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The Promise
Delores Maxine, My Grandmother's Daughter
Gorilla Love
In Berkeley
Her Eyes
Blood Sisters
If you bring forth what is within you,
what is within you will save you.
If you do not bring forth what is within you,
what is within you will destroy you.
– Jesus, in The Gnostic Gospels which stress salvation
through intuitive knowledge of spiritual matters
Last year I bore a child.
Glistening, she slid into the world
wet and sweet—
a pomegranate seed.
She taught me to sing,
the melody tart,
the words staining me red.
But I lost my place,
and the hum in my throat
turned to a groan,
then to the noiseless hiss
of sand
through an hourglass.
She
sat drinking coffee,
in a fluorescent-lit diner,
dull eyes watching her skin wither and
pull away from her bones.
I tried reminding her of certain urgencies
worthy of napkins, the backs of placemats.
She turned from me with a dry rattle.
I ached with her absence.
What if what you bring forth
sits in a diner
drinking coffee?
Then one night,
numberless nights,
I felt her stir me
like cream in her coffee—
knew she poured into
my black, bitter sleep.
Mornings I would rise
to some hollow hell
where time turned liquid
and glutted my lungs,
silence razored my mind,
sunlight iced over my eyes.
Morning after morning
the terror of a knife
inside me
threatened to cleave
the leathery skin
that held my guts.
Finally, I willed it
to splay me open
and blackened seeds
spilled to the floor.
"Good," I heard her say.
"Now sit and rock.
Sit and rock.
Sit and rock."
She came back,
crawled inside my opened belly.
We sing.
(January 1994) {Back to Top}
Delores Maxine, My Grandmother's Daughter
Amazing Grace,
Watching Captain Kangaroo,
I could feel you in the house,
dependable as grilled cheese sandwiches,
warm as tomato soup.
how sweet the sound,
That whistle,
Strong, clear, unequivocally commanding.
It told us, "come home."
But more than that,
it told us who we were coming home to.
that saved a wretch like me.
Turquoise gingham with matching purse:
I was the cat's meow!
For years, your whirring Singer
gave birth to my leopard-skinned, rick-racked,
polka-dotted personalities.
Could it be stiff sizing
from one-of-a-kind outfits
seeped into my pores
like a lifelong poultice
drawing out
the courage to be different?
I once was lost,
Six o'clock. Dinnertime.
The house deflates slowly, like a balloon.
I wait for you to come home,
wait for you to reinflate the house,
from the kitchen out.
but now I'm found,
I collect pieces of your life:
Grandma's simple wedding ring
that old cast iron skillet,
plain platinum-ringed china.
I am rich indeed.
was blind,
Just ripening into womanhood
poring over Kimberly-Clark books
and getting the hang of Kotex belts,
I could feel your mother,
the grandmother I never knew.
I could feel her in me.
Disturbing, troublesome, eerie,
yet welcome....
just like the blood that came in the night.
but now I see.
Watching old films, my first glimpse of her—
and yet, I recognize her sassy eyes.
Know her brazen smile.
Feel her highstepping feet.
They are yours, Mom.
They are mine.
(July 1991) {Back to Top}
– Inspired by the jazz of OutSpeak
(September 1997) {Back to Top}
(January 2005) {Back to Top}
Written upon viewing "The Butcher's Helper, Buchenwald 1941–45," painted by Jerome Witkin.
Disgust floods my mouth
as semen floods her body.
Her body, handless, footless,
is heaped in a corner,
stubs sewn shut with gristly stitches.
She watches as the Butcher's Helper leaves,
sees beyond him where her husband hangs
from the ceiling
gutted:
a side of beef.
As the black slit between her legs
seeps with filth
the allied soldiers come.
At first I feel triumphant,
Redeemed—she'll live!
Then gasp.
This burning ember with eyes.
She will live.
(October 1992) {Back to Top}
They will not remember you for how many sisters you had,
but for how many sisters you earned...
-Nicole Blackman, in Elegy
They gather on the dark side of the moon
Every girl broken off at the root
Every woman ground to ashes.
I feel them thicken my blood-
those I've known-Penny, Susan, Pat-
and those numberless I've only known of.
When I hear her
struggling
growling,
"Get off of me.
Let me go.
Get off,"
and she doesn't say please,
I love her for that,
this stranger
behind the pine
in the damp grass
with the man on top of her.
I find my voice.
It gushes from me full, luminous.
It is enough
to send him skulking back to the dark.
Perhaps he knew...
I would have fought him
hand-to-hand with her.
And we would not have been alone.
{March 1994} {Back to Top}