eastbaypoetics.com » inspired by sandra cisneros

an era to love

tahminah zaman, m.f.a. — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 02:07:10 +0000

This song always works, makes me remember the feeling of asking for what I wanted and receiving you. How you came to my doorstep in the rain because I called you. I had to. Telephone and e-mail and the other thing. The one with too many ex-girlfriends’ pictures before I knew how jealous they would make me.

In the moments between your hands, your kisses, your voice whose echo reverberates through all the waters and tissues of me, I recall you: your feet at my doorstep. The room you entered a closet, I hadn’t told you to walk around the side of the house. Had probably been too nervous. Because it was you.

You who I had somehow loved since the first glance. You smiled at me, you say, do I even remember that? I just stared. My psychic’s eyes looking hard into your soul. I needed to see what was there. I had never liked anyone with long hair before. You and I, both wearing all black, we who rarely do. Bright purples and greens more our style.

I was too weak to drive myself to Eastside Arts that night, I had had to ask someone to pick me up. Had entered the room quietly in clacking black heels, trying to tiptoe. We were late. I had to stand against the wall. Not far from you. Within a few steps, maybe.

What did I see that made me look twice? I must have recognized you.

From elsewhere.

Elsewhen.

Cradle of my muscled heart, somehow I measure myself against your desire. Caressed by so many men’s eyes, even their hands when they can make it look appropriate, I still look for a certain starvation in you. That’s how it should feel to not taste me, to not swallow me almost brutally, as you do. I want you hungry for me. It’s what I wait for, to see if you love as I love.

Unlike the song. I can’t put you on repeat. Your silence doesn’t fascinate me, not really. Neither does your patience, waiting until you are so desired that you are needed. Because I need. I desire. Can’t forget the little words, the pieces of me I can only see when I hear you, speak to you.

Voice of my voice. Sex of my sex. The song makes it real. Outside of time. Distance and separation, what other lovers crave. Your presence such that your absence crushes me. The way your passion does. I want to be awake and asleep with you at once. The way we are together and apart. Maddening. Life and death simultaneous and one. What an era to love.

Filed under: cosmology/mythology, creative non-fiction, death, erotic poetry, experimental, feminism, gender, inspired by sandra cisneros, karma, life, love poetry, men, mental illness, parapsychology, poetry, prose, psychology, religion/faith, self-love, sex, short poems, the male species, Uncategorized

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.