Parthenogenesis
Envy these female hammerheads:
how they swim in purified
fields, pregnant by salt or ocean
without contact with males. Link and lock
that warmth. No tepid waters.
No freeze. Immaculate.
I am fertile as loam and no one braves
me – oh, flesh of flesh of bone
of blood
and someone was inside me but I remain
terrible
I remain empty.
The roots of parthenogenesis are “virgin”
and “creation” – spiders, snails,
scorpions love
themselves, love their bodies,
rapture, rupture—life takes flight.
Progeny in your nests, twigs, and tanks.
Web me the mouth that fields
my questions. Ransom: fatherless children
who will never wonder except
in wonder – the miracle of their mother’s
bright bodies: blue hammers, blue tails.
Magic Whitening Princess
In the Ao Nang 7-11, I buy the cheapest sunscreen: SPF 50 PA+++
Magic Whitening Princess Sunscreen by Cathy Doll. On the box,
a sad tan cartoon girl languishes under an umbrella. In front of her,
her pale counterpart winks, smiling, brazen & sunless. MAGIC,
the label reads. JOY, it promises. WHITER SKIN, it proclaims,
backs that up with ingredients: “titanium dioxide”, “L-Glutathione”;
Fright is the color of my half-experiment, half-joke. I lather it on,
the ersatz glow—blend it into my skin. My arm hairs turn white.
Chalky, pale umbra, slivers of silver. Now my legs are bright fissures
in a skinned desert. White Lady is the name of a skin emulsion,
a serum to correct dry yellow faces. On the subject of a white lady,
Louise Brooks, Hilton Als once wrote: “We are all the product
of someone else’s dream.” That dream, to cast a radiant light,
alchemize a new skin, find a formula that alters the kind of sight
we are. My dream, to court the sun, extend its fingers. To suck
its gold egg & gag. My chalky skin doesn’t hide me from myself,