Love on the Streets: Selected and New Poems

Outlaw

• 31 outlaw 1. Don’t shoot. I’ve eaten this country alive Your hard male body, like a road, I drove your famous miles, back of vans low on backseats The states grow out of me now The borders are my skin The fatal flag flies, tattooed between my hips The hum of my motor blends with the thump of little bodies and the static rockbeat of my radio and I am gone like the semen you spilt to the ground when you fantasized me a whore and then would not love me for fear I was a whore 2. Everyone was looking for me I was always right here a mute piece of music a deep down motion running through your blood Don’t shoot In the windows of all your houses • 32 my face is printed where I pressed it to glass she who robbed her father’s banks 3. Crowds on the streets at night looking for me But I was caught in the dancer’s grace of apple trees in cold country I never lived before Don’t shoot, who could recognize me now? There’s a dead man hanging in the middle of my forehead His cold charred body emerges from my cunt and anus My mouth expels a new country 4. And so I walked away in my rich white skin while you scattered all your parts to the wind I picked up your hand your hand without fingers by the winter waters and placed it on my breasts you were still warm I called your name You did not answer • 33 So I’m gone like the semen you spilt on the ground when you wanted me a whore and then could not love me for fear I was a whore 5. I am a woman a traveler back and forth I joined the army traveling back and forth across the continent the sun coming up the sun going down the stars planted in their routes the dancer’s grace of apple trees in cold country I never lived before I learned constellations, windrows, rotations of farmers’ land food for the people and the ache of you the fucking ache of you What does it take to communicate? The words burnt deep in my flesh burn a gory road before me the only escape • 34 6. Everyone was looking for me I was always right here Once I camped in a national park with a caravan of retired people At night inside their little campers their blue phosphorescent lights served me up for dinner, a cold cold burn this is your daughter this is your daughter Everyone was afraid I was their daughter 7. I am the woman alone on the road at night you catch in your headlights Afraid, you do not stop I walk the middle of the world with a child at each side another tied in a scarf on my back Tonight we will sleep in a cold open field I will lay my hands on its heart I will blanket them with pine needles I will hear the screech and groan of wagon wheels I will pull dead Indians from the soil I will be thankful I have not house or land I will be thankful I have no money • 35 I am a woman I walk in the middle of the world I follow the cross of the gypsy trail over the world and back 8. I went down to the bottom of the mountains I went down to the sea in your scrotum I rode out the dark untried eggs I saw the body and soul are one I saw when the body fragments so does the soul I saw that in death our parts are strewn and scattered piece of flesh, piece of soul and our tortured lament is our parts crying to one another across the ever-widening abyss 9. I am only a mother trying to piece together a child 10. I am a woman a traveler back and forth When I knelt to your groin the first time and took you in my mouth I felt the fish beat • 36 for the cold pull of the distant sea and when I took you in my mouth I was the moon receiving your wondrous light now I am scattered...