Loose Woman Read online

  Acclaim for Sandra Cisneros’s

  Loose Woman

  “Thank you, wicked wicked woman, for shooting up these loose arrows to the high hells of poetry, passion and humor.”

  —Eduardo Galeano, author of Memory of Fire

  “Fierce, intoxicating, hilarious. These are poems to shout aloud. Sandra Cisneros has a gift and an attitude we should all be grateful for.”

  —Cristina Garcia, author of Dreaming in Cuban

  “Frankly erotic, mixing delicate imagery with a pop sensibility and a discreet but spicy sprinkling of blunt sexuality.”

  —Enrique Fernandez, New York Daily News

  “Sandra Cisneros’s voice is naughty with all we girls were taught not to say out loud—or even whisper. She says it all in these sassy, tangy, intimate poems.”

  —Julia Alvarez, author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

  “Soulful, sexy and grand, Sandra Cisneros’s Loose Woman is a hothouse feast of word-play, divine love, earthy humor, mariachi yearnings, and powerhouse passion.”

  —Jessica Hagedorn, author of Dogeaters

  “The poems in this collection mourn, swear, flirt and tell stones. Loose Woman [is] a gallery of gems and beasts fashioned by a skilled writer’s hand.… Readers are drawn to her magnetic images, her liberal use of Spanish words and expressions, and her blending of poetry and prose.”

  —Detroit Free Press

  “These poems are celebrations and incantations of a woman in search of her place as a woman, wands that put a spell in the reader’s heart. Cisneros shakes the blue sky, [and her] poetry intoxicates.”

  —Poets & Writers

  “I love these poems! Sandra Cisneros has attained a sureness possible when someone faces down the terrors of intimacy, the push-pull of relationships. These poems are firecrackers and tequila, with a little candlelight and lace linen. If you’re looking for notes of passion from the heartfield, these accomplished poems won’t disappoint.”

  —Joy Harjo, author of In Mad Love and War

  “Loose Woman is a collection of love poems for the nonbeliever, some sheer jade and some for the jaded, a noose for the lover on the loose, a net for the next novio. But sometimes they are simply love poems in wonderment of life and death. At all times, Sandra Cisneros has penned poetry of utterly divine language and imagery.”

  —Ana Castillo, author of So Far from God

  FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, MARCH 1995

  Copyright © 1994 by Sandra Cisneros

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, in 1994.

  Some of the poems in this work were originally published in the following:

  Bomb Magazine: “I’m on My Way to Oklahoma to Bury the Man I Nearly Left My Husband For,” “Cloud,” and “Black Lace Bra Kind of Woman” • New York Times (Op/Ed section): “Little Clown, My Heart” • Stone Drum Magazine: “Why I Didn’t” • “Original Sin” and “Jumping Off Roofs” were published in Emergency Tacos, March/Abrazo Press • “Las Girlfriends” was published in Intertext/Interstice: Chicanas and Latinas on the Border, Third Woman Press • “Down There” was published in The Sexuality of Latinas, Third Woman Press.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows: Cisneros, Sandra.

  Loose Woman/Sandra Cisneros.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-8041-5087-3

  1. Women—United States—Poetry. 2. Love poetry, American.

  I. Title.

  PS3553.I78L66 1994

  811′.54—dc20 93-35937

  v3.1_r1

  For Jasna,

  as if our lives depended on it

  “Life is life.”

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Little Clown, My Heart

  Little Clown, My Heart

  You Bring Out the Mexican in Me

  Original Sin

  Old Maids

  I Let Him Take Me

  Extreme Unction

  A Few Items to Consider

  I Am So in Love I Grow a New Hymen

  Your Name Is Mine

  Something Like Rivers Ran

  You My Saltwater Pearl

  You Like to Give and Watch Me My Pleasure

  Christ You Delight Me

  En Route to My Lover I Am Detained by Too Many Cities and Human Frailty

  Dulzura

  You Called Me Corazón

  Love Poem for a Non-Believer

  The Heart Rounds Up the Usual Suspects

  The Heart Rounds Up the Usual Suspects

  Waiting for a Lover

  Well, If You Insist

  Pumpkin Eater

  I Am So Depressed I Feel Like Jumping in the River Behind My House but Won’t Because I’m Thirty-Eight and Not Eighteen

  Bay Poem from Berkeley

  After Everything

  I Want to Be a Father Like the Men

  El Alacrán Güero

  Thing in My Shoe

  Night Madness Poem

  I Don’t Like Being in Love

  Amorcito Corazón

  A Little Grief Like Gouache

  Full Moon and You’re Not Here

  My Friend Turns Beautiful Before My Eyes

  Perras

  Unos Cuantos Piquetitos

  With Lorenzo at the Center of the Universe, el Zócalo, Mexico City

  I Awake in the Middle of the Night and Wonder If You’ve Been Taken

  Small Madness

  Heart, My Lovely Hobo

  Heart, My Lovely Hobo

  I Am on My Way to Oklahoma to Bury the Man I Nearly Left My Husband For

  Cloud

  Tú Que Sabes de Amor

  Once Again I Prove the Theory of Relativity

  Fan of a Floating Woman

  That Beautiful Boy Who Lives Across from the Handy Andy

  Black Lace Bra Kind of Woman

  Down There

  Los Desnudos: A Triptych

  Mexicans in France

  My Nemesis Arrives After a Long Hiatus

  A Man in My Bed Like Cracker Crumbs

  Bienvenido Poem for Sophie

  Arturito the Amazing Baby Olmec Who Is Mine by Way of Water

  Jumping off Roofs

  Why I Didn’t

  Las Girlfriends

  Champagne Poem for La Josie

  Still Life with Potatoes, Pearls, Raw Meat, Rhinestones, Lard, and Horse Hooves

  Vino Tinto

  Loose Woman

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Acknowledgments

  There is no such thing as coincidence. I wish to thank the Lannan Foundation whose generosity arrived on a day of doubt and serious grief. I am grateful for its kind support and faith that yanked me back to art and sensibility. Here are the poems from that labor.

  Eyes: Dennis Mathis, Drew Allen. Ojos: Norma Cantú. Voces: Sonia Saldívar Hull, Tey Diana Rebolledo, Ellie Hernández.

  Corazón: En memoria de Danny López Lozano. These lives also left and were recorded in my heart—Astor Piazzolla, César Chávez, Cantinflas.

  Las Madrinas: Susan Bergholz and Robin Desser, who poked under the bed with a broom and coaxed these poems to light.

  Espíritu: Finally, I wish to thank Julie Grau, my editor at Turtle Bay, whose love and labor on my behalf allowed me to share my poetry.

  To each, my heartfelt thanks.

  Little Clown, My Heart
>
  Little clown, my heart,

  Spangled again and lopsided,

  Handstands and Peking pirouettes,

  Backflips snapping open like

  A carpenter’s hinged ruler,

  Little gimp-footed hurray,

  Paper parasol of pleasures,

  Fleshy undertongue of sorrows,

  Sweet potato plant of my addictions,

  Acapulco cliff-diver corazón,

  Fine as an obsidian dagger,

  Alley-oop and here we go

  Into the froth, my life,

  Into the flames!

  You Bring Out the Mexican in Me

  You bring out the Mexican in me.

  The hunkered thick dark spiral.

  The core of a heart howl.

  The bitter bile.

  The tequila lágrimas on Saturday all

  through next weekend Sunday.

  You are the one I’d let go the other loves for,

  surrender my one-woman house.

  Allow you red wine in bed,

  even with my vintage lace linens.

  Maybe. Maybe.

  For you.

  You bring out the Dolores del Río in me.

  The Mexican spitfire in me.

  The raw navajas, glint and passion in me.

  The raise Cain and dance with the rooster-footed devil in me.

  The spangled sequin in me.

  The eagle and serpent in me.

  The mariachi trumpets of the blood in me.

  The Aztec love of war in me.

  The fierce obsidian of the tongue in me.

  The berrinchuda, bien-cabrona in me.

  The Pandora’s curiosity in me.

  The pre-Columbian death and destruction in me.

  The rainforest disaster, nuclear threat in me.

  The fear of fascists in me.

  Yes, you do. Yes, you do.

  You bring out the colonizer in me.

  The holocaust of desire in me.

  The Mexico City ’85 earthquake in me.

  The Popocatepetl/Ixtaccíhuatl in me.

  The tidal wave of recession in me.

  The Agustín Lara hopeless romantic in me.

  The barbacoa taquitos on Sunday in me.

  The cover the mirrors with cloth in me.

  Sweet twin. My wicked other,

  I am the memory that circles your bed nights,

  that tugs you taut as moon tugs ocean.

  I claim you all mine,

  arrogant as Manifest Destiny.

  I want to rattle and rent you in two.

  I want to defile you and raise hell.

  I want to pull out the kitchen knives,

  dull and sharp, and whisk the air with crosses.

  Me sacas lo mexicana en mi,

  like it or not, honey.

  You bring out the Uled-Nayl in me.

  The stand-back-white-bitch in me.

  The switchblade in the boot in me.

  The Acapulco cliff diver in me.

  The Flecha Roja mountain disaster in me.

  The dengùe fever in me.

  The ¡Alarma! murderess in me.

  I could kill in the name of you and think

  it worth it. Brandish a fork and terrorize rivals,

  female and male, who loiter and look at you,

  languid in your light. Oh,

  I am evil. I am the filth goddess Tlazoltéotl.

  I am the swallower of sins.

  The lust goddess without guilt.

  The delicious debauchery. You bring out

  the primordial exquisiteness in me.

  The nasty obsession in me.

  The corporal and venial sin in me.

  The original transgression in me.

  Red ocher. Yellow ocher. Indigo. Cochineal.

  Piñón. Copal. Sweetgrass. Myrrh.

  All you saints, blessed and terrible,

  Virgen de Guadalupe, diosa Coatlicue,

  I invoke you.

  Quiero ser tuya. Only yours. Only you.

  Quiero amarte. Atarte. Amarrarte.

  Love the way a Mexican woman loves. Let

  me show you. Love the only way I know how.

  Original Sin

  Before Mexicana flight #729

  en route to Mexico City departs

  from San Antonio International Airport

  I buy a 69¢ disposable razor at

  the gift shop because I forgot

  in Mexico they don’t like hair

  under your arms only on

  your legs and plan to

  shave before landing but

  the stewardess handing out declaration

  forms has given me the wrong

  one assuming I’m Mexican but I am!

  and I have to run up the aisle and ask

  for a U.S. citizen form instead because

  I’m well how do I explain?

  except before you know it we’re

  already crossing the volcanoes and

  descending into the valley of Mexico City

  and I have to rush to the back

  while the plane drops too quickly as

  if the pilot’s in a hurry to get home

  and into the little airplane bathroom where

  lots of couples want to coitus fantisizus but

  I only want to get rid of my underarm hair

  quick before the plane touches down in

  the land of los nopales disregarding

  lights blinking kindly return to your

  seat and fasten your seatbelt all

  in Spanish of course just in time

  for flight #729 to deposit me finally

  into the arms of awaiting Mexican kin

  on my father’s side of the family where

  I open my arms wide armpits clean

  as a newborn’s soul without original

  sin and embrace them like the good

  girl my father would have

  them believe I am.

  Old Maids

  My cousins and I,

  we don’t marry.

  We’re too old

  by Mexican standards.

  And the relatives

  have long suspected

  we can’t anymore

  in white.

  My cousins and I,

  we’re all old

  maids at thirty.

  Who won’t

  dress children,

  and never

  saints—

  though

  we undress them.

  The aunts,

  they’ve given up on us.

  No longer nudge—You’re next.

  Instead—

  What happened in your childhood?

  What left you all mean teens?

  Who hurt you, honey?

  But we’ve studied

  marriages too long—

  Aunt Ariadne,

  Tía Vashti,

  Comadre Penelope,

  querida Malintzín,

  Señora Pumpkin Shell—

  lessons that served us well.

  I Let Him Take Me

  I let him take me

  over the threshold and over

  the knee. I served and followed,

  harbored up my things

  and pilgrimed with him.

  They snickered at my choice

  when he took over

  and I

  vigiled that

  solitude,

  my life.

  I labored love,

  fierce stitched

  and fed him.

  Bedded and wifed him.

  He never disappointed,

  hurt, abandoned.

  Husband, love, my life—

  poem.

  Extreme Unction

  I would’ve liked

  to live with one

  before

  I turned complete.

  That one I

  could have desired

  like a

  prohibited

&n
bsp; sweet.

  Wonder now how

  I would’ve

  bellyed

  his child.

  Romanced

  enough

  I was

  to believe

  I could brave

  that Ypres,

  that Verdun.

  Husband.

  Balm for the occasional

  itch. But I’m witch now.

  Wife makes me wince.

  My seamed tongue,

  my eye blistered,

  raise stink. And love

  needs a smudged wink,

  I think.

  A Few Items to Consider

  First there is the scent of barley

  to remember. Barley and rain.

  The smooth terrain to recollect and savor.

  Unforgiving whiteness of the room.

  Ambiguity of linen. Purity.

  Mute and still as photographs on the moon.

  Everything here must be analyzed.

  Catalogued. Studied twice.

  A painstaking arrangement, almost vain.

  Brandy glass with its one amber eye

  on the bedside table. Shirt

  draped across the chair. Woolen

  trousers folded neatly in a square.

  Little clock repeating—

  precise, precise.

  Not a stray whisker.

  No comb full of dead hair.

  No cup filled with coins and cuff

  links and fingernail clippers.

  A scrupulous chess game.

  Formal. Concise.

  There is much to learn.

  Grace of the neck to memorize.

  Heliotrope of sleep.

  Hieroglyph of bones to decipher.

  Love, if at all, comes later.

  For now, the hands take to their dialogue.

  Gullible as foreigners.

  A greedy chattering, endlessly on nothing.

  Nothing at all.