The Neutral Ones
My daughter’s fed up with getting called boy.
She wants to trade in her brother’s short hair
and hand-me-down athletic shorts
and polo shirt with the collar popped
for picture day. She wants to replace her handsome
smile for never explaining herself again.
How many girlfriends you got? I imagine the photographer
will tease as my daughter scans the room
for that teacher on a field trip who scolded her
for using the wrong restroom. She prefers
the neutral ones with half-skirted
stick figure signs
where everyone belongs and can be hers
as the sky is hers. Eleanor. My daughter
reveals she is about to cry when red stains streak
across her cheeks and I swear I could
slit that teacher’s throat with the teeth
of a tiny black comb. With my teeth.
I have learned to murder anyone, mother
that I am — a fool at Target with a Starbucks
and hangover scanning The Girls Section
for a get-up my kid could stomach —
something ribbon-free and sans Princess —
bulletproof, perhaps, in a pretty shade
of math, refusing to conform, and always
speaking up. My own bowl-cut childhood
was roly-poly bugs and jacks, jeans
with the knees ripped out going for the ball
and still the fluorescent glare in here
is brutal boomeranging between mirrors
and the blank-faced mannequins — my face —
my mascara — my strong legs — my desires
that strange morning years ago I woke up
out of time into a middle space
between dreaming and perception
and for a flash was no one, just me
without a body, a Lauren-y existence
before corporality snapped me back
to shape and brain, this sale rack place
of dumb graphic t-shirts. Roarsome!
says the T-Rex. Hang in there!
jokes the cartoon sloth. They/them/theirs
demand my gorgeous students, fierce
in polyester, violet fades, and fedoras,
fluid as the ocean and complex as the night
out of range of any manufactured light.
* * * * *
Mom Turns 79 During the Global Pandemic
From the harbor
of their porch — twin figureheads
beaming—
Dad in his Hawaiian shirt
Mom fresh from online yoga
with the virus
maybe
swirling through all of this
empty space
between us.
We brought cake
I wore plastic gloves to frost
and a rainbow
of sidewalk chalk
to scribble birthday tidings
on cement. The cards
I made the kids make go into
a CVS bag
weighted with
one small stone
and tossed from six feet
back to land
before them.
From the other side
they wait
to see who picks it up.
I take a picture
to send my sister
of Mom blowing
the candles out, each flame
taken by our mother’s life-giving breath.
My wish
is to reach for my parents —
to touch and to stay, all of us
vines-curled.
But even with the gift of ten more years —
twenty more —
one day the earth will have me
pressed
onto itself
body flat, splayed into a star shape
ear to the dirt and worms
from six feet above
listening across the distance.
* * * * *
Shut Up Amy Cooper
“I will tell them that an African-American man is threatening my life.”
~ Amy Cooper on the phone with police during the encounter with Central Park birdwatcher, Chris Cooper. He asked that she leash her dog in the “Bramble,” a popular birdwatching spot and an area of the park where leashing dogs is required.
“I’m not interested in being in a room full of white people talking about race — I think they still need that conversation but I don’t need to be in it.”
~ Educator and birder Tykee James, on the National Audobon Society’s June 2020 Zoom discussion, “Birding While Black: A Candid Conversation”
I used African-American
because I’m a good person.
I used African-American
like any good, white, woman
calling 911 on a reasonable request.
I follow the laws like everyone else,
knowing I can afford to break them and live
in my Upper West Side apartment
stocked with eco-products because
I’m a good person who cares about glaciers
as long as I don’t have to see them.
I could have had any dog I wanted.
I could have had a purebred thing.
Look how I’ve been made
to pull the collar so he can’t breathe.
Tell me the essential differences
between a Swamp Sparrow and a Song
and I’ll tell you how much I over-tip
at ethnic restaurants.
Tell me which species of woodpecker
is the smallest in North America
and I’ll cover my mouth with a mask
and claim it’s for your protection.
Tell me how unsafe you’ve been made to feel
scanning the tulips for tanagers
and I’ll present this receipt
for causes that come with a hashtag.
You tell me to back away. But how
could I hurt you, a person I’ve hidden from
myself, who seems to believe
there’s still beauty to find
amid these vines and switches?