Flaunt
your face
your neck
your breasts
young thing
show ’em what
they can’t have
Let’s just hope
they don’t come
claim what isn’t
theirs
What pale man
is so infamous for
Be yourself
But let’s pray,
cross our fingers
for Peace & Nudity
Tag: womanhood
Widow Home Part II
This place was my first fancy meal, in a trailer-turned-Taj-Mahal where we ate steamed whole artichokes dipped in melted butter and T-bone steak. This place was Peggy and me, sixty years apart in age, sitting Indian-style across from one another, in a mobile three blocks from McDonalds hands clasped in front of us in prayer gently singing we are siamese if you please, we are siamese if you don’t please. At that time my voice was so soft it was barely there. And while my vibrant, open, excited child’s-mind could capture these memories I have just shared with you, the reality is that I could not even mutter a thank you. Often one-on-one with Peggy I would freeze. The intimacy of the energy that was with us being too much. Tapping a place I knew little about—the relationship between woman and woman.
Throughout every moment with Peggy, or with Tina, my great Aunt, I felt pampered, like a princess-child. Like I could take on the world. Like I was somewhere else completely. Like I was someone else completely. My higher self. I could rest. I could wake and see magical things. I was in a magical world. Like a girl in a Disney movie. Like a girl on TV, in a normal home, with a normal family. Where things looked good and smelled good and felt good on your skin. Where you were rewarded for your hard work—an orange and crème popsicle for doing the dishes. Where nothing was out to get you.
After two nights or so my dad would pull up out front in the pickup-of-the-week. It would be seven p.m. on Sunday, getting dark, a school night and Peggy would say something about that and arms would raise and for the first time in two days my little white arms would get cold from standing in the sea air watching my dad defend himself, sawdust and oil on his pants and hands, him talking about a late start and needing to finish bucking the alder and I haven’t even sold it yet and I’ve got to go meet the guy tonight, actually and me noticing the blue tarp over the heap of wood in the back of the truck. Peggy would give me a dry kiss on the cheek and though there was a certain carefree comfort I felt with my dad, my eyes might sting with a tear or two as I watched that mobile-home-castle get smaller in the mirror reading objects in mirror are closer than they appear and thinking I sure hope so.
Widow Home Part I
“The divine source of all life
is the fulfillment of all potential.” – Iyanla Vanzant
After grandpa choked out that night at the Best Western in Ashland Peggy had taken to moving from one end of the town to the other, and she never claimed it, but was it to escape his ghost?
First it was sell the A-frame where she and Ralph raised Moonbeam—the place with the immaculate carpentry, the knobby-pine cabinets and the gazebo in the back. Her first move was a humble move, I felt. It wasn’t the Peggy I knew to move into a mobile home, but she did. And she had a fucking tower built on to it. It was a sand-colored place with bamboo and a rock yard. Not much from the outside but on the inside it was like something out of Memoirs of a Geisha. It only had maybe two bedrooms but Peggy placed several of those oriental-style room dividers throughout, adding mystery and charm to my sixty-someodd (as she would say) year old grandmothers first Widow Home. A Widow Home being, I would later decide, a place where a woman dug into her own soul like digging into a second-hand bin of silk scarves, saying who’s in there?
This place was me opening birthday presents on a warm October day. My dad with his light blue plaid collared shirt tucked in and spotless corduroys. Who dressed him that day anyway? His eyes were bright and redless. Even my great grandparents (the good ones, not the ones who touched me) were there and I ran around in my little red and white dress that grandma Gladys made me on her sewing machine. Peggy called her “Mother”. I liked to play with the sag on her arms and she would laugh and smile sweetly. This was a woman they called practically perfect. This is a woman my 27-year-old self is certain still hangs around, acting as my own personal guardian angel. After all, it was she who in her dying bed made a reluctant Peggy promise, promise she would care for me if and when someone else could not.
The Time, Mother
The time you changed your name from Darlene to Brenda
The time you gave me a blonde baby doll and told me I had a brother on the way
The time you tied a friendship bracelet on my wrist and said now I’ll always be with you
The time we stopped to pick a rose on the shoulder of the highway…and it came with a bee
The time you made long, dangling hippie earrings–for a living
The time my room flooded and you cried because you felt bad
The time you bought ten hamburgers from McDonald’s and for the first time we all got full
The time we looked at a house we couldn’t afford and we all picked out bedrooms anyway
The time you took me to the Bayshore Mall and bought me an eggshell-colored Easter dress
The time you put barrettes in my hair (I don’t remember it but I saw the pictures)
The time you sang You Are My Sunshine to Cloud and I looked out the window and held back tears
The time you volunteered at my school library and I was embarrassed because of your short, slutty shorts
The time you lit a cigarette, looked at me and said don’t ever do this
The time I stole 2 cigarettes from you and you never found out
The time I realized our hands and fingernails look exactly alike
8:05 p.m. the time you gave birth to me, far too young
The time you failed to meet the expectations of your adopted mother
The time I knew exactly how it felt
The time your dad died and if you hadn’t already lost all hope, you really did then
The time you tried to wriggle your way into societies mold but it just didn’t work
The time you introduced yourself as Moonbeam and it all made sense to me
The time you socked my dad through the pick-up truck window
The time we left you in the dust
All the times you left me in the dust
The time you cried and said you’re sorry
The other time you cried and said you’re sorry
The many other times you cried and said you’re sorry
The time you googled me everyday for five years but never called or emailed
The time you said I’m so proud of you and in my mind I said for fucking what?
The time you said Enough already! and I said Okay
Spilled Yet Contained
Today is an
in-between moon
my mood reflected
in the sky
A hot night
turning all the
ladies faces and
necks red melting
the glue that holds
together the teeth
of the man who
loves to speak
bubblegum pink
is the paste that
keeps his teeth
on the top and
his teeth on the
bottom
as for me
I think I’ll
stop speaking
for a while.
I’m applying
for a cashiers job
at the market and
between that and nights
I’ll be all talked out, the
energy settling less between
the sheets–less in the space
I’ve created for something
else, for someone else, less.
I went to a benefit concert
where I bumped elbows and
shoulders and some kid
put on a jacket and his zipper
hit me in the face
Today
Tonight
is a pretty blouse
a flower
on a wrecked girl
and I don’t know if I mean
me or someone else but either
way I’m coming around to her
I Want To Be
I want to be forgiven
for what I’m about to do
to you
catch and release
you’ll be guy number five
I’ll be your girl number two
your first
your last
your mystery
I want to be whipped
into shape
taught a lesson
fondled and driven
to madness
wined and dined
I said wined and dined
I said wined and dined
I said tell me
to put on a dress
I said ask me
to take down my hair
I said
I want to be whipped
into shape
I want to be tamed
lead me
guide me
I want a man
I’ve never seen a man
I’ve rarely seen a man
I thought I saw a man once
but he walked into the day
and by night he was all gone away
I saw a man once
who had It
I saw a man who
could tame me
but he didn’t want a thing
to do with this woman
with this body
with this piece of work
right here
I want to be forgiven
I want to be whipped
I want to be tamed
I want to be a girl
who is chased
but women like me
are so bold
so brass
women like me are
more of a man
than you’ll ever be
chew on that
and when
you’re a man
come back to me
cause I want to be
whipped
hard
I want to be tamed
and pregnant
I want to be
forgiven
Secrets of the Moon
The scent of the river
emerges in spring and
at night like moon flowers,
evening primrose and the
married-mans thoughts of me
do
Things and people afraid of
the day, afraid of the
light cast upon their flaws
tip-toe to me and whisper
their wildest
desires
Johns and Janets and Williams
all point fingers, tease and mock
but their hidden agendas are far worse
than those of the prisoners
I laugh with the crescent moon
Smile with the dew
and dream, day and night
of this tortured life,
of me,
and
of you
Free vs. Me
I wish
I had
what I had before
I want
what is far ahead
I want it now
I desire
the moment
I had just today
I couldn’t feel a thing
I desire it forever
I need
the emotion
of midnight
I find myself
on my knees
in the dark
weeping a song
I need that to last forever
to not give way
to this headache
this boredom
the song
was romance
and I wooed myself
but
I’m caught in your web
you cast your net
you neglected your win
pulled at my arm
I yanked my own chain
I need
free
I need
me
but I’d rather
you not let
me be
don’t be mean
Poems by a Horny Small-Town Gal is Free Today!
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What Fun (Writing Prompt: Have a conversation with a body part)
“It takes a village to raise a child.”
“Be Smart. Be Ready.”
“Is he hurting you? Get help NOW.”
My milky thighs tear the tissue paper beneath me as I adjust my hips. I cover one foot over the other protectively, instinctively because soon the stranger will be in to spread my legs. She’ll tell me to move my ass closer to her (even closer..) and relax my feet into the stirrups. “I said relax,” she’ll tell me again.
The nurse enters the room, wearing Winnie the Pooh scrubs. Without skipping a beat, without even looking into my eyes she lubes up the duck clap and inserts it into my woman-cave. I struggle to breathe. She tells me “You’ll feel a pinch here”. But she doesn’t tell me it’ll last so long that I moan, long and hard, resulting in my quick embarrassment. My mind is flooded with every sexual experience I’ve ever had as a strategy to rationalize why I am here, enduring such pain. Only half the memories are any good. My eyes dart across the room, reading the posters again, frantic for a distraction–less because of the pain and more because of the uncomfortablness of a stranger being inside of me. Some people like it. It’s not my thing. And her stupid cartoon scrubs make it worse, like a stranger with candy, or something. Fucking sicko.
Ittakesavillagetoraiseachild. Besmart.Beready. Ishehurtingyou?Gethelpnow.
Relax, she tells me again. Foolishly I look to a side table and see blood, and those blue napkins they use. Like mechanics napkins. I’m quite literally a piece of work.
The nurse quickly releases the duck clamp which cramps the inside of my woman as it goes out. I shake and tremble as the stranger shuts my legs. “You’re good for 12 years,” she tells me. I smile and thank her, coming to my senses, dizzy, the room smelling like we’re both still inside of my vagina.
TERAH RACHELLE VAN DUSEN 