I dreamed
I had open-heart surgery,
completely awake (inside the dream)
All the lights were sharp
and all the knives were dull
You were the surgeon
and you kept promising, over and over
that you had washed your hands
which meant that you hadn’t.
“Kissing Toads”
Hop came the toad
He told me
“You are gorgeous.”
He sang me punk rock lullabies
“Baby, baby, baby
Won’t you be my girl?”
So, I kissed the toad.
He became a punk rock boy.
I stayed a punk rock girl
but punk rock boy wanted more.
so I learned to give up my thighs
before I was ready.
When my gift was too far in between
I was replaced by faster girls
in back seats.
So, I never believed that fairytales were meant for me.
“Varinia A. Rodriguez is a Frida Kahlo painting: surreal, divine and unexpected. She is an amalgamation of ten thousand jellyfish all swimming together, forming something that almost resembles a form in its unity, but always changing. Reading Rodriguez’s poetry I’ve never felt like I’m in the same place twice. Her poems feel like déjà vu, familiar but somehow brand new. Her poems feel like ten strangers shoved together inside of a hostel and forced to reconcile their songs of the open road. Her poems feel like getting home from a trip and finding sand in the back pocket of your favorite pair of jeans. Her poems feel like photographs, urgent to grab the small intimacies of a big world. Varinia speaks of trauma, and heartache, and missed connections. She speaks of magic and wanderlust and love. Some of her poems wash over you like a cool wave on a hot day. Some burn on the way down like a shot of rum on an empty stomach. All of her poetry is worth cherishing, and the kind of thing that will catch you in your own holy moments, and having you questioning just where you keep the passion in your life, and how do you manifest your own dreams?” ~Brice Maiurro
Get your copy of “The Jellyfish Dream” at the link below!
http://www.lulu.com/shop/varinia-rodriguez/the-jellyfish-dream/paperback/product-23851855.html?utm_source=GeniusMonkey_VT
i’m an artist
yesterday i
watched through
your window as
you made breakfast
i wanted you to
feel me
i wondered if you
could feel my
eyes like hands
running up your
sides touching
your thighs
like fingers
touching your lips
running through
your hair grabbing
your hips
pressing against
your ass
i wondered if
you knew that
i was watching or
if you knew
what I was thinking
baby,
i’m an artist
and the view
from the fence
is spectacular.
I’m seated at an outdoor cafe
sipping coffee, reading a novel,
when a thing in tattered clothes stumbles by
pursued by an angry mob
wielding tire irons and baseball bats.
It’s a hot, stifling day.
The beach is closed from contamination.
The blood-bars don’t open until three.
This is bound to happen.
Everything is as it should be,
everything is here, except
you and that changes
everything here,
Bessie the dog is sad-eyed,
the cats are sulking,
the radio is quiet,
t.v. off
your absence strolls
through the house, I
can feel you moving
by me; evening has
noticed, it’s autumn
presence falling like a
soldier weary of war,
putting down his
weapon and laying
down his head on the
earth to hear your
footsteps finally
coming home and
knowing everything
will be okay.
The Grande Ballroom in Detroit
dispensed music and sin seven days a week
for six years, until it ran out of money.
Even Ted Nugent sounded cogent
while describing his love for the place.
Alice Cooper, the MC5, Muddy Waters,
Cream, Led Zeppelin, the Who, BB King,
Frank Zappa, Iggy, the Grateful Dead
and countless other bands graced the stage.
The dressing room was open for groupies
and folks who wanted to tune Jeff Beck’s guitar.
Kids got down behind the stage.
Their parents couldn’t care less
what they were doing, or with whom.
A joyful, decadent time, before Detroit
collapsed into ruins, taking the Grande with it.
One frigid March afternoon in 2013,
I stood on the corner next to the Grande,
took cell phone photos of two friends
as they huddled beside the chain link fence.
They’d lived in Detroit their whole lives,
and had driven past the Grande
hundreds of times since its closure.
Still, they humored my need for documentation.
The two had been married
forty years, and were still in love,
but a little bored with each other.
He was an angry union guy on a vegan diet
who worked for the phone company,
and she had been fired ten years earlier
from her travel industry job.
They scowled as they leaned against
the crumbling bricks of the defunct ballroom,
the vivid pain of a Michigan winter
like angry red scratches across their faces.
Later, the woman showed me scars on her belly
from where her stomach had exploded
a few months beforehand. She almost died twice.
The scars were raw and purple, and
her skin bulged and sagged with their weight.
I stared, unable to comprehend.
Me: west coast girl, the one who escaped.
Seattle will collapse like Detroit, she said.
Everything on the west coast will one day
look exactly like the Grande Ballroom.
I laughed, said this was impossible.
A few months later, they stopped talking to me.
Of course, my friend was right, but I can’t
be blamed for my refusal to believe.
Like those kids behind the stage,
I needed my illusions to last forever.
Now, when I look at the mirror
and the street corner, all I see is wreckage.
Perhaps if I run fast enough,
I can twist the knob in reverse,
go backwards and restore everything:
the ballroom, Detroit, this damaged land
that somehow allowed me to survive,
my lost friendships, and more than anything else,
all the times I turned away instead of listening.
dim the lights
hit the music
and grab a
clean towel
it’s time to
release the
poison again
maybe, just
maybe
somehow
before i die
i’ll get to have
a partner in
this
i think we all
know why my
wrists are riddled
with arthritis
