Member Poem

I want to be an elephant.

Stretch my skin into a grey dune body

I am tired of being a silly little girl

My belly button is a balloon lip

Inflate me into an Indian elephant

Eleven feet of Ganesh wisdom,

Rapturous promises of forested eternity, carved

Into my tree trunk bones, weaved

Into the sulcus and gyrus of my brain.           

Fill my cup to the brim, feed me seconds, thirds, fourths, fifths

I am an African forest elephant.

I feast on fermented rain forest papayas

Until I get martini splashing, Zelda Fitzgerald, trumpeting drunk.

She was a silly little girl.

No one will be able to tuck 10 feet

In a mental hospital or dedication

At least let me be a Borneo Pygmy elephant

The smallest species

Standing 8 quiet feet

Let me be a pygmy

They are the remnants of domesticity

Someone must have squeezed their waists with apron strings

Let me be a pygmy elephant

To shelter the thirteen feet of

African Savanna inside me

Her knees pound, her landslide body spills out of my skin.

She is a thundering cannon ball, swords blow

One of fifteen Persian war elephants

She slays, She fans her glorious drum beat ears

She is Ishtar goddess of war, birth, and sex

She battles naked.

She commands she be written into myth

Amazon Warrior princess

Men want to tame

Her into three big top circus rings.

They want her to carry barefoot children on her grand, grey back.

Dress her in gaudy costumes

Give her great brain beach balls to balance.

Then force her to disappear

Reach gluttonous hands for her ivory

Hunt her down, rub her blood in the dust

Pose with her head until she is only a statue

For someone to grope.

But she is resilient

Pounding knees, landslide body

She knows she could roll over

Under her weight crush every predator

But she marches on,

Mother Teresa

A quiet Matriarch

She resurrects her fallen sisters

Her trunk launches them to heaven

She buries their struggles in her grey dune body

I want to be an elephant

Elephants will survive

And wrap their trunks around their grandmothers’              

Tails. They will break beachballs and

Love themselves in the mirror.