Woman Body

Woman body knows Spanx, push-up bras, and high-heeled shoes are designed to keep us small.

Knows women used to faint on couches from corsets strangling breath.

Woman body knows we have always survived on less: less oxygen, less stability, less money, less space, less rights, less

of our own bodies.

Woman body knows wage gap, knows "how old are you anyway?"

knows "but you aren't the real doctor, right?" knows "all you women are just the same"

knows research ideas stolen and executed, knows

man got the praise, knows woman body said it first.

Woman body knows "you tell my wife I'm the man and she will do what I say with my children." 

Woman body knows female bodies bruised. 

Woman body makes friends with security guard.  Feels finger on panic button in her sleep some days.

Woman body will never be the loudest voice.  Resorts to being most insistent; woman body learns to say no and forgets to cover her ass first.

Woman body finds boundaries, learns she's being "unreasonable,"

might have to say yes anyway.

Woman body walks down the street.

Woman body wears jeans, wears skirt, wears sweatpants, wears yoga pants, wears...

Woman body hears "hey Baby, where you goin'?"

hears, "you wanna come in and fuck?"

hears, "smile Sweetie.  Aren't you gonna smile for me?"

hears, "why you not answering me?"

hears, "bitch"

hears, "cunt,"

hears...

Woman body keeps walking.

Woman body knows wings clipped and pinned to brick like

butterfly to shadow box.  Knows purple crocus blossoming where fingers lay;

woman body cannot write angry metaphors.

Woman body makes them beautiful,

woman body knows they're not,

woman body tries anyway.

Woman body doesn't know what to eat anymore. Woman body starving not for food.

Woman body does not know which women to look to; woman body lost.

Woman body wants a mother; woman body, own mother.

Woman body knows shame.  Knows small.  Knows to take up less

space to make you more comfortable. 

Woman body wonders what space feels like without

too much. 

Woman body stands outside at night,

chest to heaven, breathing in expanse of sky.

Woman body does not imagine herself astronaut.

Does not become planet, moon, or cloud.

Woman body is star.

Woman body is small on the ground but science knows

she is ball of power and light.

When you know her she has already died but

continued existing for light years, she

expanded out beyond her unsmall body, this

woman body knows how to survive anyway.

Woman body knows to survive anyway.

Woman body survive anyway.

Woman body survive

anyway.

A History in Music

A History in Music

What if the songs we hear become pieces of us?

When we love them hard enough, notes become dislodged, float

inside our bodies and stick in our

hearts or lungs, we

embody those notes and each time we hear the song again it's like

a puzzle finding it's missing piece: something we

didn't know we were missing snaps

into place and for that 3 minutes and 29 seconds we

are something like complete.

This

is for the notes

of every song I've ever sung that are

waiting to be breathed again;

and this is for all the notes still waiting out

in the beautiful not yet.

It's bedtime and I am 5 years old.

My sister and I go into our bedroom and switch out the cassette from the tape player

exchanging soothing ocean sounds for Disney's Greatest Hits.

Dad comes in, says goodnight, turns out the light, presses "play" and "The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers" fills the bedroom as my sister and I howl with laughter, hopping in our beds. 

There were no ocean sounds in our bedroom that night,

but at 5, music filled my body with wiggles I could not suppress.

I'm 8 and have discovered my father's record collection.

In the basement, my sister and I don fancy dress-up clothes and turn on Jim Croce's

"Bad Bad Leroy Brown" while flipping our skirts and dancing wildly around the floor. 

In that moment, I felt myself simultaneously beautiful and talented and also

hilarious and a little naughty dancing to this song I did not understand.

At 11, I was practically a piano virtuoso...according to me.  I played

and played and played those songs until I never had to open a book.

I lost myself in the embodying of those notes, played them again and

again until my mother would yell, "Give it a rest, Laur,"

and I would slink to my bedroom.

I have always been a poet.  I want the lyrics

to wrap themselves around me: as a teenager, I would crawl inside

and find myself a home inside the words. I left

pieces of history in those songs that still smell like

summer camp, swimming pools, dressing rooms, college dorms,

car trips, alcohol, and regret. 

Large pieces of me can be found on CDs I burned and listened to until

their rhythm became the pace of my day.

This is for the music of the not yet.

For the love and laughter, grief and heartache

waiting to be heard, to be sung, to be played

until everyone around me begs me to

give it a rest.

This is for knowing the world in us as the only song.

For the music of magic creating vast vibration of

beautiful in us; this is for the songs we sing off-key in our kitchen.

For the lyrics we remember wrong - or never hear right.

For the ones that speak to our souls and never leave us.

This is for the music we make

with our tongues, our feet, our hands,

for the beat of our hearts keeping time with our

rests, our melodies, our

cacophonies of words we try to smooth like symphonies:

you untamed, wild song.

Hold the microphone of your life to your lips that we

may ever hear your vital blossoming of lyric, you

unfolding explosion; let us

breathe our harmonies into your bloodstream --

listen...

can you hear it?

This

is the sound of the world in us.

It is the song of all the music that is

living in you.  It is

the harmony of all the songs

you have not yet sung.

Underbelly

Sometimes

the poem is born from the  

underbelly where the

fire lies.

I will

write from the place where

broken turns broken

open like too much becomes over-

flowing like

river like

can't contain this 

could never contain this, like

tried to tame this

tried to train this

tried to good girl this

truth, this human, this

woman out of me, like -- 

I am learning to

breathe this body.  Learning to

move to

unsmall myself, learning to

expand.  You may not

chain me: I am

untethered,

frightened and

flying. I am

everything you fear and

living in this broken,

holy body, I will

risk

the blossom of this

too much, this

intensity

this

truth-stained, battered

transparent heart of a body is

all I have and I will
rely on her for she is

fierce.  You may not

convince me

otherwise and

my heart will 

believe these words.  Sheds

tears to believe these words, it took me

years to remember how

to pull my tear ducts

open but now I let old
pieces of myself fall like

stars: hope-filled and

sad, yet 

beautiful in the

dark.

God, make me fierce

enough to hold this holy

boldness.  Turn me vast and

spacious: unleash in me a wondering

furious love to keep me

moving                

fighting                

wanting               

speaking.

Here.

A New Year Poem in 3 Acts

I.      Resolutions

Sometimes I wonder about the cost of being human.

I wonder if I made a covenant with a divine

being I have since forgotten

to pay on this ride; I wonder if I

am pulling my weight.

I could make a resolution.

Everyone could make a resolution.

We could all make resolutions like I will: 

                               lose 20 pounds and eat more vegetables

or                           give to charity and volunteer for the homelessanimalshelterfoodpantry

or                           beabetterperson who doesbetterthings and thinksbetterthoughts.

It would not be wrong and many will do it.

I could make a resolution.

Promise is a synonym for resolution.

As are oath / pledge / purpose --

this is no small matter in a world of the

uncompromising splendor and

terror we

live, enable, unmask.

 A synonym for resolute is stubborn.

So are determined / unwavering / definite --

there is power in this,

the living, the marching rising lifting hearing speaking yelling falling and

rising again.

I do not love the coming of the year.

When more in me feels old than new and

change hangs like a pendulum swinging without

gravity or physics,

resolutions surround that may/not be of consequence

and the weight of the unresolved shifts like earth

quake: break me open.  Make me

thunderous and messy in my

shaking, challenge me to be dis-

comforted, up-rooted and

growing.  Unquiet my heart and light a

fire to burn my too soft edges -- the world is precious and I am

stubborn.

Let me learn to pay the cost of being human in

raw, determined love:

this promise is one I must continually learn

to keep.

II.     Revelations

New Year "beginning again" is not my

target: growth is too hard

won to aim for beginning

anew, roll that clock

onward, I am standing

under the dripping

faucet of faith, waiting for

no one: I am my own

Godot. And aren't I

dangerous? Aren't I a woman to be

feared as I dare

revelations of my own

worth?

III.     Revolutions

In astronomy, natural objects in space are

heavenly bodies.

Although no one says it,

we celebrate the New Year because our

heavenly body completed one

full cycle around another heavenly

body and those cycles are

revolutions.

Quiet, unassuming amid our

fireworks and ball drops, the

heavenly body heaves herself to home plate

without a sigh of derision, the

gravity of this revolutionary

love literally holding us all

here, we

human bodies crack

under both weight and

weightlessness, we know

revolution

is the key for our survival

revolution

is making it home when they tried to end you
revolution
is holding it all in love, and anger, and fear, 

revolution

is the will to keep your

heavenly body

cycling.