My Vow
I promise
to call you by your name
your name
the shape of it
built from your bones
your body
the one you built
the one you chose
for the mind you grew
your mind
a wild garden
that lush and sacred place
that vast and winding place
and I promise
to tend to it
to protect it
to remember it
to say it aloud
Your Mind
Your Body
Your Name
Poetry and Body Art
A Love Song of Pomegranates
They say to look for one
that feels heavier than it appears.
I test each fruit
in the palm of my hand,
feeling for the weight
of its buried gems.
Back home, I run the tip of my knife
through the thick skin,
just deep enough
so I can crack it open.
I peel back pale membranes,
thumb the fruit
until they loosen and drop.
It is a slow process. Methodical.
I work away at each section, wiggling out
the ruby teeth.
It is crucial not to break them.
Of course,
there are always a few mistakes.
The bowl fills.
The tips of my fingers blush.
My love wraps his arms around me
and watches the work.
He sneaks a handful
and slaps them into his mouth all at once.
I furrow my brow at him.
He laughs.
We are different, that way.
I eat them one by one,
picking them up between finger and thumb.
I hold them up to the light.
I pretend I am eating heartbeats.
I pretend I am
Persephone, though I’ve made my decision
long ago, and it was a good one.
Pomegranates are a practice
in patience. I don’t mind
that by the time we are done,
he’s eaten twice as much as I have.
We love in different ways:
He, eager and ravenous,
grinning with a mouth full of juice,
and I, counting each moment,
remembering the work I had done
to get here,
breaking each jewel between tongue and teeth.
Poetry and body art.
I am ugly.
And that doesn’t mean I’m not PRETTY,
I’m just so ugly-stuffed with life
that it shows on my face and my body.
I turn heads when I walk, flaunting my ugly.
I laugh with all my teeth, and nostrils flared, and eyes squinted ugly.
I cry….UGLY, snot streaming over my lips, face red,
back in school some jerks two doors down said,
“she sounds like a monkey!”
ugly.
I was the only Asian in my grade, shortest in my class ugly.
didn’t act like all the other girls, scared of my own growing body.
I am flat-chested, no-hips ugly.
I was black eyeliner and loud music,
curtains drawn, scratching at my skin
with safety pins ugly.
But out in the daylight, perfect grin,
sweet, smart straight-A student
all that ugly held down with a pile of books.
I knew all the answers,
sitting at my desk with my hand up, pen poised on paper.
I thought I could turn all that ugly
into a perfectly formatted resume.
Toss that ugly up into the sky
like a graduation cap and stroll into adulthood
with nothing but beauty.
That’s not how it works.
I am deep, molten mantle around an iron core ugly.
The tectonic plates in my face sent up
eruptions and formed rifts above my brow.
I was ugly with layers of foundation and concealer,
ugly with silence,
ugly with the need to be seen mistaken for consent.
And then ugly for attention shaking ugly ass, flipping ugly hair,
batting ugly lashes, look at me just please don’t see
my ugly.
Then it went down into my joints and bones,
tired achy ugly.
My golden summer skin looked jaundiced when winter hit.
Ugly circles under ugly eyes, chapped lips.
I am an expert at ugly. I deserve a degree for the ugly I have been
and the ugly I have seen.
I collect and categorize kingdoms, phylums, classes of ugly.
I speak and transcribe ugly.
Mix pigments of ugly into perfect hues.
I dream ugly dreams.
I am ugly like days of rain.
Ugly like thick smoke.
I am ugly like a cat trapped out in the cold, looking for a home.
I’m ugly like death.
Ugly like decay.
That sick sweet smell that never goes away.
Like dirt and seeds that struggle to sprout.
Ugly like leaves, ugly like trees.
I am a forest of ugly. I am an ugly country surrounded by angry,
ugly seas, the tides of ugly pulled by an ugly gravity.
I am the ugliness of a galaxy with its raging forces of energy.
I am monumental masses of ugly revolving around a central point.
I am light-years of ugly. My ugly bends space and time.
One day I’ll collapse into dense, dark ugliness, but I’m so ugly far away
that from back on earth, you’ll look up for years to come
and see me shine.