Elderly with Benefits
Rashida, the oldest woman of the tribe, went to the watering hole to wash. She was old, old like the land. Her skin was like a crocodile, leathery and cracked. It took her a long time to get there, her old legs were slow and tired. As she made her way, Jamilah the lizard slithered alongside her.
Jamilah was beautiful, the most beautiful creature on the earth. She was a lizard, smooth and young. Sometimes she looked like a rock in the river and sometimes she looked like a rainbow.
All the animals on the earth wanted to be near Jamilah, just to feel her radiance. Sometimes she got sick of never being anywhere but with big mobs all the time. Sometimes she wished that the other animals might like her for her thoughts as well as her skin. As she slithered along next to that old woman, she stared with big eyes, looking at her wrinkled skin and her white hair. She saw how the others in the tribe nodded at her as she left and paid their respect to that old woman.
Jamilah wished that she might experience that too. When the old woman got to the watering hole she felt very tired and laid down to rest for a while. Jamilah felt very brave and slithered right across Rashida’s dry hand. Allah chose that moment to take that old woman to that big water hole. He was in a good mood that day and decided that Jamilah would have Rashida’s skin. Jamilah couldn’t believe it! Her smooth skin turned wrinkly and old and leathery!
As she slithered through the bush, no-one paid her any mind at all! She’d never felt so free. Soon other animals were stopping to ask her for advice. Jamilah cried with joy.
Power of the Pen
I picked up my pen to write
and the desiccant winds
arrived from the desert
with their load of sand
depositing it under the
windowsill
and doorjamb;
my place would travel with me.
Though I do not believe my words
brought the sand
anymore than they did the wind,
apparently I would continue to live
on the same page
as the desert.
Pekoe
I saw tendrils of blood
reaching out of my brewing teabag
in the pale fluorescent light
of indoor echo electricity,
Blood in my tea as Tom Waits belted out odes
to a 1974 Saturday Night,
his hearts and ghosts playing down
like midnight sky’s diamonds on his windshield,
Blood flowing into my tea
like those dreams where you swim in the sky
and can see yourself
through everyone else’s eyes,
Blood in billowing fluid clouds,
seeping into my version
of what the Japanese claimed
was necessary to see the world’s truth,
Tea, the liquid of lavish life,
bringer of calming caffeine,
an oxymoron until you experience it,
And there was blood here in mine,
bold arms hugging the water as they
squeezed transparency from the cup,
But it still turned that bright brown
that any decent orange and
black cut pekoe should,
though this time I’m thinking
it’s the blood oxidizing,
like that ugly mud color it turns
when it stains your favorite shirt
after a border skirmish
with your lover’s new man,
This blood in my tea,
it’s a water-based augury,
and now I’m a witch reading the future
in its deceitful sweetness,
reading words yet written,
seeing creations yet invented,
living the lives of those yet born,
This blood in my tea smells rich and familiar,
and with every sip
I can taste reminiscence,
And I realize it’s mine,
it somehow snuck into the silk pouch
and sheltered itself,
waiting for the chemical exodus
induced by the boiling water,
Waiting like a lynx,
a feline spring of pound-for-pound energy
equivalent to an atom bomb of awakening
as it pounces and is pulled silently
through the air toward its prey, me,
My own blood twisting vision,
tingling tastebuds and traveling
past light speed to my brain,
giving me glimpses of my life to come,
glancing my dancing children
in my unfocused peripherals,
The words my future holds
in its open-page palm are mine,
The inventions are my new systems
replacing the rusted steel structures
forming the unstable base I now live on,
The lives are my kids’,
And the blood in my tea,
it dissipates and evaporates,
goes to rejoin the capillaries
of my future family,
And leaves a mild iron taste
as I drink the last bit of it down.
Gypsy