Castera Street

Castera Street

On the floor of Nana’s house

---I was sent there because my mother couldn’t handle

my sister and I--

I played with dolls and gave them voices and names

Nana disappeared into back rooms

or outside to water succulents

the plastic pitcher with flowers on the side

I never followed her unless I needed something to eat

she sometimes made me those cookies
white powdered sugar over crescent moons
Later she forgot my name
called me, Janet, her dead alcoholic daughter
I thought that meant I was bad
but had no one to ask
Sometimes I sat in the avocado tree
watching her love her plants

bending down, dusting them in her sun-hat

I wondered why there were no other girls on that street

I asked Nana-- she said it was time to water the garden.
When I slept there, I stared at the alarm clock with
glowing hands while
Nana drew letters on my back
and I would guess what they were
Sometimes I would confuse X with T
because of the angle.
Nana slept with toilet paper pinned to her hair
and I asked her once
“When you die can I have this?”
holding up a beautiful watch with diamonds for initials
I didn’t know what I was saying
She walked out of the room

Her short heels clack clacking on the hard wood floor

He Wore The Shirt I Slept In

He Wore The Shirt I Slept In

I
My ex is behind me

Watching my neck, my ear, my hand to my cheek
I slump down in the black dress
On a chair that belongs in basements
Cold and hard 
My black suede booties slung out into the aisle
Covering the feet that inspired him

To paint the dead thing and stick it on my wall
Leg over leg or ankle stretched out
I am with witch girl

Who swears she sewed her soul into mine

But I can’t feel it
She laughs her puppet arms around me
I touch her face like a lover
And make fun of her blow-job lips
Not quite kissing them, but almost

II
I stand in line and turn to catch him
In the purple shirt
I used to sleep in
Hiding by the coffeemaker
Eyes like a showroom
Full of the things he once loved
And remembering the things he thought I could make him forget
I only glance in his direction then turn
To the two men who want to talk about
My outfit, my style and what they think about
Late at night
I turn again to see my ex hiding, but I can’t see his face
Just the shirt and the torso of my lost lover
He hasn’t been eating
That much is clear

what sets you apart

what sets you apart

so me and some people are in an apartment


we don't leave because we are paranoid


they agree to anything i suggest

it is not my beauty or youth because i never looked more tore up


but my passion they warm to


I guessed you won't believe me, so i kept the pictures

in a box


they don't like me
 and i don't like them

but we get along-
our understanding is as loathsome as the political climate


but why should i care, i'm here ain't i?

hate streams from our eyes cause no one is smart enough to stop the dreary incomprehensible sameness 
of days


  

i hold my breath for what seems like weeks
 with kings on hollywood hilltops and dirty homeless
 in basements where hill street meets that bright neon sign of jesus



we are always peeking out windows

time isn't anything to us
--lifetimes come and go
 
i have always gotten my way through them all 
and what of it?
you don't let me and that's what sets you apart

There Is No Substitute For Love

Dear Daddy,

          When you went away and the Mommy went to bed, I didn't know where you had gone. I was told you were traveling, but no one travels that long. My small girl heart didn't know what things meant, so I would ask, but the answers were lies. I don't blame the Mommy, she went to bed and I gave her orange juice and tried to find out why she was crying. She couldn’t tell me. But, that's not all. You were the fun one, you were loud and silly and smart and we looked at the stars together out in the courtyard under the Jacaranda tree.  When you went away--for many years after-- the Mommy said that you had been traveling. The day you came home, I ran to hug you and kiss you and love you and ask you where you were why'd you go, I missed you so much I cried. The Mommy told me to leave you alone. Your eyes were sad or dark or other-than-regular. I didn't understand where you were. You were standing in our Los Feliz House--the one over the Shakespeare Bridge and you were not yourself. Anyone could see that. I didn't know what to do. Because the Mommy told me to leave you alone, I thought it had something to do with me.

         We still took long walks through the streets and up and down the stairwells in rain or shine. We listened to records on the oriental rug in the living room. You taught me to sing.

         Many years later, when I was seventeen, drunk on Thanksgiving, I threw this tantrum saying to the Mommy, you lied to me, you left us in this house where my sister got beaten and Daddy went away and you said he was traveling. At this point, I was told you had a psychotic break and that you had been on Thorazine and that I wasn't told because you didn't want me to think there was mental illness in the family or not understand what it was, but either way, lie or no lie---I felt it. I knew something was different. I just didn't know it didn't have to with me. 

          You went off Thorazine, you seem better, you are happy and dancing but there is a lost thing that we had between us. I was your favorite, we were close, now there was a space that I couldn't get back. I saw your love still in your eyes. You told me I had a pure heart, you told me I was the most special kind of person that there was and that life was going to be hard for me because I love things more than other people love things. I feel more, I am more open, I am happier and sadder and all that stuff. You told me I was the most beautiful thing, the thing that no one could touch, I would take over the world, but it would be hard and I would feel everything but you told me not to change myself just because I was different. So, I didn't.

         But, what I remember and what I can't take back or change now, is there were years when you were angry or moody or couldn't talk to me in that old way and I never knew how it was going to be. I was just a kid, I tried my best to understand you. You were my first great love. When you told me I couldn't marry you I stomped my feet and said, "Who will I marry, then? No one will be as good as you and no one will love me like you do so why would I get married?" I was depressed at the age of 5 or 6 or whatever that age was when you told me I'd find someone else to marry. It's so weird, but over the last month I've had three different men ask me why I never got married and I didn't know what to say to them, but what I can say to you, is no one was smart enough and funny enough and liked me enough for whatever weird overly energetic happy to be in the world but sad when I saw an orphan bunny kind of person I was. You did. There is no substitute for real love.

         The Mommy did her best to protect me from whatever was wrong with you and you did your best to help me see what kind of person I really was. You told me I was the smartest, funniest, most brilliant one. But, you were right. My life was hard. You had problems and couldn't see me as much as I wanted to see you. You never called me on the phone. I thought these things meant you didn't love me. All my other friends saw their Daddy's even if they were divorced. I really thought something had happened that made you not love me. I asked you about it more than once, but you always said it was ridiculous. I find in life people say things are ridiculous when they are not accountable or can’t give a logical reason. They don't show up and have an excuse. I know why though. I always know why. It's just that even if what I know is wrong. I just can't help it from being that.

         Whenever I come home for Christmas you tell me to stay over, I know you are hurt that I don't. Things happened in that house that I still remember—not things that had to do with you, but the whole adolescent disillusionment happened there. I started writing there. I did cocaine on the floor of my room. I made a girl dry hump me in my bed and I made out with my first boyfriend and then broke up with him when he wanted to have sex. I wanted to stay innocent.  You say you could just have me there forever and ever and I love you that way too, it's just I'm out here trying to be a person and make a life for myself.  You were lucky you found the Mommy when you were young and handsome and you two made a life. I am lucky in a different way. My idealism and uniqueness has kept me silent or hidden or vanishing from individuals that want to trap me, but still I perform for the people who know what it is I am and what it is I do without letting them get too close. The ones I don't care about are safest. The ones who want to get close I push out. I am afraid that something will happen to them, like that thing that happened to you. I just want you to know that that thing that happened to you also happened to me. It still affects me, but I love you even though we are not close like I want. I know you love me although sometimes I can’t feel it like I want to.

           I know I never have said these things, because truthfully they embarrass me, I am an adult and should be able to shake it, but I just can't.

           Your daughter in all ways that can be counted, felt, expanded upon but never diminished.

With my whole heart,

Lisa

The Grad School Diet

          

LISALAND

THE GRAD SCHOOL DIET

Today I was driving down the street and it occurred to me that I haven't been eating. Sometimes I don't have any food here or any money for food or sometimes I have food, but it isn't what I WANT to have at the moment. But, that is not why I stopped eating or am now eating very little. I never eat A LOT unless I'm at a beautiful restaurant, but right now I'm on my cute but hard chair with no couch and feeling a bit depressed. This depression is chemical though---from antibiotics. They make me sick and feel twirly and have bad thoughts. They make me hate food and most people. They make me go: where the fuck is my couch and why did I pick that banned book to read when all it turned out to be was one dude touching other dudes but really really really badly written? I don’t need to read about cocks described in a million different ways and how some of them seem to be smiling.

         And standing in Trader Joes I tried to remember what it is I even like to eat. That was hard. Ever tried eating when all you feel is nauseas? Well... what I like turned out to be lemon yogurt and bread and water (jail comfort food) and mac and cheese (firestarter tendencies) and chips and Orangina. All these seemed like safe foods. I bought them with a hundred dollar gift card my mother gave me when she came to visit me last week.  I was happy for one second. Then, I had to come home and try to eat something. I tried. I made toast. But the butter was too cold and the toast not toasty enough. I tried. I really did. I ate one half of the cold butter violently mashed into the toast by the wrong kind of knife because I was too dizzy to look for something else and covered that non-toasty enough toast with cherry jam because I might like to have some fruit in what I refer to as the Grad School Lisa Diet. I don't recommend this diet, but in case you were wondering it goes like this:

1. Wake up shaking from lack of food and/or sleep and or love.  Be sad. Have sad memories. Realize my boyfriend is gone. My friend is gone. My dog died when I was a child.

2. Hear alarm (yes after) go off for 25 minutes until it shuts itself off--get up--make coffee with half and half and sugar.

3. Do homework and at the very last minute jump in the shower and find outfit--make it cute but not too revealing because there is a cute boy in your class and you know he's cute and he knows you know he knows and he thinks you're cute too or likes your brain and you say things to him on his paper like: do you need to suck a fat cock? I mean your character? And you make it funny and fun so he will think you are a genius. Make sure the outfit has sex appeal but no see-through tops. Save those for workshop.

4. Drive to Irvine---look at balance bar, other kind of healthy disgusting bar, luna or otherwise on the passenger seat and or at the bottom of your purse and turn your face away in disgust.

5. Get to Irvine--hit Peets and buy a tiny scone. Put that scone in your purse, but don't eat it. Just drink the coffee. Forget there is a scone until much much later in the day when you see it in your purse, maybe on the drive home, take it out and put it on the seat with the rest of the rejects. Think about eating it, but not know if you really want to eat it. Is it still good? Fresh and crumbly like it was at the beginning when it was born? You wonder, how many scones get to travel around in Lisa-Purse and wonder what it would be like if scone knew all that you know but never ever say. Not even to your own Lisa-self. The lies and stuff.

6.  Drive home and go to Starbucks to do coffee--I mean homework. Drink coffee with so much sugary goodness that it might just be the sugar keeping you alive. Have more. Try to read or think or write or whatever. Get distracted by every text message and human that passes through the door. Be grateful when someone comes to visit you to save you from your thoughts. Someone who really likes you and finds you to be entertaining and tells you---you just cheered me up so much now I don’t need coffee (yesterday). Say no when he asks for your number. Too much pressure.

7. Go home (this really includes eating) put something in the oven and sit on hard chair and wait for it to be something more than its frozen boxy previous self.  Know in your heart that this thing—this made up frozen thing will in no way be like food or delicious. Set the alarm on your phone to be sure you'll know when the non-delicious thing will be unfrozen and ready to for the experiment.

8. Call friend. Say ridiculous things to friend till both of you are laughing and crying from laughing at each other and the dumb same story you are both always trying to figure out but never will. Laugh at your ignorance. Realize your lack of intelligence in new and different ways.

9. Dinner is ready---stare at it and stay on phone so you can ignore that you basically are living like a kid without skills or even the desire for skills---take bite—make face no one can see, but pretend you didn’t make it so you can go on eating, hate it all the way through because you don't like TV dinners whether they are supposedly healthy or not. They disgust you, they make you wonder why the world exists at all and then you come to the sad realization that everything disappoints you, not just frozen TV dinner, but TV itself. How the people who are ordinary and boring and latching onto you or running away from you that they are all their exact predictable selves and know this and know you can’t change it and know it doesn’t matter we will all be dead in the deep earth one day where no one can run or hide or be annoying anyway. Not only that but also be greatly worried about the people who pretend to like you but don't really like you and then get mad and tell you things about "how once a girl did a thing and I hated her and made voodoo dolls and stood outside her house because I didn't have a car" but its the EXACT thing you did and you know "the girl" is really you and you worry if voodoo dolls are real. A guy last night really said the words: “Your pussy makes most guys crazy, but it just makes me angry.” Ask why but not really understand the answer about how you wouldn’t fuck him and then his girlfriend hated you and etc. etc. Remember the time he lifted you up at Swingers in a front of all your friends and ran you down the street and pushed you up against the wall saying this is your one last chance and you laughing at him and after that he didn’t talk to you for nine months enough time to make a baby only you didn’t make one and he didn’t make one—he just vanished from your life.  Be disappointed that you can’t tell when someone really likes you for you and wants to be your friend or just for your sex parts and know that if you are attracted to each other hanging out as friends will drive you both mad and that you are lying if you say you can.

10. Sometimes eat a snack of some kind of chip dipped in something too delicious---cheese spread, hummus in all its varieties, bruschetta sauce, etc. Sometimes eat ice cream that is still after all this time in the freezer---more likely look at it and know it was once delicious but you aren't really hungry at all just eating to stay on planet earth.

11. Think about why you are on planet earth to begin with: the food isn't very good anyway and the people are mean and shut down and not playful like they should be and you don't have any money and it makes you worry about if they will be kind when you are outside pushing a shopping cart but well dressed and hope you can still look cute when you get old and be cute and act retarded and make your friends laugh. Stare at computer screen. Make puppet show about a boy you like.

12. Think about a time you were happy, but that just creates longing and makes you feel like eating less. Remember the saying affection and attention are two different things. Remember that right now there is nothing that could be categorized by a brain that is being misled by all these antibiotics.

13. Bite something, chew it down. Swallow.

14. Remember that you are here at all because you mean something to someone even if they won't ever say it and people mean something to you even the ones you lie to and make sad. And writing. That might be the whole thing. I might only be here for that and never get what I want in any other way. 

I will have to be on these pills for the next few weeks: side effects are:

1. Alienate friends with rages similar to ones my father used to have. see the effect it has on people—say sorry but watch relationships destroyed. Scare myself.

2. Make up with enemies because now they seem suddenly just in whatever their initial hatred of me stemmed from.

3. Dislike everything I previously liked including whatever I have in my closet.

4. Feel nauseous and dizzy over and over and over and over and over

5. Lose sleep because I keep feeling like I’m falling into a dark deep ravine and can’t wake myself up because I’m already awake.

6. More stuff that isn’t very interesting except to say my always puffy stomach is now very flat and weirdly cute.

(omitted parts--real boys, action in cars, subways, stairwells)