Swathed in steam and terrycloth
the ladies slump, belly and bone
concave and pendulous
against the cedar planks.

Eucalyptus mind-grime scour.

The ladies stretch and sweat
toddler-glad in their
played out bodies.

Unguents are bartered
honey slather for rock salt scrub
heel pumice for shoulder pound
exhale for inhale.

Ice water is currency here.

Dim forms sprawl opulently
haunch to haunch, lips to ear.

Here is heat and ease and respite
while winter hangs on a hook outside.

The Japanese have a name for it,
that exquisite art of killing flowers
then arranging them stylishly.

One exceptional peony stuck
next to the sweep of a willow twig
wrenched from its pondside home,
or the rootless iris weeping indigo
into water bleached blind, melancholy
for muck and piscine nuzzles.

We lust for composition as we lust
for all violent or unnatural acts.
Trod on a path, hundreds of organisms
crush underfoot and we look the other way,
craning our necks skyward to pluck
perfection and drag it by the hair
onto our own blank page.

My cave wall is ripe with animation,
my bowl replete with pears and avocados
posed just so. I arrange my lovers limbs
around me like a flower. All is art
and food, dirt under the nail

resurrection

I tried to measure it once, snuck up behind her
with a ruler when I should have been learning
long division. It was only eight to ten inches high
depending on the day of the week,
but that didn't stop me
from bragging on my mom's foot-high beehive.

It was stiff as blue jeans dried
on a line in late November.
You couldn't poke your finger through it,
much as we tried, the four of us.
Howie almost did (he was the scientific one),
come up with a Clairol hairspray antidote
after school one day that almost blew up
the barn, but only singed the cat.

Dusty was mad as H-E-double toothpicks and didn't come
home for a week. Turned out Mrs. Next-Door fed him
table scraps and from that day on he turned up his
whiskers at dry kibble.

Mom spanked Howie good, elbows flying
but not a hair on her head out of place. Baby Dave
tried to smoosh it down each time she leaned in
for a nighty night kiss, but she figured that one out
right quick, commenced to sleep armored, wrapped
in a toilet paper turban spiked all over with bobby
pins. No wonder I had nightmares.

Mom's foot-high beehive was her pride and joy.
Oh she claimed we were, but with what esprit did she,
all five foot two of her, march home every Friday
from Bea's Beauty Salon, her back ramrod straight,
towering over all us kids, Dusty, Dad
and every other thing in her world.

June heat lightning FLASH
I am three
Momma takes me to the night
She says look
the stars fall down from the sky

June heat lightning FLASH
I am five
Momma says fireflies
You can put them in a jar
I say no
The stars fall down from the sky

June heat lightning FLASH
I am eight
Poppa says those lightning bugs
are watts and wings
I say no
The stars fall down from the sky

June heat lightning FLASH
I am twelve
Teacher says study up
those bugs you love
that's entomology
I say no
The stars fall down from the sky

June heat lightning FLASH
I am now
I take my boy to the night
I say look
The stars fall down from the sky

Well the stupidest thing a white girl has said in the entire history of post-colonialism, as she is rowed down a costa rican river by a black nicaraguan who is paid one dollar an hour by the expatriate-owned tour company she has paid seven times that to, and for which she worked two hours for, to be rowed by a man who has to live so far away from his family that it takes him twenty working days to pay to go home for christmas

and who sends his pay home to his mother so his mother can use it to send him clothes because his pay stretches further in nicaragua because there is no work in nicaragua because things are better now because the civil war is over so the sandinista soldiers are all unemployed

but he is happy because he is working and he loves to play soccer with his amigos when he's not working when he's not rowing tourists, when he's not going fishing, when he's not patching nets, when he's not patching the holes in the roof that he shares with his brother that they share because they have nine younger sisters still at home, growing like sassafras

so he is happy to rest in the tall grasses while the gringa rubs on sunblock over pink flesh his nine sisters would never expose as the gringa rubs herself in front of his half-closed eyes as the gringa asks do you people ever get skin cancer as the gringa says life just isn't fair

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