how to have a pointless argument

decide that you are right
forget all the times
you have been wrong
create a monster
fear it
scream
until you scare her away
stomp
to make your stabbing point
point label discard
paint the cracked walls of your heart
fire engine red then never
ever leave that bloody murder room
run in circles
off at the mouth
until you are dizzy
until you are sweat
taste the salt
of your enthusiastic effort
stop listening
fuck tears
tighten your hold
on your version of truth
decide that you are mighty
forget that things change

© 2009 by Lenelle Moïse

Reaching Out After Rehearsal

Yesterday, the rehearsal room was warm with music and anticipation. We laughed a lot. We sang even more. We thought of you.



For more info, a sneak peek, project updates and potential gifts, check out: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lenellemoise/the-expatriate-amplification-project

MEMORY: PRIVATE SCHOOL JEZEBEL

From age five to nine, I attend Saint Patrick’s School, an esteemed Roman Catholic institution on a grassless hill in Roxbury, Massachusetts. It is the eighties and Roxbury is a section of Boston that most middle-class people would call “the bad part.” Here, where there are gangs, graffiti, immigration and other colorful things, smily priests and stern nuns walk the streets with the detached but dutiful air of foreign missionaries.

My best-friend Ildulce lives in the neighborhood. She has teeth like small white daggers. She has sneaky, pretty brown eyes. She has silky black hair that falls to the middle of her back. She wears a gold cross between bulging collar bones. She screeches all the words to Madonna’s Like a Virgin. I love her. Every Friday, during recess, she grabs my brown left thumb in her olive-toned fist and drags me off campus, around the corner, to an overstuffed bodega. We marry our quarters and stock up on Cigarette Gum, Now and Laters and irresistibly gross Garbage Pail Kids trading cards.

One afternoon, in the cold beverage aisle, Ilduce argues with me about which one of the sugary neon dyed 25¢ “drinks” in stubby plastic containers tastes better. I like fake grape but she likes fake orange. “You’re crazy,” she tells me, flashing her charming, sharp grin. “Grape tastes like butt.”

I am about to stick my tongue out at her when, suddenly, the sweaty man behind the counter starts shouting, “Shit shit shit, not in front of my store!” We follow his gaze to discover two men tangled in an urgent, wordless fist-fight outside. The stronger one repeatedly bangs the pitiful one’s jerry-curled head against an abandoned orange car’s windshield. Jerry Curl’s contracted back crash-lands into the bodega’s window as his attacker takes off. The store owner continues to curse as he dials 911 but, as our patent leather feet scurry past the bloody beaten man, we can already hear sirens approaching. We stuff sweet junk into our illicit brown paper bags. We stuff the paper bags into our bright pink backpacks. We throw our heads back and laugh, terrified.

The teachers at Saint Patrick’s are mostly Irish-American and Italian-American with deep crow’s feet around well-meaning thirtysomething year old eyes. My classmates are African-American, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Trinidadian and Cape Verdean. Aside from a pale, strawberry blonde girl named Beverly―whose face flushes fushia when we nickname her “Shirley Temple”―most of our little faces are various shades of brown. Only the African-American kids comfortably and confidently identify as “Black.”

Haitian students also attend Saint Patrick’s but few are willing to admit their roots. It is the eighties and Haitians in America are dubbed Boat People, even if they crossed the border on a plane, like me. Scientists, comedians and politicians blame us (and the Harvey Milk-like men of San Francisco) for AIDS. One morning, in kindergarten, a new boy named Christopher joins our class. It is the middle of the school year. He is a handsome, big-butt prince with almond-shaped eyes, puffy cheeks and smooth, dark skin. He is a friendly, albeit nervous, only-child who cannot stop talking about his mother. After I catch my first whiff of the spicy clove cologne smell emanating from his talcum-powdered neck, I am determined to develop a crush on him. But then Ildulce suspiciously demands, “Christopher―where are you from?” He honestly replies “Haiti” to which she cries “Eeew” and for the rest of the school year, he’s screwed. Kids call him “Cootie Boy” even though he has the best hygiene in our class. My proud, Haitian parents would be appalled. I never tease Christopher but I also never come to his defense. I steal hellos and goodbyes to him before and after school, palming his back when no one is watching. I tell my friends that I am from Tahiti, an island that sounds like Haiti, an island I cannot begin to locate on a map.

Our principal is Mother Superior. Her other claim to fame is that she is the aunt of popular teen movie star Anthony Michael Hall. He is the unlikely heartthrob featured in Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Weird Science. In her office, Mother Superior keeps a gold framed 8x10 glossy photo of her famous, scrawny relative beneath an oil painting of Jesus. Anthony (Anthony Michael?) grins like the rich in his studio portrait. Contrastingly, the wide-eyed, melancholy Christ―surrounded by cute but useless cherubs―tilts his bearded chin toward the sky with a look that knows he’s about to die. Both nephew and Savior have blonde hair and blue eyes. My principal shares these features but she is chubby with wrinkles. Her gaze is ice.

In the third grade, I am sent to her poorly lit office on four separate occasions: 1) when my mother forgets it is a Half Day and doesn’t pick me up on time after school 2) when my mother forgets to give me $15 for a class field trip to see The Nutcracker ballet but sends me to school anyway 3) when my mother remembers the money for a class field-trip to Rocky Point Amusement Park but forgets that I am supposed to go in my street clothes, not my uniform and 4) when my mother forgets to have my uniform dry-cleaned and I spend a Monday in an outfit I have already outgrown. On this fourth and most humiliating occasion, the buttons on my sky blue button-down shirt keep popping off and when I sit on my cold classroom seat, my check plaid skirt barely covers my behind. The hard edge of the seat digs into my thighs and leaves an itchy temporary dent to mark where a proper skirt should end. My friends avoid and whisper about me throughout our entire first period. Even Ilduce snickers. When Mr. Balsamo finally writes a note and sends me off into the dim, empty hallways, I am relieved to dodge the critical eyeballs of Catholic school children.

In her office, Mother Superior loudly lectures me about modesty and proper Christian code. Her cold spittle lands on my face as she scolds, “Your skirt should sit past your knees, not in the middle of your thighs! Do you realize that you are distracting your classmates, your teacher! We cannot have you parading the halls like a fallen woman!”

The way she says it, woman sounds like the dirtiest word. It resounds without the innocence and sweetness of “little girl” which, because I am tall for my age, is all I really want to be called. Woman has a man overtly chasing her tail. Woman means adult and adults do nasty things children are not supposed to do, like have sex. Fallen woman is even worse. I imagine myself tripping on a crack in the pavement, hitting the ground with a thunderous thud, flashing my panties to old ogling bums as my fingers clutch bent scraped knees. Fallen woman. As Mother Superior's chapped lips batter on, I feel bloody from my graceless collapse. I silently wish for oversized clothes that will sag around my frame like a potato sack. Then, holding back tears, I beg her to let me spend the day in her office so as not to cause further disruption back in class. “I swear to God, I’m not a slut!” I plead.

Somehow, my blasphemy calms her. “There, there, my child.” She pets my well-coifed head, “I know this isn’t your fault. We shall call your mother immediately to have her pick you up.” I wonder who else she is speaking for when she uses the word We. I glance up at the images of the famous nephew and the framed Son of Man. She continues, “We certainly cannot keep you in my office much longer, looking like a little Jezebel.” I do not know who Jezebel is but the hard z and b of the name sounds bad. I cross my legs and nod in agreement. Ashamed, I am ready to go home.

While I wait for my mother to pick me up, I ask Mother Superior questions about Anthony Michael Hall. “Does he live in Boston?” “Is he Catholic?” “When did he start acting?” She loves talking about her relative, the 1980s Hollywood star. I do not retain her answers but feel triumphant to have changed the subject and brightened her mood.

When my mother finally arrives, frazzled from having to declare an emergency at work, the head nun passive-aggressively punishes her with words: “Lenelle is suspended for three days. Hopefully, in this time, you can arrange for clean clothes?”

In the car, I burst into tears. My mother grows livid. She shouts, “Who does that bitch think she is?” and I am surprised and elated to hear her swear. She vows to pull me out of Saint Patrick’s for good. She tells me as soon as we get home, she is going to call Cambridge Public Schools and see about having me enrolled. “The schools in Cambridge are good, not like Boston. Harrington Elementary is just two blocks away. I wouldn’t have to drive you all the way to Roxbury everyday. You could walk to school like a big girl.” She adds that since she won’t have to pay private school tuition anymore, we’ll be able to afford a shopping spree at the mall. “You won’t have to wear that ugly navy blue uniform. We’ll give them all away. I’ll buy you pants and sweaters like Rudy Huxtable wears on The Cosby Show. Forget navy blue. You can wear pink and red and green―”

“And purple?” I interrupt, thrilled by the promise of new fashion.

“And purple, yes―any color you want.” With that, we hi-five and I cannot remember walking into Saint Patrick’s ever again. In this moment, my mother is my knight, my hero, my savior.

www.lenellemoise.com

queer(ed) femininity #6

a pump of bony pelvis / ode to michael jackson

cover your mirrors

a phantom has passed

in the end

we will all look

like michael jackson

a hypnotist

dandy

sexy spirit of corpses

vodou’s ghede in sunglasses

a pump of bony pelvis

he-he was as pale

as a manga superhero

as smooth as zorro

a limber zombie

singing thriller

a minstrel

in reverse

a gloved black power fist

curled tight around an aching

crotch (daggonnit baby ow)

oh michael i loved you

you king without borders

you emotional pauper you pop

you sure-footed lunatic

you flying lost peter

your irresistible girl voice

floating out of a grown man’s

ever-shifting timeless

chiseled troubling face

you were your own race

you mess of delicious gender

you queer jolly roger

you masturbation good

you lover not a fighter

you earth-quaker

you perfect music maker

you screaming-fan-fainter

you fedora flicker

you james brown snicker

you slicker

he-he was a childish child embracer

our american disaster

our american anthem

the original idol

gaudy godlike and only man

the ultimate

cross over

act

irrevocably crossed

over

his graceful genius

body

gone

too soon

too soon

said, cover your mirrors

to hear ghede laughing

but in the end we are still

looking

for michael jackson

© 2009 by Lenelle Moïse

new poem: mud mothers

the children of haiti
are not mythological
we are starving
or eating salty cakes
made of clay

because in 1804 we felled
our former slave captors
the graceless losers sunk
vindictive yellow
teeth into our forests

what was green is now
dust & everyone knows
trees unleash oxygen
(another humble word
for life)

they took off
with our torn branches
beheaded our future
stuck our breath up on pikes
for all the world to see

we are a living dead example
of what happens to warriors who―
in lieu of fighting for white men’s countries―
dare to fight
for their own lives

during carnival
we could care less
about our bloated empty bellies
where there are voices
we are dancing

where there is vodou
we are horses
where there are drums
we are possessed
with joy & stubborn jamboree

but when the makeshift
trumpet player
runs out of rhythmic breath
the only sound left is guts
grumbling

& we sigh
to remember
that food
& freedom
are not free

is haiti really free
if our babies die starving?
if we cannot write our names
read our rights keep
our leaders in their seats?

can we be free
really? if our mothers are mud? if dead
columbus keeps cursing us
& nothing changes
when we curse back

we are a proud resilient people
though we return to dust daily
salt gray clay with hot black tears
savor snot cakes
over suicide

we are hungry
creative people
sip bits of laughter
when we are thirsty
dance despite

this asthma
called debt
congesting
legendarily liberated
lungs

© 2009 by Lenelle Moïse

queer(ed) femininity #5