Kiss My Ass, I’m Going Dancing

my husband says arguing with me is like watching storm waves 

crash into a granite crag in that the waves never stop coming 

and the rocks never move it’s all fascinatingly furious and natural 

and I responded shit man, great compliment, the problem with female

rage is fuck off, unbuttoned my pants, mooned his round face,

and latched his bedroom door shut just as his blue eyes flared

anyway it was him that chased this big salt and he can’t pretend 

he didn’t know how ready to pounce my nipples, he can’t pretend

he ain’t a groundhog who’d destroy the foundation in a single season,

and just the other day a patient told me that there’d been another shooting 

up the street disturbingly close to my workplace, and she warned me

to stop walking to work because it is no longer safe to walk to work

and I won’t stop but it seemed wrong to dismiss the wound she was baring

so instead I took a moment to explain how I’m writing a new poem 

addressed to death titled, Kiss My Ass I’m Going Dancing,

but she did not hear me and I think she was offended by the word ass 

being tossed in a medical setting and she began blinking rapidly 

and it became clear that she wanted me to hold the burden of her fear,

she wanted me to feel scared like she was scared, so anyways, she said,

watch for reflections in the side mirrors of parked cars and shop windows

to assure you’re not being followed, I know this since I am from the big city.

The first lines of the poem are:

 how the tongue of a dog

            springs out    enormously         

 the heart is    incorrigible

and she grabbed my rough hand in her soft hand and said, cross the street 

and cross it again and do not ever look down at your phone, stay alert,

and now my annoyance has roused my fear of sudden male fury 

which lives in my throat and under my collar bone and against my cervix 

thickens in my endometrium and spikes the pressure of my blood,

a promise waiting to unspool - how violence prophecies violence -

and now thanks to this lady I’m picturing Tom Cruise 

from the movie Legend where he’s trapped underwater 

by sudden winter and a growing disc of ice 

bubbles tumbling from his mouth and he is pounding the ice 

kicking and panicking and it’s all caged fear and fury and nothing budges 

and the princess is shrieking and the goblin hacks the horn from the unicorn

and now storm waves break across the granite crag of my ribs

arguments that are ongoing and incessant and frigid and don’t change 

beating their foaming heads against an immovable stand of rock 

Exposure to cold is important for many plants,

I tell my warm-to-the-touch daughter, explaining  

that the numb seeds of primrose must wait for spring

Do you think you’re invulnerable, asked my sister 

and though her care was easy what I heard was 

Are you delusional and the answer is, Yes, 

I am a superhero,

and tonight’s conquest is an inky bar with heavy chairs 

walnut floors and amber lights populated by people who are not drunk 

but drunk enough to stop policing themselves and others 

and there is righteous ridiculousness in the air

- Did you know Janet Mills is known for dealing coke? -

and I can kick back with a cold one and listen to libertarians

talk about their mothers and get confused by their own phones,

set my beer atop a pulpy coaster, lean a hip against the juke box

and press buttons that lead to furious bursts of joy

so is the dark wood the unlit trail the hidden path

the things and places you should not touch or go

the waves the crag the granite the ice the gun

so, aggrieved husband

so, big city lady

so, Tom Cruise in the movie Legend

Look up

look up before the scleras freeze, 

look past the crystals forming 

the heart a Torch

a holy blur dancing across 

the cold disc of Death