Dorothea Lasky

Promising myself  I would not do this again Is what kept me going A friend told me to And I listened Taking a thing to the end of its life Is what I was made to do I think I am not attuned To the things that breathe Well that’s not true I am in tune to breath and life And little falls of  flowers When the moon was high I went out to the stream And brought in the water For my folks, my kin, my brethren I brought in the greenish milk To feed the ones who were already dying Oh did they go Oh I do not know

What stays in Doesn’t come out Nipples hard with milk When things are of another time They are of that time Not timeless They are no longer here Nipples hard with liquid or falsities White and soft I can’t get it out No matter how hard I yank Or pull and suck Face watching with my own Nipple in my mouth Like the room she’s in I went and I seduced But no matter what I couldn’t get her to leave Aqua and in the morning, coffee The bathroom gold and green No matter what I said She stayed there She had her own fantasies to wait for Milk that never comes out It grows inside Does it fold back in time I want to say it becomes different The man who grafted another face What poems I wrote for him No I want to say That when you came at me With the syringe That I loved you In gold and green You came at me Revision upon revision Of your love It wasn’t like you To give up I knocked and knocked And you went back Into your doorway What days The nipples rising With future things to come What happened to those thoughts To those people I loved that woman In the building Sunset road The place With the dead babies But no matter what I did How hard I yanked She would never leave I knocked and knocked No matter what I did Or said I just couldn’t Get her out of there

The birth isn’t about poetry It is about screaming pain on a Sunday Hailing a cab and head racing To the hospital, now so close to the new apartment I had a baby inside of me But no one expected it to happen so fast Or then at least they said they didn’t Maybe they expected it to happen so fast All along Alone in the waiting room I shook and shook And the blood ran down my legs Later with the magnesium I thought of the many permutations of the bald head Pale, pickling fish skin, glowing with scales When she came out, she was dark and full of hair No blood, but born in the caul Like the other magical realities of my past accomplishments When she came out she cried and it sounded like me But passed me, into her new reality Now 3 weeks later, they say I am still not an erotic object So I wander the park in the snow with my friend We light candles and pray to the darkness We light the park on fire and the police come and find us When they take us to the jail, I say no, it’s not right I am a mother after all They say, but where is your baby And I say, no no, my baby my baby They say, yes yes, look at your beautiful baby I say, I do, I do Look, look, and listen My baby my baby She’s here

I wanted to tell the veterinary assistant about the cat video Jason sent me But I resisted for fear she'd think it strange I am very lonely Yesterday my boyfriend called me, drunk again And interspersed between ringing tears and clinginess He screamed at me with a kind of bitterness No other human had before to my ears And told me that I was no good Well maybe he didn't mean that But that is what I heard When he told me my life was not worthwhile And my life's work the work of the elite. I say I want to save the world but really I want to write poems all day I want to rise, write poems, go to sleep, Write poems in my sleep Make my dreams poems Make my body a poem with beautiful clothes I want my face to be a poem I have just learned how to apply Eyeliner to the corners of my eyes to make them appear wide There is a romantic abandon in me always I want to feel the dread for others I can feel it through song Only through song am I able to sum up so many words into a few Like when he said I am no good I am no good Goodness is not the point anymore Holding on to things Now that's the point