Poem: Op-a-le-scent

I dreamed in op-a-le-scent green 

But only because

I liked how that word slurred milky from my hummingbird tongue

And not because

I actually dreamed

In the shade of the dragons

Perched in the window of the Chinese shop downtown

I always thought

The gold-dipped claws were a cheap touch to a perfect, roughhewn thing

My first perfume

My mother's  old scent

From a plastic stick pulled free from beneath eyelash curlers with long cold handles

Smelled of man-da-rin oranges

But not really

It was just that I hoped it did

So when the other kids asked with voices like a tetanus shot

Why I smelled so strange

I could tell them in in-dig-nant and righ-teous tones

That I smelled of man-da-rin

And their eyes would pop wide like flowers the day before they start to fade

And I would pull my lashes down low with sweet mystery

And bask in the elegance of my exotic tastes.

My parents were never angry

They were FU-ri-ous

And I was never sad

But des-PON-dent

And the sky was never gray

So much as a color shared with the underbellies of doves

I'd visit my grandmother

And kneel in church

On the benches I wished the Catholics would share with the rest of us God-fearers

Thought that I'd never heard of anything so beautiful as "Holy Water"

Prayed my eyes would open up a-qua-ma-rine

in-di-go

like a torturous sea

or the wall of a storm.

I wished away the simple sweetness of common words

Family words, home words

On syllables that twisted between my teeth like ribbons

Like ma-ri-o-nettes 

Had no time for forest

musk

gray

or blue

And everything blue means.

3.23.12

12:30 AM