Laura's Crush (2005)

I asked my mother if they’d shoot
the white horse
that reared up on Thursday.
No. She said
they don’t do that anymore.
She almost laughed.
Rueful I guess is what we call it
when my mother’s mouth
is half up towards something silly
and part way tucked in
to accommodate the wound.
I didn’t intend to mourn
the white horse.
That’s not why I asked.
I don’t even know it’s name
or if it has a gender.
But what am I supposed to want
for the animal
that reared up so high
it fell over backwards
and crushed my little sister?
I can’t imagine the future
for that horse.
It’s ugly now too.
The blood from my sister’s belly
didn’t stay
just on the back of the saddle.
It stained
the top of the horse.
White is hard to clean.
I can’t stand to picture
that horse running:
feet high and forelock blowing.
I think there’s usually a breeze
out there where the stable is.
Southern California is
three thousand miles
away from me.
I’d like a big red sore
permanently imprinted
on the back of that white horse.
It fell over backwards
and crushed my sister.
I guess it’s good they don’t shoot them.
Otherwise I’d have to imagine
a use for all it’s parts.
Right now I can’t remember
if we still make glue
out of horse’s hooves,
if we still make mattresses
with horse’s hair,
if we make cat food
with horse’s flesh.
It’s hard enough
to remember
that my little sister
Laura-boo
got crushed.
right in her middle.
It’s hard
to remember that.
So for me to want a shooting—
an assassination
of the white horse
that reared up so high
it fell over backwards
and crushed my little sister—
is a minor hard thing
relative to the remembering
I need to do.
The thing is
I want that white horse dead.
I can remember this easily.
And wanting a dead horse
violates all my principles.
What if the horse’s body
were just left there
after the assassination?
If that white horse’s body
was of no use to anyone,
not even a first grade
‘glue-the-circle-next-to’ art project,
and if it was me
that made it true,
then I’d have to totally
revamp my ideas about
who it is I am.
Because I am not
a violent wasteful person.
But that horse
reared up so high
it fell over backwards
and crushed my sister.

I’ve been with her
since the accident happened.
Holding her hand
and kissing her forehead.
Laura-boo has an amazing forehead.
her bangs never hang down straight.
Her hair is kind of wispy
in the front.
There’s a soft place
between the wisps.
I’ve been turning her hands over,
using my fingernail
to remove a half moon of dirt.
It’s stuck under the nail
of her left ring finger.
I’m preparing her hand
for her husband
when he comes.
I lean down
over Laura-boo’s forehead.
My two lips touch
between her hair wisps.
Her forehead
is unusually cold.
She’s always been so warm.
But since the horse
fell over backwards
Laura-boo’s skin is chilly.
I’m good at pretending
so I tell her that no,
it’s not a lot of blood.
I say she’s just kind of wet.
I hold her hands.
both of them.
Sometimes I kiss
her dirty fingernails.
It’s hard to clean them.
I don’t want to hurt her.
I’ve been with her
since the accident happened.
I should have been there before.
Maybe I would have known something.
Maybe I would have said something.
Maybe I would have intuited something.
I could have stopped
the horse before
it reared up so high
it fell over backwards
and crushed my sister.
But Southern California
is three thousand
miles away from me.

I’ve been with my sister
ever since the accident.
That’s a slight exaggeration
but when Laura-boo called me
on her cell phone—
she was laying on a stretcher
in the emergency room
and couldn’t find the button
to push for a nurse—
she reached across
and yanked me out of my body.
Thank goodness
I can walk through my life
without really being
all the way in it.
I flew to Laura-boo
faster than a car.
I flew faster
than a cross country train.
I flew faster than an airplane.
I was holding her
and gently kissing her forehead
through her wispy hair
—backwards in time—
so she wasn’t alone
in the ambulance.
I’ve been with her
every second
since the accident happened.
My body’s been here though.
It doesn’t take consciousness
to make a hummus sandwich.
It doesn’t require presence
to separate the darks
from the whites
and push the button
on the washing machine.
The button is right here
and I can reach it easily.
It’s a small challenge
to remember the detergent
and the appointment
I made last week
to check the brakes on my van.
But these details aren’t hard
like remembering
that Laura-boo
got crushed by a horse.
Getting crushed hurts
a lot.
My sister
has not really been alone.
I’ve been with her
since the accident happened.

For the first two days
I ride solo.
It’s just me
holding our childhood.
It’s common knowledge
that during near-death events,
the injured person
flashes pictures from their past.
Laura-boo hasn’t said
anything about dying
but I’m deluged with
her kaleidoscopic memories.

I see her in her jodhpur boots.
She has faded brown riding pants
with special reinforcement pads
to protect the inside
of her knees.
The pants hang down
over the outside of her boots
and the elastic sits under the heel.
Her riding cap perches on her head.
Her wispy bangs
peek out underneath.
The brim of the cap
obstructs any kissing
and her toes are pointed in.
Laura-boo is tiny
and she’s also pidgin-toed.
She’s grinning so big
that her cheeks dimple
around the strap
from the riding cap.
She’s holding the ribbon
she won at the horse show.
She’s clutching it with two hands.
The blue and yellow tails
hang right down her middle.
I guess the grand champions
are usually taller than Laura-boo
because the bottom
of my little sister’s ribbon
is touching the dirt.
She doesn’t have
her black show jacket on anymore
and the sun is so brilliant
it glints off her teeth.

I’ve been with my little sister
every second
since she called me
on her cell phone.
It’s been like living
in a slide show.

Now I’m outside the barn
my father built in our back yard.
I’m looking at my sister’s feet.
she’s standing on a bucket.
She’s wearing black rubber barn boots
with blue jeans hanging over.
Her palomino pony Camelot
is stamping his right front foot.
The shadows from the outside
fence boards
blend with the cross-ties
holding Camelot’s head.
His mane whips as Laura-boo yelps.
Then my little sister growls.
Up by their two heads
it’s hard to see.
It’s all in shadow
but my little sister’s head
and her pony Camelot’s head
are definitely side by side.
I can honestly swear
that my little sister Laura-boo
lifts up Camelot’s long blond mane
before she bites him on the neck.
Hard and long.
I see her heels
lift from the bucket
with the effort.
Camelot’s head is shaking.
jerking up and down.
And his two feet are stamping.
Laura-boo’s growling
and Camelot’s stamping
crescendo with my awe.
My kitten Cory falls off the fence
and Camelot never ever bites
my sister again.
No one hurts my little sister.
Not more than once.

I’m with my Laura-boo
every second
since the horse
reared up so high
it fell over backwards
and crushed her.
I see the pink carpet.
it matches the coverlets
on my sisters’ twin beds.
Laura and Lisa Ann share
one bedroom one bedtime
one thought one pink color.
They even share
one name.
Laura and Lisa Ann
are ‘the little girls’
to anyone who needs
to make a reference.

My room was across the hall.
I used to sneak
into their room a lot though.
My two sisters
really knew how to play.
Horsey was the best game
and as the oldest
I was the best horse.
Lisa Ann always fell off first
but Laura-boo rode
like a cowgirl.
She gripped tight
no matter how I twisted and lunged.
She stayed on so well
that sometimes
me the horse
had to fall down
in a collapsed puddle of laughing.

Nobody can shake off
my little sister.
There’s not a pony
in the whole wild west
that can buck off Laura-boo.

I’ve thought of a use
for the white horse’s body.
After the assassination
I could create a team.
The white horse
who reared up so high
it fell over backwards
and crushed my little sister,
and me
the errant failure of a pacifist
working for a better world.
We could prop up the body
of the dead white horse.
It would be necessary
to film the head
hanging down
with the mane arranged
in a wispy sort of do,
and plenty of forehead showing.
A hair stylist would need
to be on hand
to make sure that my hair matched—
even though my forehead
is low and flat
(not like my little sister
Laura-boo)—
so I could stand
side by side
head to head
with the dead body
of the white horse
who crushed my little sister.
We’d need to match
for the cameras.
We could make a team.
The horse who crushed her
and the big sister
who authorized the murder.
I could give a little talk.
I could practice my face
in the mirror
before the first take.
We could hire my mother
to coach my lips:
rueful I guess is what we call it
when my mother’s mouth
is half up towards something silly
and part way tucked in
to accommodate the wound.
The show could be the one
that preaches to the masses
about how retribution
doesn’t work.
See. I could gesture
with panache—see:
when you shoot back,
you get a body
that’s of no use
to anyone.
It’s a waste I’d say.
It’s better to use words.

I have been with my sister.
every single breath
since the accident.
My breaths have been hard to take.
Especially the ones I breathed
in the pot holder aisle of HomeGoods
on day three.
I was looking for something
to send to my little sister.
A special perfect something
for my cowgirl
who got crushed.
It can’t be something
she has to move for.
I can’t send her anything
that will make her laugh.
Giggling could kill her
through the broken ribs
and fractured pelvis.
I can’t pick something that will evoke
femininity or sexuality.
Lisa Ann told me her labia
is unrecognizable.
This is hard shopping.
It would be harder though
if I’d killed the horse
who crushed my sister.
If I’d done that
I’d be a woman shopping
without my principles.
A consumer
without my values.
Just a body
moving through the store.

I’ve been with Laura-boo
every moment
since the accident.
When the white horse
reared up so high
it fell over backwards
and crushed my little sister,
I left my body here
and flew for three thousand miles
in a fraction of a second
so I could hold Laura-boo’s hand
in the hospital.
I took her back her past.
I passed it to her
with my heart.
In case she was thinking
of letting it go.

It could have been the cell phones.
Mine rang near the pot holders.
Is that you Laura-boo?
I whisper is this really you?
I don’t ask my little sister
if her insides are back in.
I don’t ask my sister
if all her tubes are re-attached.
I just gasp
I love you my Laura-boo.
and I swear to god
I cry so hard
my tears shoot straight
out of my eyeballs.

Truth & The Penis (1997)

If we were all doing it:
telling truths like mad people,
maybe we’d have to
either start knowing the truth
about how we love to kill each other
or
we’d have to stop doing it.
So what the hell is true?

I’m still trying
to figure out what truth is.
Because the truth is,
truth is really confusing.
I mean there are some things
that are just true.
I know one something that’s true.
When I bite my cheek and I have a little lump
on the inside next to my second back left molar,
that is a true lump.
I mean that is one true thing.
It’s one fucking irritating, interfering little hump of skin.
And then every time I try to take a bite
of some food that might otherwise
be succulent or delicious or even spicy,
I rupture the hump.
And when I try to kind of suck on my cheek,
gently while I’m thinking-
it’s this little thing I do for emphasis-
I’ll be thinking and sucking
and then
I bite it again.
It hurts to bite my hump.
Between the hurting and the hump
I get to know the cheek thing
is really true.
It gets really confusing if I start thinking—
but without the sucking
because of the hump—
do I really bite my cheek
because I want to?
That’s what I said before.
But if what I said was true
then I must want to do it.
And if I want to do it
then it must be something I want to do.
And then it couldn’t be true that I don’t like it.
There has to be some sort of reality here.
I don’t like biting my cheek.
I don’t do it because I want to.
But I do. Do it.
And eating my cheek hump sucks.
I can think of a few other things that are true.
They get to be lies a little bit when I talk about them
but they feel like they’re true when they’re happening.
I mean one way it’s really hard to tell a lie
is when your mouth is full.
I mean when my mouth is full
it’s really hard to tell a lie
because it’s really hard to get my lips wrapped around it.
So this seems true.
It’s really hard to get my lips wrapped around something
when I already have something in my mouth.
But there’s one kind of something
that when it’s in my mouth,
well, when it is,
it’s really hard for me to lie.
Because it’s really hard for me to talk.
I mean have you ever tried to talk
when you were giving someone a blow job?
It’s really difficult.
Particularly if they’re big.
And I should know.
Because I used to be
the blow job queen.
I swear. I’ve given more blow jobs
than any woman I’ve ever known.
It could be a by-product of rape.
When one orifice is out of commission,
some people think that
compensation is in order.
Other people think it’s part of the marriage contract.
Ohhh. This leads us into a whole other category of truth and lies.
Pulling it in just a little
leads me to an important question.
How many times has it happened
that somebody wants to know
if they’re really big?
Do you think they really want to know if they’re big?
Or do they just kind of want to know if they’re big
because they really want you to make them feel good.
And they really want you to tell them a lie.
But they don’t want to know that’s it’s a lie.
They want you to lie about lying.
I really know about this too.
Because my friend who read this for me,
(lots of years ago when I wrote the first draft
and he was helping by looking for typos)
just had to ask me—
while his face plead innocence
and his eyes definitely asked for a lie—
whether surely this part wasn’t about him?
I want to tell you that I got on my knees,
unzipped his pants, put his penis in my mouth,
and then, because he was actually pretty tiny
I was able to say
with full enunciation:
‘of course not.’ without missing a stroke.
But that would be a lie.
I actually murmured something unintelligible
and went on with my note taking.
Maybe lying about lying makes things true.
I’ve got to think about that.
So if I’m thinking about lying
and I’m lying about lying
then maybe it means that I’m telling a true something.
but I don’t think it’s the something I’m telling that’s true.
I think it’s the sentiment that’s true.
The feeling behind the something that I’m telling.
I mean obviously the thing that I’m saying isn’t true.
Because if the person really isn’t big—
I mean there are people that are really small—
so if the person is really small,
and I’m saying that they’re big
then it’s pretty clear that that’s like a straight-out lie.
But if I’m doing it when my mouth is full of them
then they would know that I was lying,
if they knew
just one additional very important
piece of information:
that it’s really hard to talk with your mouth full.
Especially when it’s full
with somebody whose penis is really big.
In fact, talking with a huge cock
in your mouth is close to impossible.
So if I’m talking while I’m giving a blow job,
even if it’s only to say: ‘Oh yes honey. Huge.’
The true translation is a guaranteed:
‘Oh so sorry. You’re so small.’
Maybe I shouldn’t be talking about this.
Maybe this is one of those true things that popped out.
Maybe that makes this whole thing true.
Okay. I’ve got to get my mind wrapped around this.
Not my mouth.
My mind.
When I wrap my mind around what’s true
and what I have in my mouth is a big cock.
No. I don’t have a big cock in my mouth.
What I have
is I have a very small penis in my mouth.
But it’s attached
to somebody I have very big feelings for.
A somebody that wants to know they have a very big cock.
But honestly they don’t really want to know
if they have a big cock.
So they just told a lie.
Maybe if they tell a lie
that gives me permission to tell a lie.
Does a lie beget a lie?
If a lie begets a lie then I don’t even have to worry about what’s true.
Because there'll never be any reason to tell what’s true.
There’s an awful lot of lies out there.
I can always find some kind of convenient little lie
that someone else told,
to back me up when I need to tell another lie.
And then I never have to tell the truth.
But the truth is, I mean I think this is true.
At least to the best of my knowledge
about what I can tell is true.
I want to learn what’s true.
And I want to figure out how to use the truth.
Because
Well
I think I’d be lying if I told you that I knew exactly
why I wanted to know what’s true.
But I know I want to know what’s true.
I know I do.
There’s something about knowing what’s true
that’s really freeing.
Well I’m not positive about that.
That might have been a little bit of a lie.
It sounds really good though.
That’s where lies come from I think.
They come from sounds.
Well I mean,
Lies are sounds.
I suppose a lie could be something that was an absence.
I mean you could not say something.
And by not saying something.
By not making any sound.
In a way you could be making a lie.
Well maybe you wouldn’t be making a lie.
But you could be contributing to a lie.
Here’s a little nuance:
Contributing to a lie.
Is contributing to a lie like lying?
Is supporting a lie lying?
I guess we all lie.
I mean look around.
I guess we all do in a way.

But you’re still here
and you still seem to want to know what’s true.
How come you want to know what’s true?
Is it really true that you really want to know?
I mean this is what’s true.
I’ll tell you one thing that’s true.
What’s true is that this is the way my mind works,
when I’m trying to figure out
what’s true and what’s a lie.
Because lying is supposed to be bad.
But I see a lot of lying.
Well you can’t really see a lie.
You can see the results of a lie.
I’ve seen a lot of results of lies.
I’ve felt a lot of results of lies.
I’ve felt a lot of results of my own lies.
There’s this twisting kind of gnarly feeling
that happens in my stomach when I’m lying,
that’s really different than the kind of feeling
that happens in my stomach when I’m telling the truth.
so maybe that’s how I can tell when I’m in the truth.
Maybe it all happens in my stomach.
it certainly does sound like an oral thing though
trying to figure out what’s true and what’s a lie.

Back to the size of that thing inside your mouth.
I mean if you have someone’s penis in your mouth.
And it really is big.
And they’re asking you if it’s big.
And your mouth is seriously full.
Then there isn’t any way to answer them.
So that’s their answer.
So with a cock,
the absence of an answer,
can then become a true yes.
Although very often the absence of an answer makes a lie.
In this case though,
in the penis situation, it makes it true.

I’m trying to think of other things that are true.
I mean I really do want to tell the truth.
I want to be a person
that knows the difference
between the truth and lies.
And I don’t want to need a penis in my mouth
in order to find out.
I want to be a person who knows how to use the truth.
I want to be a person who lives in truth.
I imagine you standing there glaring at me,
while I’m trying to figure out what’s true.
And maybe
the only reason that I really want to be in the truth
is because I feel like I’m supposed to come up with the right answer.
But you and I both know
that the feeling of ‘supposed to’ come up with the right answer,
is very often what leads to the lie.
Because when you think you’re supposed to know the answer,
and you don’t know the answer,
and you’re like mopping around in your brain,
going ‘Oh my god oh my god
I need to know the answer I’m supposed to know the answer
I can’t remember the answer.’
Then sometimes.
An answer pops out.
And it’s not true at all.
You can betray yourself this way.
I’ve betrayed myself this way for sure.
I might be betraying myself this way right now.
I mean if I was sure
then it would definitely be true
that I was betraying myself.
but I’m not sure. Are you?
It’s pretty hard to be sure about the truth.