Ivory Angel #3

My mother and I get along pretty well, but she told me that she could never love a daughter that loved other women, and me being somewhat bisexual, that kind of put a dent in our relationship. She is too pushy, too religious, too intolerant, too certain she is right, and too determined to be the Lord of all things, imposing her views on everyone and everything. I have promised myself I will never get so rigid in my ways, never let myself get trapped in a marriage where my husband ignores me in favor of computer games, never let religion become my only social group or solace. But I know that someday, I will probably turn out just like her, only not religious and quite possibly alcoholic. It's inevitable, and that sucks.

This is kind of cheating because it's old, but I'm moving and don't really have time to write much. All these three poems deal with my disgust at my mother's hypocrisy and unwillingness to accept people if they do not live up to the (meaning her) proper standards.

Letter to my Mother (2/19/04)
I still wear my mother’s hand-me-downs
Leather boots and yellow off-the-shoulder blouses
Your mother must have good taste friends tell me
But I just smile and shake my head
If she did, she wouldn’t have gotten rid of these things.

My dad proposed to her on their third date and she accepted
No she, wasn’t pregnant. She got married when she was 21.
In the a golden temple. She wore white.
And a veil that was handed down from her mother’s mother
It’s made of Old Dutch lace. It looks like dove feathers.
Some day it will be mine
as will the ring that won’t slide off her swollen finger
Commitment, she tells me. It’s a symbol.
My father wears one too. He’s never told me what it means to him.
The way his lips are hard and chiseled says enough.

In eight months, I too will be 21, but I will not be married
Not in a temple, and not in white.
Please don’t be disappointed, mother, when you discover
that I am Raven and not lacier Dove.
I love the black leather boots you threw away
I wear them out on Sundays to my tabernacle
Of Wiccan trees and tattooed strippers
And a pioneer world that’s all my own.

My Graduation (2/19/04- "You" is my mother)
No please don’t photograph me don’t let me
Remember this day of fake smiles and chins held high above
Graduation gowns. I don’t have an honor cord
And I’m worried the picture will see the
Pain in my eyes.

Grandma and grandpa fussed over me so. I don’t know why,
But you wouldn’t let me wear a white dress with black stockings because
You said it looked silly
I always look silly in your pupils and in the flash
That gives me red-eye and a headache
Because the camera never takes me seriously enough.

You don’t understand! I want to have stripes like a zebra!
I want all my pictures to involve me French kissing the lens!
Don’t let me be ordinary or forgotten or mundane!
Is it silly to want to be remembered?
The photographs zig-zag across tables in the parlor
Or at least they do in other families where
Parents are proud of their children and everyone is loved.
You just shove them in a box and forget them while pretending to be sentimental
How can you love me when you don’t even accept
That black stockings are important to me. They’re really who I am.
I’ll wear them even if the toes don’t smell nice
And there are runs up my thighs
At least I’m safe and coated in dark shadows and not this galling, blank white.
It gets stained too easily.
And even if you won’t drive me to my own graduation if I don’t change my outfit
I know I can still hurt you.
I won’t let you take my picture, not unless you photograph my corpse.

So please,
No more silly, taffeta charades
I am not the daughter who dances glibly before a shutter-click.
Or who will pretend we are the perfect family
And sit there with the dull, dumb smile on my face
Sometimes, I think you don’t even miss the frame that
Isn’t on the mantelpiece.
Let me be the first to say I no longer care.

Picnic (3/11/04)
The sandwiches were in a bag that smelled like meatballs
Wrapped in paper that crackled in my skinny hands
The sun was hot and pleasant, the sidewalk shone
An elongated, sparkling glitter-pearl

But not where she was. Twisted mother
White hair spindly under dark gray shawl
Her shadows were leaking everywhere
And there were stains on her scarf, which once was olive
Threads unraveled quickly
As if trying to escape from their own chaos
Her trenchcoat smelled like all the gutters
I looked and saw
She had no teeth.

Mama grabbed my hand and quickened
But the lady was smiling, round eyes filled with sharp edges.
She looked down at the bag and I knew I smelled like meatballs
She was so close I wondered why she didn’t just reach out
And take them but she just trembled
Her hands just trembled and I couldn’t look at her
“Please, please” she gulped the words, sickly albatross
Mom shook her head, and the woman shrugged
Turning back towards her dumpster
I clutched my bag tighter. I wasn’t hungry anymore.

“There are places for those kind of people to go,” Mama tells me
As we meet Daddy in the parking lot.
“They can go and get help there.”
Four hands guide me away to the car but then
Daddy sees the woman in the distance
Sees a crooked grandmother looking through a dumpster
His breath goes hoarse. “Did you, honey?”
But Mama doesn’t answer. Her lips are pursed.
Daddy turns away and rushes
Backwards in time to the dumpster
And empties his wallet right on the sidewalk
The woman hugs him and through the holes in her skirt I can see
Naked thighs pressing against him
Paper thin and full of veins.

“We give to charity,” Mama whispers. “We give enough.”
Her hand is clutching me and it hurts.
There are places for those kind of people to go.
She doesn’t look at Daddy when he comes back, and he wordlessly
Picks me up and sticks me in the white sedan
That he washed this morning. It shimmers like a fallen moon
Mama won’t speak to him all day, but we
Unroll the checkered tablecloth anyway
And lounge in North Park like Emperors
Before a feast of bologna and potato salad
We eat slowly and I remember someone else’s brusque eyes
While the mosquitoes linger, becoming swollen.