Sweat, Tears, Saliva

We decided to cut class and hang out at his mom’s. We lay topless on his twin size bed, with our skinny arms tangled together. Our legs bent towards each other, our knees almost touching. His bed sheet smelled like fresh cut grass. He played with my bra strap, kissed my forehead and told me to relax. He placed wet kisses on my chest, my belly, the top of my thighs. He pulled down my cotton panties and kissed me there. I wasn’t a virgin but no one had ever kissed me down there. No one had gotten that close and all of a sudden if felt like my first time. Worst because I started crying hard. I had no control over it and it made me so mad that I started slapping myself. But Lo didn’t stop and eventually I relaxed.

Afterwards, he rubbed my back for what felt like hours and then he began to talk about his father. How he was an apprentice for an electrician down South. How he hadn’t seen him in a few months but had written to him about me. Lo said his father wrote that I was the type of girl who would love only one man. That sounded so corny to me, but, at that moment, all I wanted was for Lo to keep touching me, so I kept my mouth shut. As I listened to him, my fingers wandered from his chest to his belly.

“I want to show you something,” he said, his rough hands stopping my progress. He reached under his bed. Pulled out a bulky manila envelope. Letters spilled from the envelope onto the bed. The edge of one letter poked me in the thigh. I kissed his shoulder and reluctantly sat up. While he read, I admired his face, the dimples that deepened when he laughed, the lines that formed between his two thick brows when he frowned.

He stretched out certain words, making them sound like they were the most important words I would ever hear. Out of nowhere, my father’s face appeared but I pushed that image away fast.

Certain words came up more than once. “My son…Remember this…Watch your back…You’re the man of the house now…” Stupid words from another stupid father. But Lo was so proud.

I could have pretended I didn’t see the postmarks on the envelopes, but I couldn’t stand hearing his father’s lame ass words.

“Riker’s?”

Lo stopped reading. He picked up all the letters and shoved them into the big envelope.

“Riker’s,” I said it again, this time I said it to be mean.

He pulled on his clothes and slammed the bedroom door. It bounced back open. I found my panties on the floor and pulled them on. I followed him out, pulling the bed sheet over my shoulders, yelling that word over and over again.

When he couldn’t stand it any longer, he pulled me by my hair and threw me out of the apartment. I stood outside his door, stunned. The hallway smelled like dog piss. “I need my keys!” I yelled and the door open again. He threw my clothes at me. I didn’t even bother to put them on.

I walked the two blocks to my family’s apartment. It was a nice day out and that was bad because everybody was out. Little kids called me out, old ladies hissed at me in disgust, the mailman wanted to take a bite out of me. I flashed them all my left tit and stuck out my tongue.

The next day, I barged into Lo’s homeroom and dropped the folded bed sheet on his desk. I ignored his teacher when he asked me to leave. Lo didn’t look at the sheet; he didn’t look at me. He only stared at the teacher.

When Mr. Gregor pulled me by the arm, Lo pounced on him. Knocking Mr. Gregor to the ground with one shove. He then rammed his fist into the young teacher’s face, breaking his glasses, making blood ooze from his thin nose. Security guards ran into the classroom, pulled Lo away from Mr. Gregor. One guard grabbed me. Red splotches appeared on his face as he yelled at me.

We got detention. We got suspended. I got into it with my father when he came home from work. The rest was hard to remember, but after three long weeks of punishments; I met up with Lo after school. We decided to take a walk through Inwood Park. He grabbed my hand as we climbed up to the big C painted on the rock. When I slipped on broken glass, I expected him to laugh, but he didn’t.

We stared out at the Hudson and when the Circle Line cruised by, we made fun of the sucker tourists onboard. I asked him if he wanted me to apologize. He opened his backpack and pulled the sheet out. He shook away all the folds. The musky smell of sweat, tears, and saliva slapped me in the face. He threw it over his shoulders and ran circles around me. The sheet flapped behind him making him look like some kind of superhero.

I yelled, “You’re my savior!”

He crashed down on me. His jagged hipbones poked the top of my thighs.

“Don’t move,” he whispered, “don’t say a thing.”

The pressure of his body made the skin on my chest feel tight like it was being pulled back. I tried to force words out of my mouth.

He looked like he was about to bite my lips off. Just as suddenly, he rolled off me.

“Sabi,” he said, like he wasn’t sure if that was still my name. “You’re a cunt.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, then kissed him.

Saturday Morning

“Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.”
- Steinbeck

You rise from the ground like a toddler trying to find her balance on unsteady
bowl-legged limbs, but you’re an animal with an enormous head, a rhinoceros.

You can’t possibly hope to do more than try to stand on all fours and then
collapse on your massive haunches. Dry, scaly skin weighing you down, but the weight comes in handy.

A small swing back and you land on your bulgy side. Then slowly you begin to rise up two feet then four feet.

Higher and higher, so high you fear floating away into the sky, away from the
atmosphere, and out into space. You often have nightmares of suffocation.

But you’re not floating after all, the ground kisses your face as you land on it.
Your head is definitely not hard, scaly. It’s the soft delicate head of a rose. A
wilting flower that feels every grain of concrete and grime on its onion thin skin,
smells every discarded cigarette butt and puddle of urine.

Garbage trucks rumble down the cobblestoned street, car alarms scream in their
midst, your numb ears come back to life.

The piecing together of last night riles you up from the ground. Hands on face,
chin pulling. Moving jaw, rubbing away the sharp pain on the side of your neck,
you scratch your oily scalp and luxuriate in the low-hanging sun.

Deep breath followed by a short cough followed by a full-on asthmatic fit
followed by the rattling up of a ball of phlegm, which comes out of your mouth in
one neat little package and splatters on the ground.

You drop to your bony knees as your wretched body hunches, there’s bile rushing
up your esophagus, burning every inch of that thin lining, shaking your being, a
violent hot spring ready to burst.

On all fours, you arch your back and let the bile gush out of your mouth,
splashing your hands, soiling your long hair. But you aren’t done yet.

Impulsive sticky dirty finger in your throat and it gushes out again, this time it’s
all lava.

In the past it’s been bitter and malty, smelling like Old English, today it’s sour and
briny, tasting like Cisco or Nighttrain.

Herstory

Father dead, when I was nine. Mother weak, a bit emotional, perhaps touched. Found a new Bob, a self-made man, so she said. He didn’t like me much. Said I was ugly, dirty, nothing but a failure, unworthy of his home, his goodwill, of no use at all. He beat me, rag doll slapped against a wall and what did my mother do? Stared at the floor.

At sixteen, I left with a boy. Hitched a ride to the city in a pickup truck that smelled of dead chickens. We married, had children. Your mama and uncle they both came out looking the same. Too dark to amount to much. Too poor to be anything more.

I took care of the children, fed them, made sure they were properly dressed. What about that scrawny dark boy I married, that weakling whose body never developed to anything more than a face full of whiskers, who was too skinny for manual labor, too stupid for an office job?  Most of the time we didn’t see him for days. When he’d finally show up, he’d win the children over with a bag full of brown bananas.

Never mind about him, I did alright with your mama. She learned to cook and clean before she could add and subtract. But my boy, your uncle, he was my biggest disappointment. I had hoped to groom him into the proper man. But how do you create someone you know nothing about?

When he was eight, he began to sneak away at night. He believed he could swallow life up in one gulp. He didn’t stand a chance against the world.

They say, without destruction nothing is born but they forget to tell you that sometimes what’s born is already dead.

Your mama, she watched and listened. She learned from her brother’s mistakes. Swore her allegiance to school, sports, church and me. I chose the right man for your mama, tall, white enough, from a foreign country. I pushed her away from me whenever I had a chance. It was the least I could do for her.

When you were born, I told your mama, “Don’t let her out of your sight.” And she listened. Took me literally. Locked you away in that one-bedroom apartment with only your books and a TV.

Knowing nothing of the world is a luxury, a gift. But you don’t want to hear about my greatest success. Instead you ask me to tell you about the past that I want to forget.

Five Stories of Love and Heartbreak

1. Boy chases girl.  Boy gets girl. Boy grows tired of girl.
2. Girl tries to run from boy. Girl wants more than boy can offer. Girl settles for boy.
3. Girl and boy love each other without loving each other.
4. Boy wants sex but not with girl. Girl wants sex but not with boy.
5. Boy wants things the way they were. Girl wants to recapture what she gave up.

Birthing

The image communicates everything. She moves the camera closer, stealthily, so as to not interrupt the act taking place. She stops six feet from her subject and zooms in. A blur of gray and black sharpens into fur. A heaving abdomen. Pan down to a sac with something moving inside it. A small body peeks out from a small opening. The camera stops. The gravel is cutting into her knees.

Interference means corruption of the image. She relinquished her right to feel and presses the record button on the camera. The stray cat lets out a long sigh. She has no interest in these sounds of birthing only in the image.

Editing destroys truth. At school the next day, she sits alone in the computer lab. She transfers an hour of footage into the computer, waits for the upload, then watches the footage. She relived the birthing one more time. She chooses not to edit the moments when the camera moves and shifts out of focus.

Greatness is often misunderstood. Later in class she’s called up last by the professor. She’s not surprised. She’s developed a reputation in class. Her films are too long, too raw. Her refusal to edit is anti-cinematic. She might as well take a shit on Eisenstein’s grave. All three films she’s shot this semester have been of births: hamsters, rabbits, cats. She’s working her way up the ladder. All three films were shot without sound.

Daydreaming at the Supermarket

Man Ray

beat up shopping carts
stray cats rummaging inside
cardboard boxes
dented cars parked in front
two older women standing
waiting for their rides
teenagers on their break
arguing over a last cigarette
cashiers discuss the meaning of
discipline at the workplace
pigeons flying around
carefree
without responsibilities
shitting all over the place
a cop sitting on the hood of his car
writing out traffic tickets
talking into his radio
codes that mean something to
someone
stripes on the streets
appear in colors too bright
a reminder of perception
how it makes life more difficult
more complex
harder to deal with
others can’t understand this switch
in a point of view
the purpose of a decision
which may not have a purpose after all
except to avoid confrontation
apathy
how is it possible to exist without questions
without curiosity
without joining the crowd.

Rilke

Oh Rilke, how I wish I would

have sat next to you at my first writing workshop

You would have stopped the burning

in my gut.  Perhaps even offered me

a joint.  Unfortunately, I didn’t even know

who you were

until I sat in that class

where everyone looked bored

unimpressed

where dead poets were called out

declared madmen

to keep everyone

off-kilter

insecure

under control.