The house that I'm currently residing is overrun with animals--a veritable feline hotel.  There's the litter of feral kittens living under the house---the majority of which have been wrangled up and delivered to the animal shelter sans one black and white one that is probably more cunning and wily than the rest.  The feral kittens attacked the hand that tried to feed them one afternoon, sending the food deliverer to the hospital for emergency surgery---perhaps it was the black and white kitten.  Just last night the kitten was finally trapped and soon to be reunited with its brethren at the shelter after what I imagine will be extensive rehabilitation and counseling.  After such an ordeal I fear it is irreversibly fucked up and once in lock-down will be lifting barbells, giving itself Mama-Kitty tattoos with dirty needles and sharpening its claws into deadly weapons.  But what can ya do?  

There's the Siamese supermodel cat---eyes so blue you could swim in them--named Noodles/Poseidon.  He spends most of his time lounging on the Master's king sized bed, eating bon-bons and reading back issues of Cosmo between model shoots.  There's the barn cat Tanikin who prefers catching field mice and sleeping under bridges.  A real hobo-cat.  And there's the pint-sized Maggie-Sue who got herself knocked-up by some old gray Tom and is ferocious-mother-extradinaire—attacking anything that comes within 100 yards of her litter.  Originally Maggie-Sue had a litter of five, but two died from unknown causes and the other was smothered Andrea Yates style, albeit accidently, or so thought.   Motherhood has made Maggie-Sue exceedingly unbalanced so it’s anyone’s guess.  Me?  I think she looked at the situation and said, two’s all I can handle.   The kittens are going on four weeks now, mewling and clawing their way through their boxed-crib and I suppose thriving is the way I’d put it. 

Gus is in the thick of it.  The only dog amid so many snarling cats.  He’s jarred for sure.  Technically, he’s uncle to Maggie-Sue’s litter, but the only thanks he gets is Maggie-Sue’s vicious disdain.  She attacks him any chance she gets and they roll like tumbleweeds several times a day.  Maggie-Sue was Gus’ first playmate and they used to like each other.  A lot.  But now he’s been cruelly rejected and retreats in bewilderment and dismay in the aftermath of her assaults.   Still, he much prefers this environment—acres of yard to patrol, people coming and going, free rein of the property and several cats to cajole and antagonize—than the tranquility of my apartment.  This place is dog-heaven to Gus and I am loath to send him back to the leash and heel.  He won’t know what hit him.  I’ve never seen him this happy before.  Deep down, he’s a country dog.  Through and through.

Candy Necklace

Each piece of chalky wafer breaks

my heart.  I adore these pastel chips

strung on the thinnest of elastics.  I hold

them in my mouth.  I drool little rings

down my lips and when I try

to talk and giggle there is a catch

in the throat—a catch when the elastic

snaps and the sizzle of candy spills on tile

like a drop of orange sauce on a hot grill.

Winter now and drunk flies knock

my window for just one more drink

of light, or to sink into fruit juice left in a glass

overnight.  I chew off all the tiny pink

rings, then the blues, the yellows, and leave

all the white: a sad excuse for pearls

at this age.  We have sticky necks,

sticky hands and when I slide the candy—

an abucus around my neck—I count the times

you thought of me today—or was it

how many times I thought of you?

I set the silly truck-stop rings you offered me

under my tongue.  My neck is still sticky,

still collects—but the candy necklace

I wear tonight is all the rings you gave

my phone and I didn’t answer.  Now

I can afford even peacock pearls clasped

in a wild gold latch but I have no money

for his steps         his boot           his taste.

Borderline Spring

Spring burst into my room today.  One hand on ample hip in accusation, lips pursed in petulant bloom, hair swelling past her knees and to be perfectly frank, she reeked; a potpourri of swamp cabbage, old lady’s perfume and the decay of the ages.  It’s all the damn flowers and bees.  She can’t help it, but even so, it’s vile. 

You’d think she’d be cheerful, but Spring is a cunt.  A real pill.  She’s all about, Look at me!   Aren’t I interesting?  Aren’t I beautiful!  And if you fail to approve,  a fake smile plastered on your face in mock reassurance, her feelings get all hurt and she starts with the cutting down her cellulite thighs.  A real attention grabber, so she thinks.  I was once impressed when she cut Damn Spring across both her breasts, but that was a long time ago, before she exhausted my patience. 

So what is it this time?  I was annoyed because she has no respect for my boundaries, just barges in my room any time she pleases.  She stood there looking to unleash the water works.  It’s just a ploy.  Once, in a note, I neglected to dot my “I’s” with little pink hearts, and she disapeared for three weeks!  In May!  She’s overly sensitive like that.  She insists that everything be rainbows and unicorns.  She collects My Pretty Ponies and Hello Kitty figurines.  She can really make you sick. 

So she stood there in my room, with that part wrath, part wounded expression on her face, waiting for me to…WHAT!?  That’s the thing, I don’t know what she wants!  She won’t come out and say.  She likes to play these passive aggressive games with me, as if she is so privileged and more important than you and everybody else; she expects people to fall at her feet and spend hours trying to figure out what she meant by such and such comment, or that particular door slamming, or why she is so annoyingly quiet. 

my sensual preoccupation

with the phlebotomist-in-training,

some fetish or disorder, a sanguine fixation,

nightingale complex—

because when his brown hands

(so soft)

introduce their warmth to my skin,

and despite my veins, just targets

to excavate, flesh diminished to doll parts,

blood just a pool from which to draw,

an attendant science—

despite this, I am a devoted patient,

one who considers needles

a kind of love charm, instruments

of affection, because it’s been years

since I’ve been touched,

except in this way, in a clinic’s room

white as sugar, and it’s been years

since anyone has drawn my blood,

eased my heart’s gravity, finessed

its submission, except in this way—

his hands

(so soft)

grazing the inside of my elbow,

the tourniquet stretched taut, jaws

waking the vein, that blue pulse,

and then the pop, the sucking,

the pull, a kind of kiss, the clench

of fist, a whisk of tape and gauze

as I descend, become an opened

palace, a collision of vessel

and nerve, when hours later

the results appear: the needle’s

sharp bite, its rigid tension,

the blistering afterglow

a concupiscent bruise that lingers

(so soft)

            for days.

During our walk Gus started yipping at the mailman parked across the street.  "Oh, Gus," I heard myself saying. "Don't be a cliche."

After all this time I finally saw a performance of “The Vagina Monologues.”  It was a raucous tour de force that simulaneously made me laugh and cringe.  I don’t know if it’s my strict puritan upbringing, the time I spent worshipping Jesus in that Italian nunnery or being gang-raped by a lesbian motorcycle gang while vacationing in New Mexico, but at times watching the writhing, celebratory, orgasmic, pussy-loving performers made me downright uncomfortable.  I was wondering if this was supposed to be furthering a feminist agenda?  I am not completely sure, but I think I’m a lesbian now, those women were hot.  And I’ve taken huge leaps in my feminine empowerment; for instance, this morning I actually removed my underwear before taking a shower.  And I told my boyfriend to make his own damn dinner!  Hee.  

Here's the version of the "Vagina Monologues" I want to see. 

Starring Veruca Salt, Pippi Longstocking, Cleopatra, Peppermint Patty, Zuzu Bailey, Pocahontas, Scarlett O’Hara, Annie Chapman, The Virgin Mary, Wonder Woman, Pebbles Flintstone, Georgia O’Keefe,  Miss Piggy, Daisy and Violet Hilton, Queen Victoria, Foxy Brown and Sappho.

It occured to me recently that I've never ran across any anthologies of mermaid poems; this surprised me because nearly everyone (any poet that I happen to admire) has one in their repertoire (except me, at this point).  If anyone has one or knows of a good one, pass it along to me.  I'd love to have a cache of them.  TiffanyMidge@aol.com

I love this selection from Theresa Boyar!  Enjoy!

 Theresa Boyar


Sea-Girls

Mermaids were apron-pocket stowaways, mint and jade bodies brought to light on her palm while her tongue swam through tales of customers (vulgar) and shift managers (incurably uptight).

In the kitchen, her translucent girls cast lettuce-colored diamonds on our walls. We watched and listened, watched and swallowed oyster crackers whole, anxious to own an army of finned women for ourselves.

It helped move things along if we joined her exorcisms, picked up the proffered tridents and attacked the drowning men. So we watched and listened, watched and swallowed oyster crackers whole, watched and hated with her.

We hated the men who called her baby and dollface, the bastard who accused her of eating half his steak. Hated the ringed hands that grabbed her ass and we wanted, we really wanted to kill them all. The men who barked at her to make it snappy, we murdered them nightly, all of them, in our dreams. We ignored their wild, convenient apologies. We held their salty faces undersea, waiting for limbs to loosen like spilled ribbons. We watched and waited, watched and hated, watched and swallowed oyster crackers whole.

That day at the beach, her bikini was the color of ketchup. And with her last dive, we thought she'd finally let go. We thought she'd forsworn the trailer, its roaches and fans, its oyster cracker crumbs and shifting patterns of diamonds on kitchen walls. She'd grown a sheathe, we thought we'd seen a sheathe, the way her sun-jarred legs dissolved, merging fast with salt and froth. We stood on the shore and waited for her to resurface. We waited and wondered and swallowed whole oceans of air.

Days later, she swam back, with ribbons of kelp in her hair instead of smoke. She rounded us up for the drive back home and was silent. There was sand in our suits and our thighs were shining with sun and the vinyl beneath us was slick with our new sweat. There were unopened soda cans rolling near our feet, warm and tingling and waiting to be opened. Waiting like an oyster or a girl waiting to be opened. We wondered why she was silent and we watched her and saw her. We saw how her ears were pale and curled like snails, how serpents, we thought we saw serpents, coiled in the seaweed of her hair. We swallowed our words and hers and watched and waited.

We picked up where we left off earlier, returning to the ritual of her apron pocket. The retrieval of her translucent, slender girls. Her dance of story and show, toy arms that slid over juice glass rims. Her fingers shook loose the ribbons of her hair and what spun free was the smell of smoke and men, ketchup and sand and salt. We waited in that kitchen, waited to be noticed, our miniature bodies beginning to curve the air. We waited for her hate to change, for it to change us, to catch us on its prongs and pin us down. We waited for her eyes to shift and for her to see us, to see our salt-glazed thighs and sun-fucked skin, starfish dripping from our hair, the shredded men we wore like smoky ribbons. We watched and waited and watched her watch and hate us. We watched her hate and swallow oyster crackers whole.