I was dropped from a black hole
part hurt fledgling
Wild Thing
bird of swift wing
part hothouse flower
wilting
neglected
in the desert
I am square peg
in round hole
way too dense
of emotion
I do not fit well
in the world
my spitfire tenacity
ruffles too many feathers
while my soft underbelly
is ripped raw
from the teeth of daily
indignities
unwelcome
as an overly plump raindrop
plunking cold and abrupt
on a spring sunned bosom
it slides anfractuous
joined apace in feigned ennui
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I slip my feet into your shoes
wrinkling my nose
while I distract myself
from the odor
of sweat and rough pebbled roads and
difference.
I remember the first time
a person of color told me
she had grown up
thinking white people
smell funny
like wet dogs
and cringe under barrage
of memory –
my defensive inner monologue
(thank the goddess it was my inner voice)
at how wet dogs smell
GROSS
I pride myself on being
clean
and my naivete clamoring
I don’t have a smell
though of course
we all smell of something
and perhaps I
reeked
of unacknowledged privilege.
I brace myself
embrace the experience
bury ringed and painted toes
in concrete shod heels
gird ankles as I lace up
tighten the knots
haves and have nots
reinforce resolve.
white-collared fingers
split and crack
while flipping the coarse hewn pages
in the atlas of your journey.
I mimic Nellie Bly
hell-bent on exposé
ferret out your footsteps
along the turbulent trail
I clamber to the summit
of perilous mounts
I could have sworn
(cursed prodigiously!)
were foothills which
barely broke my sweat.
there are serpents
camouflaged as flower stems
they struck at me
when I stopped to smell
ah, the roses!
as they invite us all to do.
winded,
eyes dust-caked
I stumble upon it
the X-marked spot
that place
that unites and divides us
no treasure here
you rubbed and rubbed
with spit and pencil stub.
it is blurred around the edges –
the twisted-tined fork
in your back road
that haunts you
as it ill-defines
you
contemptible or vile.
I have arrived
at the close
vaudevillian excursion
phenomenological circumnavigation
manifest and destiny
obscured
I tug your boots
from barking dogs
massage blistered
tenderfoot
contemplate chipped varnish
adorning well-mouthed toes.
thousand pound eyelids
sweetly sticky shirts
breasts transformed to boulders
heartrending squalls
nipples chafed and raw
delirious hallway treks
panicked phone calls
milk drowns suckling mouth
mislaid wet diapers
silky infant skin
(art:Vicente Romero)
Insights from "Inside" 