Sore
No one can ever really help you
have to do it yourself
do the dishes and cry out
your emotions into the sink
and you say where is everybody?
And there is nobody
to dry so you do it yourself
but the rags are all dirty and you
want to rest, a person your age
shouldn’t feel so weak and tired
but that is how old ladies feel and you
always say you want to be an old lady.
The tv gets turned on drugged out
eyes and weak manicure fingers
can’t work anymore you just exist
like it doesn’t hurt because
long term ache is too slow for you to notice
the ticking away of your brain.
The clock in your head
is further back near the hypothalamus
where your sex is determined fewer people come
into your space you are an adult
now the worst word in your language
dull and serious and practical
like store bought appliances that can hurt
fingers and toes if one doesn’t know how to use them
but you know how to use them yours run
smoothly like your droning life source waiting
for the next empty moment to pass
over your fingernails.
There is almost too much race color creed to think about.
Los Angeles, 1992
24 years and I’m
unstable things are
worse than puberty 7th
grade plus there are
no pretty suburban
pictures safe playing
by my eyes when I
walk to Sav-On
Drug I get a gross
noise thrown at
me at least once
by a male
species.
I spent green
grass and humid
bug screeches up
my nose and
ears running
through fields down
your house to
make up Charlie’s
Angels games and kiss
littler girls on the
mouth.
School had
mimeograph purple
ink and giggle friends
you are smarter but
darker than everybody
else, why are you
brown? oh yeah I
am you have a
moustache too oh
no I’m ugly, I covered
my upper lip with my
cupped hand and my
mouth and voice were
gone.
Armenian school
every Friday
where they made
up a language of
hate the Turks, they
killed us taught in
between cheap
snacks and textbooks I
was too American stupid
to get or speak it
shame for each culture
built in my dumb
eyes.
Lock the door we
are going through
the bad neighborhood
my mother said so
I pushed down the
knob and over
my finger out the car
window moving black
people across gray
Boston sky streets
were gonna come get our
white Armenian family
if we didn’t secure
the station wagon my
mother said
so.
My best friend was
Turkish and wore
designer jeans and
headbands we looked
at each other alike
next to everybody
else white. Don’t you
know they killed us?
Mr. Armenian History
Professor incredulous
at my 12 year old just
wanna be friends with
someone confused culture
else she didn’t kill
me adult Armenians
with American racism
like the 6th graders
at school already got
my inferiority complex
good.
1988 college London
summer where they
called Indians and
Pakistanis Black
bastard black bastard
this street lady
screamed at me Black
bastard and I didn’t get
it at first I’m not
black, I’m white, you
have no right to do
that to me until I
realized then I didn’t
want to be black or
even dark the English
always spoke to my
pale blond friend
when we were together
and ignored me like I
was stupid for my skin
color and I always
thought I was one
of them but no I
was a stupid dark
person from my own
prejudiced
mind.
Sev yev jedmag means
black and white in
Armenian my mother uses
it to point out the
sin of interracial
couples in public so
she won’t have to show
her stupidity out loud
“if you ever wanna kill
me marry a black
man” my mother says I
scream my outrage at
her after an hour my
brother says “it’s
pointless to argue her
racism, she’ll never
learn,” and I can see
he’s almost right it
has taken me 24 years to
learn I’m embarrassed to
be dark skinned and it’s
wrong.
I live in a smog
city now with
multicultural far
from family and east
coast values the police
here beat up a black man
and the jurors just
didn’t get it took a
riot for me to see what
was going on inside
myself and still I’m
not sure what or who I
am in an assimilated
country proud to be an
American fuck that I
have white privileged
guts and a brown exterior
and my naive body was
shocked when the city
fell apart there is
almost too much race
color creed to think
about.
Lips and Holes (History)
My grandmother used to say
“don’t trust people with
skinny lips, they are
stingy,” and then she
would scowl dramatically.
A woman opens her legs
wide and she has a big
old hole there large
enough for a baby’s
head and shoulders
to pass through but
sometimes the doctor says
“your hips are pencil
narrow I am sorry you’ll
never be able to give
birth,” and she is closed.
A man opens his legs
wide and he just has a
tiny hole in his
penis and well, there is
his anus too and it
can be stretched wider that
is how he can have a
big old hole large enough
for a fist and wrist to
pass through and he is
open.
That is why I am telling
you women are naturally open
with their feelings and men
are naturally closed with
their feelings it is
the physical attributes
that dictate of course
exceptions do occur and
people can change
their holes.
Have you ever kissed
someone with thin
lips? They can’t
give a whole lot
of pleasure at
least not as much as
someone with full lips.
But then sometimes you
will kiss someone with thin
lips and it turns out
their lips are actually
big you know there is
the whole inside lip
to play with too, rubbery
and flexible that is nice.
But I have to believe what
my grandmother told me of course
she is my GRANDMOTHER from
the old country it is a truth
she gave me large dollar bills
for “lunch money” and fed me any
chance she got and when I
entered or left her house
she was the first woman to
kiss me on the lips and
hers were thin.
Fear of Sex Poem
Sick television
day and it makes
me think and
scare HIV positive
can I get it through
kissing spit no
were there bleeding
sores on his mouth no
did the condom leak I
don’t know I’m
nervous every day
sick last laugh
on me first sex
fatal ouch ouch
it hurt and I
bled and if it
mixed with dirty
semen I’m dead
no I’m not alive
I will end before I
began and it’s all my
fault I was wrong
without any sex and
now I am dead wrong
with it too but I
was safe we weren’t
messy everything
clean and the rubber
didn’t tear even the
man Greg was his name
on the AIDS hotline told
me I would know if
it did rip they run like
nylons he said but Greg
doesn’t wear nylons I
asked him so I’m still
scared scared
til I get tested
won’t do it don’t
want to know die
slow.
Anxiety Sickness
or
Thinking is Bad For You
If I were Amish I would have
hardly any decisions in my
life because of the rigidity
of no zippers, buttons;
no vanity, simplicity; humbleness
in the face of god and greenery
of the Pennsylvania interstate
with the tourists gawking at
the hobble of the horse and buggy
carrying the modest people with the
lowest rate of mental sickness
but I’m not Amish I’m American
non-spiritual praying for god
cheap like when I’m afraid I
might be pregnant.
I stop my prayer once it is
answered: the blood flows out
of my womb, and I still don’t
believe in god. I go on
thinking too much so I can control
this limitless life of choices
I’m making wrong. “Your life will
end if you make the wrong decision,”
says my mother in my mind, sitting
in the front seat on our visit to
Amish Country, buying souvenirs
and pretzels, filing her nails
over emery boards that will collect
in her pocketbook to scrape up
against her unprotected eyeglasses.
When she looks through them I become
the blurry mother-daughter-self image
my therapist exploits to reassure
me of all the human nature I exude
anxiety included – “anxiety is okay,
just don’t get anxious about being
anxious”.
If there were a hole in my head
I could poke my finger in and
rub the bumps back and forth and
moan and ooh and hallucinate
but no, my brain is locked under a
hard casement that doesn’t let
anything in to relax it overworks into
a breakdown so that I can’t read or
write or emote or express the
only thing I can do is cook
simple vegetables to dump into
my nervous sack so I can get
better.
