Total Facts Known

i.

Fact: Faces in agony & faces in ecstasy resemble each other for a reason.

Fact: Pain is dissociative, overwhelming, all-encompassing. A knife that stabs where every joint bends, the insides of your eyelids & the walls of your cunt.

Fact: Talking about a hard thing in therapy, I feel a stir in a tender point. While I know that’s not surprising, my sudden inability to white-knuckle through it is. C’mon girl, breathe, move around a little – but that’s just not working today. It, agonizingly, becomes too intense: A ramp up from background ache, white noise, vague radio static; to pointed, incisive, insistent, greedy. I massage my own shoulder & make sounds that I don’t expect myself to – precisely identical to the sounds I make when I’m getting fucked, hard. I finally say “You are hearing me make some very… Intimate noises.” to my therapist, who graciously laughs, touches their hand to their sternum. “I must really trust you, or something,” I giggle & tap my own sternum back – but then it’s too much again. I wince, see white stars burst behind my eyelids.

Fact: Pain is also an intimacy, an invitation, a softening, an opening. Pain is your body crossing its own threshold & still holding itself upright.

Fact: I write every spike, throb, wave, undulation in stardust. Continue reading →

“The Pool”

Old men flock in locker rooms,

their tattoos stretched by gravity beyond recognition,

a 1971 bleeding heart with an arrow through the middle,

now a flattened marshmallow with sticks protruding from its sides.

They move slowly these days, like molasses, spreading out onto benches

with all of their stuff: straps and bands, towels and tubes of Aspercreme,

trails of wet gray lint soughing off of their shriveled legs as they trudge

into musty shower stalls.

Their wives walk the lazy river beside the pool,

pushing against the current, praying that Lipitor and eating

more beets and kale will do the trick. “Purple means freedom,”

says the chatty lifeguard whose voice echoes over water. It’s the way

she codes her notes, how she manages her time she explains on her

blood-red iPhone.

There are babies being tossed into the kiddie pool, unafraid to leave

their mothers’ waters for the second time, kicking as naturally as guppies.

They need to acquire this skill now to prevent them from drowning later.

There’s always a baby found in some neighbor’s pool, usually around the

4^th of July, when too many people are more concerned about the potato salad

going bad.

The sign reads to shower before you enter the pool, but I never do.

The lifeguards don’t pull rank; I think they may have been tossed into pools

as babies, all of that control and responsibility, the way they see dead people

bobbing in the water; that it would certainly be their fault. I choose to clean myself

with a splash in Lane One, lemon-yellow flippers attached to my feet, propelling me

half-way across the pool in eight strokes. If someone tells me that I’m cheating,

I will remind them that it really doesn’t matter since we are all living on borrowed time.

  Continue reading →

Husband Potential

Huda Al-Marashi’s First Comes Marriage

I cannot remember a time when I didn’t think of Hadi Ridha as a potential husband. The day my family  first met the Ridhas, Mrs. Ridha took one look at me—six years old and my hair in braids—and my baby sister, Lina, and praised God  with a heartfelt “Mashallah, mashallah.” “We don’t need to look anymore,” she said, “We found our pretty girls.”

At the time, I didn’t know that my father and Dr. Ridha had gone to the same medical school in Baghdad. I didn’t know that they’d found each other  at an American Academy of Neurology meeting in San Diego and that Dr. Ridha had invited us to his home for dinner. I didn’t know that the Ridhas were also Iraqi and Shia, because those were descriptors I still didn’t know to apply to myself.

All I knew that day was that the Ridhas were different in the same way we were different. They spoke Arabic with “ch” sounds, replacing the “k” sounds; they ate rice with stews called marga; and they kept their five daily prayers, even though Mrs. Ridha, like Mama, did not cover her hair with the hijab. These were my signs that of the two types of boys in the world—those who were possible to marry and those who were impossible—the Ridha boys belonged to the former, the small population of boys from which I’d be allowed to choose a husband.

Continue reading →

EXECUTIVE OFFER

Howdy. Amigo.

My name is not important. Call me the voice above. With all the planes and helicopters buzzing overhead, some of the true patriots will be dropping my truth, my leaflets, my truthlets to float down to you folk. If you have the blessed fortune to be holding this sheet of paper in your hands, then you’re on the final stretch. Read on to find out how you can make a difference.

You may know the big man, el jefe naranja, paid your island a visit. That much is true. But the mainstream media always got to put a spin on things. If the mainstream media had been around when Jesus-our-lord-and-savior walked this Earth, they’d say he was the leader of some cannibalistic cult. So… it should come as no surprise that those smoothie-sipping, scum-sucking journalists skipped the most important part of the president’s visit to Puerto Rico.

Sure, they covered that neat scene where he threw paper towel rolls at all you excited natives in the church. And the cameras captured el presidente letting your governor Ricky sit on his right side and patting that nervous boy’s hand. Hell, el hombre con manos enormes even congratulated all the agencies on a job well done before the real work could get into full swing. Generous. Compassionate. Congratulatory. A shining example of the commander-in-chief in action.

But the journalists got to turn every story into a smoothie. They take a great man’s words, put them into a blender, and hit spin to get their next headline. Here is what the president said word-for-word:

“Every death is a horror, but if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous – hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died – and you look at what happened here with really a storm that was just totally overpowering, nobody’s ever seen anything like this. And what is – what is your death count as of this moment? 17? 16 people certified. 16 people versus in the thousands. Uh, you can be very proud of all of your people, all of our people, working together. 16 versus literally thousands of people.”

Now look at how the headlines twisted his words:

*President Says Hurricane Maria Was Not ‘a Real Catastrophe Like Hurricane Katrina’

*President Says Puerto Rico Should Be Proud of Hurricane Death Toll

*Puerto Rico: President Compares Maria and Katrina Deaths

Listen, over 1800 people died because Hurricane Katrina hit America. For the sake of math, let’s say that 18 of you people died because Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico. If you want to play that death count comparison game, then you could say that Puerto Ricans are 100 times stronger than the average American. Of course, the president, el jefe que caga oro, knows that NO ONE is stronger than the average American. Therefore, he could not have been making such a comparison at that time.

See? Simple logic is all it takes to defeat the mainstream media. Don’t believe their lies. Don’t even try to debate them. Two words is all they deserve: ¡FAKE NEWS!

Now that we’re on the same page, let’s get the story straight. The big man was not downplaying deaths and leaving your island to rot. No, he wanted to make Puerto Rico a deal, but he knew that he couldn’t trust the dishonest media to tell you about it.

That’s where I come in, compañeros. I am the president’s strong teeth, his wise tongue, his stern but sensual lips. Here is the deal that none of the major news outlets are covering. This executive offer comes direct to you from el hombre con la boca hermosa:

Tired of being a second-class citizen with no voting rights in a government of the people, by the people, for the people… except for you people? Then this offer is for you, Puerto Rico! For the month of October only, as part of ongoing relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Maria, you’ll now be able to vote for three assistance packages with your lives¹:

Hurricane Maria Level (10+ deaths): a free financial lecture and paper towel rolls thrown at your face (you’re welcome)

Hurricane Ike Level (100+ deaths): a two-week business course that covers how to clear fallen forests to make way for golf resorts

Hurricane Katrina Level (1000+ deaths): a power grid that works some of the time and 15 minutes of national news coverage (commercial breaks included)

But wait, there’s more. Die in the next 48 hours, and you’ll receive an all-expenses-paid trip to Mar-a-Lagooooo², regardless of total death count!³

¡Vaya con Dios!

¹Applicants who don’t speak good American and who don’t agree that this is the greatest deal ever will not receive a vote. The president is the greatest deal-maker of all time. He has the best words.

²Must use back entrance.

³Your death must be deemed to be hurricane-related and will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Any and all restrictions apply. Cases open to consideration include, but are not limited to, death due to downed power lines; lack of adequate medical care for cancer, advanced diabetes, heart conditions, etc.; generator fires, explosions, and carbon monoxide fumes; flooding, absence of clean drinking water, and waterborne diseases (including leptospirosis); heat exhaustion from waiting in lines; being out after curfew; gunfights over gasoline and/or gasoline containers; falling bridges, trees, and/or coconuts; angry women named Maria; and a hopeless bleak despair that tracks you in the darkness and seeps into your soul, and which cannot stem from the fear of being forgotten (for in that fear, there would still be hope) but must be borne by the realization that your death counts more than your life ever could.

Berry Picking

I strolled down raspberry isles

a little overgrown, endless

choosing the Tulameens

rosy and polished when ripe, tart

the way I knew you’d prefer.

Warm hours filling green baskets

of berries and doubt this might make a difference.

A fine dusty layer of dry filth

covered my feet, legs, silence,

on hands that reached deep into the bushes

where no one looks

where vicious thorns are grander,

but so is the fruit, and possibly your

renewed love for me with them too.

Continue reading →