week of January 23 - 29, 2006

Jessicca Daigle Vidrine and Scott Malby

First Sex As a teenager I swam naked in water that had a passenger train pulsing in its bed. In a whir of a late night winter storm, lightning flashing like fireflies, the bridge didn't close in time the train didn't make it across. I often thought about it how the train reared up its head of steam, the screeching sound of metal as wheels locked like lovers' legs, skidding off the end, the pale faces of people pressed up against windows like small moons. As it dipped its nose into the water, its belly of twisted metal crumpled, folded in on itself. I went out there once with a boy I didn't really like. We swam naked, bodies touching beneath the crispness of the cold. Later, we crawled up onto the bank of mud and had sex near the dead people, their bodies glowing beneath the water like bone-white brilliance. I couldn't ignore his eyes, one green, one blue, so I closed mine until I felt him shrink away and slide out. Afterwards, we quickly dressed like two shy kids. I sat on the edge carving circles in the water with my toes, thinking about the dead, tracing the faces below. forthcoming in print in The Porch How Love will Come, and When He's only eight, but one day his muscles will swell, and girls will giggle hand-cupped secrets in his ear as he smiles and pushes his tongue into the cushion of his cheek. I watch them sifting dirt; they compare snails they have evacuated from hard-cased swirls, then mash mud between hands, forcing it to ooze between fingers. She offers hers, a perfect round pie without the cherry, to him. He spots a bullrush and splits it open blowing the seeds like dancing stars in her face. They take off running, bare feet hitting hot asphalt. The heat doesn't bother them. Their soles are unblemished, ripe. Their only worry is who will get there first; the swing will not stay empty long. Years away, girls will wait with giggles and cupped hands and breasts that are just beginning to swell, like the twisted knots of the tree he climbs. Today they are making mud pies. Tomorrow they'll be making love, splitting one another open, and entering a place beyond hand-cupped secrets. forthcoming in print in Yemassee Kiss in the Cornfield No one ever knew how we'd sneak to the cornfield, finding its center so we couldn't be seen. When we were seated, legs folded and crossed, facing each other, our knees touched. The bruises like soft wax on our legs were small embers burning, and you'd lean forward, touch my milky face and kiss me. By then you had kissed me several times, but still I'd wonder why it was always slimy. I should have expected the warmth of your slippery tongue, its smooth skin and the way it'd slither in and dance. Yet, each time I was dazed by its forcefulness, something swelling and rising in my mouth, like a twisted tail thrashing against my cheek. That day we found a dead snake sun-stroked in the cornfield, you laughed, and dared me to touch it. I did, its swelling skin like soft silk against my own. Its body gleamed in the sun. I imagined how it must have glided unseen through the field, whole body moving in unison, its mouth closing around a mouse taking it whole, sealing it in. I imagined the way it would feel draped around my shoulders touching me and I smiled. To Galileo's Universe There were times when the tips of your fingers might've fallen against my back fitted in each groove and bone of my spine a jig-saw puzzle begging to come together piece by piece. But my heart furrowed in its stones; rough, ragged edges glazed over by an indiscriminate echo from your mouth. Like the night we spent studying the constellations on the domed ceiling we witnessed the law of Galileo spewing from his mouth. Under a siege of inquisition he lost his battle to see a corner of heaven in a new way. Four hundred years later we still can't appreciate that piece of heaven. Palm over the arch of my hand, your fingers interwoven in mine Something so grand as Galileo could happen. (It's logic, right?) But for you and me, as the dome cast its final shadow, final star, the Earth didn't seem to revolve around the sun anymore. You loosened my fingers and let my hand fall, like the universe, what Galileo missed was that it is open, expanding forever, gliding against the outside time of supernovas. forthcoming in print in The Porch

A brief history of time a. Icarus Praise be this windy rapture of wings and surging blood fighting its way through currents inside me toward the sun. And praise be the sweet kisses of imagined immortality time wraps in the refuge of its own embarrassments. When the physical thunders I must climb, drenched in a universe of hot honey; my movement of muscle all Arabian as I burn to be lord of what I push against. b. The last tree carried through Los Angeles Sometimes, it feels like a woodpecker inside my brain or I'm taking a vacation because the buzz I feel won't go away. Like a potted plant fooled into bloom, I woke in L.A. at night to find this flesh of movement bursting through skin. I experienced the light of street lamps and stores, strung out before me like the rush of an adrenalin addict or streetwalker, glowing from inside out, emerging here and there, exposed flesh, a bit of breast. How brazenly Los Angeles struts her stuff. Her curves are lovely. Her ravines, revealing and deep. Hello, Northridge. Hello, Van Nuys. Hello Walmart, McDonalds, nursing homes, funeral parlors, churches, check cashing stores. I feel like I could grow rings. I'm happy. I have found myself at last. To those who knew me, but didn‚t know me as well as they thought, my gender change will come as a shock. My past is in a bird cage. The best of me in tatters. I'm blowing paper. The wind whips me like a mocking bird. When time goes, it flies. Where it goes is mysterious. c. Self, I want to whisper white lies in your head. If I were your clock I would tick off time and because my eyes are your napkin, I must tell you that the dead don't dance and I don't know what the real world is. I can't keep secrets, while you step on your own toes and stumble down stairs.