Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals
Read Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals Online
Authors: Patricia Lockwood
ALSO BY PATRICIA LOCKW
OOD
Balloon Pop Outlaw Black
(Octopus Books)
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First published in Penguin Books 2014
Copyright © 2014 by Patricia Lockwood
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LIBRARY OF CON
GRESS CATALOGING-IN-
PUBLICATION DATA
Lockwood, Patricia.
Motherland, fatherland, homelandsexuals / Patricia Lockwood.
pages cm.â(Penguin poets)
ISBN 978-0-698-15678-4 (eBook)
I. Title.
PS3612.O27M68 2014
811'.6âdc23
2013049362
Version_1
Is Your Country a He or a She in Your Mouth
Search “Lizard Vagina” and You Shall Find
The Whole World Gets Together and Gangbangs a Deer
He Marries the Stuffed-Owl Exhibit
An Animorph Enters the Doggie-Dog World
When the World Was Ten Years Old
List of Cross-Dressing Soldiers
The Fake Tears of Shirley Temple
A Recent Transformation Tries to Climb the Stairs
Nessie Wants to Watch Herself Doing It
Bedbugs Conspire to Keep Me from Greatness
Last of the Late Great Gorilla-Suit Actors
Factories Are Everywhere in Poetry Right Now
See a Furious Waterfall Without Water
Love Poem Like We Used to Write It
The Hornet Mascot Falls in Love
Natural Dialogue Grows in the Woods
The Brave Little _____ Goes to School
There Were No New Colors for Years
The Father and Mother of American Tit-Pics
Thanks to the editors of the following publications, where some of these poems first appeared:
AGNI
The Awl
Colorado Review
Denver Quarterly
Fence
Gulf Coast
Hazlitt
The London Review of Books
The New Yorker
North American Review
PEN Poetry Series
Poetry
A Public Space
Slate
Tin House
Mine is a man I think, I love men, they call me
a fatherlandsexual, all the motherlandsexuals
have been sailed away, and there were never
any here in the first place, they tell us. Myself
I have never seen a mountain, myself I have
never seen a valley, especially not my own,
I am afraid of the people who live there,
who eat hawk and wild rice from my pelvic
bone. Oh no, I am fourteen, I have walked
into my motherland's bedroom, her body
is indistinguishable from the fatherland
who is “loving her” from behind, so close
their borders match up, except for a notable
Area belonging to the fatherland. I am drawn
to the motherland's lurid sunsets, I am reaching
my fingers to warm them, the people in my
valley are scooping hawk like crazy, I can no
longer tell which country is which, salt air off
both their coasts, so gross, where is a good nice gulp
of Midwestern pre-tornado? The tornado above me
has sucked up a Cow, the motherland declares,
the tornado above him has sucked up a Bull,
she says pointing to the fatherland. But the cow
is clearly a single cow, chewing a single cud
of country, chewing their countries into one,
and “I hate these country!” I scream, and
their eyes shine with rain and fog, because
at last I am using the accent of the homeland,
at last I am a homelandsexual and I will never
go away from them, there will one day be two
of you too they say, but I am boarding myself
already, I recede from their coasts like a Superferry
packed stem to stern with citizens, all waving hellos
and goodbyes, and at night all my people go below
and gorge themselves with hunks of hawk,
the traditional dish of the new floating heartland.
A higher country had a question, a higher
country searched and found me, and the name
of the country was north of me, Canada.
When I think of you I think
up there
just as I
think when I think of my brain, my brain
and the bad sunning lizard inside it. Today
you searched “lizard vagina,” Canada. It is so
hugely small if you can imagine it; it is scaled
it is scaled so far down. It evolved over many
millions of years to be perfectly invisible to you;
and so you will never see it, Canada. Here is
some pornography, if it will help: tongues flick
out all over the desert! Next time try
thunder
lizard vagina. That will be big enough for even
you, Canada. You have one somewhere
in your hills, or else somewhere in your badlands.
Perhaps someone is uncovering a real one right
now, with a pickaxe a passion and a patience.
Ever since she was a child she knew what she
would do. She buttons her background-colored
clothes, she bends down to her work;
keep spreading,
Canada, she will show you to yourself.
Your
down there
that is, my Up There. Oh South oh
South oh South you think, oh West oh West now West
say you. The pickaxe the passion and the patience
hears, pink tongue between her lips just thinking.
The stones and the sand and the hollows they watch
her. The tip of her tongue thinks almost out loud,
“I have a brain am in a brain brain suns itself in lizard
too. Where would I be if I were what I wanted?”
Has a feeling finally, swings the pickaxe- the passion-
and the patience-tip down.
Bambi is fresh from the countryside. Bambi is fresh
and we want him on film. He doesn't even know
how to kiss yet. “Lean in and part your lips,” we say,
“and pull a slow strip off a tree.” We shine our biggest
spotlight on him, our biggest spotlight is the sun.
And under the spotlight the deer drips sweat, and what
do deer like more than salt. “Now look at the fawn
and grow an antler,” we patiently instruct him. “It will
grow from your thoughts like the ones on your head.”
Oh Bambi says the fawn, oh Bambi. Fresh grass-stains
around the young mouth. Every deer gets called Bambi
at least once in its life, every deer must answer to Bambi,
every deer hears don't kill Bambi, every deer hears don't
eat Bambi, every deer hears LOOK OH LOOK it's Bambi.
When the deer all die they will die of genericide, of one
baby name for the million of them. Then women begin
to be called Bambi, and then deer understand what women
are like: light-shafts of long blond hair and long legs.
The sun piercing through the Bavarian trees and the sun
touching down on the dewy green ground. Then women
begin to be called Fawn, and then women begin to say
Bambi oh Bambi. And their mouths are open and they
gape like a mouth when it takes a big bite of spring green.
The spotlight shines down through the trees in long legs.
This is the first movie most of us see. Small name
for a small deer: Bambi. Sometimes he feels
all
the deer
could fit inside him. The movie we are making is this one:
all the deer in one deer one after another. Subtitles
so we know what his soft sounds are saying. Mostly he says
THE MEADOW, THE MEADOW! like the women who are
Bambi say GOD OH GOD. What they mean is a wide open
space, a great clearing. All the deer and us watching in a great
open field. A great wide clearing in the face of the deer
says THE MEADOW, THE MEADOW! and all of us watching.
The deer's mouths moving as if they are reading.
But no, they are eating the grass.
He marries her mites and the wires in her wings,
he marries her yellow glass eyes and black centers,
he marries her near-total head turn, he marries
the curve of each of her claws, he marries
the information plaque, he marries the extinction
of this kind of owl, he marries the owl
that she loved in life and the last thought of him
in the thick of her mind
just one inch away from the bullet, there,
he marries the moths
who make holes in the owl, who have eaten the owl
almost all away, he marries the branch of the tree
that she grips, he marries the real-looking moss
and dead leaves, he marries the smell of must
that surrounds her, he marries the strong blue
stares of children, he marries nasty smudges
of their noses on the glass, he marries the camera
that points at the owl to make sure no one steals her,
so the camera won't object when he breaks the glass
while reciting some vows that he wrote himself,
he screams OWL instead of I'LL and then ALWAYS
LOVE HER, he screams HAVE AND TO HOLD
and takes hold of the owl and wrenches the owl
away from her branch
and he covers her in kisses and the owl
thinks, “More moths,” and at the final hungry kiss,
“That must have been the last big bite, there is no more
of me left to eat and thank God,” when he marries
the stuffing out of the owl and hoots as the owl flies out
under his arm, they elope into the darkness of Indiana,
Indiana he screams is their new life and WELCOME.
They live in a tree together now, and the children of
Welcome to Indiana say who even more than usual,
and the children of Welcome to Indiana they wonder
where they belong. Not in Indiana, they say to themselves,
the state of all-consuming love, we cannot belong in Indiana,
as night falls and the moths appear one by one, hungry.