Don’t tell me you’ve never had an overwhelming urge to reach out and touch a baby
I want to stir up a young child’s fantasy right now so swell
up in my heart this overwrought emotion
to see a little Ivory or Avery running around
matching up Velcro smiley faces with his current disposition
and not have to call mother and home and tell her how naughty he’s been.
Hopefully she cares,
I sure would.

Baby Misha, I’d call her.
and we’d stroll down the banks of the river
the nearest river we’d stroll.
I love you so much
and not just because Nature forces me to.
Nature forces women to have babies
but I still want to
produce.

The ultimate work of art, I’d joke.
The penultimate prize,
my arrow I’d shoot out of my womb
and let it fly, unencumbered by my wants and wonts.
Ha ha, that’s so funny.
I’d nurture the hell right out of my child.
No phone! No i-phone! No phone until seventh grade.
But mama, she’d say.

But mama,
But mama,
But mama,
But what?
You are better off.
You’ll understand when you’re a mother,
and that’s me functioning with the assumption
that baby Misha wants to be a mother.
She’ll feel the same things I’ll feel because we have the same blood
maybe not the same blood type,
she may be positive, I may be negative
but one day we’ll dance like my mother and I danced
and I’ll cry like my mother cries and say
I’ll miss you but I want you to be free.

But mama.
But what?

You opened my jar.
Stuck, so you ran it under warm water,
banged it on the counter, and leaned
your full body over it and strained to
free it from its lid.

You scooped me out.
I was luke warm and spicy salsa.
Cold, watery hominy.
Salty greens.
Fermented sugar cabbage.
Smelly and raw.

You ate a little of me every day,
tried to make the contents last.
The jar had been in your cabinet for a long time.
You almost donated me,
but you forgot.

You stored me in your refrigerator,
I got cold, stagnant.
I loved when you poured out my contents
and warmed them up on the stove
and ate me in front of the window on a mild day.

I loved when you seasoned me and made me new.

I drew you
playing the flute
but your hands were too large
you couldn't push the buttons down right.
I didn't realize this until after
I drew you

With remorse,
I recalled ******* at you to not
shave your beard.
I drew you
with a beard.

With remorse I remembered
you, growing up with you.
Being outwardly critical toward you,
did you ever say I hurt you?
Did I ever hurt you?

I drew you
and I drew a map of you,
and I love you

I know a stranger that does not bring me artifacts from the earth
he does not give me flint pieces or moon snail shells from
the coast of Delaware or from blue grass Kentucky.

He does not look familiar.  He looks adult. He looks salt and pepper.
I wonder what he won't bring me next.

I was an errant vacuum
cleaning up all the hay,
******* on the floor in my room.

I was not a wooden broom
with a sturdy handle and bristles.
I was an errant vacuum.

Innocent clumps of dirt loom
along with pennies and bobby pins
******* on the floor in my room.

I cleaned best by the light of the moon.
The crackle of staples did not faze me.
I was an errant vacuum.

I didn’t care if the machine got ruined.
There was no one to scold me.
I was an errant vacuum
******* on the floor in my room.

I'm really sweaty.
I'm really sorry
I read you such a heteronormative poem.
I thought it was beautiful and short.
I forgot
if I was a lesbian.

If it is trendy for me to like my same ***
I don't want to do it.
Some of us argued, on Lagrange, in Polish Village,
about whether I wasn't shaving because of ideology or
because it was annoying.
I said it was annoying, but I meant that the whole thing about it is annoying. Everything is annoying. I'm annoyed and cold but still sweating.

Sometimes I feel the same as when I am transplanting
fragile cucumbers into the ground with clumsy rubber
gloves, very graceless. I feel tenderness toward you
and disdain toward myself that I subtly impressed upon you.
I am sorry about that. I don't want to do that,
to her. I don't want to do that again.

I felt good when her and I watched raindrops drop into a pond.
Both our natural tendencies were to lie down in the grass,
maybe she was thinking about our muddy bodies,
but I wasn't thinking much. My thoughts were warm.

Today we're going to ride in my ticking time bomb car,
fifty-five miles per hour for a couple of hours,
forty-four degrees is the high and *******, we are going to feel that high. Embrace the peaks of the weather and the pits of our lonely, young, emphasis on the young, but still rather manic feelings.
I feel better doing that with you,
but I don't know if I want to touch you
all the time.

The miserable city.
Bankrupt *** holes and bbq.
Langston hughes rock drum solo everyday people
wear baggy pants and cross the street
no crosswalk necessarily style.
A leaf wishing wind would push it to the cleaner side of town
right across the way. Companies paid make flower basket hanging
contraptions and tend to the grass till the grass cant be tended to no more.
Glass city style, glass walls in the loft shiny windex clean
to secure the sweetest view of wendys or a steel solid warehouse.
Calculated anthony wayne trail street lights
and twenty four hour surveillance, vaudville light fixtures
and bus stops empty of any white people.