Black Satin

I’m sitting here on the couch, flipping through the cable channels, not finding much of anything to hold my interest.  On the coffee table sits my Macbook, beckoning me to turn off the tv and write something. Anything. Just a couple of lines, and hopefully, the rest will magically come flooding out. (Of course, it never really works this way).

After watching a few minutes of Anderson Cooper 360, I give in to the urge to create, and turn off the television, walk over to the small wooden bookshelf where I keep my various books of poetry and erotica, and blindly reach for a book. It turns out to be an author I haven’t read for a very long time,  Sandra Cisneros. More specifically, her crazy hot book of poetry, Loose Woman.

One of my favorite poems in the  book, “You Bring Out the Mexican in Me,” is a beautiful, passionate, gritty, paranoid, erotic ride of a poem:

“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…”

And in “Full Moon and You’re Not Here,” she is the mistress waiting for her lover to come:

“Full moon and you’re not here.
I take off the slip,
the silver bangles.

You’re in love with my mind.

But sometimes, sweetheart,
a woman needs a man
who loves her ass.”

I remember reading this book for the first time and thinking: “Damn, who IS this woman?” She smokes cigars,  yells and curses her American lovers in Spanish, describes her period in graphic detail, and does it with a lyrical wit that Sonia Sanchez would envy. A fellow poet had recommended the book, and I thought at best, it would be a good way to spend an evening, a few glasses of wine, and some decent poetry. I had no idea what I was in store for–it caught me completely off-guard, in a good way.

So now, years later, seeking inspiration, I sit in my living room with a glass of Cabernet,  reading Loose Woman again and remembering our first date, hoping to get lucky again.