Border Crossing, and: Watching Dad's Porn on the VCR

Border Crossing

Before the crossing I was human; out in the gardenhaving a good laugh at puffed up clouds wanting to rain.I built the life I was living. I picked each fruit by hand.But between the leaving and entering they changedhow they look at me—objects once labeled can't be relabeled,you know. But no one is one identity. No one is boundby one allegiance. I don't speak the secret languageof gophers because I once buried my body in the foldsof the desert. Just as my children aren't Indians or cowboyshaving once rode on painted horses. After the crossing,I was a split human. Tired feet stitched steps across a newgeography. My stories they replaced with one word.Defined me by the outcome of one transient event.

Watching Dad's Porn on the VCR

Mouth of a prophet, tongue of a poet, the gravity-defining vagina of a tightrope walker. To be a woman is work. Be gentle, kind; be dominant, dirty, big-breasted, thin-wasted with thighs that quiver but firm. Body contorted to shape fantasies.

I pack Dad's pipe and light the rum-soaked tobacco, inhaling through puckered, glossy-strawberry lips, caressing the smoke with my purple tongue—taste buds burn numb—before gaping my mouth into an O and letting out a soundless battle cry.

Twisting the cap of a 333 Premium Export, the bubbles fizzle and soak into my skin. I swig from its hard mouth in a sloppy kiss. Put my feet on the bed, sink my jelly body into the armchair and let my knees fall open. So, this is what it's like to be a man.