As the Moon Climbs

How to Walk

Valerie — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:30:18 +0000

“Hija, come here,
I need to go. Go. I have to
go. Help me up. Help me.
Don’t grab my arm so tightly!
Help! Don’t let go. Ay dios.
Ay dios! I’m falling!
My legs are weak. My legs.
My legs hurt. My legs are soft.
Don’t go so fast. I have to
go. Hurry up. Ay. Ay dios.”

In the other room, the baby grips
the slick surface of a mirrored wall,
makes faces at himself as he steps
slowly sideways, looks back
and forth from mother to reflection.
He turns, smiles, and lets go.

White Noise

Valerie — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:29:24 +0000

Ears ring in
silence, strain
to hear through
vacuum of empty house.
Cat licks foot.
Neighbor runs dryer.
TV is too bright.
Turn thermostat down
so AC clicks on,
steady rush of wind
loud enough for sleep.

Going Broody

Valerie — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:30:55 +0000

Rock doves were made
to live on sheer
cliff faces, nests
wedged piton-like
in crevasses
above the sea,
preferably
with other birds,
cooing couples
condo-clustered,
raising all their
squawking squabs
communally.

Evolution
chiseled, carved some
base bird instinct
deep in your brain
that bids you nest
in fifty-floor
high rise towers,
blue glass windows
overlooking
bay or ocean,
stepping out on
slim balconies,
red wine in hand,
wondering how
many more whole,
unspoiled eggs you
have left to lay.

Sexual Preference and Race

Valerie — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:30:34 +0000

Are not the same thing, see,
because like my friend said the other day,
he said, Hey, let me ask you
a question, and I said,
You can’t ask me a comment, man,
and he didn’t laugh because
he thinks puns are lame, but so,
Dude, he asks, check out that black
chick over there, so I did,
and he asks, Would you bang her?
No way, I said. What if she
were white? Nope. What if
she were a dude? No,
what the hell. A white dude?
No, I said, listen, what is your point?
My point, he said, is are you racist
or homophobic, and I said, Dude,
neither, I just don’t like uggos.

The Statistical Probability of Hate at First Sight

Valerie — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:13:58 +0000

The attractiveness of a person can be determined
in an average of 0.13 seconds. Troubadours
thought love was shot from women’s eyes on light beams, so
love travels thousands of miles in an instant.
An arrow flies upwards of 220 feet per second, but
sound is roughly 4 times faster. Speed dating
usually lasts from 3 to 8 minutes, ended by a whistle.
Dialogue about travel results in more matches than
dialogue about films. 59% of women are interested
in an ideal single man; 90% in a married one.

It’s a 29 minute subway ride from Prospect Park
to Rockefeller Center. Coffee is best served
around 175 degrees Fahrenheit. Third degree burns,
which permeate the entire dermis, are rarely caused
by scalding. Nerve impulses signal pain
slower than touch, a mere 0.61 meters per second.
Your surprise seemed to take an eternity
to reach your face, but I hope you will forever
remember just how quickly a girl can move
when you grab her ass in a crowded New York cafe.

Never Mind the Thunder

Valerie — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:54:15 +0000

A summer gush of rain drove us inside
McDonalds near our school. We waited, wet,
for our respective mothers. Lightning fried
the grid like French potatoes in a net.

How long had we been dating? I forget.
From here, sixteen seems like the darker side
of a new moon. Your father hadn’t yet
done more than hold my hand. Not even tried.

A movie would have had the music rise,
slowly, so you would feel it more than hear.
We’d shyly gaze into each other’s eyes,
lean closer, everything would disappear–

It was a little like that, though the truth
has more sweat, grease, and a hard plastic booth.

The Creation of Adam

Valerie — Tue, 08 May 2012 16:52:09 +0000

My grandfather was silent as god, drawn
into himself to contemplate eternity,
reduced to lobe and chiasm, gland and sulcus.
Enwombed in a red blanket, unshaven, skin hung
like robes on slack muscle, he lay
motionless and refused food.

Stomach still raw and red-slit, I came,
Eve, Sophia, Mary bearing my new child
swaddled in blue blankets. I set him down
next to his creator twice removed.

Slow as a geologic age, he reached out
the crooked finger of his right hand to touch
my sleeping son’s knee. Perhaps some spark
passed between synaptic clefts, a spirit,
life in the void between neurons.

He died that night. In the end, there was
no word, and nothing moved in his house.
In my bedroom, the tiny image of a man filled
lungs with breath and cried, and cried.

Right-handed

Valerie — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:10:34 +0000

Tucked into the crook of an arm, my baby
sleeps after nursing, his face pressed
against my chest. In my left hand
I hold a pair of nail clippers, slide
the slick blade along a tiny fingertip
slowly, so I don’t wake him, under
that pale jagged line of growth,
scratcher of faces and arms. He stirs
as I squeeze the lever, freezing me
fast as a cat in high grass, muscles
taut and trembling with stalled intent.
I breathe. He breathes. We breathe.
Sleep limpens his limbs again. Awake
this task is impossible, Herculean,
wail, writhe, wiggle of arms. Asleep
my clumsy off-hand can barely manage,
barely. Each successful snip means
nothing, for the next could slip,
carve a bloody hole in perfect skin.
His scars are my greatest mistakes.
And yet, it must be done. The bonzai
must be pruned and shaped to flourish.
The gardener can only pray
not to pare away too little, too much,
enough to let the wild tree thrive
tamed by a steady hand.

News on the March–er, April

Valerie — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:15:04 +0000

I have a couple of new articles up over at Medium Difficulty, for the “gamers” among you. First up, One Hand Wonders, about games you can play–wait for it–with one hand. The second is Mythologizing the Gamer Grrl, in which I pick apart the prevalent social “narratives” about girls who play video games.

I also have two poems published in the new issue of scissors and spackle. How many links can I cram into a single sentence? Three, apparently.

To conclude, a period.

Dooms of Love

Valerie — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:05:21 +0000

As the sun tucks its chin just below
rows of roofs flat as the Everglades down
Tamiami Trail, down where strip malls squat
across the street from sluggish canals
green as the sawgrass on their banks, down
where the dark grows, where streetlights stop
flicking on and only headlights from big rigs
burn a human hole through alligator dens,
I crouch barefoot like a wild thing in grass
warm still from the day, tear blade after blade
out at the base trying to keep them whole
but leave the root for future generations,
press my thumbs together with cupped palms
facing upward like a benediction, pinch
the tip and blow through the space
around my makeshift reed. Nothing but wind.

My grandmother whistles me in for dinner,
two-note rise and fall like another name:
Come, Black-Foot, Grass-Plucker, Dusk-
Walker who carries the light of home, be
with us inside and eat cold lettuce with the same
fingers that could not coax leaves to music.
There is food even for those who fail, in a kitchen
where avocado seeds birth new shoots
staked by toothpicks in a cup on a windowsill, where
old hands rub grains of rice in water until
it clouds milk-white, where black beans simmer
while I climb trees, slow, sugar-spiked for hours,
waiting for me to remember I was hungry,
like grass patient with the promise of song.