Love on the Streets: Selected and New Poems

100 Memories I Don’t Remember

• 151 100 memories i don’t remember The dress I was wearing when my brother was born, my bangs growing out. My father undressing me under the house in Ramona, my sister reporting this again and again, my white Maidenform bra I am trying to tell my sister or someone downstairs to save the rotting lemon because it’s organic. We can’t remember everything. We can’t forget anything the last hook, then snap of the band with the half-inch seams I always had to make both sides of the 34D to fit my girl frame The migraine up Clevenger Canyon, there’s a grainy black and white of this, I’m 16 in a white V-neck Orlon sweater holding up my heavy hair having pulled over on that dangerous spot. Having Vicki take the picture because otherwise I’d never remember that I had a headache. Daddy and my brother were boys but not different from me, Mama and my sister. I thought of their things and our things like clothes we put on. Male and female, this is how I understood adjective. I believed with the fervor of prayer we were the same. I still believe we are the same. • 152 Daddy in his bath shows me how he masturbates, the word more forbidden than witnessing masturbation and I don’t remember through all the years ejaculation. He lies in the tub, his big-boned, white hairy body in the bubble suds. His hairy toes turning on the hot water faucet to reheat, that’s how long we’ve been in here, his hairy fingers around his purple thing and what is a mistake? and what is remembering? what is a sin, instinct, desire, what is allowance of the self, what is justice and what is love? Running away, disappearing into the fog to Korea to Europe ravaged to the river bottom, my father ravaged Going back to the house the first time after I told my mother in her bath, last week of sixth grade. I remember flying through the house, leaping off the porch knowing the greatest relief I will ever know, Mama will take care of it. But imagine going back and Daddy coming home. I remember her beautiful body in the bubble suds, I don’t remember going back to the house, I never thought to try though she was never the same, I was never again her child, I didn’t know this until now. I always thought my not remembering was good, this is how we forgive, this is love. I so loved my mother and my father and my sister and my brother. Last night I nightmared again the murdered girl. What to do with her body? I can’t remember who she is but I remember the Los Angeles River still free though it had flooded before I was born killing so many it had to be cemented. I don’t remember the Fathers castrating me • 153 stuffing my mangled, bloody genital into my mouth, their faces can’t be looked at. I don’t remember my gender, my father, my tribe, the fear but I remember my mother is lost so my heart rises to go to them fleeing back down their many mansions then unable to weep, to remember how we walked the millenniums, each a galaxy of blood a hundred billion ancestral faces looking up, if you are found guilty, Daddy, will they execute you? I remember my first song, “shu shu m’ baby.” I remember going into that forbidden place, myself that island rising up on the horizon. I forget its name but I remember when it saved my life ...