You have that kind of face that people write poetry about. The kind they can’t show to their mothers. The kind they keep hidden with receipts and newspapers and grocery lists. The kind where drying ink struggles to scratch that last word in. You have poems resting on your lips, waiting on the next sucker with paper and pen to swoon at your every breath - a letter. Every sigh, sentence, syllable, scream, stare, so sharp - a stanza. Your face takes them to the stars, where their bodies expand and spread distances to come close enough to see your eyelashes turning into exclamations. I can’t imagine what you see in your reflection. It must be…

you see, my whole life

is tied up

to unhappiness

it’s father cooking breakfast

and me getting fat as a hog

or having no food

at all and father proving

his incompetence

again

i wish i knew how it would feel

to be free

it’s having a job

they won’t let you work

or no work at all

castrating me

(yes it happens to women too)

it’s a sex object if you’re pretty

and no love

or love and no sex if you’re fat

get back fat black woman be a mother

grandmother strong thing but not woman

gameswoman romantic woman love needer

man seeker dick eater sweat getter

fuck needing love seeking woman

it’s a hole in your shoe

and buying lil’ sis a dress

and her saying you shouldn’t

when you know

all too well-that you shouldn’t

but smiles are only something we give

to properly dressed social workers

not each other

only smiles of i know

your game sister

which isn’t really

a smile

joy is finding a pregnant roach

and squashing it

not finding someone to hold

let go get off get back don’t turn

me on you black dog

how dare you care

about me

you ain’t got no good sense

cause i ain’t shit you must be lower

than that to care

it’s a filthy house

with yesterday’s watermelon

and monday’s tears

cause true ladies don’t

know how to clean

it’s intellectual devastation

of everybody

to avoid emotional commitment

“yeah honey i would’ve married

him but he didn’t have no degree”

it’s knock-kneed mini-skirted

wig wearing died blond mama’s scar

born dead my scorn your whore

rough heeled broken nailed powdered

face me

whose whole life is tied

up to unhappiness

cause it’s the only

for real thing

i

know

An Entomologist’s Last Love Letter.

dear samantha

i’m sorry

we have to get a divorce

i know that seems like an odd way to start a love letter but let me explain:

it’s not you

it sure as hell isn’t me

it’s just human beings don’t love as well as insects do

i love you.. far too much to let what we have be ruined by the failings of our species

i saw the way you looked at the waiter last night

i know you would never DO anything, you never do but..

i saw the way you looked at the waiter last night

did you know that when a female fly accepts the pheromones put off by a male fly, it re-writes her brain, destroys the receptors that receive pheromones, sensing the change, the male fly does the same. when two flies love each other they do it so hard, they will never love anything else ever again. if either one of them dies before procreation can happen both sets of genetic code are lost forever. now that… is dedication.

after Elizabeth and i broke up we spent three days dividing everything we had bought together

like if i knew what pots were mine like if i knew which drapes were mine somehow the pain would go away

this is not true

after two praying mantises mate, the nervous system of the male begins to shut down

while he still has control over his motor functions

he flops onto his back, exposing his soft underbelly up to his lover like a gift

she then proceeds to lovingly dice him into tiny cubes

spooning every morsel into her mouth

she wastes nothing

even the exoskeleton goes

she does this so that once their children are born she has something to regurgitate to feed them

now that.. is selflessness

i could never do that for you

so i have a new plan

i’m gonna leave you now

i’m gonna spend the rest of my life committing petty injustices

i hope you do the same

i will jay walk at every opportunity

i will steal things i could easily afford

i will be rude to strangers

i hope you do the same

i hope reincarnation is real

i hope our petty crimes are enough to cause us to be reborn as lesser creatures

i hope we are reborn as flies

so that we can love each other as hard as we were meant to.