Single-Handed

I was a single mothers for many years and dreamed of being saved.


Looking at the sky
for signs of God,
I see the tree
outside my bedroom window
fulfill a destiny without complications.

Stubborn pride
keeps me afloat
when I listen
to my mother's gray-blue stories
about my father leaving her
with a swollen belly
and bruises around her neck;
about marrying the second man
when she wasn't pregnant after all;
about the aches of aging
and merciless regrets.

Where is the white horse,
where the prince
that I read about when I was young,
listening to my Snow White and the Dwarfs record
by my grandmother's sewing machine,
the one I hid under when Santa Claus came one year
prepared to flock me for my bad behavior.

They say each color has an emotion.
Childhood diseases do too:
Chickenpox is angry,
Measles is sad,
Mumps is lonely.

Rabbit

I hadn't seen him.
He just ran into me.
In the rear view mirror I see
half a rabbit
dragging his body to the grassy ditch.
His legs have already died.
It's only Tuesday
and I am walking
towards the twitching creature
hoping he is just in shock,
that everything is going to be all right.

Like when my stepfather
beat me with an unhinged door
and my mom told me later
everything would be fine.
Like when my best friend started licking
my cheeks in the middle of the night,
and we never talked about it.

The rabbit's eyes
are glowing and he
has to trust me.
I hold him and feel
his quivering.
Does he know
he is going to die?
And when he does,
his black jello eyes
go behind the curtain.

What world do I live in?
I am not accustomed to death
without TV.

My Uncle's Farm

I loved these vacations on the farm of my aunt and uncle, because my life there was so different than at home. Everything was matter of fact. They had a black watch dog that was always chained to the dog house, never played with, and fed our leftovers. In my world people took walks with their dogs and fed them dog food. I chose the poem to be in the voice of my younger self.


Some summers I spend on my uncle’s farm.
The house smells like potatoes,
cider cellar, fresh air,
and my dead great-grandmother.

I am nine years old and driving tractor is
almost like being grown up.
The scent of freshly cut grass fills my small body
and lives inside me.
Makes me want to be a cow and chew slowly,
with that crunching sound.

A skinned rabbit hangs on the fence,
his eyes seemed still alive
as if caught in surprise.
Dinners are soup, dumplings, homemade bread,
and meat on white table cloth.

My older cousin Helmut hides a magazine
under his mattress and shows it to me
one evening.

In the morning I go with uncle Willi
to the pigeon coop.
It is built on stilts above a small creek
like a tree house.
He has so many birds
and sometimes he makes them fly away
with a letter wired to their leg.
He climbs up the ladder and comes back
with a pigeon.
Her eyes are like little pieces of coal
and a string of purple feathers
lines her neck like a necklace.
Her body is the color of dolphin.

Uncle Willi's two fingers
wrap around the pigeon's neck
and with a twist and a quick jerk
he rips off her head.
He tosses it into the river.
While he walks towards the house
with her body,
I watch her face swim away.

Threshold

I still get a kick out of the visuals accompanying my memories of “the first time.” His name was Albrecht. One of his eyes always looked tired.


Once I was in love with a blond angel.
His curls almost hid his tired eye.
Before I knew his caresses,
I was suspicious
of touch and saliva,
of hands on my breasts and thighs,
of the scent reminding me of pulsing death.
His casual love, insisting to be unimportant,
opened the first waves of woman love.
My indigenous inner girl stood by watching shyly,
with a dirty face.
Mute, with a hollow space to throw words into,
she watched as this ancient ache arose, quivered,
and broke to pieces.

How did it all begin?
In a sunlit, apricot-colored room
with the silhouette of an African tree
above the desk.

Church bells next door.
A baking house across the street.
Many women arrive with balls of dough,
marked by a symbol of ownership.
Man in blue
hacks wood for the stone oven,
with two front teeth missing.

Orderly bookshelves and an heirloom rug,
too expensive to throw away,
too ugly for the main house.

We had tongued each other for weeks,
then laid down on the quilt
mom had made for my 21st birthday.
He moved on top of me,
as I searched for feelings.
Am I a woman now?

On his white T-shirt,
a blond Viking smiled confidently at me.
His halo read:
“Virgin maidens register here.”
Is it allowed to laugh during sex?

Sex was so serious that my mother's eyes
always looked wounded
when she came out of her bedroom,
bravely resuming her chores.
My stepfather appeared shortly thereafter,
adjusting his leather belt
in a triumphant gesture.

I run into the kitchen
looking into my mother's gray eyes.
I must look different.
She has to notice.
I am a woman now.