3 AM

3 a.m. phone calls

cutting through silence

the jagged edges

where i used to tell you about my dreams,

nightscapes of thrashing nightmares

crashing through my sleepwalk sleeping

soft and low i could hear you breathing

as i raged and stormed

sketching my death monsters in the air

static live wires,

you received them

held them in your hand

weighed them

let them drop

massive and writhing

on the floor

i think it scared you,

the pretty girl with the ugly dreams

startled and shaking

i would call just to see

if you were still breathing

all i could see

coming out of my pillows

was blood and bone

i had a dream.

who died.

everyone. all the time,

i howled until the line went quiet.

i still wake

swimming under the covers

the slow pulsating sickness

trapped in sleep moving pictures

i reach for the phone

wanting to unleash them

into the earlynightmorning

but there is no number

to dial anymore

Dreamscapes

dreamscapes haunt walking hours

shadowing my footsteps

rolling like fog in my breath

white and wounded

fragmented ghosts

that paint the skin behind my eyelids

bodies that hang from rafters

fish mouths gaping

arms flailing over the frayed noose

hospital doors

and the wave of dread

radiating from the exit sign

bullet holes and shattered glass

dummy bodies on the floor

toes sticky with blood

the woman with the broken face

the smiling neck stitched and raw

waking to sleep

with scratches that span my fingers

searching for who is not there

who is missing from the side.

Feminism is Not a Dirty Word...

If I have not declared it before...I am a feminist. Gasp! Oh No! That dirty word... This is the reaction most people have to the term. Some of the disgust may not be unwarranted, because, in my mind there is a misconception of what feminism is today. In our post-post modern times (yes folks, sadly we left postmodernity some time ago), feminism has dropped it's first, second, and third wave meanings. This does not mean that hose meanings still do not pervade the term. They certainly do. However, the kind of feminism that I am proposing is not only about women and social, economic, political, relational, etc. quality, but about equality for all groups of people who are marginalized, stigmatized, weeded out by social discourses that fear "the other," that constantly seek to pick out that "which does not belong." Feminism, today, I would argue, is not about women hating men for all the evils of the world (although there are some warranted reasons for that hate at times...), it is about striving for a world that is not filled with judgment, hatred, poverty, pain, suffering, violence, despair. It is about striving for a world where people are free to be who they are without fear of being hurt, raped, mutilated, ostracized, exiled, etc. Therefore, anyone who respects the humanity in each person is a feminist to me.

Why am I ranting? I suppose I must come off as too hopeful. I am not hopeful that I will live to see the day when the world will possibly look like this. However, that does not mean that I can't fight for it while I'm alive. I'm sure women (White and African-American) during the suffrage movement were told many times that their dreams were impossible. If someone had stopped fighting then, I might not have the privilege to vote for our shitty presidents today. The point is I feel very passionately about helping those that cannot help themselves--not because they are not strong enough--but because we live in a society, we live in a world, that sometimes works incredibly hard against them.

Okay, so the point of this post. Finally! I am currently working on a paper (that I can hopefully submit somewhere) about the relationship between gender, race, violence, and the nation with a specific focus on the "borderlands" (the U.S./Mexico border), and even more specifically about the situation in Juarez, Mexico. In short, over the past 13 years more than 400 women have gone missing, and have been found dead, or are presumed to be dead, within and outside the city of Juarez (which is near El, Paso TX). The Mexican government has done very little to further the investigation over the past 13 years, and the majority of the murders remain unsolved. The majority of the women are young factory workers, who work in the maquiladoras (see: globalization) and who are, for the most part, kidnapped as they go to or leave work. Most of them are then raped, mutilated, and dumped in the desert or the streets of Juarez. This situation is clear example of how a cultural understanding of women within a nation can be tied to violence and the body. In a culture, where women are to remain silent, remain pious, are kept in the background--then violence is easily justified (theoretically, not morally). Women's body's, in this case, become objects subjected to physical manifestations of machismo and physical signs of a disregard for human rights.

If you want some more information on this situation, you can start here:

http://www.amnesty.org/es/alfresco_asset/24a3f182-a438-11dc-bac9-0158df32ab50/amr410112004es.html (P.S.--this one is in Spanish)

http://www.now.org/nnt/fall-2006/juarez.html

Things I've Been Doodling

Nothing with any Certainty

“i know nothing with any certainty,
but the sight of stars makes me dream.
--vincent van gogh

lying back in carpets of grass
drowning in the night sky
pools of blackness and neon puddles
engulf me suspend me protect me
FIELD CLOSED
and my feet don’t seem to mind
i trail the blades of grass
sharp lines between my toes
sharp cuts into my thoughts
the moon refuses to show her face tonight
perhaps she knows i shine enough for both of us
or she is a captive of the same manipulative thoughts
that hold my words for ransom
until i wrap them in suitcases of skin and bones
offering them as ultimate sacrifices
to the ghosts that drift the corridors of the mind
still moments such as these
with the languid breeze
licking my wounds soothing my skin hiding my scars
my skin doesn’t feel unknown to me
the ghosts don’t scream and beckon for payment
with the damp grass at my back
i do not worry of what must be offered next
to appease these abductors of thought
the neon puddles shine unwavering
there is no baggage for me to carry
tonight--EAC

fell asleep with the pen
clenched between my fingers
again last night
the rapid flutter of drug heavy honey eyelashes
and I lost the ability to evacuate
these swarm of bee thoughts
clamoring at my honeyhive
unconsciousness drowned the persistent droning
still I slept with my hand spread
across the page
grasping its smooth finish
like a mason jar half full
my callus broken hands
covering viscous words
still thinking they could
drag me back to inspiration
unyielding
before the beekeeper returned to check
the safety of his buzzing teeming minions.--EAC

Writing from Another Time

a work in progress

-for an old friend-

i know now.
august of last year would be the last time
i would ever see you.
i crave that night street cool breeze lane
where my captivity first began
to begin that night again
just to slow the second hand
as it made shadows multiply
on familiar concrete under possessive summer skies
the sun had started to fall, the air no longer thick and heavy
but moving swiftly over my skin
we were on the creaking wooden porch
me in a swing
you in a chair
blocking my vision occupying my thoughts
while talking to your sister, mouthing inconsequentially,
i intently stared at your face
a face I could remember from
pages of twisted words and compressed thoughts
all this in order to figure out when you started to look so old,
when i started to fell so distant
staring across empty space i found lines, rugged and sharp
that my fingers had never known,
stubble creeping along your chin
that had never brushed against my cheek
i wanted to reach out trace the outline
so i could remember what you felt like in air
what you looked like through the lens of my hand
sitting in that chair so unaware
the old wood creaking, keeping time
i glanced at you once finally
face to face only to find myself bombarded
by my bondage to you
at that moment my eyes decided
it was too monumental to ever do that again
profiles are safer when the stars are out
safer than the dark pools i had to face,
the dark pools that keep me chained to that swing
oscillating perpetual limbo with you in the same scene
only we pretend to be adults now—older than our memories
when time ceased to matter, the house lights extinguished,
we drifted into the street, a ritual we had learned
when we were still new
when the sky always threatened to keep me from you
your friend who had always lived up the street
joined us as we sat staring at the stars
talking about the past, about the lives we longed to relive
this was not the space where one spoke of the future
or the present that was running us down, hunting us
the street was a time machine keeping us frozen
in old fears and comforting insecurities
you eased down beside me with familiar weight
i felt my body relax under your presence
i couldn’t look at you or the moment might steal away
into the cover of the trees never to be recovered
never to be felt as it freed my skin
up the street friend raged on about money and capitalism
fuck the system mantras we had come to dwell on
over years of jaded living
nothing matters dropping on the wind
why am i here’s scraping on the cement
i just considered the holes in the sky
thinking of a night a few years past
when we still had intentions.
i had stood under those same stars
and watched you disappear a thousand times over
the stars had not changed and neither had i
i was older in my skin less happy
less aware of where my feet were
where my mind had traveled
but i was still frozen with you there beside me
still the same person who held your face in my hands
so i wouldn’t forget who you were
so i could always find your face tattooed on my hands
while my mind moved miles above us
you placed your hand over mine
i couldn’t even look at you
for fear that I might break and seep into you
i just smiled and linked my fingers with yours
it didn’t matter that we no longer were
it didn’t matter that we may not ever be
in the early hours of the night i just wanted
to remember what safety felt like and
how the stars looked hanging in the sky--EAC 2004

That Street

Alot of things happened on that street. I drove by it the other day, because I was missing you. The first time we kissed was on that street. I was drunk and had my whole life in front of me. You--were right in front of me.

"I think I'm lonely."
"You don't have to be."
"Sometimes I think I do. No one understands me. No one wants to try hard enough."
"I could try."
"I'm fucked up."
"So am I."
"I have issues."
"So do I."


We had our first fight on that street. I was so insecure and you took it so personal. I remember stumbling on the street in my underwear, tears streaming down my face, looking for your car. You had already left and I felt like I was dying inside. What if you never came back? What if I had fucked up everything? I tend to do that. I tend to self destruct. I drove around all night looking for you. I found you at four in the morning asleep on someone's floor.

"Hey."
"Hey."
"Fuck...I'm sorry. Please come back."
"Are you sure you want that?"
"I'm sure I want you."
"I can't believe you found me."
"I think the same thing all the time."