ALSO BY PATRICIA LOCKWOOD
Balloon Pop Outlaw Black
(Octopus Books)
PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published in Penguin Books 2014
Copyright © 2014 by Patricia Lockwood
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Page vii constitutes an extension of this copyright page.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Lockwood, Patricia.
Motherland, fatherland, homelandsexuals / Patricia Lockwood.
pages cm.—(Penguin poets)
ISBN 978-0-698-15678-4 (eBook)
I. Title.
PS3612.O27M68 2014
811'.6—dc23
2013049362
Version_1
CONTENTS
Also by Patricia Lockwood
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Is Your Country a He or a She in Your Mouth
Search “Lizard Vagina” and You Shall Find
The Whole World Gets Together and Gangbangs a Deer
He Marries the Stuffed-Owl Exhibit
An Animorph Enters the Doggie-Dog World
The Hatfields and McCoys
The Arch
When the World Was Ten Years Old
List of Cross-Dressing Soldiers
The Hunt for a Newborn Gary
The Fake Tears of Shirley Temple
A Recent Transformation Tries to Climb the Stairs
The Feeling of Needing a Pen
Nessie Wants to Watch Herself Doing It
Bedbugs Conspire to Keep Me from Greatness
Last of the Late Great Gorilla-Suit Actors
Factories Are Everywhere in Poetry Right Now
Revealing Nature Photographs
See a Furious Waterfall Without Water
Love Poem Like We Used to Write It
Why Haven’t You Written
Rape Joke
The Hornet Mascot Falls in Love
The Descent of the Dunk
The Third Power
Natural Dialogue Grows in the Woods
The Brave Little _____ Goes to School
There Were No New Colors for Years
Perfect Little Mouthfuls
The Father and Mother of American Tit-Pics
The Hypno-Domme Speaks, and Speaks and Speaks
About the Author
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to the editors of the following publications, where some of these poems first appeared:
AGNI
The Awl
Colorado Review
Denver Quarterly
Fence
Gulf Coast
Hazlitt
The London Review of Books
The New Yorker
North American Review
PEN Poetry Series
Poetry
A Public Space
Slate
Tin House
Is Your Country a He or a She in Your Mouth
Mine is a man I think, I love men, they call me
a fatherlandsexual, all the motherlandsexuals
have been sailed away, and there were never
any here in the first place, they tell us. Myself
I have never seen a mountain, myself I have
never seen a valley, especially not my own,
I am afraid of the people who live there,
who eat hawk and wild rice from my pelvic
bone. Oh no, I am fourteen, I have walked
into my motherland’s bedroom, her body
is indistinguishable from the fatherland
who is “loving her” from behind, so close
their borders match up, except for a notable
Area belonging to the fatherland. I am drawn
to the motherland’s lurid sunsets, I am reaching
my fingers to warm them, the people in my
valley are scooping hawk like crazy, I can no
longer tell which country is which, salt air off
both their coasts, so gross, where is a good nice gulp
of Midwestern pre-tornado? The tornado above me
has sucked up a Cow, the motherland declares,
the tornado above him has sucked up a Bull,
she says pointing to the fatherland. But the cow
is clearly a single cow, chewing a single cud
of country, chewing their countries into one,
and “I hate these country!” I scream, and
their eyes shine with rain and fog, because
at last I am using the accent of the homeland,
at last I am a homelandsexual and I will never
go away from them, there will one day be two
of you too they say, but I am boarding myself
already, I recede from their coasts like a Superferry
packed stem to stern with citizens, all waving hellos
and goodbyes, and at night all my people go below
and gorge themselves with hunks of hawk,
the traditional dish of the new floating heartland.
Search “Lizard Vagina” and You Shall Find
A higher country had a question, a higher
country searched and found me, and the name
of the country was north of me, Canada.
When I think of you I think up there just as I
think when I think of my brain, my brain
and the bad sunning lizard inside it. Today
you searched “lizard vagina,” Canada. It is so
hugely small if you can imagine it; it is scaled
it is scaled so far down. It evolved over many
millions of years to be perfectly invisible to you;
and so you will never see it, Canada. Here is
some pornography, if it will help: tongues flick
out all over the desert! Next time try thunder
lizard vagina. That will be big enough for even
you, Canada. You have one somewhere
in your hills, or else somewhere in your badlands.
Perhaps someone is uncovering a real one right
now, with a pickaxe a passion and a patience.
Ever since she was a child she knew what she
would do. She buttons her background-colored
clothes, she bends down to her work;
keep spreading,
Canada, she will show you to yourself.
Your down there that is, my Up There. Oh South oh
South oh South you think, oh West oh West now West
say you. The pickaxe the passion and the patience
hea
rs, pink tongue between her lips just thinking.
The stones and the sand and the hollows they watch
her. The tip of her tongue thinks almost out loud,
“I have a brain am in a brain brain suns itself in lizard
too. Where would I be if I were what I wanted?”
Has a feeling finally, swings the pickaxe- the passion-
and the patience-tip down.
The Whole World Gets Together and Gangbangs a Deer
Bambi is fresh from the countryside. Bambi is fresh
and we want him on film. He doesn’t even know
how to kiss yet. “Lean in and part your lips,” we say,
“and pull a slow strip off a tree.” We shine our biggest
And under the spotlight the deer drips sweat, and what
do deer like more than salt. “Now look at the fawn
and grow an antler,” we patiently instruct him. “It will
grow from your thoughts like the ones on your head.”
Oh Bambi says the fawn, oh Bambi. Fresh grass-stains
around the young mouth. Every deer gets called Bambi
at least once in its life, every deer must answer to Bambi,
every deer hears don’t kill Bambi, every deer hears don’t
eat Bambi, every deer hears LOOK OH LOOK it’s Bambi.
When the deer all die they will die of genericide, of one
baby name for the million of them. Then women begin
to be called Bambi, and then deer understand what women
are like: light-shafts of long blond hair and long legs.
The sun piercing through the Bavarian trees and the sun
touching down on the dewy green ground. Then women
begin to be called Fawn, and then women begin to say
Bambi oh Bambi. And their mouths are open and they
gape like a mouth when it takes a big bite of spring green.
The spotlight shines down through the trees in long legs.
This is the first movie most of us see. Small name
for a small deer: Bambi. Sometimes he feels all the deer
could fit inside him. The movie we are making is this one:
all the deer in one deer one after another. Subtitles
so we know what his soft sounds are saying. Mostly he says
THE MEADOW, THE MEADOW! like the women who are
Bambi say GOD OH GOD. What they mean is a wide open
space, a great clearing. All the deer and us watching in a great
open field. A great wide clearing in the face of the deer
says THE MEADOW, THE MEADOW! and all of us watching.
The deer’s mouths moving as if they are reading.
But no, they are eating the grass.
He Marries the Stuffed-Owl Exhibit at the Indiana Welcome Center
He marries her mites and the wires in her wings,
he marries her yellow glass eyes and black centers,
he marries her near-total head turn, he marries
the curve of each of her claws, he marries
the information plaque, he marries the extinction
of this kind of owl, he marries the owl
that she loved in life and the last thought of him
in the thick of her mind
just one inch away from the bullet, there,
he marries the moths
who make holes in the owl, who have eaten the owl
almost all away, he marries the branch of the tree
that she grips, he marries the real-looking moss
and dead leaves, he marries the smell of must
that surrounds her, he marries the strong blue
stares of children, he marries nasty smudges
of their noses on the glass, he marries the camera
that points at the owl to make sure no one steals her,
so the camera won’t object when he breaks the glass
while reciting some vows that he wrote himself,
he screams OWL instead of I’LL and then ALWAYS
LOVE HER, he screams HAVE AND TO HOLD
and takes hold of the owl and wrenches the owl
away from her branch
and he covers her in kisses and the owl
thinks, “More moths,” and at the final hungry kiss,
“That must have been the last big bite, there is no more
of me left to eat and thank God,” when he marries
the stuffing out of the owl and hoots as the owl flies out
under his arm, they elope into the darkness of Indiana,
Indiana he screams is their new life and WELCOME.
They live in a tree together now, and the children of
Welcome to Indiana say who even more than usual,
and the children of Welcome to Indiana they wonder
where they belong. Not in Indiana, they say to themselves,
the state of all-consuming love, we cannot belong in Indiana,
as night falls and the moths appear one by one, hungry.
An Animorph Enters the Doggie-Dog World
Discover the power at age eleven. Discover all powers
at age eleven. A kittenhead struggles out of your face
and the kittenhead mews MILK, you gasp with its
mouth and it slurps itself back. Yet the mew for MILK
remains, you drink it. You think, “I am an Animorph.”
Your sight and your hearing increase, like wheat
and the wind in the wheat. Well you’ve never seen
trembling ears. Blue sky increases above the wheat
and you know what it’s like to grow a . . . well.
A hawk’s is between two legs but much higher.
Halfway to any animal is where you like
to be. Get halfway there and have just the instinct,
the instinct that someone’s approaching. Stripes
begin to form, are always a surprise, you look
down and you move your head left to right and then
the meaning comes. English get worse but not much
in your muzzle, English get worse but not much
in your mouth. You walk to school and sit next
to a girl who was born with a tail and you copy off
her. You rub your temples when they ache, rub any
of your body when it aches, you seem to be only
a series of places where animal parts could emerge.
Soon you will be a teenager, and soon you will be
so greasy, and how you can hardly wait, because:
its grease makes the animal graceful, and go. You go
to the petting zoo with your class and timidly reach
in a hand. Turn to a donkey and finally
feel your lashes are long enough. Turn to a horse
and finally feel that your eyes are so meltingly human.
Walk home on your own through the fields and the fields,
and the increase of wheat and the wind in it, and think
of the life that stretches before you: work your way
through all the animals, and come to the end of them,
and what? And turn to crickets, and make no noise?
One tear struggles out of your face, but no that’s not
a tear. “I fuckin eat crickets,” your kittenhead says,
“I fuckin eat silence of crickets for fun. I got life after
life and a name like Baby. Every time I try to cry a tear
a new kittenhead grows out of me.” And oh how you
are lifted, then,
the kittenhead of you in the high hawk hold.
The Hatfields and McCoys
I am waiting for the day when the Hatfields
and McCoys finally become interesting to me,
when they flare with significance at last as if
they’d been written in Early Times Whiskey
and the match of my sight had been flicked
and was racing now along them, and racing
like a line to their houses—who wasted
all this whiskey, and now everything is lit up:
how they hid behind trunks of oaks, and hid
behind herds of cows, how they aimed like teats
at each other and shot death in a straight white
line; I will learn how it began, probably over
a . . . gal, or McCoy gave a Hatfield an unfair
grade for a paper about mammals he worked
really hard on, and his dad to whom grades
were life and death kindled a torch in the night,
and burned her grading hand to ashes along
with all the rest of her, but her name McCoy
escaped from the fire and woke up in seven
brothers. I will learn how
their underdrawers fought each other while
hanging on the line, how socks disappeared
from their pairs, how new mailmen were killed
every day touching poisoned postcards they sent
to each other, which said things like Wish you
WERENT here, and GOODBYE from sunny Spain,
I will learn precise numbers of people who died
and where they put all the bodies, under the garden
maybe, where they helped grow blood-red carrots
that longed to lodge in enemy throats,
where they helped grow brooding tomatoes
that were still considered deadly back then, as part
of the nightshade family. Two of their babies
fell in love, because love comes earlier for people
who live in the past and the mountains,
and when they turned one year old
they were told they were Hatfields and McCoys,
and one locked his lips grimly on a breast that night
and drank milk until he died, the other took an entire
bottle of Doctor Samson’s Soothing Syrup for Crybaby