Sparkle & Purple

Before the poem, another great event going on Tuesday Dec 30 at Busboys & Poets at 5th and K. Sparkle is a queer driven reading and open mic that will start at 8:30 pm. and will be hosted by Regie Cabico.

A hot little poem bout me:

My life is a hot mess too untamed for Crayola definitions
Purple
The sunset of summers spent on hallowed back porches
Splintered tongues twisting around
Eggplant shells
Secrets captured in wooden walls

Orchids dancing through the garden
Carefree, Rare
Hard to raise
O’Keefe

Relief
Like female

My life is a sprinkler’s sunbeam reflection
Clinging closer to greens than blues
That hue
That keeps the splash behind my eyes
Reeling

On nights I fight shadeless dreams

My life is that sacred cup
The perfect buzz
Bring it to your nose
Inhale
That’s some good shit

My life is purple
Propelled permanently towards the next freeway
Past comfortable
And straight on till morning.

Plucking past lives like orchids
To create the radiant light
That is my life’s backlit TV screen
Glowing off
Your now sleeping face.

Purple haze
Purple nonsense
Dancing around #107
That moment that sheds the reds ad blues
From my day’s hand worn blisters.

Purple heat
Screaming through the walls of the apartment
Like static.

Like something barely palpable
But violent violet
Like magenta

Like a shade so familiar
Yet so undefined.

District Winter

Written in a workshop last Thursday. The prompt was something vague about seasons and detail. 

This apartment has a view when the leaves hit the ground
It opens up like red and orange bursting like
Full-bellied angels before the winter hits the city

I see clearly now

My eyes wet and foggy with the resistance of yet another season
Life
It’s just brief jogs between floor board heating and
You
You’re all radiator heat
And fleece blankets

You spell out warmth like the braile behind my eyelids spells discomfort

You comfort my limbs
Make me whole again before spring rushes in without notice

See, I’ve lived in a place without seasons and I’m a girl afraid of change

Afraid of revolving four times around the sun four times yearly
Like I’m always looking for the next season

I want to stay here for a minute
Here in this bare trees and barely breathing
Here in this cold dancing the edge of snow globe
Here in this sheepskin boots and thick stockings

Here in this cold comfort of reds and oranges
Half lives coming to and end
Like summer always seems to too soon

But I’ve stopped missing her

Stopped wishing black ice was puddles to jump through
Stopped tugging on my scarf, praying for tank top
Stopped praying for time to give me back more sunlight

I’m here
Swirling in the surf of yet another cycle
But present at best

Basking in the gloom
And the view
From my apartment.

Letting cold rush over me like juice of a baptism
Never forgetting to let it
Leave me
Breathless.

Karen Effing Finneyfrock in DC Tomorrow Night!

MotherTongue DC will be hosting Seattle poet (originally from DC) Karen Finneyfrock tomorrow night at 9pm at the Black Cat. Okay, so it's $8, but it supports a great local nonprofit, Our Place DC which helps formerly incarcerated women get back on their feet. A few of them will perform on the open mic (and so will I) and Karen is worth it people. 

As for Finney, one of my favorites. "My voice turning 20 years younger in my throat. My voice growing a mermaid tail and a unicorn horn."

Voice to the Voiceless

Daddy Comes Home Today
Daddy comes home today
And my ears hang low, and they wobble to and fro

And I can throw them over my shoulder like a continental soldier

and then I can be like my Dad.

Strong and tough and brave and good and smart and the best.

When Daddy left for his army vacation Mom told me he was going to I-rack.

Mommy has a spice rack

Baby Julie has a diaper rack

I have a stuffed animal rack

And Daddy has an I- rack.
That’s an inside family joke I think is funny
but I feel silly when Mommy tells it in front of other people.

I kiss Iraq on the map on my wall every night before I go to sleep.
I try to squeeze my lips really tight so they don’t touch Syria or I-ran, but my Mommy says people there could use my goodnight kisses too.

Daddy told me how to tell my left from my right.

Sometimes I get it wrong

But tonight I will kiss Daddy on his right cheek

And whisper “I missed you” in his left and he will know that I am smart

Just like Mrs. Jacobs knows I’m smart when I name all the US State Capitals in alphabetical order by state.

Smart
like winning the geography bee last month

Only this time it will only be Daddy cheering for me and it will be

the greatest.

Daddy comes home today
And I will sleep safely for the first time since he left.
Because Daddy really knows how to look for monsters in all the scariest places.

He looks in the closet

And under the bed

And just outside the window.

He looks in the air conditioning vent.

Tonight Daddy’s hug was the best I’ve ever had in my life.

It was like a thousand hugs all in one and for a minute

I thought I couldn’t breathe

n a really, really, really good way.

I fell asleep in the car and wasn’t awake for Daddy to put me to bed

But I feel safer already just knowing he is here.

I am safe and

Daddy is home and

everything is the

best.

But Mommy is different since Daddy is home.
Her eyes aren’t as shiny.
Her jokes, less funny.
Her smile, hiding in her pocket like Megan’s Girl Scout song.
And it's weird—
But she seems more alone now that Daddy is home.

Can I tell you a secret?
Tonight I heard crashes below my bed

Below where the monsters sleep and into the kitchen.

I didn’t leave my bed.

I tried to be a big boy.

I pulled the covers over my ears
and recited state capitals to fall asleep.

In the morning I ate my Lucky Charms out of Mommy’s good bowls

because something very, very, very bad happened to my Dinosaur ones.

Mommy had this purple spot under her glasses that I tried to ignore

But as she sat across from me at breakfast, reading me Peanuts from the funnies

it was all I could see

think about

stare at.
Did Baby Julie hit her when she was changing her diapers?
Did she run into a wall?

Did this have something to do with the crashes I heard last night?

With Daddy’s voice rumbling under my bed the way thunderstorms do on nights

When they are competing with monsters to see who’s scarier.

Daddy’s voice
Daddy’s voice
Daddy’s voice is meaner

Tonight I tucked myself in.

I can’t check the scariest places by myself

So I just squeezed into that tight place in my covers

And made sure not even a hair was sticking out

Tonight I am hiding

from the monster

in my mommy’s bedroom.

This was a poem written while I was working for an affordable housing organization. One of the families we worked with was a mom who, with her six kids, was forced to flee from her husband after he suffered PTSD from his time in Iraq. I wanted to tell the story of one of the children.

The Point is Not Me, The Point is the Poetry

So people have been asking me when they can see me perform (and by people I mean 3-4). The problem is, I am not yet of feature status, open mic lists are unpredictable and I usually don't know what what my plans are until I'm doing them. But today I thought to myself, screw it, I am going to start putting events up. Even if I don't make it on the mic, it will be cool for everyone to know of upcoming poetry events.

I had been emailing with Danielle of MotherTongue earlier this morning and she let me know she would be performing at The Guerilla Poetry Insurgency open mic tonight at 7pm at Bossa in Adam's Morgan (my new neighborhood)! I will try to make it on the open mic list in which case I will perform the Seattle poem. I think.

Tomorrow night is the regular open mic at Busboys and Poets on 14th & V. It starts at 9pm, but you should get there at 8pm for wristbands, getting a seat, etc. Very cool poets and a cool vibe there, but Bossa will likely be more low key.

I am pretty excited about tonight so please don't hesistate to join. TK and I will be there at 7pm.

Short. Sweet. Truth.

Backward glances
Fixed over fingers
Lingers with the scent of you
And the stench of everything that comes after
Every time you walk into a room.