eastbaypoetics.com » inspired by sandra cisneros

scab

tahminah zaman, m.f.a. — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 08:59:32 +0000

The skin started to thicken like a scab over the left side of my chest — my heart — when I pushed you away. I saw “New Fire” and felt your presence there, I feel it everywhere. I feel it in my hair, feel you in my lips when I speak. Wake and move knowing I walked away from you, shoved you from my fear where I should have named it aloud. And what I could not take into my mouth before, I would swallow now, maybe not even stop to taste. A love too simple, too universal to digest then; after taking some in, I refused your medicine.

I am a young sorceress, love, so young I cannot even imagine the power in my hands, my unexpressed need. How I used words to invite and then reject you. What I see in you of myself, I could not bear to look. As my marred vision clears, I want you here, call you with my hands to bring you close again.

I went to see you last night, knocked at your door. No answer came. Now I wait for the Universe’s hand to move. This morning I touched the place where I felt the scab before — it’s gone. Almost completely. The skin smooth again, the way it was when we met. When I was beautiful to you and corrected you: it’s yourself, mostly, that you are seeing. When you look at me, you make me more beautiful. To be seen by you. I told you.

Dark power, Kali Ma, you destroy so beautifully, death so lively you can’t be contained, somehow you overfill every glass. Dramatic. Your vibration is a mystery: both high and low. Your wand whose lightning does annihilate too much. Now I know you. Flavor too strong to forget after this last bitterness.

The universe reassembles herself, reordered according to the present, the singular instant of now. This one guarantee. Where the kiss arises, even if erased thereafter.

Filed under: ancestry, cosmology/mythology, creative non-fiction, death, erotic poetry, experimental, feminism, gender, hip hop poetry, inspired by sandra cisneros, karma, life, long poems, love poetry, men, parapsychology, prose, psychology, queer poetry, self-love, sex, short poems, Uncategorized, women

mamacita corazón

tahminah zaman, m.f.a. — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:00:02 +0000

con tus labios bien rositas
y los mamelones tan duros en mis dedos

la lengua silenciosa
que habla solo
abrazándome

mamacita corazón
tu deseo es un agua
para mi sedo

te quiero como el mar
se muere pa’ la atención
del sol

tu risa evoca
las campanas de iglesia
llamándome
levantarme

despiértame para amarte
el amanecer
pa’ mojar esta plantita
de amor

gettin away with

tahminah zaman, m.f.a. — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 04:58:41 +0000

i put my babies to sleep
before hittin the dance
floor / do my homework
in the morning
right before class rehearse
my presentation on coloniza
tion / fix dinner from scratch
in ten minutes pour some red
into a glass / celebrate with
a song & bare feet on back
yard concrete

oh momma momma i don’t give
a good god damn
i don’t give a good

i wake up late make my students
wait in the hall / forgot my keys
again feelin the breeze blowin
thru middle school doors
i teach spanish without a degree

you know what i mean
i be gettin away with shit
makin it look good
at the last moment
makin it taste gourmet

ay mommy mommy i don’t give a good
god damn
don’t give a good god damn

stamina

tahminah zaman, m.f.a. — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 10:23:20 +0000

low points. high ideals. 19 demons beckoning me off the path of light. they got fingers pointing every way but up. yesterday returned for a visit. kaleidoscopic vision blurring a flicker of self-destruction. too easy. only a matter of a few dialed numbers, a few steps outside my door. regression like death at my heels. tongue black as a gun. guard your silence like a womb. temperature drops. this bed an ocean of forgetting. 364 nights of solitude. stay empty.

& now this. how it sounds. what should have been comfort, terror. what could have been satisfaction, frustrated desire. the hours pile like chips on a blackjack table. the way years do. never could learn the easy way. instead, bitter & burned. taught. hardened, hawklike, the steel body i step into. jewels to distract from the entrance. a quirk in someone’s calculations.

20 days to the resurrection. the foundation, the frame, the roof of this structure would disintegrate in an instant. every step between the 1st & the 999,999th to be lost with a single act. a word. darkness starving. wilting with each second of quiet. the sentence too high to speak now.

stamina.