Rice: Poems

Permittable Thunder

148 Permittable Thunder Up seesaws And all the way down slides I was told Not to wiggle around so much Stared still often New warnings came along With every inch I grew Learn how to move Or else be labeled frisky Else be thought of as fresh Careful Not too much twisting About in my chair A dress is to be kept down Legs pretzel crossed My hands should be at my side Or never farther Than my lap Where I could watch my brother Romp and roam Be mischievous and inquisitive His always curious legs flying up 2 dark wings Opening closing At natural will As I grew I was reminded Bras were for keeping in 149 No brazen hussy lifting up And breasts Should bulge not bubble Stop jiggling girl! And make sure Be certain You’ve heard of girdles Whether one is needed yet or not Get familiar with the word Before too long My hips Should never get there ahead of me Or turn any boy’s head on the way Dress So as to not entice incite Or bring the female wrath Upon myself I boarded trains And took my quiet designated seat On buses and at desks Careful that my legs were properly pressed tight Two lovely squirming golden sardines In a tin tight girlish can That were never too wide (For me they are never wide enough) On the same pew row Right next to my brother my father Whose legs were always forgotten Whose legs flapped open easily 150 Packaged from the first With prefit hinges that sat flat and gapped Like sacred male shoots Rootstalks running down the same as mine That took up enough space And spread out wide enough Those “snails and whales and puppy dog tails” Where two of me Could have fit Even though I was the taller From the waist down We women are taught From the same girlhoods From the same missing paged But still often quoted books By the same motherwords The same daddystares We see the same brother scenes unfold Over and over Until our lives are rewind buttons Automatically pushed in For life We are told even in our grown worlds To be perfectly still To keep perfectly quiet And let the world Feel on us Tug at will Pull at whim Reminded only to keep it in We decide we can do even better than that Because as girls we have been so well taught To always help We help even when we are not asked 151 We push it even farther down So no one will think To call us a name That means We are not nice girls But I am a nice girl Who has known the rules Memorized the warnings Felt the restrictions I realize the course intended for me But know the one I’m walking instead We are taught and told not to But I am returning the rule Removing the law I have to move More than this allotted respectable inch Tagged at birth More than what has ever been allowed before I have to have all of what I come from I need Then want Each of my twists and turns My bends and bows and curtsies Gracious but free Like Bajan woman Walking across her sand Riding her own seven hips As if there were a trusty steed beneath her Taking her across safely Yet there is only her Self 152 Moving without a pass Armed only with some other ancient permission Like Senegalese woman queens Standing doing nothing Only moving the chew stick From one side of her mouth to the other Before she crosses the street That claps all around her Like permittable thunder That through the house curtain That as girl Mama showed me once How to hide from Or else get struck by I reach for this kind of mortar to pestle Movement to put on To tighten around myself For myself I am this kind of torrential grinding quiver Don’t stop me From coming From crossing The street or the river or the dance floor Just like this Don’t ashame me Or keep me from This kind of walkflying movement That shakes the ground good From taking me like a golden black tongue Through a sensuous mouth area Between teeth and...