Dear terrorists;
The people you killed and maimed today have nothing to do with your war. They were innocents, with people who love them, people they love/d, dreams and fears, children and boyfriends, girlfriends and wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and friends, and they themselves were all these things too.
You did not win your cause, but you disrupted worlds, caused grief that will never end for some, fear that will live on forever for others, and again, these people had nothing to do with you. Your act was selfish and petty and mean.
You may have intended to make a point, but you did not. You may have imagined you were fighting for some glorious cause, or that you were defeating some great satan. Neither is true.
What is true, is that you caused pain beyond belief, set back immeasurably, whatever cause you represent, and for some innocent people who had no quarrel with you, and perhaps even sympathized with you, you brought their entire universe to an end.

The image of the small, wooden remnant of an eyeliner pencil, about an inch in length and bereft of its white, waxy "lead" stayed with her hours later. It remained where she'd dropped it during her frenzied morning makeup ritual, there, in the middle of the dirty bathroom mat about which her wife often complained she never washed often enough. There it lay like a memorial.
It evoked a dream she'd had 32 years before, in which she herself had been a stick of waxy makeup and lived in the bottom of an unknown lady's purse; as the dream progressed, she was aware of the temporaryness of her existence. She was aware that she was being used up. She was aware, that she was disappearing. In her dream, it felt like she was dying, and when she awoke, she was both sexually aroused and incredibly happy.

All too familiar
this uncertainty
this fear
She becomes an object
(far too willingly- I think)
As they turn her life into
numbers, and
charts
something quantifiable
something
not her

Thighs squeezed
tight around thighs
Lips and breasts
mashed together
Fingers in hair
(fingers inside)
This is not sex
Not making love
This is our blood
This is life itself

Preparing for the GLBT Expo this weekend at the Javitz Center, I had some idea of what to expect; would it be an enormous room full of beautiful queermos hocking pride jewelry, free dental dams and condoms? (Yes.)
Would there be a slew of corporate and tourism booths dedicated to opportunistically courting the almighty "pink dollar"? (Predictably, yes.)
Would there be incessant, inescapable and incoherent babble coursing from loudspeakers over a driving bass thump from the back of the room? (Annoyingly, also yes.)
In fact, most of what I expected to fill the large conference room at the Javitz Center did, but there was something else.
This is where I should let you in on a little secret: This was my first time at the GLBT Expo. Therefore, I have no idea what was there previous years. That said, I was struck at how completely family oriented the whole thing had become, and not in that Sister Sledge- "We Are Family..." kind of way, although it was that too.
Amidst the free HIV testing booths, the booths promoting the latest Broadway shows and the queer, ethical porn booth, were booths offering at home fertilization devices, promoting sperm cryo-banks, adoption services for same-sex couples and foster parent advocacy groups. The whole thing was so normal, so nice, so... non-subversive, which is a good thing. Right?
I mean, sure there was the occasional bear or leatherman walking around, or the odd old school butch/femme couple- one in a slinky dress, the other with a lead gray crew cut, but the overwhelming feeling I got walking around the expo was, "we're here, we're queer, and, let's face it, America's used to it."
Now, before you get your carabiner clipped keys in a tangle, let me explain. I'm not romanticizing the days of unrecognized partnerships, daily gay bashings and general societal homophobic ickyness.. Hell, leave New York City and you'll find that that world still exists. In fact, I think it's amazing and wonderful that I can go with my WIFE to her new doctor, and when he asks what our relationship is, answer "I'm her wife". I love the fact that we live in a city (and time,) where the love of my life and I can walk down almost any street holding hands and barely get a second look from passersby, and it's incredible that- if we were a bit more solvent and in a position to adopt a child, there are services to help us do just that.
All these things, and so much more that have come about with this great sociopolitical shift are more than I could have dreamt of when as a child, I first realized that I could never follow in my parents' socially sanctioned footsteps, but there's a part of me that wanders if, along with all these gains, we as a people haven't lost something precious.
Gay culture has always given its proverbial middle finger to the bourgeois, middle American ideal of white bread, Bible thumping conformity. As dykes, queers and trans* people, we've always had somewhat of a rebel cachè. What now, now that we're becoming that bourgeois cliché? Does the fact that we're out and proud on Kindle commercials, raising adopted children before coast to coast network TV audiences and a frontrunner in the NYC mayoral race mean that we're slated for sociocultural lesbian bed death?
Maybe not so much. As out front as our collective fight for equality has become, (even the POTUS has publicly sworn his support for marriage equality,) it's easy to forget that in several states, conservative lawmakers are still proposing laws as heinous as the "Don't Say Gay" bill, and rates of anti-gay and anti-trans* violence have barely waned.
Events such as the GLBT Expo are designed- not only to support GLBT owned/friendly businesses, but to increase opportunities for LGBTQ people, and to make more visible our presence in the world.
Being an out and proud dyke of trans* history may make me feel a little badass, but I'll gladly trade that little bit of outsider cool for a world in which my sisters and brothers can celebrate their loves and lives and enjoy the same privileges as the rest of the hetero world.

Your breath on my neck
Your breasts against my back
Your arm across my breasts
Like this, we revel in now
Already, day's blue light
stains our dancing
white gauze curtains.

I Need Feminism Because:

I need feminism because
No woman owes beauty to anyone else, but we're all treated as subhuman if we aren't at least "pretty"

I need feminism because being fat, and unabashedly eating a Butterfinger on a crowded rush hour bus ought not be a revolutionary act
but it is

I need feminism because
"feminist" is still viewed as a dirty word

I need feminism because
politicians are still trying to regulate every woman's uterus, but any yutz can still walk into Walmart and buy a gun

I need feminism because
my wife, the woman I love more than anything in the world thinks she's ugly because she's also fat
and has scars

I need feminism because she thinks that not being "beautiful", somehow detracts from her worth as a woman

I need feminism because
My sisters and I continue to make only 77% of our male peers' salaries, work harder to receive less recognition, and are often passed up for promotions in favor of far less capable men

I need feminism because
every woman is taught to think of her virginity as a "gift to bestow", rather than her sexuality as something for her own enjoyment

I need feminism because
even today, on Facebook and elsewhere, women who choose to appear in sexy outfits are exhorted to "respect themselves" by practicing modesty, lest they be viewed as complicit in their own sexuality

I need feminism because
no woman becomes a lesbian just because she's never been fucked by a really great dick
(just remember..strap-ons don't need Viagra!)

All kidding aside, I need feminism because I don't hate men
In fact, I know many men are victimized by the patriarchy as well

I need feminism because
I'm exhausted.
I'm exhausted from crying over my sisters:
14 years old and shot in the face for saying that girls should go to school too
15 years old and throat slit because she wanted a brighter future than being forced to marry her 28 year old cousin
23, and gang raped to death on a bus

I need feminism because
this list could go on for a hundred thousand pages, and the world will continue to invent new ways to make my sisters and me feel that we're somehow failures- as women and as human beings

I need feminism because
I will reject each one, and I pray that my sisters will all find their strength
and stand beside me

Questioning the Term "Transgender"

This is exceedingly personal and, a personal narrative is- as its name implies, personal. For the sake of real discourse, it must be maintained that from the personal comes the political, and never the other way around, or we risk sacrificing what's important, (i.e., the truth,) for what's convenient, or useful as propaganda. That said, while I'm writing about gender identity, I'm presenting my own perspective on my own experience, and in no way should this be mistaken for a political statement or manifesto.
...
I've been thinking about the word "transgender" alot lately. Although I'd never dream of denying my own history, I'm no longer certain that I can identify with the term, and here's why: first, I must begrudgingly confess my compulsive disorder regarding language, particularly when it comes to grammar and the obsessive drive to find the exact right word for any given situation. Mind you, I don't always succeed, and much self-flagellation has ensued as a result, but this is slightly beside the point.
The "point" is, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines "Gender" as, "sexual identity", not biological sex. The selfsame dictionary defines the prefix "trans" as "across; on the other side; beyond".
In that light, let's examine the word "transgender":

"Across gender": this would mean encompassing more than one gender.

"On the other side of gender": this suggests that there was some initial place from which an original gender identity was formulated prior to being changed; while I'm certain this is applicable to many who identify as "transgender"- and for the sake of argument, I'll include myself, it doesn't exactly match my own experience in that, I always knew I was female, regardless of what the doctor stamped on my birth certificate. This brings us to...

"Beyond gender": while I've known many who legitimately identify as "genderqueer", or outside the male/female binary, I do not. I identify as female and I always have, regardless of my presentation at any given time.

So you see, in several ways this "transgender" thing is a conundrum; if when asked about my identity (this kind of thing comes up in conversation far more often than I'm comfortable with,) I simply say "I'm a woman", it will be read one of two possible ways: either more or less at face value, (I'm exceedingly thankful for "passing privilege"!), or that I'm challenging the socially accepted definition of the word "woman" itself. For my part, both apply. While I was not born with ovaries, I was born with an XXY chromosome and a female gender identity, and while I have had to utilize medical and cosmetic intervention for the purpose of aligning my external gender presentation with my internal identity, I'm far from alone; there are millions of women the world over who- for one reason or another suffer from hirsuteness (typically male pattern body and facial hair growth), have no ovaries, etc. Would any concientious person have the gall to suggest that they aren't women?
Equally important, there's the issue of the personal as the political: as an "out" "transitioning woman who was at one time thought to be, and presented herself as a man (etc. etc.)", whether I like it or not, any way in which I explain my identity to the world matters. If I reject the mantle of "transgender", I will be perceived by my trans* sisters and brothers as a turncoat, and by the
cis world as "proof" that trans* experiences are somehow less than genuine.

Maybe I can find a way in which the term trans* is personally applicable. Afterall, my entire life is in transition: my wife who met me when I was presenting as male, is straight, (I identify as lesbian,) and finds herself grappling with her own identity within our relationship, and my parents who, for 43 years believed that they had had a son, must now come to grips with the fact that they suddenly have a 44 year old daughter.
Perhaps I need to come up with a new term, one that more accurately fits my identity. Maybe, the next time some probing questioner asks me what I am, (and I feel safe to answer truthfully,) I'll reply, "I'm a woman living a life in transition", or, maybe that's far too long winded and will lead to too many other probing questions I'd rather not deal with. The fact is, if some future gatekeeper or self-appointed gender gendarme has the chutzpah to ask me "what are you?" I'll likely answer "I'm a woman ", and simply leave it at that.

thank you

To the beautiful, twenty-something lesbian from the makeup counter at Macy's on Fulton Street today: Thank you for flirting with me when you're obviously out of my league. Thank you for touching my arm and then my curls as you leaned conspiratorially close to whisper that I could find eyeshadow of the same colors and quality at less than half the price at Duane Reade. Thank you for making me blush. Although I acted cool and unaffected, you made my day.

For Everywoman

I don't owe you/ pretty, or/ thin/ or shapely/ or "hot"/ I don't owe you/ my tits/ nor my ass/ nor do I owe you/ (or anyone else)/ "Modesty"/ Or a plan to shield you from looking at me./ (that's all on you.)/ I owe you very little in fact, nothing but what you owe me/ Like respect/ as another human being/ not as a "lady", or a mother or a daughter/ Just another human being/ who rides on the same bus/ Walks on the same sidewalk/ Or breathes the same air.

This morning in the laundry room,/ I learned that Jose had died./ Jose was a homeless man./ He stayed in the neighborhood./ He was kind and had a dog named Shorty. /He was eloquent and thoughtful and spoke like a poet. / I'm going to miss the fixture of his cart./ I'll pass the corner where he spent temperate days/ and miss the inspiration he lent my stories./ I didn't know him well, but I'll miss him./ Occasionally, I'll wander what became of his dog.

body

Naked, we press/ together in purple sleep, my/ budding breasts/ reach toward your back/ but my belly/ your ass/ put air between us/ This is our body/ ankles tangled / thigh between thighs/ under white down comforter/ pulled up around cheeks/ Warm breath on back/ against the cold/ late November open window.

The Butterfinger Incident

Since transitioning, I've become acutely aware of male privilege. For one thing, taking the subway, or even the bus doesn't feel as safe as it once did, but that's something to be expected. I'm not by any means condoning harassment, but let's face it, men can be creeps. I was however surprised when one recent rush hour on the M14 bus, I was forced into the realization that something as mundane as eating a candy bar could be so controversial. I should probably explain. I'm fat. I take up space. In no earthly culture could I be viewed as "thin". And so it was that one evening rush hour on the M14, while eating a Butterfinger candy bar that I was reminded by a man (who was of at least my own girth,) that if I would "...only lose a few pounds, maybe I could get myself a nice guy". I won't even bother to go into the myriad replies that filled my incredulous head, all jostling towards my mouth only to get stuck shoulder to shoulder to shoulder in the doorway (chief among them, I'm a lesbian who happens to be married, thank you very much!) In fact, I was sadly unable to say anything brilliantly cutting or clever before he disembarked at 5th Avenue. Had I been quicker on my verbal feet, I might have retorted that women's bodies, indeed all bodies ought not be regarded as grist for the mill of public commentary. How many of us have looked at another woman and commented that she was too thin or too tanned, or that her breasts or ass were too small or too big? I'm not only pointing the finger at everyone else. Admittedly, I've done this too. Obviously, as a lesbian I look at other women. I am afterall a sexual creature, and it's only natural, but the problem arises when we don't only look, but feel compelled to comment, as though we have a right to lay some kind of claim to another's body. I realize that I've digressed from my original point about male privilege, or, maybe not. The fact of the matter is, women are complicit in making the female body public property, and although men are becoming increasingly regarded in much the same way, it's usually men who are already in the public arena as celebrities. This doesn't make it alright by any means, but that's fodder for another rant; this one's about women's bodies, and our right to own our own. After all, a fat woman standing on a rush hour bus should be able to enjoy a candy bar, without it being an act of feminist rebellion.

My Body is a Revolution

As a lesbian identified woman of trans history, my criteria for attraction/attractiveness already differ slightly from those of most of the hetero/cisexual public. That said, my wife was shocked when, during a conversation last week about "getting into better shape", I declared that I didn't want to completely get rid of my belly. The truth of the matter is, I like having a belly. I enjoy being "fat". It makes me feel feminine and in charge of my own image because, with the revolutionary act of simply accepting my body as it is, I've declared- both to myself and to the world, that the media will never dictate to me what I should look like, nor what I should find aesthetically or even sexually attractive. My body is a revolutionary act because, I declare ownership of it and responsibility for it every day. And to those who would cite the fact that I was born biologically male, rendering me incapable of understanding the angst and social pressure brought to bare on girls to conform to media imposed strictures of acceptability, I say this: I am a woman. I'm a woman who until only recently was perceived as, and expected to behave as a man, simply because, externally, I didn't fit anyone's concept of what a woman should be. Believe me, I understand the pressures of society to conform, and admittedly, I embrace some of them: I take hormones to grow my breasts. I still shave daily (because as yet, I cannot afford laser depilation) and wear makeup. I paint my nails, and do my best to maintain some semblance of a manicure which isn't easy, considering that I've got dry nails that crack and I'm a klutz. I do all these things and more, because they help me feel more in touch with my femininity, as well as helping me "pass" in the world, but mostly I do them because I like to. It's as simple as that. They simply feel right, like they're a part of me, and if tomorrow, Vogue Magazine came out in favor of absolute androgyny, and women everywhere began foregoing their lipstick and makeup for a K.D. Lang circa 1991 inspired look, I'd walk out my front door in my size 26 pencil skirt, blood red lipstick and matching nails, and- as much as I'd enjoy checking out all the hot androgynous women, I'd thank the universe for the fact that I am who I am: a fat, femme dyke who has, after years of struggling with identity and body dysphoria issues, finally come to love herself, exactly as she is.

The View From E 88th

Stepping outside my front door this morning, coffee in hand, ankle length winter coat for lack of a bathrobe, onto the catwalk: our street is eerily calm. It's cold, and there's a carpet of wet, yellow leaves on the ground. The three trees in front of my building thankfully withstood the storm, as did a carelessly parked Harley across the street. In fact, but for the news, loudly insinuating itself from my neighbor's apartment, one looking out on this street might think she had merely awoken to an average Manhattan morning still wet with the results of an average October rain. But there's no sound of traffic coming up the hill from Second, and no march of morning umbrellas torwards the 6 train on Lex and down on 14th, at Avenue C the cars' roofs are like islands in an inland sea.

Ritual

The sounds of her pills, my pills being counted / This diurnal inventory that greets me each morning.

Just A Comment

When someone tells me I'm "very brave" for transitioning, I can't help but think it has less to do with bravery, than it does that survival instinct that kicks in when one's house is on fire; if one wishes to go on living, one gets up from their easy chair and runs outside. My decision to transition was- indeed IS no more nor less than that primary instinctual imperative to get out of a burning building.

untitled

I did not choose this otherness
I did not choose isolation or
the fear
of leaving the house
unshaven and without my face
I did not choose this otherness, this
life apart, of complexities
and complications
I never chose anxiety
over which public restroom to use, nor
to be a target
just for walking in daylight
I did not choose this otherness
any more than to have two hands
or to be 5 foot 6
or to have curly hair
I choose only to be myself
Unapologetic
Unashamed
Let others be shamed by their sameness, their lack of courage
I did not choose this otherness
but I will accept it with
wide open hands.

Suheir,
The brothers in olive have
wrapped you in your own anger
You smother there
For whom?

this morning

We shared a pint of
giant blackberries
stained our fingers with
Blackberry blood--
a sweet memory from
our first meeting
and now I sit in my
yellow chair
reading your Hammad
my fingertips still red.





*poet Suheir Hammad

By way of my contribution to the "I need feminism because..." meme circulating on Facebook:

I need feminism because
people think it's ok to suggest that:
(a) I've sacrificed status, and
(b) I shouldn't be surprised or upset when people
regard me as a joke because I'm transgendered.

offering

Some intruders
come with hammers and torches
Knocking down walls, throwing
books to the pyre
Others come full of
only good intentions, with
Ziploc bags full of
sage for burning.

Cleaning The Refrigerator

Cleaning the refrigerator
in the country house
Is like some perverse exercise
in something the opposite of archeology;
In yellow rubber gloves and with
Lysol cloths
I erase the ketchupy finger prints
of a brother-in-law, 4 years past,
some short black hairs from Spikeword,
the German shepard who shared my wife's bed,
2 years before me
and crayon marks from my 3 year old niece
(who's now nearly 17).
"Powerful Cleaner- No Bleach Harshness" reads the blue and white canister, but
what it fails to warn me of
are the myriad other ways
in which
the harshness of a clean refrigerator
might be felt.

7/28/2012: Kerhonkson

The radio off, we
drive in silence
She sits beside me
listening to cricket gossip
I, driving, write this poem:
The Kerhonkson roads
have a smell in summer
At 62 degrees, and 70% humidity,
They smell of old wood houses
and lush green roadsides
ancient trees with porous bark
Occasionally, a skunk
(a smell I like.)
My t-shirt sleeve grows wet by the open window,
And slow motion moths change direction before the windshield
white wings blue in the dashboard light
We round a bend where 3 local boys died
Their truck split in half on a telephone pole
(the newest ghosts of Samsonville Road)
Each time
At this bend, I hold the wheel a little tighter
resisting the seduction
of entropy
We're almost home now,
There's a pickup close behind;
"better signal early, so he doesn't rear end us"
-my practical wife pulls me out of my own head
"remember to put the ice cream away before you sit down to write your poem"
She says to me as she
disappears down the hall.

The Following Account Is Absolutely True

So, at 5:08 a.m., I wake up to pee. I flip on the bathroom light, (silly me,) and one of the three 100 watt bulbs that hangs above my medicine cabinet explodes into a shower of shattered glass. Now I have to run and get my crocs (I only wear them in the house), plug in the tired old vacuum we inherited when we moved in (from my sister-in-law's "granny" in law), which has the shortest cord of any vacuum in history, and make sure every splinter of glass has gone with Elvis (left the building). I do just that. Mind you, I still have to pee, but now, so does Carrie. She gets HER crocs (she only wears them in the house too, I swear!) and shuffles into the dark bathroom. While she's peeing, I decide to put the vacuum away. When I pick it up from whence I'd leaned it, the canister, in an apparent show of sympathy with the bulb, forceably ejects, spewing dust, glass, and- inexplicably, peanut shells, all over the living room floor. Carrie says it must be something in my aura, and I search my Broca's brain for new and interesting curse words with which to experiment.
Through no small amount of therapy and gentle coaxing, I finally get Granny's vacuum to agree once more that it is, in fact, a vacuum, and clean up our now war torn living room. I still have to pee, and go to do exactly that, but first I don yellow gloves and flip the circuit breaker to make sure I don't get electrocuted as I surgically extract the root of the terrorist bulb from its socket. Carrie gives me the once over, says of my naked-but-for-yellow-rubber-gloves-and-black-crocs look, "You know, I'm certain there's a fetish for that somewhere if you google it", and helpfully shuffles back to bed. I meanwhile, replace the terrorist bulb with a new one, one of those twisty new bulbs which promise four hundred years of use and mercury poisoning if they break.
Job well done, I congratulate myself with a well earned pee, flush and get up to wash my hands. As I stand before the sink, I notice how bright the new bulb is. As I notice how bright the new bulb is, I glance in the mirror, and when I glance in the mirror, I see something stuck to my forehead. Is it dried blood? Had a kamikaze shard actually gotten through to its' target, missing my left eye by less than an inch, scarring me for life? As I lean closer to the mirror, it becomes apparent that it's not in fact dried blood at all, but a clump of dried tomato. "Where on Earth did I get dried tomato on my face?" My brain races through improbable scenarios until... Suddenly I remember last night's failed chili con queso operation, exploding salsa and all, and, as images of techni-color culinary misadventures splash across the movie screen of my mind, I make a decision: I'm going back to bed, and staying there until October.

Mizmor L'Avi (a new psalm- in progress)

I am running a race
for which there is no course
My feet
are insubstantial as dreams and
I'm running alone
Though the world stands by the side
they mostly do not cheer
but throw holes and rocks
instead before my feet.

1986

Instead of muscles and money, we
wore our guts on our sleeves
Open and ragged, bleeding and raw
Our strength was in our difference, and
With razor cut arms we pledged our allegiance
to all of the gods of
“not one of them”, and with
boots laced high, and
hair painted and spiked, we
stood aside,
while the parades passed by
mocking the band with our
own frantic beat.

A Transwoman's Declaration of Solidarity

A rare introduction: I wrote this piece, when someone accused me of trying to "cash in on female privilege", because I told them I'm transgendered; oh, that I thought fast enough to let this roll off my tongue at that moment, but oh well:


Female privilege?
Tell me all about female privilege, because
my sisters and I would love to know;
You mean like
getting dry humped from behind during rush hour on the
6 train, or
Paying more money for
haircuts and clothing
all while making
33% less than our male colleagues for the same exact work,
for the same exact job?
Or,
that patient condescending smile we get
when we
go to the auto parts store, and
actually know what we're
talking about?
Or how about
year after year
sitting in a cubicle
while some
20 something Jack or
Johnny-come-lately
suddenly gets his own windowed office?
Tell me,
Tell me about female privilege.
Tell me again how most
any woman could go out to a bar, most
any night, and
never pay for a single drink,
or
How lucky we are, that
even on a frumpy day
we can get laid,
whenever we want,
I'll counter your assertions by telling you that most
every day,
some poor woman who let some strange man
buy her a drink, gets
drugged and raped
and sometimes worse,
but never mind,
You were saying,
You were about to tell me
all about female privilege,
Because really,
No, seriously,
I'm pretty sure I speak
for my cis and trans sisters alike
when I say we'd
love to know
what it is we've
all been missing.

Caution

Pronouns are
heavy blunt objects.
Falling pronouns
may break your bones.
Swinging a pronoun
in a crowded room
may result
in grievous injury.
Beware of pronouns:
Use with caution.

Bitch

St. Mark's Place
Crowd of male voices
teenagers chanting
"Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!"
A young woman's voice breaks through:
"Let me go!"
All of this happens
out of my sight
Behind the protection of a
parked box truck.

How Blessed

How blessed to feel
at home in my own skin
For years, so worried
over minutiae, like
the proper way to carry schoolbooks, and
the masculine way to walk
How I covered up my body
in the South Florida heat
Covered my soft curves
in denim and leather layers
Now how blessed
not to hide
unembarrassed for my soft hands
and to no longer fear
the natural sway of hips
to take off the mask
To become
unstiffened
How blessed it is
to be myself.

Please Don't Ask

Please don't ask me if I'm going to
"cut it off",
it’s none of your damned business, and it
reduces me to
an object of
“genital dissonance”.
Don't ask me who I'll be tomorrow,
I barely know
who I am today.
Ask me instead, how does it feel?
What was it like to be
forced into boyhood,
(then manhood,)
to have been made to don some kind of
learned masculinity,
all the while fearing the fragilty of my disguise.
Or, ask me what it's like to be a
double agent
a secret spy in the
war of the sexes;
I'll happily give away all my learned secrets,
see, I've always been kind of an antiwar activist!
Ask-
what was it like to grow up in a world that told me
time and again that it's
better to pretend,
rather than to risk anyone finding out the horrible truth.
And finally,
ask me what it feels like, at the age of 43,
to grow tired of pretending, and I'll gladly tell you,
it's like
taking off a pair of someone else's shoes,
shoes that have always been 2 sizes
too small.

When I'm An Old Woman

When I’m an old woman, I’ll wear denim shirts

and big turquoise rings on my

tanned, knotted fingers

When I’m an old woman, I’ll paint in my garden

mixing red dust from the earth

into oil, and light

I’ll grow out my gray hair

way down past my ass, and be

“that strange old woman, who barely ever comes to town”.

When I’m an old woman, I’ll laugh about the time

when everyone around me, thought that I was a man.

When I’m an old woman, I’ll smile at the mirror,

because the woman smiling back at me, knows

who I am.

I'm Trying To Invent A Brand New Language

I’m trying to invent a brand new language
to tell you about the place that I’m from
but I can’t use words such as
female, or male,
you’d never understand how they don’t apply.
So I’ll tell you instead how I
come from a marshland:
a soft place between
two fortified nations with
impassable borders and
natal requirements for citizenship.

If I tried to explain how I’d been handed
the wrong disguise
by the border coyotes when I came to this place, or
if I told you I don’t have a green card
and that I feared discovery
every second of every day,
maybe you’d see,
maybe you’d understand, how
try as I do just to fit in,
and try as I have all of my life,
none of that matters.
I’m just not from here.

And I wish I could tell you
how lonely it is here
when nobody else can
speak my language:
a language that
even I have yet to learn.

if truly

If truly I hated you, I'd
roll you in sugar, or
douse you in Tabasco,
whatever I had to do
to make your bitter taste
easier to swallow.

Finding My Place Of Strength

There was the time when, walking across my high school's courtyard at seven a.m., there was a loud noise- a thwack, and I was down. I’d been hit in the head with- a rock? And there was something wet dripping on my left ear. Was it blood? A searching finger revealed it to be albumen. I'd been hit on the side of my head with a raw egg, hard enough to knock me to the ground.

I was 17.

There was the time I was cornered in the boy’s room at the point of a switchblade, and called a “Faggot”. No, "worse", (in his eyes,) I was a “girl”.
“What’s a girl doing in the boy’s room? Take off your clothes, girl.”
My button down shirt and orthopedic saddle shoes ended up in the toilet. Only my blue J.C. Penny pleated cords were spared by the timely entrance of a teacher.

I was 8.

Then, there was the time I was surrounded on the P.E. field by 4 bigger kids. They called me "fatso" and "faggot". They violently kicked and shoved me as I tried to get away. When finally they pushed me down, my wallet fell out of the elastic waistband of my polyester P.E. shorts, and as they taunted me with it, one discovered the condom I’d hidden within, stolen from my father’s drawer, but worse for me, he also found something to really get me in trouble about: a baggie of small red pills I’d taken from our home medicine cabinet.

The pills were nothing but Sudafed, I’d carried them months as some kind of ill conceived exit strategy: In case things had gotten so awful I couldn’t stand another second, I would swallow them all in a bathroom stall.

When Mr. Fontana, our school's vice principal got a hold of the pills, I wasn't sent to the school counselor, nor was I asked what they were, or why I had them hidden in my wallet. The school rules were firm, and instead of a sympathetic ear, I was bent over his desk, my pants pulled down. He pressed his large, hot hand on the back of my neck as he stood over me with a heavy perforated wooden paddle. It was three strong strokes. (It could have been five, he'd warned, but he was being "lenient".) The four bigger kids, who'd bullied me didn't even get a detention.

This was at Highland Oaks Junior High School in North Miami Beach, and I was 14.

I’ve never been what you'd call masculine. In fact, there was a period in my early twenties when after years of living in a body I'd always felt sentenced to rather than gifted with, I’d finally decided to pursue gender reassignment. At that time however, the fact that my primary sexual/romantic attachments were with women, led the inept therapist to whom I’d been sent (the only one in Miami at that time, who dealt with the Harry Benjamin protocols for gender/sexual reassignment,) to concede that I wasn’t truly “gender dysphoric”: I was merely “confused”.

Not that any of this is truly pertinent to the above, but I am, and always have been quiet, sensitive, interested in things like fashion, (which, believe it or not, before the whole “metrosexual” thing, was thought largely to be the province of women and gay men,) art, philosophy, literature, music, etc. I've never had a bit of interest in sports, (though, if I'm being really honest here, and I am, I’ve occasionally enjoyed watching them under the right circumstances,) war movies, or fixing cars. In fact, I always preferred the company of women with intimate conversations and sisterly relationships, to that of men with what I always perceived as its brevity, lack of depth in bonding, emotional honesty, and "pissing contests”.

Beyond the whole masculine/feminine thing, I was always more of a creative person, and this came out loudly in my personal approach to fashion. As a teen, I was a regular punk rock peacock. I eschewed the popular mall bought fashions for thrift store treasures such as a bright orange plaid over sized suit which I’d customized with safety pins, scissors and patches, cinched at the waist with an extension cord, and roughly cut off just above the top line of my extra high combat boots. I wore a mohawk, (the only one in North Miami Beach,) and spray-painted it fire-engine red, and, at the height of my piercing fascination, I wore 26 earrings in my left ear, 12 in my right, and two tiny gold wire hoops in my right nostril.

Had I grown up in the East Village, it's likely that none of this would have so much as raised a pierced eyebrow, let alone inspired the violence I was so often subjected to, but this was the mid eighties, and I didn't live in New York. I lived in Miami, that pastel bastion of Miami Vice machismo, and all things conservative conformity.

Even my parents would ask me almost daily, why I couldn't "just fit in", why I felt the need to be so "weird”, and at the time, I didn’t have an answer. In retrospect, I know that they were pained as I was by the way I was treated, that they were worried about my safety, and that they were doing their best to protect me. At the time however, it felt like criticism, and to my fragile teenage ego, it amounted to little more than another egg upside my head.

The truth is, there was little I could have done to fit in. I just wasn't like those I was surrounded with. I couldn’t have cared less about homecoming or prom, high school football, or “banging” the hot "J.A.P. chicks" at North Miami Beach Senior High, had no interest in hanging out on the Ft. Lauderdale Strip and getting trashed on Friday nights, and I wouldn't have been caught dead in Guess, Sasson or Sergio Valente. I wanted more.

The morning I turned 18, I walked into my high school at just after ten. My mohawk which was usually more poodle like than fierce, was responding unusually well to the half a can of Aquanet I'd shellacked it with, and I felt celebratory and resplendent in my tattered thrift store jeans, brand new Docs and motorcycle jacket. It was the best "fuck you" outfit I owned. Rather than going to class, I walked into the principal’s office, and declared I was dropping out, and just two months later, in February of '87, I got my G.E.D., and was ready to enter college.

Once at Miami Dade Community College, (and later Florida International University,) no one said a word about my shaved head, piercings or carefully tattered rags. I found that as long as I contributed well thought out arguments in class, turned in fresh and interesting papers, and was generally just myself, I was rewarded with nothing but appreciation from my professors, and acceptance from other students.

Before I’d discovered my source of strength, (which maturity and experience have shown me to be nothing more than living within my own truth,) the years of bullying had left me a raw and bleeding nerve; I was weak and afraid, and— although I’d found creative ways to hide (such as dressing in what I now call “guy drag”), it usually took all the emotional energy available just to walk out my front door.

Now I live in New York. I am an outspoken, (and just plain "out",) transgender lesbian, a spoken word artist, writer, poet and activist. I’m in a committed, long-term relationship with a wonderful woman whom I love, who in turn, loves me as I am.

Being out as transgender affords me a kind of power I've never felt before. I am for possibly the first time in my life, genuinely unapologetic for my existence. It's wonderful beyond words to feel unconstrained by others' expectations or imposed definitions of who or what I should be, and I'm pretty sure that if I wanted to, I could walk down Fifth Avenue in a pink prom-dress and Doc Marten’s and no one would look twice at me, except maybe the tourists who would ask to take pictures of the "wild, crazy chick who's just so very New York!"


*Note: Mom and dad, don't worry, the pink prom dress was just comedic hyperbole; I'm so much more of a punk rock, black t-shirt, jeans, 'n' Converse kinda chick!

Danny

You write of adventures in a
brand new home
(The land of your father, who’s re-
turned with a new beard)

Climbing Masada
you hiked up the “snake trail”
On a tour through Chevron you
donned your new pride like an
olive green shirt

I can see them indoctrinating you
Twisting you into them
Why am I so worried about you, you say?
Because you’re sensitive and kind
And I know that world well
how they think of these things
as weaknesses, or worse-
(they’ll call you a frier, and
knock you down
until you develop
your tough new Israeli scars)

so you stand up straight
and puff out your chest
and dream of the day
of your giyus
where you’ll lace up stiff boots
and look serious for your ID

and again you ask
why I'm worried about you?
Because it’s apparent
they’re already scarring you
And can’t you see? I bear
those scars too.

Walter

Your family looks for your ghost in corners while
nightly, you visit me in my dreams
We invent a language to
connect over you, not wanting to be trite,
(but who am I kidding?)
And now, each time
I leave my apartment, I carefully step
'round the stain on the walkway, which
might afterall, be from
your spilled brains.

On Writing (Modern) Poetry

Numerous are the legions of "poems", whose well rendered words are perfectly metered or rhymed, and maybe even chosen with such care so as to defy any suggestion of triteness or triviality, but who lack any real anima or soul. A "good" poem however, exists beyond the mere confines of its language.

There's an almost mystical quality to the process of writing a good poem; one might even assert that in fact, a poem isn't so much "written" as realized. I'll explain by personal example: When I sit down to "write" a poem, I pay little attention to the words I'm going to use, the form it's going to take, etc. Instead, I open myself to the soul of the poem; "what exactly do I need to convey?" Believe it or not, this is usually an almost painless process. When a real poem is ready to be born, it just won't be denied!

The next step is somewhat harder: getting out of the poem's way.
Anyone who has sat at their desk, a cafe table, on the edge of a cliff, etc., wishing to "compose a great poem", will have no doubt found themselves painting with broad strokes of ego. This is annoying, and almost never results in an enjoyable, interesting or enlightening poem. That's not to say that one can't write a great piece that exhibits his or her own point of view, (think "Two roads diverge in a wood...",) but it must not come from the desire to "prove something", or force something down the reader's throat, otherwise it'll result in little more than a self indulgence at the reader's (or audience's) expense.

Try instead, to allow the poem to be organic. I've found that thinking of it as a living thing, with its own set of needs and desires, helps me do this. This is very handy when it comes to the next step: editing.

When I edit a poem, I do my best to remove any extraneous content that might interfere with its purity. Usually, I begin this process with a chainsaw, and only later, when I’ve hacked off a sufficient amount of “fat”, do I go back in with a scalpel, finely trimming here and there, surgically shaping it. A good poem is, if anything, distilled.

Adjectives and adverbs are poetic potholes!
When Gary Snyder wrote "The Dead By The Side Of The Road", he relied on the cleanest prose:
" Zac skinned a skunk with a crushed head
washed the pelt in gas; it hangs,
tanned, in his tent"

He could have expended great energy on adjective laden descriptions, but instead he allowed the events or the moment to move it forward. Therefore, it has energy and immediacy.






This is equally true of both Raymond Carver's and Lawrence Ferlinghetti's work. Neither provokes inertia with wasted adjective or metaphor; When Ferlinghetti writes

"Johnny Nolan has a patch on his ass
Kids chase him
thru screendoor summers"

there's nothing unnecessary; in fact, the only adjective employed- "screendoor", is so new and specific, that it almost disappears, or takes on the same quality of motion as the rest of the poem.


Lastly, don't impose some artificial format on your poem. A poem, being organic, and having its own needs, tends to grow into its own form. This is not to say that there aren't some great and very enjoyable formalized poems; the dusty world of "Poetry" (notice the capitalized "P") is littered with them, but modern sensibilities tend to relegate these to the realm of the "quaint", and (rather unfairly,) the boring, so while I very much enjoy work by the likes of Donne, Wordsworth and Coleridge, the type of writing I'm discussing here is more akin to that of Snyder, Carver and Ferlinghetti.

Early readers of these three must have experienced one of three possible reactions:
"That's not poetry!",
"That's poetry?" -or-
"That's poetry!" .
All three largely disregarded earlier Western notions of what a poem is. Snyder studied and emulated Japanese and Chinese poetry with its pared down sensibilities. Ferlinghetti tuned into the music of the world around him, and Carver wrote almost as if he was writing fiction, which just happened to be readable as a poem. Whether one enjoys any of these approaches or not, it’s undeniable, that these three did something new, something interesting, something enjoyable, and something irrevocably poetic!

ארצנו Our Land

ארצנו
בנוי מאבנים
ארצנו
בנוי מכאב
ארצנו
בנוי מהבטחות ומפיוט
אחרי מאה שנה,
רק הפיוט
לא יהפוך לאבק


Our land
built of stones
Our land
built from pain
Our land
built of ​​promises and of poetry
after one hundred years,
only poetry
will not turn to dust

ערב שבת 2

אני נכנס את הדירה מהקריאת הפיוטי
בחוץ, זה כבר חושך
ובפנים, זה חם בתוך ההילה של הנרות השבת
השבוע המטורף, היא היה לעזאזל
העכשיו הזה,
הוא שלנו

I enter the apartment, fresh from my poetry reading
Outside, it's already dark
but inside it's warm in the glow from the shabbat candles
Let this crazy week go to hell
This now, is ours.

erev shabat

at seven o'clock you sweep
through the front door
your mood drags behind you like a
dusty bridal train
now thrown by the tempest of your
chaotic homecoming , it gets
caught in my hair
tangled in my curls
and now, I find that I
can't break free.

Y''m י''ם

אבני לבן על צלע ההר
היא מאירה את חום האבק באוויר

white stones on the hillside

she shines in the brown dusted air

exile

Some of us live in a per-
petual state of exile,
but exile is not always
imposed by place;
there are those who are left there
by the passage of time,
and those who were simply
born misfits into the world.
All who live in exile however,
have this in common:
we carry small pieces of our
native worlds with us,
like round, worn pebbles,
that are
sometimes in our pockets,
and sometimes in our shoes.

10.07:2010: Union Sq.

Come skittish bird,
return to your crumb; the
menacing feet have
gone away.

מולדת homeland

כאן,
בארץ אחי
ואחותי
הדוד
והדודה
הבית שלנו
הוא כל כך קטן
והמרפקים שלנו
הם חבולים


Here, in the land
of "my brother",
"my sister"
Of Uncle
and Aunt
Our house is so small
our elbows are bruised

Dedication

For walls and trees
For oil and air
For screen doors and Tuesdays old paint cans, and stairs
For grandmothers and chickens
For Volkswagens and quarks
For malcontents who protest,
and nervous dogs, who bark
For oaken tables and magazines, for computers and for gold
For rust and for decay, for mushrooms and for mold
For all that we once were
For all we shall become
It's really all the same
All is one. All is one.

A Plate

A plate that’s been in the oven warming left-over nachos from last night’s dinner falls to the floor; breaking into 13 pieces (3 major, 7 minor, 3 more nearly microscopic), it’s so shocked it forgets to continue being hot.

After THIS Storm

Hurricane Irene is coming to town. The thing is, I'm not terribly scared, nor am I not scared. You see, I've been through hurricanes before, and thus, I have a slight edge over many of my fellow New Yorkers. I know for example, that masking tape "x"s don't keep windows from shattering, and that storm windows in 100 mile per hour winds are actually no better than any others, just as I know that this isn't Armageddon, and a wall of water 30 stories high isn't about to sweep through Manhattan with biblical consequences. Then again, maybe it will. Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not bemoaning my lack of an ark or collecting cooperative pigeons, but something about a storm of this magnitude actually fills me with something that just might pass for hope, (at least,if you don't look too hard).
It's been a terrible year; every time we turn on the news, some extremist somewhere is doing his or her damnedest to make life impossible for you and me, and corporations are strangling democracy to within a milimeter of its existence. Religious fanatics are citing recent earthquakes and economic turmoil as sure signs that "the beast" is afoot, and with a well intentioned but wishy washy Democratic incumbent going up against the likes of either Romney, Bachman or Palin, 2012 isn't looking so promising either.
Nevertheless, something about this hurricane business makes me smile a little bit. In about 20 minutes, our windows will rattle threateningly, our power may go out and we will be reduced to cold canned kidney beans for breakfast, but come Monday, the sun will rise. People will walk out their front doors, and having communally survived another near catastrophe, will actually say "excuse me" as they walk into me, their eyes glued to their iPhones. The news stand guy will smile as he refuses to look to see if he still has a copy of last weekend's Haaretz, and people will graciously acknowledge that I was at the bus stop before them, even as they elbow their way past me onto the 86 St. crosstown. For 5 minutes, New York will be glad the world is still here. At least until the next big scare.

Movie

So, we’re sitting on the couch reading the weekend paper, and I say to Cleo, “There’s this new picture at The Quad that sounded good.. Directed by Mel Brooks and Woody Allen, it’s called “Paradise, Nu?”

Robert Eger says, “It stars Mike Burstyn of Kuni Lemel fame, and Gene Wilder as two madcap would be suicide bombers who do their best to cross borders and blend in as Haredim. Hilarity ensues as Mahmoud (played by Wilder) tries to buy a shtreimel from a shop in Mea She’arim, but the shop owner speaks neither Hebrew, nor Arabic, forcing Mahmoud to communicate in a combination of charades, and something approximating "pig" Yiddish, meanwhile, Omar (Burstyn) just wants a lafa, but the Falafel shop in Ben Yehuda is crawling with border police on their lunch. Will he risk the mission for a sandwich? Will Mahmoud get his hat? Will the two ever make it to Paradise? Two thumbs up.. this movie is the bomb!”

“I'm not sure,” says Cleo, “it kinda feels like it’s been done before.

Haredim - ultra-orthodox Jews

shtreimel - a hat made of a fox's tail wound around the head, typically worn by Satmar and Netureikarta chasidim

Mea She'arim - "Hundred Gates", an ultra orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem

lafa - Iraqui pita, larger than Israeli pita, with no "pocket". Used as a wrap, rather than being stuffed.

Ben Yehuda - A pedestrian mall in the center of Jerusalem

if..

The tension is growing between the lovers, you can feel it coming in the peace between them. But maybe you're wrong this time. Maybe, Amir and Noa will work it all out, get married, have a kid, buy a dog and a house outside the city where possibilities sprout from between the squares of pregrown grass that make up the front lawn.. it's possible, you tell yourself, but then again, if everything was grand in the end, if Amir got his tenure at the university, if Noa finished her book, if their son Gidi didn't grow up and get shot in Lebanon, if they lived long and contented lives, free from tension and tragedy, would you in fact, be sitting by the window, your legs curled under you, holding this book?

Soup

How much is say, a container of the best soup in the world worth to you? Say you’re sick, and the best soup in the world is across town, in a little hole in the wall called Mogadishu Café. Say you have a fever, and the only thing in the world that would make you feel better, is this soup. Now, say your roommate, who’s this quiet Indian guy who the Foreign Student Union set you up to live with, would have to race if he left right now, just to catch the cross town bus to get to this place before it closes for the weekend, and say the owner is willing to wait an extra 15 minutes, but no more, because he had a good day. Now, say your roommate races out the front door, and it’s starting to rain, but neither of you has an umbrella worth its salt. Your roommate get’s soaked, and you promise to yourself, you’ll make it up to him. You’ll set him up with the cute blonde on three who laughs at your jokes in the laundry room, the one you were hoping to score with yourself. You’ll do his laundry for the next three weeks. That seems fair. Maybe you’ll finally clean the apartment, top to bottom like he’s been asking you to do for months now.

How much did you say that container of soup was worth to you? Say that, while running for the crosstown bus, his glasses blurry with rain, your roommate doesn’t look and darts out into 72^nd St, hopelessly as the bus pulls away from the curb?

Even if it was a semi-trailer that hit him, and they said it was instantaneous, was the soup worth what you’ll carry the rest of your life?

On Writing

Herbs and spices
dry in jars on my shelf.
One day,
maybe even in many years,
they're going to make
a tasty soup.

Here is the Road

Here is the road
on whose center I walk:
On one side the flowers
are heavy, and sweet,
and hanging from a cactus,
a sabra, ripe and tempting.
On the other,
glass and steel, and
Guo's Garden, whose
kung pao sets your
tongue on fire.
The road is wide,
the sides far apart,
and the sabra after all,
is growing behind a fence,
But look at the red sky,
the Friday sun is setting;
will it be omelettes in front of the
T.V. on the couch,
or will we
sit together at the table,
eating slowly, playing sheshbesh
This road we walk is
a balancing act.
We take from what's familiar,
arrange it as best we can;
the narghila sits in the corner
unlit,
and Keret and Kishon debate
"HaMatzav" on our dusty shelf.
Maybe
just for this week,
we'll put off clearing the table,
instead, take out the bag of menus,
and hold hands on the couch.




Sabra - A cactus pear
Sheshbesh - Backgammon
Narghila - a water pipe, also known as a hookah
Keret and Kishon - Etgar Keret and Efraim Kishon, two well known Hebrew writers who are on opposite ends of the political spectrum
HaMatzav - Literally, "The Situation"

Erev Shabbat

One Friday night, God, who's real name is Chaim, just happens to look down from heaven, and as he does, he happens to look at Tel Aviv.
He sees people dancing at The Fifth Dimension, people smoking on the beach, riding scooters, etc. His mother puts her hand on his shoulder, and says “Chaimka, you have to do something about this.. It’s not kosher! They’re making a freyer out of you, can’t you see? Yallah, send another flood.”
God smiles at his mom, says, “Dai ima, it’s how Israelis are.. stam.. nudnikim. They do things to annoy, it’s just how they show affection.”
"Oof," says God's mother, shaking her head, "come eat. Your soup is getting cold."






Erev-evening
Shabbat-sabath
The Fifth Dimension-a club
freyer-someone who gets walked all over, a fool
Dai-Enough, stop
Ima-Mom
stam-it's nothing
nudnikim-nudges

there are

There are poems
and there are stories,
that are made of a single word.
Words like home,
or immigrant,
longing
or exile.

There are poems to whom if
you add a single thing⎯
they'll disintegrate,
or explode
leaving nothing behind,
but ever increasing
entropy.

Damned

So I get off the M15 Select Bus at 79th St, and see this woman running madly for the bus as it's pulling away from the curb. Feeling bad, I offer her my receipt so that she doesn't have to pay. She declines, explains that she has an unlimited Metrocard, and says "I'm surprised, I would have thought you'd be more aggressive about it."
I have no idea what she's talking about, until I look down, and remember I'm wearing a blue t-shirt with the collar torn out, and printed with (in large, white Hebrew letters,) "ETZEL ITZIK- MAKOM HAMIFGASH HA'ISRAELI - MIAMI". I think, "Even when you try to do something nice... damn, I hate bad stereotypes."

Nose

You finally got your nose fixed. Noone else ever noticed how crooked it really was, but you did.
You broke it when you fell off your skateboard at 12, or maybe when you got punched in front of that Chinese resturaunt near your high school at 16. Maybe it was when you were 23, and you swam into the wall of the pool at full speed, face first with flippers, because you were showing off to that girl… it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that every morning you’d stare at the bathroom mirror, half your face shaved and notice how lopsided you really were.
Now you got your nose fixed, and noone’s really noticed the difference. Even your wife, who loves you says you look the same, but now when you look in the mirror, razor in hand, half your face covered in foam, it’s a stranger who looks back.

Any Call

Any call
at seven a.m.
is not a good call.
Ed McMahon never calls
at seven a.m.
to say that you're a millionaire.
Your publisher doesn't
wake you to say
"you made the Times' Best Seller list".
Any call at seven a.m.
Is a dreaded call:
What hospital or- is it
already too late?
Can I even get a flight, or
car to the airport?
I'm out of clean underwear..
I'll never put off laundry again.
At seven a.m.
when the phone breaks your sleep,
be thankful if it's only
some drunken wrong number.

A Theoretical Conversation Between A Zen Master And His Student Regarding Sisyphus

“And what of Sisyphus? Is it true that his labors brought him nothing?”

“Nothing was gained.”

“Poor man. All that work for nothing.”

“Yes, all that work was for nothing.

I’d say he was quite fortunate in that.”

Hair

“The tub keeps backing up” I told my wife last night.

“Well, have you cleaned out the trap?”

I told her that I had.

“We share the drain with the Gundars

in 4H, don’t we?” I asked.

“Maybe they don’t have a hair trap—

maybe it’s from them.”

“well, call the super in the morning I guess.

maybe he can snake it, or pour some Drano down.”

This morning I saw our neighbor Joan;

she was paler than usual, and

thin, and her black hair, which

in Summer graced

the backs of her bare knees

was gone.

The chemo'd left blue rings

under her eyes.

Afterwards

Nostalgia,
or novelty would
propel me through the
“can’t sleep” streets,
but familiarity negates novelty
and ubiquity, nostalgia
so instead I look
for something to hold
something to push
deep into my pocket
but everything I find
falls to the ground
through my open fingers
my open grabbing fingers.

M102

He had the kind of mustache
that would
cause you to describe him
as a
guy with a mustache.
He wore a polyester shirt
tucked into
polyester pants,
and he
stood there
leaning over me.
It was hot out.
It was over a hundred degrees,
and he
stood there
leaning over me.
He had
both hands on the bar,
the bar above
his head on the
uptown M102.
I sat by the
window,
in the single seats
as he stood there
leaning over me
with his hands above his head
on the metal bar
with his mustache
in his polyester shirt
and his polyester pants.
It was hot out.
It was over a hundred degrees.
He smelled of garlic
and B.O.

For Amy Leigh Cutler

Was it you?
Was it you who zipped by on her
green fixed gear
smiling in the bus lane?
Was it you-
who waved insanely
like an excited sunflower
who'd spontaneously sprouted on
second avenue?

burial

In plastic bag
beneath the bathroom sink⎯
the lining of her womb

Some Older Entries Deleted From My Blog by "Blogger"

*The following are pieces that were deleted from my blog
by "Blogger". They were originally published between August and
September, 2009.

Cord

I’m vacuuming over by the
kitchen, and suddenly surprised by the length of the cord, (I’d thought
it was only 9 feet,) I look behind myself to see my wife holding the
plug in her hand, and she shouts to me over the whir of the motor,
“Something strange happened to me today”.

Gitty And Esther

“Mommy what does self-righjus mean?”
Gitty took one last drag off her cigarette before stabbing it out in
the styrofoam cup that held the sludge from Esther’s hot chocolate.
“It’s like your father, not letting us see each other more than twice a
month, and not letting you live with me because I refuse to wear a wig
and skirt, and keep Shabbes”, she wanted to say, but instead: “it’s
self-righteous, and it means, you think your way is the only right way
to do something.”
She watched as her daughter tried to select a color for Yogi’s picnic
basket from the crayon fragments scattered around her on the floor,
before settling on purple. “So what do you think you’ll want for dinner
mameleh? I bet we can have pizza delivered to our room, you want
pizza?”
As she passed the bay window on the way to the phone, she
surreptitiously parted the vinyl curtains and scanned the motel's
parking lot for the familiar white vans.
While the two waited for their dinner to arrive, Gitty lit another
cigarette, and studied the gas-station map, while Esther continued to
color Yogi.

Advice

“What the hell do I need with advice from a goddamned tea bag” I
thought. I got that fortune cookie on Tuesday night, and it says to me
“Good clothes open many doors. Go shopping.” I figured I needed some
new interview clothes, so I did. I bought a new tie, a new shirt to go
with it, and just for the hell of it, a new suit so I could make the
best impression.
Now, my rents due, and I’ve got three dollars and seventy eight cents
in my bank account until next month, so I go to the bank to see if I
can get an overdraft, and while the bank managers in the back office, I
see there’s this bowl of candy on his desk for anyone to take from, so
I take one, and I take the little red square Dove chocolate, even
though it’s the last one, and there on the inside of the red foil
wrapper, it says “Success comes to those who have no fear; simply leap
and the net will appear”, so before the manager even comes back, I get
up and leave. Just like that. I go next door with my last three bucks,
and I buy a cup of tea, the evening paper, and a lotto ticket. I open
the tea bag, and there, printed on the back of the little tag, it says
“Don’t believe everything you read”.

$5.00

Each story begins with a choice, one made either by or for its main
character. Consider Yaya. Yaya is a 40 something year old man who works
in garage; though he isn't supposed to accept tips personally, (there's
a lucite communal tip box for the benefit of the entire staff,) from
one customer to whom he's been exceptionally helpful, he accepts the
neatly folded five dollar bill pressed into his hand. Later that night,
he'll use it to buy himself one extra drink, which will effectively
keep him at the bar an extra 17 minutes; during that extra time, he
will meet his next girlfriend, or get in a fight. On the other hand, he
may use the extra cash in his pocket to buy himself two lotto tickets,
a cup of coffee, and a bag of Doritos.
If he chooses to save the bill, and use it that night at the bar, and
he meets his next girlfriend, perhaps she will become the love of his
life, marry him, give him two children, one of whom will attend
Princeton one day and earn a doctorate in physics, specializing in
magnetics, the other of whom will die of leukimia on her 11th birthday,
or maybe the woman will give him herpes.
If he gets into a fight, maybe he will accidentally kill the man who
started with him, or before the first punch, perhaps the two will
reconcile and become fast friends, and discover they are from the same
obscure part of Kenya.
Maybe one of the lotto tickets will win 2.00, or 34,000,000.00.
If it wins 2.00, maybe he will count himself lucky, bless God, and buy
himself a muffin to eat later for desert, or maybe he will buy himself
two scratch-offs, win nothing more, and curse himself for wasting 2.00
when he could have had a muffin. Or maybe he will win a million dollars
a year for life.
Each story begins with a choice, and with each choice there are a
million stories.

Click

You're drunk, and the cold feels like something else, as you stagger out of
her basement apartment, barefooted and bloodied. Damn it, she should
have listened when you told her to keep quiet.
The book in your hand is already falling apart, but you do your best to
keep the pages from scattering in the wind. "Just once more", you tell
yourself, and behind you, just a bit to your left you hear the click.

HELP WANTED

Applicants must be able to accept criticism, take being misinterpreted and misunderstood
with aplomb, have a high threshold for stress, and be comfortable
making life or death decisions. Extensive knowledge of world history,
politics and religions required. Executive experience preferred. Must
be multi-lingual, able to multi-task, and have advanced problem solving
capabilities. Work schedule is for 6 days a week.
Predecessor is exhausted but will thoroughly train replacement before
retiring.
Interested applicants may leave their curriculum vitae at any
synagogue, mosque, church, temple, ashram or ancient grove.

Shorty

I had a dog named Shorty once. I got him from the pound, because they said they were five
minutes away from killing him. Shorty had one eye, a coat of about 7 different colors,
and his back legs were just a little longer than his front ones, making
him look like he was always in the mood to play. My friend Meiron said
he looked like Frankenstein’s dog. When I went to pet Shorty for the
first time, he took a bite out of my left hand, but he must not have
liked the way I tasted, because he never bit me again. When we took him
to the park on Saturday afternoons, he would always chase other
people’s soccer balls and pop them, and when a lady soldier was bending
down to get something out of her backpack, Shorty bit her on the ass.
He must have liked the way she tasted, because he didn’t let go for a
really long time, even though she was screaming, and it took her
boyfriend, Meiron and me together to pull him off. Meiron said we were
probably the first people in the history of Independence Park, to be
kicked out and told never to come back.
When I met Neta at “The Moon” one Friday night, it was love at first
sight. Three days later she moved in, with a footlocker full of her
CDs, Books and clothes. When I picked her up from work on Tuesday
night, we came home to find her locker pried open, her CDs scattered
and scratched, her books torn to shreds and her clothes piled in the
four corners of the apartment: one pile had been shit on, one pissed
on, one vomitted on, and on the last pile was a very tired dog, on his
back, sound asleep.
“It’s him or me,” said Neta.
When we took him back to the pound, the lady smiled at me, took the
leash without a word and led Shorty into the back. As we walked out
into the bright afternoon sun, we heard her say, “Poor thing, we were
beginning to wonder how long you'd be away this time."

Impossible

You’re not one to give up easily, you tell yourself, as slowly, you ease your
left, then right foot into your own mouth. You swallow. Now, if you can
just manage to get your legs down you think, the rest will be a breeze…
you’ll show them all, and you slurp at your knees, but you can’t seem
to make any headway. Your back is on fire, and your jaw, throat and
stomach feel like they’re going to burst. “Tommorrow,” you tell
yourself, “tomorrow I’ll show them what happens when they say I can’t
do something…”

Boom

Let’s just say, the bus you’re on goes boom, and you survive, not only
survive, but you’re totally fine, like, not a scratch on you… now,
let’s just say, all around you, everyone is dead, there’s no way
they’re still breathing, and let’s just say, you’re walking through the
corpses, and instead of blood and guts spilling out of them, there’s
half a woman lying by your feet, and hanging out of her torso, where
her guts should be, there’s a bunch of CDs and a Walkman, and there, to
your left, is the chest of some kid popped open like a pan of jiffypop,
and where his heart and lungs should be, there are two slightly
deflated soccer balls, and a Sony PSP, and over by what used to be the
front of the bus, you see what used to be the driver, and he’s got a
book sticking out of his chest… so you pick up the book and open it,
and amid all the sirens, and the smoke, and flashing lights, you sit
down on the street and you read, and it says “Let’s just say, the bus
you’re driving goes boom…”

Second Hand Reminiscence

The song “Ein Li Eretz Acheret” comes on the radio, and it reminds you of
her, and on the movie screen of your mind, you see her sitting alone on
the corner of her mother’s bed, listening, like you are, to Gali Atari,
and moved, like you are, because it reminds her of her childhood in
Israel.
Fade to flashback she’s lanky and nine, sun tanned, pigtailed, sandaled
and shorted, and her brother, Tzion, is there; carelessly they’re
devouring enormous yellow and red summer peaches that drip down their
chins and stain their shirts. Though you're not there, she looks at you
and smiles a drippy smile, the peach’s stone apparent under her cheek.
As the song ends, she’s there once again, sitting at the foot of her
mother’s bed: neck bent, head down, face obscured by that mess of
curls, waiting for something to begin.

Fidget

When Fidget was in kindergarten, his teacher gave him his nickname because he couldn’t sit
still. He kicked his feet through naptime, drummed his fingers through
story time, and, rather than coloring in his coloring book like all the
other children, he’d play rockets and missles with his crayons. When
Fidget was 22, he won a trip to London by being the millionth customer
to walk into a supermarket, and when he visitted Sotheby’s, unable
contain his fidgetting, he accidentally bought Queen Anne’s sleigh bed
for 93,000 dollars at an auction.
When Fidget went to a benefit dance for Hadassah, he met his future
wife, Na’ama, who thought he was funny because, even though he was
sitting on his own, he seemed to be enjoying himself, dancing in his
seat; when she introduced herself to him, she told him how impressed
she was that even though he was there without a date, he seemed to know
how to have a good time by himself, not like all the guys who just
stood around, lined up against the wall trying to look cool. Every
night in bed, Na’ama would think that Fidget wanted to make love,
because he would shake his leg against her; she interpretted it as him
reminding her of his presence, and not wanting him to feel rejected,
she’d start to stroke his thigh. Six months after they were married in
Cyprus, their daughter, Miri was born.
When the terrorists broke into their house, they hid in the attic;
While the terrorists went room to room, shooting their guns, throwing
handgrenades, Na’ama held her hand over their daughter’s mouth, and
Fidget sat crosslegged, holding them both tightly, but his left foot
was free to fidget.

Getting Used to Anything

I guess it’s true what they say, you really can get used to anything. I
mean, I’ve been here a week and it’s cool and all, but it really got on
my nerves at first, how wherever you looked, just on the fringes of
your vision, everything would go all fuzzy like, and I mean, other than
that, it looks pretty much like my old place, except, you can’t find
anything good on tv, only mushy love stories and Disney cartoons, and
even watching boxing is pointless, because at the end of the game, both
guys win and all they do is hug each other, and you can’t get really
good schoog on
your falafel, no matter how much you put, it’s just never that hot, and
even though I threw myself on a grenade to save a bunch of the guys in
my unit, the girls around here are never impressed, so I haven’t gotten
laid simce I’ve been here, but like I say, I guess you really can get
used to anything.

Jellybeans

“It’s the speckled white ones that send you into the next world” says
the candy lady with the pretty blue eyes. You hold the little wood box
in your hand. It’s made to look like a miniture orange crate, and it’s
full of different colored jellybeans.
“What do the purple ones do?”
“That’s a mystery” she says, “I’m only allowed to tell you about the
white speckled ones".
You take your candy home, and the first one you taste is like a trip to
New Mexico; small octagons appear on your ceiling in vibrant shades of
silver, yellow and white, and you go through them. There’s a vague
taste of blue corn tortillas to this one, you think.
Back at your kitchen table, you choose the next one; its surface looks
like liquid opal, and you think to yourself, how could the plain white
speckled one be more special than this? Tentatively, you taste it, and
you’re sitting in a movie theater in Pittsburgh, Pa., and it’s 1943.
There’s smoke swirling around your head, and Micky Rooney is just about
to lay one on Judy Garland, when you feel a Jujyfruit hit the back of
your head. You turn around, and see your microwave flashing at you.
Now, there’s simply no holding you back. You pick up the white speckled
one, and pop it into your mouth.
When the neighbors complain about the stink, the super breaks down your
door, and when they find you on the kitchen floor, you’re still
smiling, with a chunk of meteor sticking out of your forehead.

Grandma’s Chair

After Daddy died, Grandma moved in. Since she had a hunched back, she couldn’t
sleep in a bed like normal people. Instead, she sat in our old easy
chair in the corner, so that she wouldn’t be in the way. As Mom and
everyone grieved, she sat. She sat through summer, when we had a
blackout, and the air conditioning stopped working and it was 100
degrees in our apartment, and she sat through fall when we had company
over for the first time since the funeral.
One day Grandma said, "I feel like this chair is swallowing me", as
little by little she became smaller and smaller.
When I asked Mom, she explained, “it’s just her scoliosis; she used to
be much taller, but that’s what happens. You just shrink. Plus, she
doesn’t eat much.”
One day, when we were doing spring-cleaning, Mom handed me a broom and
told me to go sweep the living room. When I got over to the corner
where Grandma’s chair was, she wasn’t there.
“Where’s Grandma?” I asked. Mom came into the room, with her yellow
gloves, carrying her bucket and sponge, and wiped a stray hair out of
her face with the back of her wrist. “I don’t know,” she said, “she
must have gone home or something.”
I sat down in Grandma’s chair. It was much cushier than I’d remembered
it. I leaned on the handle of the broom and cried. She never even said
goodbye.

Detritis

Last night my brother in law died. When we went to the apartment he’d been
staying in, we found his wallet, cellphone, keys, slippers, clothes,
and a half crushed, half smoked pack of Marlboro 100s. It was in truth,
the Marlboros that were the saddest thing to find: something so
personal, and so disposable: a half smoked pack, from a half lived
life.

The Trouble With Cheap Tampons

"Shit"
Ma’ayan was in the bathroom and I asked what the problem was.
"I just got my period and I'm out of tampons. I hate to do this to you,
but will you run out and get me a box?"
It was 11:45 at night, and the only place open in our neighborhood was
the corner bodega. When I got there, there was one box of tampons. They
were in a dusty faded red and white striped box, looked about 20 years
old, and the writing was in some language I'd never seen before, but
they were definately tampons, as far as I could tell. I bought them and
shuffled home to my dear girlfriend. She was a little grossed out when
she saw that the box was so dusty and old. "They're gross!
I could get toxic shock or something!"
Nonetheless, she used one, and we went to bed.
The TV or my need to pee or both woke me up at 4:34 and I groggily made
my way to the bathroom. When I got back, there was Ma’ayan sound
asleep, naked and spread eagle on the bed, and there, poking out of her
vagina was not the usual white string, but something that looked like
the tip of a tiny lion's tail, and it was wagging.
"Ma’ayan!" she snored at me in response. I opened up my cellphone and
shined the blue light on her crotch. It was definately a tail of some
kind. I gave it a little tug, and suddenly saw a little cloven hoof
sticking out below a small brown hairy rear. As I pulled more, Ma’ayan
began to wake up. "What are you doing? We can't have sex.. go back to
sleep."
"But there's a little horse or a goat or somthing in your vagina!"
She sat bolt upright, turned on the light, and looked down, and
suddenly began to sob, but not like she was upset or even shocked or
scared... she actually seemed happy.
"I knew if I waited long enough, I'd get one... don't you see? It’s the
giraffe I wished for on my sixth birthday!" and she pulled it the rest
of the way out.
There, sitting on the bed, between my girlfriend's open thighs, was a
3-inch tall baby giraffe, trying to get its land legs and failing
miserably.
"He’s so cute!" she squeeled. He was, but...
"I want to call him Benny. Quick, go get me some milk from the fridge."
It's been 3 weeks now, and Benny has become part of the family. He's
brought us closer than we ever were, and he's not even high maintenance
or anything. The trouble is, he's now nearly 9 feet tall. The Karils,
our downstairs neighbors have started to complain that they hear
clopping on the floor at strange hours of the night, and plaster is
falling on their heads, and our chandelier, the one my mother bought us
for the new apartment is broken. The other day, Mr. Karil cornered me
in the elevator, and I had to tell him that my 300 pound Aunt Margi is
staying with us and she’s a slightly deranged aging flamenco dancer...
I had to promise that we'd only let her practice in the afternoon.
Also, the ashtray that became a litterbox that's now a sandbox that's
sitting in the middle of our living room is becoming insufficient, and
since Ma’ayan works days, and I stay home, I'm the one who has to empty
it 3 or 4 or 5 times a day, and I've already stuffed up the toilet
several times. Giraffe poop doesn't smell much but it's pretty big and
can really stuff a toilet. Don’t quote me on this, but I think we're
going to end up having to move to Jersey or something soon.

The Episode With The Lizard

At first it didn’t register. It’s like, when you see something out of the
corner of your eye and your subliminal mind tells you in great detail
why you couldn’t possibly be seeing what you’re seeing, so your
concious mind, the wimp that it is, just says “ok, you know better”,
and gives in.
But there it was; on the top edge of the black marble backsplash, in my
kitchen on the Upper East Side, was a green Anole, looking like he had
every right in the world to be just where he was. Searching
surreptitiously for something to coax him into, I considered the
possibilities that might have brought him to me, but the more I
considered, the less sense it made. The last time I’d been in Miami was
over a year ago, and I was fairly certain that, had he stowed away in
one of my suitcases, he’d have either been discovered by now, or, more
likely, dead, a sneaker casualty; but like I said, here--
incontrovertibly, (and apparently in good health,) he was. I settled on
a black oblong plastic take-out container from Noodles 28, and poked
two small holes in its’ lid with a pairing knife before gently scooping
him up between top and bottom. Figuring I’d take him where we always
take mice to be released from our “have-a-heart” traps, I slipped on my
top-siders and headed out the front door towards the East 86th street
entrance of Central Park.
“So, have you done anything about finding a job yet? What about school?
Are you doing anything about going back to school?”
Annoyed, I was about to answer when I realized I wasn’t on my
cellphone, and that it was my perforated take out container that
talking to me.
“You know, your life is just passing you by. You’re not getting
younger, and I’m just concerned your going to wake up one day in your
sixties, and realize you’re still waiting for your life to begin”
“Shut up.” I hissed, “You’re a lizard. What would you know about waking
up at sixty and realizing anything? Besides, I’m waiting to hear back
on something I submitted to The New Yorker.”
I quickened my pace towards the park, while it occurred to me, the two
smoking barbers I’d passed on eighty-eighth and third had interupted
their own conversation and were staring at me.
“You know,” he said, “ you can wait forever. In the end, nothing really
comes from waiting. Why don’t you call them back? Be proactive for
crissakes! And what about that volunteer position you were talking
about? You know, a lot of valuable contacts can be made that way.”
“The guy from The Central Park Conservancy already emailed me back. He
said they only have high school students volunteering in the office in
the Summ… I’M TALKING TO A LIZARD!!!”
“And? And what if I was a guy with a long white beard and a staff?
Would you take me more seriously then? Look, don’t let the package fool
you guy, I’ve been around a bit.”
“Yeah? Like where?”
My take-out container sighed impatiently. “For 24 years, from the day
you and your family moved to Miami, I sat in your room, just behind
that red toy clock on top of your bookcase. I watched you throughout
junior high, high school, college… all those part-time jobs you got and
lost, every time you came home depressed after school, or a bad date,
or just a bad day… I’d crawl out onto the ceiling over your bed and
read over your shoulder when you were writing in that sketchbook of
yours, I read every word. You were good, morose, but good. You showed
promise. You had keen insight. But you never could get over what
everyone on the outside kept saying… you’re not normal blah blah blah,
you’re weird, you insist on doing everything differently, just to be
different, anything possible just to not fit in… you don’t know how to
take direction… and what did you do? You ate it all up. You believed
them! You let them get inside you, until there wasn’t anything left.
I’ll tell you, it makes me sick what they do, these self-riteous
cannibals of the spirit. They took you, a creative, dynamic,
intelligent and sensitive individual, and, because they were afraid of
that side of themselves, or maybe, who knows? Maybe because they
were jealous, they did everything in their power to crush it in you.
And now what do you do? You spend your days in your room watching t.v…
or maybe you poke around on the Internet, or you write a clever
sentence or two in your blog. You’re wasting your life! Honestly, it’s
so frustrating.”
Stopping for a red light on the median of Park Avenue, I sighed, a wave
of something that felt like sadness and the realization that I was,
even after so many years of therapy, living the victim of others’
conceptions. “So, what do I do now? I’m lost. I feel like I don’t have
anything inside me. No ideas come. And if I do get an idea, it’s like I
just don’t have the mental energy to do anything with it. So tell me,
please, what do I do?”
The take-out was quiet for about ten seconds, then,
“Eat me.”
“Huh?”
“Eat me.”
“What?”
“EAT ME!”
“I’m a vegetarian!”
“I’m green”
“You’re not exactly asparagus though you know.”
“If you eat me, the weight of your past will become like steam; in its’
dissipation, you’ll become light yourself. You’ll have drive, vision,
and clarity. You’ll finally get over every failure you allowed yourself
to be defined by. If you eat me, you can let all that go.”
I opened up the white plastic box and the lizard crawled out onto my
cupped hand. I looked into his face and he looked back at me and
blinked. I closed my eyes.

New Recruit

He just goes to me, “You’re going to misunderstand what’s about to happen to you, and for
that, I am profoundly sorry.” and sticks the knife in, and that’s it,
game over. Except that it wasn’t over at all.
So, what happened see, I'm on my way home from Food Emporium, when I
see this homeless guy I kind of know. Well, I don’t really know him,
but whenever I see him and his dog, (he has a dog) I usually give him a
couple of bucks or buy him some food or something. This time, I was
broke, and I’d just used the last of my foodstamps for the month, which
sucked big time, because it was only the seventh. So, I see him sitting
out front and it’s freezing outside, I mean like in the teens and
windy, and he’s sort of huddling behind his cart inside 3 or 4 coats
and when he sees me, he says hi because I usually give him some money
or buy him some food. So I notice his dog isn’t with him, but there’s
this other homeless guy, maybe 60 or 70, (it’s hard to tell) talking to
him, and he’s really skinny and he's wearing this old looking army
jacket but he looks kind of peaceful and stuff, so I ask my friend,
well, he’s not really my friend, but you know what I mean, where his
dog is, and he tells me he’s been leaving his dog with a friend because
its been so cold and this way he can go into the subway at night or go
to the shelter and stuff...so, I’m standing there, talking to him and I
feel a little guilty, you know, standing there holding groceries, on my
way home, so I tell him I don’t have any money this time, but I just
got him some cheese and a bottle of water, and I take a package of
string cheese and a bottle of water and give it to him, and tell him I
just used the last of my food stamps, maybe so he realizes it’s kind of
a sacrifice for me or something… then the other guy smiles at me, and I
smile back, thinking he must see that I’m a good person or something,
not like all the rich snobs that live around here, and I say to the two
of them have a good night and stay warm.. so I’m on my way home now,
and I turn onto my block and suddenly he’s right there in front of me,
and I have no idea how he got there, because I just left him in front
of Food Emporium, and he’s got a knife, so the thought “how the hell
did he get in front of me so fast?” is replaced by “who's this asshole
in front of me with a knife?” and he just goes to me “ You’re going to
misunderstand what’s about to happen to you, and for that, I am
profoundly sorry.” and that's it.. it's like a flash, no pain even, and
I’m here, in this stupid waiting room, and some guy's tellin' me I'm
about to be drafted into Heaven's army or something, because there’s
some kind of angelic war going on..
So, what about you? How’d you get here?