Tina Cane
Rage and Ibuprofen, and other poems
Rage and Ibuprofen
I know little about matters of practical application
it was being a waitress that taught me how to get along
that people want their food and want it now like everyone
my mind has regions
one for meat one for bread
one for caravans and tender age one for rage
and ibuprofen
plus a whole zone for listening
past the migraines to the dog whistles in the air faint toll
of cowards ringing across time history has to start somewhere
so, why not here? I ask
my class to write
a letter to Mr. Baldwin because time catches up
with kingdoms and crushes also because I miss him
one girl writes:
Dear James,
The most courageous thing
a person can be is a black woman.
Damn, son says the boy at the desk behind her
then we all sit in silence until the bell rings
At the Jetty
Water breaking over the jetty is water saying
fight if you must is the moon conversing with the sea
advice for life or advice in the case of an active shooter
sanctuary were I a gun sanctuary even at sea
I’d love an emergency as much as any tyrant
loves a crisis
better now to accept
that my phone is an asshole that my life has grown
monstrous with ease when the butcher told me
not to overthink the meat on Christmas Eve
I didn’t think too hard about the cut or the mess
of presents beneath the tree about presence or transcendence
I did reflect on Paradise though that town reduced to earth
which crews spent days sifting for remains for pain
in its most granular form
how every passion holds
clues to our vitality network names like Christ It’s Loud
or Anxiety & Trauma spawn a thousand laugh emojis including mine
as if remind us we’re alive and we’ll take it
every day is not the same but related or referred
like pain or giant babies we plod the earth hacking our way
towards freedom things that must be answered for
Orlando says
in Navajo a computer is called metal that thinks which gets to the root
of it for me how placebo means I please you how at my laptop sometimes
tears seep down into the motherboard to the mother lode to the whole mother
holding up half the sky
speak the names of those who were lost please
not the names of those who took them America is my home please
but not my metaphor not my body as an expression of dirt
the woods are full of police walking is reason enough
the margins of terror grow slim
and I survive
on an amazement of women secret transactions the rage
of all the maidens at once
lodestar bulwark subtlety of fools
Opera is the music in a movie of silence my son declares
as I buckle him if you put that in a bottle I swear I say
I will buy it
I will rest my case
Future Sonnet
I have no idea what it takes the past is what I remember
propulsion impersonates passion the future belongs to the fast
I try to take it slow so each word can travel to my ear
so I can hear what it is to be heard
I concede hearing is not listening
listening is not grasp that the last thing
I want may be the first thing I get
sometimes it takes
a trampoline with a net brown suede boots
and barrettes on a girl’s birthday list
to conjure up the future to fulfill
a wish to propel
it’s all going forward I know
our stories can only carry us so far