from kookaburras to Vegemite
my last stop on the tour was in Ballarat,
on the Yarrowee River
the school canceled my appearance
at the last minute
instead, I spoke at the public library
to a small group of kids
the librarian pulled me aside before handing
me the mic
she whispered that a sexual abuse scandal
was unfolding in town
and asked me to be sensitive about it
Ballarat had priests who liked to bad-and-gross-
hurt children
just like Syracuse. Just like Boston. Minneapolis.
Dallas.
Arizona, Iowa, Oregon, Wisconsin, California,
Kentucky, Colorado
Chile, Ireland, Austria, Canada, Guam
just like everywhere
in Australia alone, there are thousands of victims
countless suicides and immeasurable grief
the official investigation that began
the week I was in Ballarat
has now reached all the way to the Vatican
In Ballarat, like in so many other places
it wasn’t one priest, it was many
generations of priests abusing
generations of children
In Ballarat, like in so many other places
some kids told their parents,
who confronted bishops
who moved the pedophiles
to new churches, new schools
where they had new flocks to prey on
But in Ballarat, unlike so many other places
something different happened
in Ballarat people tied colorful ribbons
to the fences
around the cathedral and the schools
where children
had been molested and raped
the ribbons loudly supported the survivors
of the predatory priests
and their families and everyone who loved them
the ribbons shouted that they were not alone
the ribbons announced that they were seen
the ribbons demonstrated that they were heard
the ribbons signaled revolution
more people tied ribbons to the fences
until all you could see were the colors,
not the iron rusting underneath
the church cut them off, but by morning
the fences were again beribboned
the church cut them off
the people put them back
then the ribbons spread to other cities,
other churches, other schools
across Australia and to other countries
all the way to the Vatican
in Ballarat those stubborn flags of hope
created Loud Fence; the term refers
to persistently, relentlessly reminding victims
of sexual violence
that they are important and supported and good
when I was in elementary school
and my friends walked
down to the church for their Wednesday lessons
I had to memorize poetry for a teacher
I chose “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost
about neighbors and the work of repairing
stone walls, of walling in and walling out
the famous line still opens itself in my head,
from time to time reminding that
“good fences make good neighbors”
in Ballarat,
good neighbors make loud fences
the language of love made visible
feralmoans
your brain, young thing
shadow-dancing with lightning
swimming, brimming with yearn, churn
and the sex! woo-boy! and hungers
you can’t name yet, and crayon smells,
spells compelling, carouseling
under-skin earthquakes
altering your landscapes
eyesight, earhear changing every minute, dear
too close, too far, unplowed crowd
drowning, downing, drawn to
warm bodies like
a moth
to a flame
be careful
out there,
k?
emerging
wet-winged butterflies
wobbly antennae, shaky knees
their faces still lined
with chrysalis wrinkles
finally at liberty
straining to take flight
while terrified kings
reigning suspicious
witness the butterflies’
metamorphosis
effecting change
from elementary stasis
to fluttering chaos, launching
in the dawn’s early fight
their unrestrained campaign
to remove politicians
from their paper palaces
bought and paid for,
the sad, recoiling kings
freak
because the otherworldly magic
available to the newly hatched
is boundless and unbreakable
which is why the powerful
won’t let the young vote
But the kids know how to use matches
two opposites of rape
To have sex
is human.
To make love,
Divine.
yes, please
“yes”
sounds like heaven falling from the sky
yes smells like hot, hot
sweet apple pie
yes dances hip to hip, eye to eye
sober, yes
demands very sober, cuz yes shares this body
touch me
with permission only, yes—signed, sealed
deliverance from evil, no sin to be
tempted, but only with yes in the sheets
yes in the backseat, yes to a condom
yes, please go down on me until yes!
because yes is not swipe right, yes is hello
I want to get to know
you because maybe we
might yes, but the dance comes first, yes
the interplay of hey, flirt, hey, the pounding heart
of questioning yeses and nos, let’s go
slow
revolyestionary notion
that behold, this body and soul
that yes welcomes yes embraces yes
the taste of someone who has proven
worthy
of your yes
is worth the questing, slow beckoning
interrogating, interesting, conversating
adventuring yes is ongoing
yes enthusiastic
yes informed
yes free-given
yes the truest test
of sex
the consent of yes is necessary
Ultima Thule
I speak at book festivals
to thousands of teens
and hundreds of brilliant teachers
who clutch 32-ounce cups of coffee
with extra shots of espresso and patience
I tell my stories, burning hot and angry
gentle some truths so the kids can hear them
drop consent bombs they can’t avoid
laugh about the dumb things I’ve done
so they can laugh, too
Over three days,
I sign countless books
and listen as girls speak
up about being raped
or molested or shared
or any of the varieties
of sexual violence visited
upon the young and wordless
Greenland is a dependency of Denmark,
if you travel to the far north of Greenland
then a little farther still
you might find the mythic land of Ultima Thule
home to the wind, ice, and lichen old as time
Ultima Thule, my refuge
for when the world gets too real
like when a twelve-year-old tells me
about Mommy’s boyfriend
and the things he made her do
at night
when Mommy worked the late shift
after she wipes her tears on my shoulder
and promises to write
and walks back to her teacher
I whisper
Ultima Thule
empty and cold and holding a place for me
for cryotherapy, for vacuum-sealing myself
in the ice, just for a little while
imagining all the layers of clothes
I’d wear on Ultima Thule
the benign joy of studying polar bear songs
or renegade glaciers
dreaming of the aurora borealis
at the top of the world
and how I could make room
on Ultima Thule for anyone else
who just needs a space safe enough
to breathe, for a little while
like this girl
whose mommy broke up with that boyfriend
but now they have to live in their car
adaptable heart
the names of the charred survivors
who don’t know how fucking tough
they are
nestle
hidden
in the fifth chamber
of my heart.
Their courage warms
me from the inside,
stubborn candles
illuminating
this scorched
pumpkin.
three
my peculiar condition arboreal
After they stole the mountains from the Mohawks
and thrashed the British, my grandfather’s
people tapped sugar maple trees,
generations of us bled maple sap, wearing tamarack
snowshoes, under a late winter moon
spring urges rising, boiling
gallons of sap in iron vats
sold it cheap to neighbors, jacked
the price for outsiders who vacationed
in the woods where my grandfather roamed,
ax and rifle at the ready.
A quiet forest ranger
he taught me how to listen to the pine,
broad oak, woeful elm, sistering beeches,
spruce and fir for Christmas trees
and ironwood for fences
miles of paper birch tattooing memory
on their skin with black walnut ink
he gently pressed my palms
against the bark
so I could feel their whispers.
Ganoderma applanatum
Ganoderma applanatum is a fancy
way of saying the fungus you find
on some trees in the North, a boil,
canker sore, wide as a working man’s hand,
a worry bursting from the hip
of an uprighteous beech
skyside watertight, wind-thick, wood-tough
bird-stained, blight-wrinkled
folding over and over on herself
like a slow-growing mountain
or a hand-forged sword
earthside, underside, dirtside
clean as a patient page
waiting
for a dreamer
to make her mark
sweet gum tree, felled
Ernest Boy Scout troop
awkwardly erecting small flags,
blue and gold, on deadfall
branches propped upright
with rocks, while a white-haired woman
cooks the boys’ dinner over an open fire,
white-haired man sharpening a chainsaw
with a rat-tail file, properly,
with long, smooth strokes,
echoes of his wife, slowly stirring the pot.
The other men? Troop masters and dadfriends
slump-dressed for Saturday, clustered coffeeing,
watching one of their own revving
the other chainsaw, two-stroke oil smoking,
blade deadly dull and ready to kick, hungry
for legs, not wood, but this dad-dude
is clueless in sneakers, not boots,
blind to his need for protection, so damn tough
he leaves his headphones on the stump,
safety glasses, too. He squeezes the trigger
and the chain spins faster, motor screams,
oil smokes, and the other men lean
into the illusion of power
becoming more deaf
by the minute. But the saw, it sticks, bucks,
won’t cut right, so the dad-dudes complain
and curse the machinery,
glancing at their phones.
The boys who pledge their allegiance
openhearted play
with sticks and stones
The white-haired man, finally satisfied
puts down his tools, while the white-haired
woman
in steel-toed boots
puts on her safety glasses and headphones.
She starts the chainsaw with a single pull
looks at the old man, her husband or lover,
and he grins, knowing what comes next;
the old woman saws through expectations
and the sweet gum trunk like butter,
wood chips spitting at the openmouthed
dad-dudes unable
to process the sight.
piccolo
She hated being a six-foot-tall woman
in 1947, a freak of nature in a town
without a circus.
The class picture that year, organized by height
shows four tall boys, my Amazonian mother
then another twenty dudes, all smaller.
She wanted to play the piccolo
or at least the flute, delicate instruments
elegant, feminine testaments to belie her size
but the director gave her the trombone
cuz she
had the longest arms in the band.
She hunched, slouched with panache,
tried to shrink herself down
to the size of other girls, origami-folded
herself in upon herself, accidentally forging
a backbone that twisted
and misaligned her hips.
After days at school reducing her frame
and presence to blend into the bland expanse
of North Country expectations, my mother
would go home and cross paths
with her father, who wouldn’t stand
for his girl to bow to the will of others
he forced her to stand tall
erect
against the wall of the living room for an hour
each night, shoulders back far enough to kiss
the wallpaper, her chin lifted, tears pearling,
the ache intended to remind her
never to bend to the whims
of the small-minded
She hated every minute,
but she taught me the same way,
and when my daughters shot up and towered
over us both
their long arms, strong hands snatching
basketballs and softballs, playing trumpet,
slamming gavels,
leaping over mountains and storming castle walls,
my mother rested in their shade
and finally relaxed
into the shape of her own satisfaction.
lost boys
My mother’s last supper was homemade
mac and cheese.
Tethered to her oxygen machine
she ate at the kitchen table
with Daddy, me, and my beloved,
we drank champagne for their anniversary
and ours
then helped her back into bed
because Death
was gently knocking.
Getting pregnant was easy for my mom.
Staying pregnant was near impossible.
Her womb rejected boys, the doctors said,
claimed her body created a hostile environment
for the male fetus.
Five never-born sons
Five unseen brothers
Five failure marks in Mom’s column
of the marriage scorecard
Six decades of my father’s disappointment
On the other hand, the inside of my mother
was mahogany-red
cozy for girls like me. I snuggled in, feasted,
watched movies through her belly button,
tasted her fear
at the five-month mark, the gallows mile marker
for the boys. She’d light another cigarette
slip her hand across her belly, the skin tent
between us,
and whisper a prayer.
I’ve always loved my ghost brothers; they are
wolves
patrolling the edge of my sleep. They keep me safe
from the worst of my nightmares
crushing the fear in their jaws,
then going back on patrol for more. I wonder
how much they know about our family
about the complicated mothering
of she who carried us inside her.
When I was little I had no idea