Hips
I have this air about me.
Says to everybody,
“Even my hips know philosophy.”
My fleshy hips can’t keep bragging,
nor would I like them to.
My hips are body parts.
They ramble on and on,
but they still quote Nietzsche.
“All truly great thoughts
are conceived by walking.”
My fleshy hips do not speak anymore.
They move like driftwood.
The water is at my fingertips,
but the water has been here before language,
back when we still painted in caves
and played music in circles
as shamans danced.
Before we made art for fame.
Oh, I’m dancing.
I hear my poems on high.
I don’t know why,
but I love the words
and I’m scared of the words.
and words, words, words.
Shakespeare!
Theory:
He was actually a woman,
with hips that moved
as she pioneered
the written word.
I believed I was the bard
and back in the 1500’s,
I was actually going by a pen name.
Call me Wilhemina Shakespeare.
That’s me. I believed.
Cocky— like every young person
to ever open a Word Processor.
And now I don’t believe the same way.
There is no reincarnation on the same planet.
This is a multiverse.
There is life out there.
We’re all sparkling starseeds.
We’re a sisterhood of women yearning
to feel important.
Modeled after Zelda Fitz
and Sylvia Plath
and Gilda Radner..
God combines so many people
per person, different traits— rearranged.
We all become a being completely wonderful,
if not entirely unoriginal.
Not to hate on God’s creating style.
As we grow older,
we continue to learn
that our hips
know nothing of the past.
They know the present.
A time of Instapoets.
A renaissance.
A collective of women waxing poetic
instead of their armpits.
I raise my arms in the air and shout,
“My armpit hair is longer!”
And I walk towards the future
where there are no words in my head.
Where there is nothing left unsaid.
I might die unsuccessful,
but I’m dancing.
I can only hope young women
will one day say,
“I think I’m the reincarnation of Colleen June.”
For now,
I can at least say my mom loves my work.
And I know these hips are mine to own.