UC Davis Web Journal #2
Issue 2 : Summer/Fall 2005
Crows
Listen, I like the taste of cinnamon. Without sugar. I spill some
on the stovetop when I’m seasoning the meat, and I lick my thumb
and pick it up, like filings to a magnet, I put them in my mouth.
Without salt. Without grease, my disposition.
When I see the women walking in black skirts, toward my window, I
think about the air, the meat in it, sizzling and promising. The stir-fry
crackles in the pan with peppers and onions and cilantro. I shovel
it into a stainless steel bowl and stick it in the refrigerator, no
time to cover it with wrap. For shame.
I was the one who, as a college freshman, looked up the poets that
I loved, to make sure they were beautiful. Christina Rossetti, Sara
Teasdale, Amy Lowell. And when I saw the Stieglitz photos of Georgia
O’Keeffe, I put the book on the coffee table and put my cheek
down on her breasts, the page sticking warmly to my face.
I have implosions in my chest when I hear them coming up the steps,
long black skirts pulled up so they won’t trip, but brushing
the plaster walls and cement steps. Big laughs, loud coughing. Here
they undeniably come. They will not abandon me, no matter how I might
wish sometimes. When I’ve had enough. When I cannot take the
dirt of it. No more, I wish, just for now.
I was the one, as a child, who rarely saw naked flesh, except for
deer, duck, and boar. Not my mother. No aunts. I once saw my grandfather
coming out of the shower, fruit hanging on tired limbs after a tough
storm. I felt pity like I did when I’d see the pile of entrails,
a shovel full, in a bucket, where the blood still dripped from the
strung-up deer above. No need for those things. They went to the crows.
I practice what I’ll say when they come in the door. What a
surprise. Oh yes, I was about to eat, but that’s okay. Um, let
me light some incense. Sorry about the smell. Have a seat. What about
some music. Great to see you too.
I became a teenager, and I moved into the library, sitting cross-legged
in oversized rayon dresses, reading psychology books, eating them,
the meat of middle-aged women describing sexual fantasies about stallions,
and dragons.
The women in long black skirts are coming through my door, but there
is meat in the air. I kneel at my coffee table, a sort of altar, with
a labyrinthine carved box from Palestine filled with tiny black candles
that smell like wine tannin, and incense punks of all moods. I’m
laughing and catching up, but I’m struggling with the matches,
the watch around my neck ticks. A strike, a blow, a tiny plume of
cardamom and clove hides their vegetarian smiles slightly from my
view. I relax on the outside, but I can feel it in my belly.
I’m a young woman; I have so much to learn. Where is the room
for it? I stopped putting sugar in my tea before I turned 18. I can
no longer eat a whole jalapeño. I chew on licorice root when
my throat is sore. Even baker’s unsweetened chocolate, when
there is nothing else in the house to curb desire, I lick a spoon
and dip it in.
These women and I are rough on the edges. Our shirts are wild in pattern
and loose and do not hide the chilled shrimp shape of nipples, the
clavicles protruding, down sloping like muskoxen horns, or our fur
of mammoth, short-faced bear, and the saber-toothed cat. Salmon swim
protected in our skirts. A hungry growl blooms up inside of me like
a mushroom, or mussels opened wide from steam.
These women and I get sick together, we beg for it. We sit on small
stools or on the rugs and pass our delicate pipes, touching the interwoven
colors all over, the tulip bulbs, the phallic flowers, enclosed inside
out, smudged, trapped in glass.
When I am an old woman I will think back on art. Dance. Drums. Tuned
strings. Voice. Words. Carved oolitic limestone of Willendorf. Red
and yellow ocher smeared across our ribs like the walls of Lascaux.
Cinnamon smear on my lips. I’ll think of them like a flock of
crows, with yellow eyes, swirl of dark pecking at the falling apples.
Bloodthirsty.
What I want is the one across from me, thick with butter and flour.
I want to tear off the tattered silk poetess blouse, and with both
hands knead up the potato dough of her tattooed back, and sink my
teeth deep into the red.
is originally from Texas, but now lives in Sacramento, California. She loves bellydance fusion, sushi, Tarantino, and SCUBA diving. Read Luna's blog at people.tribe.net/lunataylor