How To

genius?
will you get married and divorced?
will you have popular daughters just like you?
and why are you mean?
why does mean = popular?
you know about sex, too
how do you know so much about sex?
i can see it in the way you move
who taught you?
did your mother teach you?
just by being sexy?
is it an innate thing?
what do you think about
alone in your bed at night
are you ever alone?
or do boys come in throngs through your window
popular boys with good hair and an innate
knowledge of fucking
what is your bed like?
do you have lots of stuffed toys
and shiny throw pillows?
do you write poetry in your diary?
is it anything
(like mine?)
are you popular because you are
a heightened version of the norm?
if that is the case and high school
was an insane asylum
who would rule?
you
(or me?)

sixteen: first time
my boyfriend took me to a party after hiking
i heard someone say, “she’s got that outdoorsy look”
i was dirty
and had on hiking boots that he had waterproofed
so the pretty soft suede turned dark and dull
there was a beautiful blond girl
dressed for a party because she knew she was going
to a party
and not on a hike
my boyfriend said good night and put me in the car
then he went back in for some reason
i knew with a woman’s knowing
though i was a girl
that he was going to try to get a phone number
he had photos of girls all over his desktop
a collage of images
my boyfriend and i hadn’t fucked yet
i was his younger virgin
part of his collage
when we finally did it
after a dinner of rare meat
at a fancy restaurant
the flesh stuck in my belly
i wore a strapless flowered sundress
we went to his gay friend’s home
and my boyfriend sniffed some amyl nitrite
when he came
he noticed a tiny hair growing near my nipple
“you better do something about that,” he said
i was so young
too naive even
for tweezers
but not for shame, of course
that comes early
after, i paraded in front of my friends
in a green knit dress and high-heeled shoes
i’m a woman now
my boyfriend and i broke up a few weeks later
goal achieved
i had one night of grief
but the virgins, my friends, were sadder
i realized he had been
part of my collage too


seventeen: war
my girlfriends and i put naked barbies
in the strawberry jell-o
ken had a mohawk, kilt, tiny earring and eyeliner
we girls danced in the living room
and had a cake fight
there were no boys by that time
just us all in shiny pink
waiting for something to happen
not expecting it to be anorexia or cancer or never
seeing one another again
or war
we were like those naked plastic dolls
swimming in a soft sweet rosy sea
while ken waited outside
untouchable
hoping no one would mistake him for g.i. joe


eighteen: monster
just when i thought i had escaped
the hatred of my body
my dad told me he had cancer
after, i went running
down the street
my face bloated red with tears
the boys screamed ugly from the car
when they saw me
i never understood
i had made my father’s disease
into my body
ugly
even after his death
she stayed with me like a gargoyle
only now have i begun to slay her
with the second corrective plastic surgery
poetry yoga therapy
glycolic peels
expensive haircuts and supplements
psychics, massage and shoes
that clinging figure
with the horns and forked tongue
i forgive her
she was trying to save me
in her way
make his disease something
i could point to
see, here it is
help me
kill it


nineteen: the asylum
when she thought of it she didn’t think
of the mental hospital that the city was known for
she thought of cresting the hill in the vw bug
falling into a valley of twinkle lights
she thought of beaches
fields of strawberries fragrant in the heat
as jam as cakes baking
surfer boys with sun-bleached curls
and sons-of-dentists teeth
she was one of five l.a. girls
on their way to a party
in tight striped pink tees and tighter jeans
drunk on keg beer
dancing to the go-go’s
making out with the boys
in their parents’ strange, clean,
bleached-sheet bedrooms
weak-limbed weak-willed with lust
thinking it was love
only later
when the boys didn’t call
were hospitalized for cocaine
or married the beautiful spanish sisters of the boys
she went to college with
when she baked her skin in the sun until it blistered
and bled
and her father told her he had cancer in his bones
was she vaguely aware
of the asylum


a myth of love for girls
when the father died
parts of his body were scattered
to the four corners
his eyes went north
his hands went east and west
his feet went south
the daughter spent twenty years searching
for the parts of him
she found a man who had her father’s eyes and saw
her the way her father never had
she found a man who had her father’s right hand
to hold
her the way her father never could
she found a man who had her father’s left hand
to paint
her the way her father never did
she found a man who had her father’s feet
she stood on top of this man’s feet
as she had stood on her father’s feet
when she was a little girl
but not after that
and she and the man danced this way
the girl loved all the men equally
and she was no longer lonely
but her heart was still broken
into four pieces
so she wept and wept and the men
bewildered by her tears
drifted away
but after some time her tears mixed with the earth
and became clay
and she formed the clay into a man
who was not any part of her father
when she kissed his mouth he came to life
and together they roamed the four corners
of the earth
both whole and alive
and in the sky were birds
and underfoot was grass
and to the east rose the sun
and to the west
came the moon


PART 2
in the