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Always Messing with them Boys
Jessica Helen Lopez            
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My Aging Face


My aging face is like the moon
craters and pock marks gone amuck
moon shoe footprints stamp their
exploration all over my laugh lines

I revel in the newness of my oldness
that I suspect in the mirror
I watch how crowfs
feet mosh in a collective
concerto, cliff dive off
the razor sharp Jemez
of my cheekbones
wrinkles will do
the backstroke into
the pools of skin
skinny-dipping under
each squinted eye

I dry
like baked sand
red clay
evaporated
water

I wouldnft exchange this skin
for any other, no other skin
could tell my story
sing a psalm for mothers
my arms shape a cradle
my skin spoons my lover
no other skin can spell
the havoc and strife,
the strain of stretch marks,
the clumsy cesarean scar mark,

the way the rolling landscape of my belly can
the way the slow descent of the valley of the breasts can
the Panama Canal split of skin can
the gorge of discolored puckered skin can
no other skin can tell my story like it can

I want time to ravage my face
roughen my cheeks like the
ruins of Macchu Picchu
I want my eyebrows to grow out into
a single bird,
like the one that flies
the face that frames Frida

I want Plato to play about
my drooping chin
dropping in to carve
out the deepest of manifestos
a map of Hellenic proportions

I want gravity to play
croquette upon my forehead
stop for tea around my two lips
and spill its wrinkled secrets
bleeding the edges of my lipstic
pursing the peck of all my kisses

Time do what you will
to my body, play savage
chords upon my biology
ripen my theology
feed my voracious hunger for poetry
insatiable poetry
kissing poetry
drinking poetry
licking poetry

color divinity
upon the tops
of my hands and
between my legs
grey my hair
down there
until I see
God

the dark star
of menopause
Autumn of my ovaries
Indian Summer
Winter slumber
silly solstice of the womb

Years of knotting my daughterfs braids and buns
fixing up buttons, tying shoes and typing memories
will have tangled the joints of fingers, disjointed discs
worn out wombs, curving
a spine like a smile
hunching an old lady
into happiness

My aging face is like Port
the long wait of faith
a goblet of ripened wine
a porous cork and
a dying of blush in the cheeks

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