Walking down the street, crowded with cars but desolate with people in the middle of the day in May, I turn my music up louder, adjusting the headphones to fit over my pierced ears.
Jamming to my Indie mix, mostly Phoebe Bridgers and Florence + the Machine, with an occasional acoustic Hozier sprinkled in, I pause to take a pebble out of my thong sandals from Sears.
“Hey!” A muffled call, from somewhere in someone’s backyard. I slowly pause my music, as it’s not uncommon for my head make such noises and voices up.
Nothing, a quickening of the heart, an intense build-up…
“Heyyy!!!” The same voice, this time with more urgency.
I whip off my headphones and stop in my tracks. Okay, I tell myself. That was definitely real, sounding like an emergency.
A squawk occurs, then rustling. I approach the rose bush, dense with thorns and thick with their smelly perfume, baking too brown in the sizzling heat.
I tiptoe cautiously over to it to get a closer look, avoiding the missing patches of concrete.
“Hey! Hey can you help me?” A frantic woman appears from behind a car, whose engine, smoke, expels.
“Ahh!” I yell.
“I’ve lost my bird, my pet. Have you seen her?” she asks, eyes wide and pupils dilated like olives.
“No, I’m sorry I-” I try to say, but am stopped up like a woman inserting a contraceptive,
As I see, fluttering and struggling between the thick thorns and matte petals,
Lay, like a worm in a cocoon, a chicken. All brown and spotted, with a feathers as shiny as copper metal.
Stunned, struck with awe and quiet with complexity,
I simply stare, and ponder, in perplexity
What kind of idiot has a chicken for a pet?
Part ii:
This woman, that’s who.
What would I do with a chicken? Bid it adieu.
Fry it with amber oil,
Watch it’s flesh recoil
In the flames and embers
On the grill, in those lonely Septembers
But this lady, this woman,
This strange gentle woman,
Keeps a chicken, a food, for a pet.
Again, who keeps a chicken for a pet?
Part iii:
Walking with her pet in her arms, it pecking at her breast,
We chat a bit, well, she talked, I did my best
To listen, but all the while I watch her chest
Get pecked to death
So I say, “So… how long have you had…this bird?”
She answers, after a long pause, “What’s the word…”
“The word?” I inquire
“Yes, the word,” the heat now feels like fire
Brimming and bubbling against our knees and neck.
I swat at the lightning bugs floating around as if there was, above my eyes, bottleneck
Of may flies and ladybugs and all those gross things
That lay eggs and swarm, that have sex in flings
Yuck! I, myself, have no such animals, bugs or other creatures
But here I am, in the middle of the street in May, covered in the sweats like some of those preachers
That condemn and pray, but I am not here to think about them,
I’m here to, wait, why am I still here? Why haven’t I turned around, I think, right as we pass the bin
Of trash parked in front of four yellow painted tires, stretching out flat in her weedy yard.
We pass these, her still thinking, even out loud, of that stupid word, as we travel to her backyard.
Lush green fig trees line the perimeter of the fence,
Which is patched together with fabric and broken teapots, hence
The name of the house we neighbors secretly call this place, The Dump.
And, no lie, there was an entire playset, small enough for a chicken, and a mini, tiny, trampoline, to jump.
“A century!” She blurts out, startling the bird from its slumber between the nook of her arm
I stop, staring there, puzzled. A century? I’ve seen her from my window puffing smoke, but I never thought to myself that it did any harm
Clearly, she has been lighting the Devil’s Lettuce a bit too much,
Yet this is none of my concern. I have to get home, I tell myself, just as the feathers and I touch
“I have had poor old Sally for centuries, we’re spirit soul twins,
Irreplaceable, a perfect match. Its like we share the same skins.“.
“Okay, well, I gotta go,” I say in one short breath
“It was nice talking but, uhhhhhhh, yeah, hope you and um, Sally have a nice rest of your day, ummm…”
“Beth.”
“Yes, well, thank you for,” I pause “this”.
“Won’t you stay? I just made some lemonade and orange scones, we can have them if you wish”.
I do love me an orange scone.
“I’m sorry, I have to get home.“.
She pouts, and puts a crooked hand on her hip,
I bite my upper lip
Trying not to laugh as she looks like a toddler trying to get one more minute of play
Before she goes home for the day
I hesitate, and she sees this, taking advantage of my awkwardness and inability to say no
“I have something to show you!” She screams! Sally flying shortly in the air, only to plop down on a downturned garden hoe.
Taking me by my hairy arm, she clomps over to the fire pit
All ashy and covered in soot, looking like a pile of flaming shit
With eyes shining like broken blue gems,
She smiles widely, as I stand there, twiddling the hem
Of my tank top. What am I supposed to be looking at here?
“Well? What do you think?” She asks, gesturing over there.
“It’s a fire pit?” I question, as it looks like a pile of toothpicks and a salmon slab
Stacked upon a grate, as hot and red as a scab.
“Yeah, I built it myself. Didn’t buy it from any store
Or purchase second hand from any man. Jesus, what a sore
Event that would have been.
Could you imagine?
Buying from a man? Seeing that all he has, and he wants more to buy?”
“I’m not sure what you mean by that,” I am puzzled. Maybe she is still high?
“Well, men are lovely, but they are creatures, they typically want money or women or sex,
Especially my ex.
Just like us”.
“Like us?“.
“Yeah, we gays can’t trust straight men,
That’s why we have drawn ourselves to loving and adoring women.“.
“I’m sorry, us gays? I-I’m not gay.“.
“Sure, if that’s what you say, but hey,
I was once like you; didn’t shave, no bra, short hair
I couldn’t care
Less about guys because they were never nice to me either
They only looked at me like I was a piece of rotting meat, never let me catch a breather.“.
“Well, I should go,” and for the first time ever, this whole time, I really saw her
Her hair thickly braided into a black rope, twisted into a tight bun like a military amateur
A cream paste smeared onto her wide exposed shoulders and broad forehead
I turn, looking at the dirt driveway, and the road ahead.
There’s something magical about this whole place, I think
And I don’t wanna leave, don’t wish to blink
My feet planted like sunflowers that follow the rays,
I keep listening to her garden mumble in its humble ways
The navy flies swarming the dead scraps of lettuce in the compost pile
And the brush stash, looking like brown bile
But then even that was beauty, never mind the reflection pond
Fat with golden and orange spotted fish, never mind the almond
Trees, so tiny with their delicate branches to the left of her field,
And all the pinkish green wild flowers that yield
To the wind in their swish swaying ways.
No, not that, but her fire pit. This, this is what caused me to stay.
“…Well, then I weeded the pea and lemon grass bed,
And placed the lion statue on its head…”
She and I go on walking through her Eden,
All the while she talks about this and that, of the parliament of Sweden.
“What about this? Tell me about this,” I point to the charred slabs of timber
Laying horizontal like children in slumber.
“This? Oh, well, it’s a fire pit. Built it myself actually. Yup, with my own two hands,”
She reveals her palms, long with black nails, except for the middle two cut short like strands
Of charcoal colored raven feathers. Before I have time to ask,
She picks a mustard flower from off its stem, eating it like a snack.
“But yeah, like I was saying, I built it myself,” A slow pause while she munches
“Without any help from friends,” she crunches
Its yellow pigment staining her white teeth a raw egg color.
Part iv:
She bends over, snapping a twig off the ground,
Straining it against the misshapen rocks that line the pit’s mound
It catches light, and she gently tosses it into the pile with her toes
All pink and hairy. Then she takes off her clothes
“Whoa, whoa!” I say with such urgency, one would think I am homophobic.
Underneath her thong, she reveals a tattooed flag, a bit too patriotic
For my taste. She then tosses her linen overalls into the charred mound, now alit with flames
Snapping out a lavender cigarette from in between her breasts, she tames
The flame, leaning over the small spark to light her own fire in between her lips,
Wiping the ash off of her bare tits.
“Ya know,” she exhales a beautiful ring right around my face
“When I first built this, I did it myself. No one to help me. And I had to race
Against time to finish it, before the winter came. It only took me three days to dig
And then three to build the structure, and finally, a couple hours to chop the wood from the fig
Trees.” She took another long drag on her smoko.
“Then of course, once I lit it, the fire department came, because the smoke was too big, nearly caused a tornado.“.
Really? I thought to myself. I found it hard to believe that this was able to cause
Such a ruckus with the neighbors that they would feel obliged to call out her flaws
Of such an innocent thing as lighting a miniature
Fire, even if it did grow to reach heights that would allure
Those people to- but before I could finish my thought,
The blaze erupted like a volcano, hot…
But then I understood. Oh, the flames!
The pink, green orange and blue flames!
Engrossing my senses, the touch of the charring heat, the smell of the hair burning on my arms,
The body, the mass, the size of this icicle, ablaze, no wonder one could get in harms
Way of this majestic, curving figure, acting like a ladder, a path,
Up to heaven. Not hatred, nor wrath,
This massive flaming tongue of heat, licking us clean of dirt with its purifying agents
Like a baptism pyre, giving way of indifference, replacing it with patience
And piety, not to any such religion, other than that of ourselves.
“Isn’t it just rejuvenating to watch.“. She nods, answering herself.
She bends down to the sand and red clay surrounding the mound, ablaze, growing in its strength
And size. Tossing in small handfuls of each, the flames erupt into enormous colorful rays, stretching in length
Until they hit the somber clouds above, coloring them in pastel hues,
Raining back down upon us like crystal gems, purples, pinks, yellows and blues.
She snaps a clay pot over her knee, throwing that into the beams as well,
And the rays explode into the colors of hell
In goes a sheep’s head, another, a pelvic bone of an otter,
And a baby fawns fur, taken too early from her mother.
The sky churned black, cracks of lighting whipped white,
Quickly the fantastic day turned to a brooding night,
The embers sparked, and out came a walking Patronus,
A silver fox, walking with a certain graceful, delicate, yet grave slowness.
Looking down, clutching the lavender haze
In between my dirt caked fingernails. I stare awe and amaze
As the unfiltered cigarette unfurls in my opened palm
I watch my two middlest fingers shrink to a stump, as if they’ve been blown off by a bomb
Before I can say anything, I turn. “Now you’ve become one.”
“With who?“. “Not with me, surely,” she begun
“But with Her,” gesturing out to her field; the fence falls down, revealing rows and rows
Of daffodils and sunflowers, the fire pit rolling out fresh soil and worms for the plants and crows
And I wonder, if at all, that being this way isn’t so bad,
But not embracing it can cause one to go mad
To the point of self-death, to become an empty shell,
With twelve children and a male husband, all so that you don’t go to hell,
Is that really worth the sweat? The grime, the coagulated blood?
To be tossed around like a bag of buckwheat in the wind, just to be scattered into the mud?
No, we refuse, and we thrive
We will not perish, so long as we create a hive
Of queers,
And peers
Who support us all
Like a colony of ants who move a single leaf to build a structure, a home, as tall
As the copper-green Statue of Liberty,
So that we may be safe from harm and immortality.
Because we will keep coming, back and forth,
Just the way you send children to the forts
Until you realize we are not perishable goods,
Not delicate meat, that we are not hiding under hoods
But living in the rain and in the soil that feeds you.
We are inescapable, too.
Irreplaceable.
And irreversible.
No amount of warfare, laws or money can break the dam, for we are a cycle of life.
Not just that, we queers are life.
Think not?
Just ask your man’s wife.
