The Fourth of July

I walked out of the party late
the night congealing on the strands of
waxy smoke weaving the streets together
drifting from the fireworks,
no more revolutionary gunpowder exploding in our streets
only the multicolor sparks, fizzling into nothing on the thick air.
dead are the revolutionaries, our founding fathers,
dead are the white men who did not envision
leaving me and my sisters, siblings
small and confused,
like mice we wander the streets with the hollow fireworks in our ears, sparks in our eyes, fizzling out.

The revolution is dead,
the revolution is dead,
burnt out, its ashes snowing on our manicured lawns,
the shroud of smoke blinding us.
We have small dreams, like
bathrooms not labeled “men” and “women”.
We dream of being able to piss when we go out in public;
of being called by the right name every time,
and even these dreams seem unlikely in the cynical haze.

The politicians light fireworks to celebrate post-racial
America
America the free
the bountiful the five vacant homes per homeless person, America
the anti-homeless spikes on our streets America

and we light fireworks to burn off our gaseous hopelessness
for one night.
For one night –
The sky is lit ablaze with sparks,
and we can see, vaguely, in their reflections, in the afterimage
our own burning mirage of America the free,
the otherverse, liberé America
In which the downtrodden fly on the voices of the powerful,
In which nobody is too afraid of rape to walk alone at night,
In which the wage-gap has long since been ground to dust,
In which our state is not a corpocracy.
The free America!
Liberated America!
One night a year we taste it,
The America that could have been –

America,
The dream unrealized.

wordy explanation

today I woke up upset
and remembered how my mom always told me
the only reason my emotions were out of control
was cause I wasn’t good enough
and because
I don’t get enough
exercise
so I ripped myself out of bed like an old band-aid
and swung a leg over my bike

I was still sore from yesterday, 
sleep-hungover from
a squadron of nightmares,
several nights plagued with taffy-stretched gray insomnia.
I walked down the driveway and then mounted my bike
which I have named Rhino. 
We flew,
my legs burning, 
black grease and rainwater dripping off my calves. 
The streets were morning-slick with
yesterday’s appeasing rain. 
The sound of wind followed me closely;
I had forgotten my earbuds.
Too late now, miles from my house.

I twined up and down the familiar roads,
threading a lonely path. 
The wind whispered to me and I argued back
biting into the silence.

I sailed twelve miles on the asphalt,
feeling my unwashed face, 
then ignoring it,
distractions peeled away
like layers of skin
until I was a molten bullet of carbon-fiber fury.
The trails murmured under my tires;
the wind sang in the leaves. 
When I stopped, a stranger asked for
two dollars, which
I gave him without consideration. Then I mounted again, flew on.

Walking back up my driveway, I was 
an unfired shell. I thought there would be catharsis,
but all I felt was the redoubled soreness already setting into
my thighs. The door unwelcomed me. I walked in 
and picked up crying where I left off. 
I often find my mom’s explanation of unhappiness, of what I’ve done
wrong
to be oversimplified,
but no betrayal could ever teach me not to trust. It’s futile,
I’m too resilient now, unbreakable even when
breaking would be the easier option. 

At a stoplight a few weeks ago, I had my window rolled down.
There was a bright red car next to me,
Bigger than mine – 
By a lot. 
More expensive, no doubt.
The driver sat high above me
Like royalty carried on the backs of attendants. 
He squinted in the sun.

I’ve never been hit on much by older men,
Never been catcalled on the street,  you understand,
because of my boyish figure, my hair,
The gazes of others slide past me the way they slide past streetlamps,
without inspecting each one.
For my part I keep my head down, 
a translucent figure of wax and mist.

The man in the big car,
the squinting driver
is in his twenties. Older than me
by a lot. 
And looking down, down
to my driver’s side window. And he compliments
me. My hair. Which is brightly colored.
Unmist, unmissed. Draws attention.
My heart rate spikes. 
And the blush rises panicked to my cheeks.
“Thanks,” I say, but my voice wavers. And I think,
He said nothing about my body and that clearly was not
sexual, and he’s
enclosed, trapped by the car door.
But there he is in the throbbing-red SUV,
reclining above me,
And my heart races,
beats like a caged bird,
like it wants to break my ribs, 
free my stuttering lungs. 

Men grow us like bonsai,
in thimble pots, ensuring
we aspire to no lapis sky,
Above us, only the nicotine-stained ceiling of a house
that hasn’t been repainted in a few years.
We crane our necks towards the windows,
stilling our breaths to deepen the silence,
to invite in the soft sounds of the Outside we’ve never seen.

The slender trunk twists,
caged by the creeping copper wires.
Budding leaves are trimmed back,
lest we become too ambitious.

– “Don’t sit with your legs apart like that, honey.
It’s vulgar.”

I will exist, I will occupy the space I’ve been assigned. I will occupy more.
I will outgrow you.

persistently, the summer comes
persistently, the summer dawns on us
flaming, peachy in the east
the sun drags itself over the horizon ray by ray each morning,
melting the vestiges of winter
the grey snow like carpet scraps plastered to the cement curb.

it thrums through the blood in our veins,
it’s a year of sunrises,
the summer dawns again and again
it dawns on us,
pulling the strawberry flush to our cheeks
drawing the lolling lazy tongue from the mouth of the family dog
dropping us to our knees to kneel and watch the white sun dawn
in the east, 
we are kneeling, like in the pews of the church, between the straight pines of the forest
the little waves on the lake are the faraway echoes of church bells.

persistently the summer dawns on us and the trees
bear fruit, again and again, the fall crop yielding to the summer crop,
apples heavy as stones on the branches of the aspiring trees.
the sun sweats on the horizon in the east,
apple-red with exertion,
persistently it dawns.

Everything is soluble in water,
including tears, memories.

The rhythm of a steady breast-stroke,
a face down stroke so that I can open my eyes in the fresh water,
and watch the fading rays of sun,
shimmering out into nothing in the foggy green-grey

This rhythm will obliterate everything that is human inside you;
It is more than human; it crushes ego;
I have swum for hours like this,
each breath a chaos of noise and sunlight,
the long strokes underwater calm, silent,
losing myself piece by piece with each toss of the waves;

I listened to the song of motorboat engines far-off,
Looked down and saw the weak sunlight drown,
too yellow to probe the depths,
bright curiosity suffocated in the dark.

as you walk your path remember
la lumière qui brille à son but
is in the hands of someone who walked before you and who
has survived the dim-lit forest before you;
those who have come before smooth the path for their followers;
regardes toujours ce lumière
tiens à l’espoir que, au futur,
tu vas tenir la flamme pour la generation prochaine.

When I was in ninth grade, tenth,
I waited.
Waited on somebody;
I didn’t know who yet.
Waited for somebody to make me feel warm, loved,
perfect,
And happy
And I knew from the books I read that he
was out there, and I waited for this boy
to come and save me. 

Then there came a day when I was hurt
one too many times
and I was tired
of waiting on the world to
turn under me; it was time to
get up and run,
to pick myself up and 
take care of the pieces like you would handle
a delicate china doll, with soft hands, warm hands

and it took me years to realize
that the boy I wasted years waiting for
was me.

The summer sun rises fast.
Three fingers above the horizon, now four,
it soars like a bird of prey released, shrieking,
blazing hot a hand above the horizon.
Cicadas sing.

Nights,
The moon drifts to her place in the sky,
unhurried.
It washes the mountaintops with silver,
reminding them that
even these giants
will fall.

It creeps in slowly
but suddenly it’s rooted.

One day
a sunset is nothing but
the herald of a coming dawn,
the white flag
of another day defeated,
its hours not lived but passed. 

The next, I find myself
drifting to the right of my lane
in the car in the evening
watching the fiery colors burn out

wondering how many sunsets I ignored
before I realized
that my sunsets were
numbered.