there's reasons why drag queens are nicer than girls..

for Sasha and Malia.

First

you will find it just to arrive. Unannounced. Foreign

like Mo Green did to a room of gangsters. Then you

will learn to distinguish dreams from laughter,

cotton from catastrophe. Doggie style

from labrador's  with dirty collars. Humankind

from Handel's Messiah

and you will learn,

Black girl,

that there is so little space between

sex and sin-tax.

Unmarried at 20, 30, 40, 50, then

you question the motives of true love. Is it

like the hours before the ACT  nearest the

wordless fidgeting?

Will it loosen the nails holding the reproductions in place?

Will roaches drift to earth and scatter under dressers

unmoved for all those years? What I mean is, will it feel like that,

the sex you never had with Billie Dee

un-oxygenated? Grandma told me of the hank

that came to live under the house on stilts. How her

uncle and brother with long broom handles

and smoking rags chased it loose only to have it

return and do the same s**t all over

only louder. Only during the loneliness nights.

Then you get serious about all possibilities;

then you burn the house down.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

geez, you are good...the scenarios you create that are so real....i got that Lou Reed feel...sometimes we try everything to be happy...and it is still such a lonely boulevard---like the one Jackson Browne sings about...i like the reference to Moe Green....and immediately saw that image of him being shot in the eye...a gangster's final vision..."so little space between sex and sin-tax" and syntax?

thank you for this cup of coffee for my morning wake up...since i don't actually drink coffee..the aroma of your words is the next best thing.

[Leon C]

I really liked this.

There was a nice edgy feel to it. can you have nice and edgy in a sentence? A urban feel that was gritty and real. Certainly you have the captured the cynical life view of city life.

[h d e rushin]

thank you Leon for stopping by to visit me my friend...dana

[Marie Anzalone]

It is said that there are two two types of being suicidal, and both are fueled by an inability to connect at a meaningful human level, euther through chemistry or biology or even now damned infection. In active, you plan; in passive, you put yourself in impossible situations and hope there is no return.

I think often of the marginalized, the ones whose internal message loes every damend day, says you do not not deserve to live for not fitting in. So you go out in desperation, cling to contact, and hope you bring home something that this time wil not wash off. Death sentences in ejaculations, perhaps. And who could say?

You change it up here from the surface to the dark underbelly where deprssion and oppression fester in dark spaces and holes. Scary, hard hititng, womderfully wrought stuff.

[h d e rushin]

I love you so much....dana

[Marie Anzalone]

and I, you.

I apologize for my long absence. I had things to take care of.

[Emily B]

I think you were born of the stars, you are full of so much more wonder than most of us

[h d e rushin]

Not born of the stars Ms. Emily. Just bone under one....You.

dana

[Emily B]

Norman Jordan passed away recently. The world lost another beautiful poet. I met him at a reading in Berea. My youngest was enamored with him

[Subterannean]

You're amazing, but you're f*****g around. You're a generational talent whose left to the same appraisals on the same website. I care about what you do and how it can access as many humans as possible. What're you doing in service of that?

[h d e rushin]

agreed totally.

[W.k.kortas]

Incidentally, no mangiare con Hyman Roth.

What strikes me about this piece is the manner in which it transitions--seamlessly, almost without notice--from the playful (indeed, the title suggests the outright frivolous) to the deathly serious final lines of the piece. There are hints that things are headed in that direction--one does not equate Mo Green and happy endings--but the wide swath this piece cuts tends to camouflage that somewhat. This stuff has the rumble of thunderstorms, only with staying power.

[h d e rushin]

thank you for that morning insight my friend.....I caught a summer cold....can you imagine?

dana