Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals Read online

  ALSO BY PATRICIA LOCKWOOD

  Balloon Pop Outlaw Black

  (Octopus Books)

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

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  First published in Penguin Books 2014

  Copyright © 2014 by Patricia Lockwood

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Page vii constitutes an extension of this copyright page.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Lockwood, Patricia.

  Motherland, fatherland, homelandsexuals / Patricia Lockwood.

  pages cm.—(Penguin poets)

  ISBN 978-0-698-15678-4 (eBook)

  I. Title.

  PS3612.O27M68 2014

  811'.6—dc23

  2013049362

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Also by Patricia Lockwood

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  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

  The Hatfields and McCoys

  The Arch

  When the World Was Ten Years Old

  List of Cross-Dressing Soldiers

  The Hunt for a Newborn Gary

  The Fake Tears of Shirley Temple

  A Recent Transformation Tries to Climb the Stairs

  The Feeling of Needing a Pen

  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

  Revealing Nature Photographs

  See a Furious Waterfall Without Water

  Love Poem Like We Used to Write It

  Why Haven’t You Written

  Rape Joke

  The Hornet Mascot Falls in Love

  The Descent of the Dunk

  The Third Power

  Natural Dialogue Grows in the Woods

  The Brave Little _____ Goes to School

  There Were No New Colors for Years

  Perfect Little Mouthfuls

  The Father and Mother of American Tit-Pics

  The Hypno-Domme Speaks, and Speaks and Speaks

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  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

  Is Your Country a He or a She in Your Mouth

  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.

  Search “Lizard Vagina” and You Shall Find

  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

  hea
rs, 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.

  The Whole World Gets Together and Gangbangs a Deer

  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 the Stuffed-Owl Exhibit at the Indiana Welcome Center

  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.

  An Animorph Enters the Doggie-Dog World

  Discover the power at age eleven. Discover all powers

  at age eleven. A kittenhead struggles out of your face

  and the kittenhead mews MILK, you gasp with its

  mouth and it slurps itself back. Yet the mew for MILK

  remains, you drink it. You think, “I am an Animorph.”

  Your sight and your hearing increase, like wheat

  and the wind in the wheat. Well you’ve never seen

  any wheat but it sounds good, to you and your new

  trembling ears. Blue sky increases above the wheat

  and you know what it’s like to grow a . . . well.

  A hawk’s is between two legs but much higher.

  Halfway to any animal is where you like

  to be. Get halfway there and have just the instinct,

  the instinct that someone’s approaching. Stripes

  begin to form, are always a surprise, you look

  down and you move your head left to right and then

  the meaning comes. English get worse but not much

  in your muzzle, English get worse but not much

  in your mouth. You walk to school and sit next

  to a girl who was born with a tail and you copy off

  her. You rub your temples when they ache, rub any

  of your body when it aches, you seem to be only

  a series of places where animal parts could emerge.

  Soon you will be a teenager, and soon you will be

  so greasy, and how you can hardly wait, because:

  its grease makes the animal graceful, and go. You go

  to the petting zoo with your class and timidly reach

  in a hand. Turn to a donkey and finally

  feel your lashes are long enough. Turn to a horse

  and finally feel that your eyes are so meltingly human.

  Walk home on your own through the fields and the fields,

  and the increase of wheat and the wind in it, and think

  of the life that stretches before you: work your way

  through all the animals, and come to the end of them,

  and what? And turn to crickets, and make no noise?

  One tear struggles out of your face, but no that’s not

  a tear. “I fuckin eat crickets,” your kittenhead says,

  “I fuckin eat silence of crickets for fun. I got life after

  life and a name like Baby. Every time I try to cry a tear

  a new kittenhead grows out of me.” And oh how you

/>   are lifted, then,

  the kittenhead of you in the high hawk hold.

  The Hatfields and McCoys

  I am waiting for the day when the Hatfields

  and McCoys finally become interesting to me,

  when they flare with significance at last as if

  they’d been written in Early Times Whiskey

  and the match of my sight had been flicked

  and was racing now along them, and racing

  like a line to their houses—who wasted

  all this whiskey, and now everything is lit up:

  how they hid behind trunks of oaks, and hid

  behind herds of cows, how they aimed like teats

  at each other and shot death in a straight white

  line; I will learn how it began, probably over

  a . . . gal, or McCoy gave a Hatfield an unfair

  grade for a paper about mammals he worked

  really hard on, and his dad to whom grades

  were life and death kindled a torch in the night,

  and burned her grading hand to ashes along

  with all the rest of her, but her name McCoy

  escaped from the fire and woke up in seven

  brothers. I will learn how

  their underdrawers fought each other while

  hanging on the line, how socks disappeared

  from their pairs, how new mailmen were killed

  every day touching poisoned postcards they sent

  to each other, which said things like Wish you

  WERENT here, and GOODBYE from sunny Spain,

  I will learn precise numbers of people who died

  and where they put all the bodies, under the garden

  maybe, where they helped grow blood-red carrots

  that longed to lodge in enemy throats,

  where they helped grow brooding tomatoes

  that were still considered deadly back then, as part

  of the nightshade family. Two of their babies

  fell in love, because love comes earlier for people

  who live in the past and the mountains,

  and when they turned one year old

  they were told they were Hatfields and McCoys,

  and one locked his lips grimly on a breast that night

  and drank milk until he died, the other took an entire

  bottle of Doctor Samson’s Soothing Syrup for Crybaby