Every Woman Is Her Own Chimera
A suite for Adrienne Rich
Every woman is her own chimera
Today she is laughing with Julio
Tonight she is dancing with Coolio
How long can happiness last?
For a slow brief afternoon
My head on the thigh of a sequoia
Reading Wang Wei
Butterfly in mouth
But don’t bite down
Whose life is it anyway?
She born of chrysalis and shit
Or she born of woman and pain?
Mei Ling brings a wounded poem
Crying Please Mommy Mommy fix it!
You wipe the tears from her cheeks
Then glue a gnat’s torn wing
The sand dab flicks her tail
The tears of the wombat are green
Kiss me against the last hydrangea
Comrades we are not yet free
O sunlit bourrée of doves
O moonlit cantata of red ribbon
Let’s drum girls let’s ululate let’s praise
The White-Haired Maiden
The Black Hawk scats vilip vilip vilip
The Humvee murmurs surruu surruu
Jackdaws boogie-down flip-flap flip-flap
Marvin sighing mercy mercy mercy
All I want is love
My heart my soul my vulva
Yowl love love love
Look at him preen at the mirror
This aging retro-sexual
Combing combing his cowlick
In search of a perfect syllable
Everybody’s pregnant today
Even my cousin Louie
But cousin Louie is a man
Yes everybody’s pregnant today
Even my cousin Louie
Ax is chopping down Tree
Tree begs Ax to stop
Your handle is made of wood
We are born from the same mother
A pink horse is not a horse
A pink horse is not a horse
A pink horse is not a horse
A pink horse is not a horse
They will shave your head
Send you to the colonies
A brown man’s musket
Will shoot you dead
He must defend his dignity
Do not do not believe in eternity
Poke me with an idle chopstick
I am mum as a flayed ebi
Bored with judgment and hate
And tired of pity
We must not be silenced
Yet
We are
Silenced
Brush
returning
to
V O I D
It’s not that you are rare
Nor are you extraordinary
O lone wren sobbing on the bodhi tree
You are simple and sincere
Metaphor metaphor my pestilential aesthetic
A tsunami powers through my mother’s ruins
Delta delta moist loins of the republic
Succumb to the low-lying succubus do!
Flagpole flagpole my father’s polemics
A bouquet of fuck-u-bastard flowers
Fist me embrace me with your phantom limbs
Slay me with your slumlord panegyrics
Flip over so I can see your pastoral mounts
Your sword slightly parting from the scabbard
Girl skulls piled like fresh baked loaves
A foul wind scours my mother’s cadaver
Ornamental Oriental techno impresarios
I am your parlor rug your chamber bauble
Love me stone me I am all yours
Pound Pound my father’s Ezra
Freedom freedom flageolet-tooting girls
Dancing on the roof of the maquiladoras
Kalifornia (A portrait of the poet wearing a girdle of severed heads)
Marilyn Mei Ling Chin
You are a Goddess
You beautiful swine
You necklace of heads
You girdle of past deeds
You have a castle
With a vestibule
You have your fresh lovers
O how you wear them like nipple rings
You have your listlessness
Its dull ache
You have your fine breasts
Your hard maids
You have your strong presences
Better than absences
Better than abscesses
You have your coital fire
Behold, Great Mother
Your black rope of hair
Behold: breasts, crotch
Scrotum, harbor, sun
Your poems will write themselves on parchment
Your manuscripts will illuminate
Any moment now
The diasporas will form a new dialect
Your tears will turn into saltlick
You can walk forever naked
On the island of Caucausus
Without harm
You have your disciples
Tanned and ephemeral
You have your death
The inevitable long drive
They will paint you black
They will paint you white
They will paint your yoni attached
To his blue lingam
Refute that a woman’s body
Is impure
Refute that a woman’s body
Is filthy
Although a woman’s body
Is filthy
They adorn you with garlands
If God is a woman
Why does the world remain
Smug
And male?
Slouched on the blue-cloud divan
The lord of sleep
Flips the channels
Of conscience
A clapboard city in flames
A thousand arms of the marauders
Lowered again, again
On a bloodied cranium
If you hate
There will be a smoldering silence
If you love
There will also be
A purifying furnace
For poetry makes nothing happen
It survives in the Bethesda Boys
Of its making
Where bankers tweet on boughs
And Humvees on their backs
Pray for transcendence
You have a surfeit of choices
You have no choice
A boon of blood-red hibiscus
Stains the burial grounds
The hurly-gurly orphan bands chant
Reverence to her
Reverence to her
And your flesh ignites
Into screams