Fringe Magazine - Feminism Archive

Feminism: February 2007.
About Us.
Archives.
Submission Guidelines.
Fringe Benefits.

Poetry.
Home > Feminism: February 2007 > Poetry

5 poems by Donna Karen Weaver

Fissures

She holds AJ, short for Angelo Joseph,
on a dirty couch. She tells me about the fiskula
in her ass. “Fistula,” her sister corrects, “Fist,”
and holds hers up.

“My doctor said it was between my cooch and asshole.”
She spreads her legs, traces the seam
in her sweatpants. It is pink, splitting where underwear presses
beneath. “Right there,” she rubs.

Watching Maury Povich, she rocks AJ in his sleeper
with cold toes, their chipped polish. It only hurts
when she goes to the bathroom, when she’s pushing out—
elbows on knees, toes curled like AJ’s fingers around my fingers.

Sunday's Shape of Skin

I see all the movements of laughter at Easter Vigil Mass:
shoulders shrugged to chins, the silent shake of torsos.

The woman in yellow holds a hardcover missile, wears a miraculous
medal, kisses it, blesses her forehead, chest, and shoulders.

She has two daughters with braces, small breasts, and she’s teaching
them how to make fun of the choir whose mouths open as wide

as the font, tranquil and cold during the sign of peace. She pulls at her
manageable hair, blending in with the women who are standing with

their heads down, praying to a suspended, wax Jesus, that Lamb of God.

Keloid

I want to know more about keloids,
why I am not black enough
to have them. I cannot say

chéloïde, chele, pince,
the fingernails of an animal.

My scars are dark.

I want those
brown bubbles on shoulders,
coffee-colored flaps folding out of my chest.

I would play with them.
I’d open my shirt, and with my finger-
nail, flick the flaps back and forth.

It is then that they would look like wings,
fluttering fast, desperately looking for light.

Passing in Adamsburg

People tell her she must be
doing well because she drives
a leased Lexus. We sit in
her office on the mismatched furniture
collected from flea markets. Nascar trinkets,

fake ivy in dusty baskets.
She prints receipts on paper
with eagles and American flags. She opens her arms

to show me the size of my breasts,
says, You look like a nigger when you hit
the tanning bed.

II.

We shop Wal-Mart, laugh at an open box
of thong pantiliners, new tampons
that look like coffee filters. She leans on
her shopping cart, giggles with the cashier

who thought I was a black person.
I put my tanning lotion, flip-flops on the belt,
these things for summer.

Now the hairbrush, Suave styling gel
because she asked me if I shopped there,
she pointed at thick cans of oil sheen, Dax Wax.
So I couldn’t get what I needed in the black people’s section.

Field Trip

Nicholas was waiting for me on the blacktop after lunch,
the afternoon I finally asked Angel for money
to buy a strawberry Fruit Rollup. She always smelled like
cocoa butter, and her teeth were so white

behind big, pink lips. She said, You stay away
from Nicholas, you hear? She said it like an old, black
woman, hands on her hips.

But there was something about
the way he climbed ropes in gym class. Tiny muscles pumping
in thin, white arms.

His breath didn’t smell like cereal milk, he smelled like syrup, and a mom
with more time. I followed him past the swings,
he wore Velcro sneakers, a collared shirt with a penguin stitched
on the chest. He beat me, kicked me, next to a tree with fat roots

growing out of the ground. He said I was a nigger.
Helicopters fell from maple trees, with no sound
when they touched down. He had my arms behind my back,
so I couldn’t catch one, peel it open for the sticky, green seed.