Improv Entries Week 10

Entry 1: from Kathy Fagan's "Womb to Tomb Pantoum"
"She was born, like so many of us,/ With a monkey on her back./ Her family said, As long as she's healthy.../ And took them home in the car."

Have you heard about the World's Smallest Woman? Her title,
in all-caps, lucky to survive the womb and then she has
a baby! Jaw-dropped me and roomie watch the three-footer or less
while shoving oatmeal and Zaxby's into our mouths, respectively,
as she climbs into the front seat of a town & country, crawls
around the seat for a minute until she fits just right and the only thing
i can think clear is how tall that husband is. six plus, maybe seven
feet tall. You see, I got no qualms with the woman. I think I love
her, even. I can see how it would happen. But this guy is three times
her size, too tall to drive the car, too stupid to write full sentences,
has some mommy issues which I think are bigger than he says, does
not see how his hand writing, his long fingers, look like
what i scribbled in composition books in first grade, when all my Is
were dotted with, not hearts, too much, big and elaborate circles
over every statement of self, desperate for ms. wilbanks to see my eyes
in the pile of six year old attention deficits, some kind of other
mother i guess i thought was how it worked when you got to school,
thought she would adopt me if my marks were bigger than everyone
else's even though I was always too small. Well, i used to be.
And then this woman on my Discovery Health, attitude heavy and pantene
hair, was the world's smallest mom. She gives life to another like her,
although it wasn't genetic and i wonder how she felt when the baby
was her size.

Entry 1: again, from Kathy Fagan's "'69"
"Sex has turned us rich/ or dead or funny, but it turns nobody/ bad, as Sister Carol said I'd be/ if I kept mum. Love does that, Mr. C./ Inside. Love made a potty-mouth of me."

Love made a potty-mouth of me, didn't even say a curse
word till my seventeenth birthday, which by the way, you
forgot, too stoned to remember my birthday you walked
into my house with friends of both genders and no gift,
not even a hug or nice word just a why are so many people here? but that doesn't matter anymore.
What does matter is when all the people scattered
like cockroaches after picking up a cardboard box
they call home, i told you it's my fucking birthday
cried like a baby, not because you forgot but because
i said the bad word that would turn me into my mother,
i'm sure. Love taught me that. Love taught me how to cry.
Love taught me how to lie, how to cheat, how to speak
badly of the ones I said I loved, like love was a thing
not just a word. Love didn't love me back and love is just
four words people put together when they need to know
whatever kind of bad feeling's they've got are real.
Love is an invisible man. But sex is the girl next door.
Sex taught me how to walk in heels, get dinner for free,
how to put on lipstick and how to wash my face before bed.
Sex taught me everything school teachers forgot, the best
word I know, the only word in the world that make sense
other than toothpaste or gum, words that matter and mean
exactly what they say, something love never quite figured out.