From This Unapologetic Body

(I first posted this in Feb 2011 on Sonya Renee's brilliant The Body is Not An Apology page. Fascinating how we can turn back to our own words for perspective...)

The sexy I work so hard to own

will never be reflected in your neon eyes

Not in the teetering balance of your morse code

when you switch fractions from morning

to night and back again

I know how to trick you into believing I’m less

Into retrieving different calculations

based on time of day and your attitude

But I’ve never been the type of woman

to get caught up in the mathematics

In relating equations and numbers

to anything worth valuing

I find words a more distinctive gift for this

So, I’ll write to you-

Dear Lousy Worthless Number On My Scale,

Stop pretending you are my compass

Don't mistake time I've spent with you for empathy.

You have exposed me, torn me open for so many instances

I've stopped counting the scars.

So stop trying to make a fool of my insides

Stop being the judge I weigh above all others

Stop smiling at me while I'm naked

or changing your mind too quickly.

I have spent years in the swell of this body

This exposed ocean of sleeve-wearing heart

and too-thin skin. This heaving muscle

of a chest and curved outer layer.

So make peace with me. See me.

Judge me on my words

and not my formulas.

My Prayer for the Bulldozers

May the sun-stained anchor of your body
find peace in the dusk

Engines idled and blades lowered

may you turn gnarled wings back into yourself

as a cease fire from the dust storm

as a pressed crane offering of hope that
somewhere there is purpose in your golden wings.

We have watched you caterpillar yourself
innocently yellow across this land

But I see the razed houses in your irises

the shaken tears of civilians on your cheeks.

I know your drivers will say

“we were just doing what we were told”

when foaming mouth roaring into the city you
snapped bloodlines, displaced humans

from necessary shelter.

I know a woman whose house
was wiped away by your blades.

Two days later, she was handed an invoice

for the parts, time, labor
for the very maize monster

that made her a homeless statistic.

How do we explain what you’ve turned into?

How you have become annihilator instead of farmer?

You were meant for so much more than excavation,

than intimidation or destruction.

You have the tools to till this land,

make it ripe for blooming

To move dirt into hungry mouth craters,

Build hills from which we can once again
feel the breeze or watch our children grow.

So my prayer for you is this

The time is now to end the demolition

Stop tractoring yourself over any hopes of peace

Come down from your cockpit and join

us at the table

Learn to use your words.

Breakfast

I woke up with the fiction of your lips still
cementing the roof of my mouth
Upstairs, the neighbors are skipping morning
around the espresso machine
I play asleep to the bacon breaking sounds of the skillet
But up above they are heavy like daybreak and your
pin needled arm is preferring my side of the bed
So I’ll be content with an arm cloaked morning to
watch the sun split over your resting temples
To have a gently heaving body remind me of the blood
floating through my own, that warmth, that vulnerable.

Your sleep is tying a knot in my geriatric knee
It’s the good kind of pain that

reminds me breakfast is soon

So I will dedicate this moment to the eggs we will crack,
the way we will wrestle the upstairs neighbors
with our tea kettle and kitchen karaoke
“Baby” will be the safest love song for sleepover friends
so we will find it on the radio immediately
Make microphones out of yolk dripping spatula
And blow out our shattered lungs before
the coffee is even cool enough

When the circuits of your body finally snap
I will secure the prospect of morning meal and
feel comfort in your sleep smelling voice,
how it still sounds like everything that came before it.
I don’t have a name for this move yet
but I know that coffee stained stomachs and doorways
can make for more constraint and sorry
than I tend to build my mornings from
and dawn will stop serving breakfast soon.

So I will boil water for French pressed conversation
Will suggest eating in bed like couples would
but blame it on the roommates
I will call this move “insurance”
Risk losing my entire Sunday to the well-perfected omelet
To your breath on my hand over crosswords
To the clanking sound of perfect pans being excavated
Or to the caffeine jolt of your body when
we finally leave the stove alone for awhile.