Not Your Bitch: The Poetry Series with Sissy Buckles

Bob in Mexico

Bob’s pale long thin body
graceful in black wife-beater tee
bony hips pressing 501’s
wanders up the cliffs of San Miguel
in $3.00 thrift store wingtips
stopping to muse on a wooden cross at the top
where a mexican peasant died
Pedro Santiago
scratched in coroded wood
where now brown kids in rags
are playing with their madres
having a picnic on the rocks
overcast day June 13, 1992 in Mexico
Rockabilly Bob skinny from five years of drugs
a lovable wreck mugging for me
his ancient profile
my own silent movie
we were kicked out of the VW van
by Audie and Jennifer so they could make it
after 400 miles traveling down baja
Bob’s hand down my shirt
in the rear view mirror
they just couldn’t take it anymore
and kicked us out on the San Miguel cliffs
with one lawn chair
and no beer.

_____________________

He Say

Should I feel humiliated
or grateful
that we can put Bob Crosby and his Bobcats
on my turntable
The Big Noise in Winnetka
nobody whistles in songs anymore
together
on my made for once bed
and not
bug each other’s nerves
yet
except when I think he’s being sarcastic
and putting me down
I think
with Special Catholic Boys School digs
except now he claims to be agnostic at 42
I was once agnostic
before I was a pagan
before I was a nihilist
before I was a born again
but now I’m just a frustrated woman
also horny
but I never was a catholic
so maybe I missed the point
but
is it funny
to take off my shirt
and kiss my breasts
(your brother in LA said you were a boob man)
to take off my skirt
and slip
(I took off my bra)
and feel my wet black tights
front & back
my faster sighs
and then he say
“I gotta go home”
and then he get mad when I say
“you have great moral fiber”
but he just wants to go home
he say.

________________________

A snake skin full of piss…

Hooked on those reality shows
watching one with the survivor dude
drinking his own piss from a snake’s skin
he’s been carrying through the desert
after first killing the snake
and running out of water
he pees into the skin behind a rock
to save himself from a dearth of oasis
so now he’s really thirsty
emptying the skin into his mouth
choking on his own nasty taste
spills it all out, the urine
running down his chin and neck
gagging, almost retching the sour brew
while the complete camera crew
follows closely behind
filming every flying droplet.

__________________

Electronic Postcards

sorry for the crappy phone pics I sent of my dog…
I keep asking myself why don’t I care
or bother to take better (and more) pics
and post them on the internet like everybody else,
maybe fearful that one day they’ll just be
a sorry figment of our collective imagination,
like once fashionable irony or Myspace
becoming a tiresome bore?
Then all this could be gone,
if you blinked your eyes but twice?
Years ago he said he imagined
that my neck smelled like gingerbread…
the odds are against me now
vintage postcards and boned waist cinchers
are reduced to being quaint and
even my neighbors hate me because I listen to jazz
I was born 38DD
I’m not going to stop drinking beer now
just to be a size zero.
And this weekend my brother-in-law Gregg
is having some real fun at MoKan HAMB drags,
and I have a good book (Blue Monday, Fats Domino)
to read for the beach tomorrow,
Antoine Dominique born/raised in New Orleans
he even made it out of Katrina
rescued from his roof in the Lower Ninth Ward,
so I guess it’s as good gets,
for now,
hasta

_________________

Vintage Queen

And damn Lorna,
tonight I’m sure missing
my visits to your pad
for local music gossip and cocktails,
the original Band-Aide Penny Lane
who gave me my first lesson
in Depression-era hats,
Bakelite and Fiestaware,
checking out your latest hip
thrift shop treasures,
dissect your frantic new beau
as only best friends can.
You’d casually light my cig
with a vintage lighter
from your collection,
and we’d giggle for hours
over art, poems, and porn.

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A Red Shawl from The Rio Grande By Sissy Buckles

I found a bright nostalgic woolen shawl
smelling of red, blue, and purple dyes
tightly woven soft wool in a perfect graceful drape;
on the tag – Hand Loomed by the Rio Grande Weavers.
When I saw the shawl in a vintage shop
I pictured the yellow rose wearing it
from that folk ballad ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’:

“When the Rio Grande is flowing,
the starry skies are bright,
She walks along the river
in the quiet summer night…”

slender stemmed reeds whispering a homesick song,
my long yearning of Texas, closer
like it’s just peeking from out of a cloud,
to swim and feel the warmth of Lake Travis
wrapped around my body in water so clear and pure
you can see straight down to it’s rock bottom,
and the need to get out there sooner, than later…
Meantime reading ancient Chinese T’ang poems
whose meditative, hip, tragic poignancy
shaped a tradition urging us all to be lyrical –
the neighborhood grocer, your sister & brother,
corner liquor store clerk, mother, mechanic, a sweet old aunt.
We all should be writing wild late night subversive poetry,
converted 2:00AM insomniacs when sleep is defiant,
maybe listen to old jazz on 88.3 radio,
the night is long and cold, my new red shawl
wrapped close around my shoulders,
smoke a cig, or two/Sangria wine, just me
drinking alone with the moon.

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Wearing Vintage Black by Sissy Buckles

Anton Chekhov got it all wrong
in The Seagull,
and Masha is not in mourning for her life
but rather celebrating,
and yes, lucky to be breathing
and not thrown into mental institutions
by our families
like Ginsberg’s one-time girl Elise Cowen,
“Alone, Weeping, I woke weeping,
Alone, In black park of bed”
frontal lobotomized electroshock
over medicated into anti-psychotic
quetiapined silence,
jumping off penthouse balconies,
our poems pissed on
stolen and held for ransom
by confused boyfriends,
and not destroyed by madness
but lucky to be breathing,
wearing vintage black now
and writing.

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