make juice from jam.
I’m going to take my face off
and dance with the band.
Please understand.
In Italics
I have been mistreated by myself in italics.
I was mistreated in italics.
I was in italics when I was mistreated.
I have threatened myself
And been threatened by people who loved me
with knives for hands.
I cut everything.
Life is a hallway.
God this hallway is a mess,
my clothes strewn everywhere.
My Government
Peripheral issues,
like where to raise fireflies,
consume my government.
My government,
not yours.
I don’t share,
And my whole bureaucracy is off their meds, anyways.
Stop staring at my nudity.
You aren’t supposed to be here.
Burning Suburbia
Shades of slate and gun metal pursue me
in a way the other women wrapped in their profiles and friends
would understand more than they want to believe.
Our spirits dream while we say,
How much? That’s too much.
I have to have her there by 3.
We need to get away. It is never just us.
In the suburbs I drive over hillock after hillock
again and again,
for bread and milk,
my fingers searching beneath my skirt for something so dirty it is clean,
so corrupt as to be pure.
Water
Look up water.
See what books,
so fearful of the subject,
refuse to stay.
Flowers gasp to stay afloat.
His desires spirit him away.
His desire to finger the piano,
her
with or without her face.
The touch of her mind on the water
regal red.
Life and I do not care who we have.
He is
crunched afterbirth.
Jealous Sky
The quality predictions
are grainy.
My name used to be July.
My clothes want butterflies.
I was born to rise.
The sky,
jealous,
buried me in his mire.
Alcoholic
She needs sour apple vodka mixed with a tart schnapps.
On her way in the nonchalant dark her dignity escaped her.
At the counter a man wonders where fugitive dignity hides.
She leaves holding black bags,
tries not to notice that even with 6 clanging bags of bottles
her load is lighter than it was.
