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About Heather Schimel Heather Schimel graduated in 2005 with a degree in English from Oswego State University. Since then, she has worked with doctors, law enforcement, and librarians. In her work, she draws from topics such as father/daughter relationships, sexism, hatred of the body, love, and much more. She was born in New York, but currently lives in the desert polishing boots, catching strange bugs in jars, and writing. She dedicates all her work to JNB, because without him she never would have written any of it down.
 Heather Schimel
to grit my teeth & stop crying. He never told me
about the silent stories of the stars, where loss
lives, what to do when you are alone at night
in Southern Australia. -
-
- My father once told me our family's last name meant
white horse in German. I have yet to find how to lead this horse to water
or make her drink. -
-
- My father has a European disease,
but is still alive, leatherette &
chrome, not even a receding hairline. -
-
- My father forgot to mention why I am in love with
a hunter's moon, purring muscles and mandible,
giving me something to chew on for awhile. -
-
- My father writes for biochemists and engineers
& used to tell me he would beat my ass bloody
if I came back in the house. He told me to stop
reading all the time, play with a ball or stick.
In this same instance I remember sitting on the grass outside & then
I found a dead cat under a fir tree. My father told me to bury it, to bury this shaken
earth, these headless chickens, & also
the failure of our given name. -
-
- My father telephones me, sounding like
a gas lamp somewhere far off, he says he wasn't trying to kill himself all those years.
We are just curious for the short and desperate,
he says, for the cello ache of a surprise knuckle curve
to our own cheeks. My father tells me he wanted to know if we would
really play the Pepto Bismol advertisement song
at his funeral because he asked for it,
or would we be too embarrassed to do so,
instead play something about Irish girls & stoplights. -
-
- Have I learned anything from him at all, my father
asks me. -
-
- I wonder if God will always protect drunks
and liars. -
-
- He asks me if I remember the little girl my mother miscarried at 39 & -
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- I wash up on shore. I turn from the telephone like a small seal lion
& I begin to weep. Pretty Pretty Colorado City Colorado City is the kind of girl
who takes her peppermint schnapps
with a little bit of coffee. She smells of
coconut oil and incest. She smells of blood sweat and
coupons. Her legs are Krazy Glue, her arms are warped windows and the construction workers
never returned after she was sold. Colorado City milks children, pays for the good habits with bicycles
and the bad habits with Sinatra. She places
a belt in the dog box. She places
a crash cart next to
the weak and weary. Colorado City is big houses and heels. There is
gin in the trunk of her car. There are tunnels hidden under her thighs. There is daylight
as a gift, in her underpants. There are her father's hands,
now just
her father's hands as she turns the wheel,
crosses the small war
that is
the state line. The Ways I Have Become Crueler Since I Met You  Artwork by Malgorzata Jasinska
you told me it was a stressful situation,
you're sorry. the italics are mine now,
and shockingly,
there is no you
in us. 2. if x equals me and y equals you - then i swear i did not leave your legs
on the interstate, x was not
the guardrail, x cannot equal anything but itself. oh y
not? 3. i ate my breakfast at the sewing machine that day.
because the world will never be ready for
these ficus leaves & breasts drooping, these
white sands of new mexico, these leaf blowers
blowing old bones, i don't worry about your torn pants.
i eat my apple, i put my head in a plastic grocery bag,
i am a hot air balloon with a knack for following
moonlight. i leave spit in the tupperware &
my hat in the closet. 4. samuel is tapping on an old aquarium,
asking me where the fish are. i don't know what to say. his hands are tapping,
slow wheat hands. i lean underneath
the sunlight. all that tapping sounds like an soundproof prayer room,
with little kids on the outside
trying to get in. 5. i buy a fog machine and take
it everywhere,
for a good effect when i enter
other people's workplaces,
gyms, supermarkets. 6. the natural habitat of a moon
is stuck to the dark. i'm a heavy breather,
but not just over the telephone. i just want
the attention of people thinking i have emphysema. i shut off the
lights when i fuck other men & they think its really kinky that this might be
my last time. 7. I star sixty nine
all my old relatives
when they call & feel dirty
about it. 8. before the eventual
extinction of the desert eagles, i want to kill just one,
just one,
and mount his head on
my wall. in the corners of my
apartment living room,
i'll put the dead things,
for irony. i want to run over babies like
a demented housewife
& leave the blood on my hands, which makes for a better story
when everyone asks me
to explain myself. 9. if i knew it was going to be that kind of party,
i would have worn
my best west nile virus & herpes simplex labialis. 10. don't let anyone tell you
how beautiful you are,
is what he told me. sadness can take many shapes sometimes it is dreaming of wool,
being trampled, the rain misleading
the best of us. other times, sadness comes
as the hammer you aimed at his sleeping face,
wondering what he is dreaming
& whether he is able to
at all. NASA  Artwork by Malgorzata Jasinska
In plain sight, the rockets
free themselves. I think of Mexican
Gods, Cesar Chavez, all the little
saints in windows. Mama tells me that
there are too many sight-seers in
this world already,
be something different. 2. I tried working for NASA,
but I didn't believe in stars. Not
the way they described them
anyway. I likened them to
red poppies fixed in the vastness,
hasty side notes, the ocean coming
and leaving us. Mama tells me to stop
staring at everyone like
they are tourist attractions.
Chemistry isn't that periodic table,
& Physics is not fiery experiments
in the basement. 3. I tried to be a sight-doer,
but people called me the moon.
Bright, but a little bit too
far away. 4. I tried to be a sight-keeper,
but no one appreciates
having a rifle in their face
for too long. Mama tells me that humans aren't
souvenirs, even the crazy ones. 5. I tried to be a sight-lover,
but some things are higher
than my heart & some things
are lower than my head. Mama tells me to let
that boy go, he's collecting
Somalia and Afghanistan like they are
cruise line vacations. 6. I start stealing weeping statues,
Muslims, the Mormon faith. If no one
wants me, I will be a sight-stealer,
steal the pyramids and sky. NASA will sob and when I steal
that boy's sun, he will return
to me, an Alaskan weekend
where no one has any fun & no one
gets any room service & 7. there are no photographs of
the mountains this time. The streetlights,
I stole those too. You can't
even get a ride out of this town
anymore, I stole all the engines,
except in the Army helicopters
& dirty smuggler vans. 8. Mama says home is where
your heart is. I wouldn't know,
but the postcards
seem beautiful. Plans I'm making an appointment
to go to Planned Parenthood.
My boyfriend is planning
to make a tear drop trailer. When we first arrived in Arizona
I took up jogging until someone told
me that long street had a drug smuggling
problem. When people ask me who I am, they do so in question-voices, like they already got
the answer and I am the crazy lady of Frontage Road. So I tell them I am Madagascar. I am Christmas decorations that are up
year-long. I am parking on the express-way. Black tar heroin.
I am the difference between hybrid cars and really great vacations
where all you do is drive and drive and say fuck the environment,
this is great. I am last June and this time you make the right
decision. I am a fat cow about to die just for you, just for you. Now, excuse me, I have a telephone call to make. I love writing
poems while people put me on hold and Cher is singing
in my ear. My boyfriend is downloading the plans to make me a log cabin. I'm talking to some authoritative woman
at Planned Parenthood about all the services they offer. I am
a packet of seeds, poured into the ground. I am tired of being afraid. I am
a bunch of flesh with a hole in the middle. I am New Orleans. I am his apology. I am two rapid heartbeats, when I only need one.
I am taking this call now. I am tired of being afraid. A Good Grip He wakes up at midnight and punches me square
in the jaw. Later, I find him in the closet. I ask him what he is doing there. He tells me
he is looking for the perpetrator. Because he knows he never could have hurt me
like that. In the morning I join him in the shower, hold him while he weeps about soap and apples and
it sounds like the sounds of whales who have lost babies. They say the suicide rates for men in law enforcement
is mind boggling. He cries and cries and I hold him and he cries and I speak softly about snow in New York, October, where we used
to be. I kiss his eyelids while talking about the the Great Lakes. Not the desert
anymore,
not the chips on his baton.
Not last night. The Weeping Poem You Love  Artwork by Malgorzata Jasinska
in a gynecologist's office. You don't want
to admit that something might be wrong. The radio is telling us that nobody loves
the fat kids so dial 1-800-I'm-A-Lazyass. The
television is weeping about the flat landscapes,
just like you. The car horns are high-pitched and
keening that the state penitentiary is more pleasant
than all of us. I believe sadness is the black helmet you forget to wear on the day your motorcycle
hits an SUV. If you want to know the truth, laughter is the packs of wild dogs that run
outside my house at night. I watch them taunting the orange cats from my bedroom
window. All they know of sadness is waiting underneath trees for hours until they are
bored enough to move on. At midnight, I realize I am responsible for greenhouse gases and sex-workers and the bare
refrigerators of the poor. The dry sound of skin being cut
is sorrow. And so is the door opening, the way you whisper
it was not my fault, all of it - the collapse of sweethearts
and ancient Indians. You unhook the telephone, hand me a gun, tell me to defend my self with myself. After all, the erosion will erode
away, the shoreline will give up, everyone you have ever loved will
leave you - but you will still have your sadness, which isn't so bad,
really. It has its good days, too. It is the business of honesty and you get the end result, always, for free. Small Tits Hello Small Tits. Thank you for not growing
beyond the size of trick candles. I put you in
these big padded bras, sigh,
strap you in for a ride. My boyfriend thinks he's funny, a real riot,
when he says
BABY THOSE BEAUTIFUL LEGS GO ON FOREVER though what's this on top, these tiny stars, these... and after awhile I stop paying
attention to the bullshit
and start eyeing myself. I say,
"Hello ladies. I like your pink
hats, the color of shark-tongues.
(if you can't have Big Tits,
you may as well inspire
the ones you have with
big verse)
Hello bed pilots.
Hello mammaries like baby suns,
the kind that always fit
into the littlest halter dresses, no problem.
You like to be licked clean as calf wounds. Someday,
the world will look down on you
with breasts to her knees and be
jealous. Don't worry, I love you even if... ...polar ice caps, these Roman girls in mauve dresses. Beautiful, and
what more could a man ask for, but a mouthful? I'll admit I could have sworn
he was going to set my bones without
a sling to hold it all back together.
He looks down at me, smiling, holds my
breasts like they are wild deer sleeping. I whisper, "shhh," and push his head down
to my chest, where he speaks to them
directly, in mumbles and spit. He speaks
as though Small Tits are royalty,
the last cup of water after a thirty mile hike.
He speaks like my nipples are mountains
where we both entered
and both got lost.
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