Grandma

standing on a chair
to help frost my birthday cake -
lemon frosting -
sunshine; sugar;
a lemon tree in the backyard.

now I see with adult eyes
this bent woman with skinny bird's legs
red-rimmed eyes dull and sticky
gin with two olives always close at hand.
from her chair she hollers instructions,
misses nothing -
my grandmother is ruler of her own domain.

I watch her fade;
shrink;
skin sticking to bones
as her cotton hair
pulls back and disappears.
her body tries
to silence her.

but behind those milky eyes and the eggshell skull
is a mind not yet soft,
one that knows the answer
to every crossword question
that holds a hundred recipes, and remembers
the bats in Panama when my father was two,
each successive pet pup of childhood
this mind holds oceans.

one tissue paper hand in mine
trembling lips pressed to my forehead
love in human form.

Dirty

life.
give it to me dirty;
i want it real.
i want rocks under my feet,
rocks and sand – i’m sick of sidewalks.
give me air thick with incense and spice,
heavy with the stench of humanity.
i want my coffee black.
i want to bust out of my plastic skin,
dizzy with the freedom of shed restraints,
and see dust and spiders,
and soot, and bridges made of
tired wooden slats –
the beauty of imperfection.
i am sick of
my middle-class America
vanilla ice cream existence.
i want more.

cities are too clean,
new cars and shiny skyscrapers
and the self-absorbed bustle of the
average white-collar businessman.
i want to sit under a bridge with
some grimy specimen of humanity;
i want to know why.
i want to choke on the dust of life’s path.

give me broken glass
in place of razor blades,
colors more pleasing than
the uniform glint of metal.
trade me driftwood
for all my sharp corners.
i want life in an explosion,
like a punch in the gut,
i want life so hard that
it leaves a ringing in my ears.
no more pillows,
no more sunscreen for this white girl.

i want experience –
i want to know.
i want life to leave
a red handprint on my face;
i want it to leave its mark on me.
i want to eat rattlesnake meat,
i want to have sex on the dining room table,
just once;
i want to jump out an airplane
and know what it’s like to fly.
i want life to exhaust me.

i want to be used up and wrung out
stumble off the ride, lightheaded and nauseous.
i want to be spun dry.
i want to be caked to the neck in
this filthy, mucky mess called life;
i want it to suffocate me.

life is meant
to be lived,
mud and all.
so give it to me
dirty.