If I had been 32 Instead of 12
If I had been 32 instead of 12
I would not have broken out in hives
That Monday night, I would have not stared down at my plate
of
meat loaf and peas my mother made
I would not have asked, 'Do you love her?'
Because I would already know that you did not
It's just that husbands get dissatisfied and hire knockout
secretaries who will smile at them all day long
In that moment when you told my brother and I you were
leaving
It would have occurred to me that our mother was on our
bathroom floor
Forehead to the tile, with the door closed
I would have gone to her, knowing she was not alright
If I had been 32 instead of 12
I would have known how wrong, no, how sick it was
For a father to tell a daughter and a son
At the dinner table
Exactly why he was leaving their mother
I would not have frozen
In the forever-ness of that moment
And in the years that followed, I would not have let myself
become
My mother's best friend, lover and confidant
Because I would have known that a 12 year old girl could
not possibly
Hold a betrayed woman's world together
If I had been 32 instead of 12,
I would have already known
That my father would be the first man to break my heart
And then perhaps I could have opened my eyes
While making love with all these men I've slept with
top
Heavy
Heavy swings in between my ribcage and my gut
She rocks, back and forth, she rocks
Making it hard to breathe sometimes
If I smile with my teeth
Heavy frowns and bends her fat chin down
‘Stop your rising. Remember I’m here’
Her tyranny is articulate
And brutal with each new each day
She weaves my wants into a rope
That she throws over the bones in my spine
Pulling my shoulders down
Denying light
Even though my forehead is in the sun and it’s noon
Heavy takes a hard lodging
On a low ledge
While my heart beats an inch away
I can twist but never turn
She knows how to tilt with me
Divide my heart from my sex
I take pills to train her to abide and share
But they don’t work that well
So I drink and I write and I inhale to smoke her out
I want to feel like the life I see out there
But I’m no counterweight to my Heavy
She only ever sees me from the inside
Where it’s always dark
top
Thomas
You’re not dead yet
Or I’m sure I would have heard
Everyone knew
They talked about us
They talked about you
They said ‘he doesn’t look well’
But I wasn’t looking
I was loving your original face,
The one I knew before we were born
Up, up and up and down
Through the streets of our town
Into the beautiful dirt of each other
Our skin fed by a kitchen of powder and pills
Two naughty children getting away with it
We could move in and out, without that spell to linger
But then it became night all afternoon for you
It began to come apart
And it was about to come apart
Winter came to Florida and
Making love became so hard,
Blood red fu*&ing turned to shut-eyed thrusting and
then to nothing
My sad woman’s thighs could not match the curve of
a glass pipe between your lips
Smoke, but no God in the room and
No love needed anymore beside you in bed
I made my way down your stairs
No longer willing to be a witness
But you’re not dead
Or I’m sure I would have heard
top
What Doesn't Kill You
I just pried away protection
With a wrench from my 'Do-It-Herself' toolkit
18th floor apartment windows
Come with safety bars
And I needed wind
Like fingers through my hair
A grown girl
Who hates wearing pantyhose and
Loves to suck Parliament lights on a ledge
Near the edge
Of the 18th floor
I know what my mother thinks
She is (they all are) careful to say 'creative'
When there's another word
To describe the loop in my head
Doesn't everyone know?
One hundred years from now
No one will remember a well-traveled choice
or a gesture that preserved songs on a record
At a window opened too wide for this high
Another cigarette
While I wait for permission to act
Like there's no consequence
And you said I sounded well when you called
top
Scarf in a Cheerful Color
Another day unlit
Slaps in short supply
Hours sing a smooth
But louder lullaby
Unattractive celebration
Balloons the same in color
Songs in major keys
Intentions lack luster
This new godlessness
This new brave world
This new cooled mind
I miss the firebird
Where’s the Phoenix
Who rose anew each morning?
After claiming the night
The day knows she’s starving
With only a scrip to eat
And no tower of ashes
Where’s the taker of voyages?
That reacher of branches?
There’s wax on the knife
She used to carve away
The satisfaction scars
And the mundane fat of days
Rubbed pleasant and pale
As the pills she needs to swallow,
Where’s the edge she needs
To carve her name into tomorrow?
top
The Baby Shower
In this room of initiates,
She stands apart
Smiling at the right times
Showing them
She is not ashamed
Of an empty belly,
Or the men who did not beg her to stay,
Or the two-night stands,
Or the then, and then, and then
Of the years gone and going
Anima, animus
She does not have to choose
She is still the author
With her hair and her hips and her heat
Her social body
Uninhabited
If God is a sailor seeding meat,
Who’s to say the birth of a human
Is the greatest miracle?
top
All poetry copyright Carolyn Hudson 2004.
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