Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals

ALSO BY PATRICIA LOCKW
OOD

Balloon Pop Outlaw Black
(Octopus Books)

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First published in Penguin Books 2014

Copyright © 2014 by Patricia Lockwood

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Page vii constitutes an extension of this copyright page.

LIBRARY OF CON
GRESS 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

hears, 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.

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