Summer 2002

Moon Woman

She glows like corn in the midnight
gliding beside the road where I drive.
Moon woman,
smiling when she notices my gaze.
I have watched her over my shoulder for days,
She curves above me,
like the curve of a mother's breast,
filling the sky with milky stars, as
each night she grows ever large.

We were taught to revere the Sun,
the Father and Wholly Ghost.
We were taught to feel shame for
our large breasts and hips,
and are forced
into bodies that do not fit,
bodies that sqeeze us into
unnatural
male shapes:
famished prisoner shapes
that resemble a weakened man,
a delicate eunuch.

I've looked for sisters in
everyone.
Melancholy, I search their stares
within hollow sockets that once were
eyes and I see only resentment
gazing out of a bodily prison,
And I sense my own desire to be
included.

Desire.
How I learned to desire
such pain is beyond me.
And so I search over my shoulder
for the moon woman,
mother,
gliding beside the road where I drive
and I strive
to reassure my self that
I am alive.

You make me feel so tall,
even though I am a small woman
in stature and, sometimes, in
spirit. But you make me feel so tall
when you allow me to wrap a protective
embrace around
your sleeping self,
when you let me peer over the snug curves
of your shoulder
at your face
and at the bear clutched
so tightly beneath
your chin.

My legs feel endless, curving
against the backs of your knees
and cupping your bottom that
sticks out and fits neatly
into the crook
of my belly,
into the exact spot where you used to
kick
at my ribs
from the inside.

I watch you sit, stretching your small body tall,
eating apples as you perch on
a splintered wooden
bench.
The breast
you hold out, with its
purple-tipped
nipples
that match your hair,
is met with a ravenous tiger-appetite
from the tow-head on your lap.
And I see you, studiously engaged in
the books splashed open around you
and your backpack.
I see you ignore the glances
from nervous faces turned your way.
"I don't think you belong here,"
the faces say.

We've talked about this before,
during those moments when young mothers
think of breasts
as a commodity to be
used in nourishment and
not in
sex.
We've talked about the times where
we found ourselves put out of place
when we chose to exert our
motherhood
in open spaces.
Here, in the campus quad, you
exert and push, forcing other students
to sneak
peeks
at nipples they don't want to see.

I remember once, when you told me about
the waitress who asked you to close
your shirt and feed your baby elsewhere.
And I admire your gall, admire
that you will feed your child so guilt-lessly
among the voices that tell you
breasts are for sharing.

Sometimes I see the angle from
my partner's point of view, and I wonder
how he was able to stare
into my mothering, into that private place
surrounded by
people
and voices
and glances
that fondled my breasts.
Surrounded by men and children
and questions about what is
best for baby-
bottle
or
breast?
Surrounded by those who
want to enter the holy space of mother,
and child,
where they can nourish themselves
and their erotic dreams.

Parasites.

And sometimes I want to argue that
I don't need to welcome anyone in
to my space;
I've worked hard to deserve this place.

I choose to feed my baby, and
I don't want to know if others are
uncomfortable
or
wary
or whether they want to share
the space that really belongs
to me.

And you tell me that sometimes we
have to pretend that we don't see
the longing looks
at this space
we want
to keep sacred.

"Second Day of School"
1 September 1999

I'm curled around myself,
Unraveling seams from this afghan,
torn, re-knitted in spots,
comforted by the warmth surrounding my shoulders.

Well, maybe.

I still feel remnants of your nervous pinch-
a babyish habit-
your small hands pushed into mine,
squeezing the skin
between my thumb and forefinger.

I was brave today, holding your hand at the bus stop.
I turned toward home
after releasing you to that belching yellow beast.
Alone, I walked down the road,
kicked at rocks strewn across
my path,
noted where the pavement cracked
beneath my toes,
ignored
the place on the roadside
where the baby robin
had been run over last summer,
paused with each step,
waiting for the road
to swallow me whole.

It must have been raining
where I stood.

I sought shelter in the arms
of grandma's recliner, and
her old white afghan.

When he came into the coffee house
that night
he saw the woman behind
the counter smiling
like a worried
puppy smiles.
"She's feeling pissy tonight," he
muttered,
to his friends,
loudly
enough for his voice
to carry
over
the counter and
into her ears.
He didn't ask
how she felt tonight.
He didn't ask
how long
she'd been in this place.
He only slammed
three dollars
on the counter, and told her
he wanted
tea,
Darjeeling,
hot.
As if she were a machine.

When she goes home
at night,
at the end
of her shift, she
looks forward to breathing
her baby's
sweet arms and face and fuzz,
soft cheeks not yet covered in
the spikes of manhood.
She looks forward to
the emptiness
that clutters her
home.
That man didn't care
that when she went home
last night
her son looked at her
as he woke up from dreaming-
"Mama, all my dreams are dried up."
That man didn't understand
that when her son
fell back to sleep,
she sat
in the dark
by his bed
and cried
because her son was only six
and should just be
feeling his dreams
poured over him
like coffee.
That man only wanted
his tea,
and he wanted
it
hot.