Chi Sherman

About Chi

2008-04-20T00:11:00Z

Poetry Chapbooks: amative; beneath this skin; mosaic

Poetry Readings CD: wild / tendril

In addition to astrology, I like - nay, love - writing, drawing, poking people with sticks, hanging out with my friends, fantasizing about dragging W. out of Washington by his floppy ears, reading, happy rainbow fun fun sprinkle time, discovering new music, road trips, learning, trying new stuff, eating my body weight in chocolate, getting mah flirt on, talking about the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (a.k.a. Michfest) until I am blue in the face, hanging out with my brother, and, of course, dreaming about the day I meet ~H~E~R~ and skip happily ever after towards the sunset while the music swells in the background and flowers clap their petals and bunnies weep with joy. In Canada.

Favorites:

Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri)
The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
Running with Scissors and Dry (Augusten Burroughs)
Ithaca: A Daughter’s Memoir of Being Found (Sarah Saffian)
Me Talk Pretty One Day (David Sedaris)
Practical Magic (Alice Hoffman)
The Lovely Bones and Lucky (Alice Sebold)
Breath, Eyes, Memory (Edwidge Danticat)
Soul Kiss and Black Girl in Paris (Shay Youngblood)

I want to get my hands on you.

2008-04-19T15:39:00Z

I want to get my hands on you. I want to get my hands all over you because honey, I’ve got the healing touch. I’ve got the touch, sings Peter Gabriel and I believe him in that I believe it about myself I believe it in a way that makes me think I’m a guardian fucking angel sent back to earth to walk around in human skin and human pain to absolve you of your sins and indiscretions. I’m here to forgive you because you can’t forgive yourself. I’m gonna get my hands on your hips, my hands over your hands, my hands over your eyes, my hands along the sides of your face and I’m going to hold you until you heal, until you feel yourself filled with orange and yellow light that turns greener and greener the healthier you get. I’m going to sustain you, I’m going to fill myself back up by touching you, I’m going to know that you’re going to be okay when I send you out into the world. I just need to get my hands on you and you must trust me when I say everything will be just fine.

the blood of home

2008-04-19T15:39:00Z

did i predict this sponge of death
sopping me up like buttermilk risen
to dance in thick white milk

you spoil me, sister, by keeping secrets
in your womb

the tongue you flick flirts from a mouth
red as ripe apples
lush as this scream in my throat

wheat and wind welcome me home
on the scent of burnt black rubber
a dotted line of no crossing
flashes past my memory
though I cannot remember the drive
i remember traveling

your furs and flesh lure muscle and promise
into heat whispers and water

we are nin’s bijou and basque
honeyed and heavy-lidded
under pale yellow streetlight

i know your stories like my lifelines
your blood is in my veins; we drink of life together

we feed on stone, salt, and crusts of earth
you swing above me just out of reach
tantalizing as the fruit must have been to eve

welcome again my soil into your bed
with teeth broken into shards
moonlight will replenish us
bone and enamel

stamen

2008-04-19T15:38:00Z

how delicate and tender
this invasion

your fingertips
soft as calla lilies
cross a border of cotton
and elastic
my mouth did not expressly invite you
but my hips roll towards your palm
while I dream

and you call that consent

orchard

2008-04-19T15:37:00Z

stuck behind the red
a white-knuckled hand on the wheel
you crossed yourself
and told me about death

with no religion to speak of
i smiled and showed you my skip marks
my speed my curves
and said
let’s be logical
this is no orchard we’re standing in
there are no trees here

follow me weeping
dirty your carpenter hands
in a search for antiques
these hills will guide you from grease
towards the salvation of blossoms
buses bridges
ridges and farms

open yourself to water and music
the feeling of my fingers trailing
the spider web of your spine

give me your highway smile
sweet from the bell jar mouth of jam
auction all you have been willed
and dive in

manifesto

2008-04-19T01:48:01Z

I’m not going to mourn anymore. I’m throwing away my Kleenex, kicking off my black shoes, and burning my church dress. I’m uncovering the mirrors and throwing open the windows so everyone can hear me shout: This life must be vibrant. This life must be orange mango melon tangerine and lemon, clear as crystal vases, bubblegum pink, shiny, wet, wild, and fabulous. I am not worthless because I don’t wear a size six and never have. I have curves and ripples, dimples and valleys and I am not going to eat one more celery stick to make some doctor happy. I’m going to move around at my own speed. I’m taking myself dancing and I’m going to groove across the floor like a ballroom champion ballerina twirling jazz hip hop tap dancing maniac. I’m not going to wear shirts that hide my belly. I’m not going to cringe every time I pass my profile in a mirror. I’m going to see myself for my beauty, for the color and design of my tattoos, for the curl of my hair, the sparkle and shine of my earrings, the broadness of my shoulders and the width of my hips. I am big and solid and I can move mountains. I will kick ass and take names if you cross me. Don’t think I won’t die defending everything I was, am, and will become. This body and mind have gone through hell and come back to tell the tale of fire, brimstone, and the sharpest bloody point on Satan’s forked tail. I am Goddess-infused, refreshing as Gatorade, a triple threat because I can take you down with my words, a look, and a Scorpio sting, all at once. I can be your girl in pinks and sweet, adorable and shy, soft-spoken and non-threatening, but believe me when I say I have the power of recovery on my side. I’m coming out of the shell I built from hard-edged venom and self-loathing. I’m kicking away that home and heading for the freedom and mystery of the ocean. I’m taking out the tide, building sandcastles without tools, and letting everyone know that I am changing and I am not changing back. This is my creed, my manifesto, and you better believe every word because I am done treating myself like shit.

invocation

2008-04-19T01:42:01Z

The empty bed girl drinks from the thick
mouth of a water jug, its fired clay
coils encircling a round belly
bottom. The raku skin blushes red
against her hands.
She remembers a few earthquake

lovers. Most saved their earthquake
tricks for women without fury or thick
hips. Passion fell to wasp waists, doll hands.
Next time, she would form a lover from clay,
a woman with an earthen face and red
berry-stained lips. She would fashion the belly

from moss, from earth. It would be a good belly:
pleasing to the touch. Then: a flask of earthquake
energy for the fingertips. A throaty voice full of red-
as-fire fervor. She would weave strands of thick
hair from onyx and moonstone. For the clay
woman, calloused hands,

sturdy and strong. The girl envisioned those hands
traveling from clay hips to a soft belly;
a light touch, a sigh, a smile. In clay,
in the promise of earth, stillness with earthquake
tremors. She mirrors the woman’s thick
hips after her own, gives her a red-

olent scent born of five directions, a candy-red
mouth for kissing. Empty bed girl’s hands
reach for her water jug; she drinks the thickness
of possibility. She leaves bad lovers in the belly
of the ocean. Let their earthquakes
disrupt a different mouth. Her clay

woman is daughter to the universe. Let clay
discover the mystery that lives in the girl’s red
heart. The sea storms in earthquake
vengeance while she waits for hands
that match her own. She trembles from crown to belly
as she waits for the sweetness. The air is thick.

Tension causes earthquakes, chaos within the clay.
The lover, vibrant and thick, sees the girl on sheets, soft and red.
Sturdy and strong hands caress the soft landscape of belly.

personal ad

2008-04-19T01:39:00Z

Me: Single, biracial female, 31, tired of people who say, “But you don’t look biracial,” and wait for me to say, “Thank you.”

You: The judgment-free listener when I need to talk about the kids on the playground who called me a black nigger. You will understand the moments when I misconstrue every comment about my skin color. You will know to treat me no differently than you would a white, black, Asian, Hispanic, Greek girlfriend, but you will also be the person to pedestal me when I need a boost.

Me: The excited murmur that water makes immediately before it begins to boil, the full-figured line of zeros that come after the decimal but before the one in the number that defines the category I slide into. Me: Café au lait in search of a novelty mug, the color of caramel candy. Me: Scorpio with Pisces rising.

You: Yang to my yin, pressed close in the dark and smoke of a jazz club on a Saturday night, the low tones of fusion, cumulus cloud to my Sahara-brown land, an earth sign to ground my water. You: Deliriously sweet as rich cream, the white skip mark down the middle of my blacktop.

Me: A scale, a bass clef, a single unwavering note, a soloist’s thrumming heartbeat.

You: A conductor poised with baton in the air, the breathtaking moment of silence before the audience explodes in applause. You: parchment waiting for my symphony.

Me: Waiting for you to find me. Me: Realizing I need to leap to truly be a great catch.

You: Are somewhere out there. You: Are necessary. You: Are not your age, race, ethnicity, body, education, bank account or employment status. You: Superglue fingertips when I shatter like wedding china.

thirty-three days

2008-04-19T00:16:00Z

On Christmas Eve, five weeks into dating my girlfriend,
I am in an oak-walled bar with wet plywood floors
and a cache of partygoers trying to get drunk
before last call. I am a cliché, a country song:
I am crying into my beer in the corner because I have
simultaneously realized, accepted, and acknowledged
thirty-three days into the relationship that she and I are through;
however, I will keep her around for New Year’s Eve,
Valentine’s Day, and her birthday because finally I am not single
during the holidays and finally I can say my girlfriend and I
are going out for her birthday. I have been significant, a member
of the couples’ club for just over a month and I am not ready
to rip up my membership card just yet.

After weeks of tripping over my girlfriend’s shoes,
her bookbag, her books and videos, and throwing
her dirty shirts and jeans across my bedroom in a huff,
I am done wondering why she isn’t here but her shit is.
I give up when I realize she was just waiting for me to get tired
of what her personal ad didn’t mention and take myself
to the bar, which is where I now mood swing from sad to angry
and switch from Corona to tequila. I suck back salt, liquor and lime
while I feel sorry for the bar’s one tired waitress
and her beer-soaked Keds. I burn through eight cigarettes
before I notice a Goodwill billboard that announces
When it’s over, it’s over, and though I asked for a sign
about this relationship, this public assertion of the end blindsides me.
Ice crackles like cellophane in the parking lot, and I take
my dumbfounded mouth home. Salty and wet,
I need no audience. In the morning, I dip into red felt,
stockpile lotions, books, thick socks, a color printer. I brave face
my way through the morning, waiting for my girlfriend to call,
waiting to say It’s her – I’ll take this in the other room.

Finally, after hours of messages, she returns my call, promises
to come over. The hole in her muffler announces her arrival
when she is still a block away. She stomps up the wide cement stairs,
knocks snow from her boots and I pull her inside, laughing,
trying to avoid the December air. Something in my heart surges
at the sight of her, and I bury my doubts, let her take me to the movies –
my girlfriend and I are spending Christmas night at the cinema –
the novel, scarf, and tin of chamomile she gives me sitting between us.

In the theatre, she and I thread together our fingers after the lights go down,
my free hand wrapped around the soda. She plunks into the popcorn
until she is grease-soaked. Back in my apartment, I turn up the heat
and watch her strip off her layers. We attach at navel, thigh, breast,
and kneecap, and I wrap my arms around her, running my hands
through her thick hair. I am not ready to say my girlfriend and I have broken up,
so I will sleep next to her, taste her mouth, and call her worthwhile
for another ninety days, knowing I should already be gone.

friction

2008-04-19T00:02:01Z

well water rinses soil
from workday skin
homebound we ride together
in trucks in cars on buses

we wind blue collar bodies
away from steering wheels
passenger seats
street signs on the corner

stride through broken doorways
towards clamoring children
with crayoned paper in hand

already thinking about the crunch
of work boots on gravel
before sunrise in the morning

(This poem was a winner in the Shared Spaces / Shared Voices public art project.)

seven shots of anna

2008-03-14T18:18:00Z

Gift shop, Chicago, December 1998

Anna seeks out Cezanne; her husband searches for Monet. In the window, a glass vase full
of midday sunshine. Dark violet as healing bruises, the glass is warm, heavy, home
in her arms. She fingers twelve months of Miro, magnetic Manet, Matisse for the wall,
but she decides on Degas, Hopper’s Hotel Room in a paperweight with a green felt bottom.
Today, he is generous, loving, offers more. She shakes her head no, pushes her hands
into fleece gloves. They head for plates of pad Thai, the Impressionists under wraps.

First apartment at 37, May 2004

At last, she has space for the vacuum, her coats, squares of pastel linen still wrapped
in plastic. In the utility room, she stores the ironing board, detergent, Downy refills
she found on sale. Eventually, she’ll purchase WD-40, nails, and wood glue for the hand-
me-down bookcase. Safe on the second floor, she is free of him. She is not home-
sick for the basement apartment and overhead footsteps. No longer on the bottom,
she hears only rain against the roof, the hint of bass thumping inside stucco walls.

Parisian bar, July 1990

You were part of history, he stresses. You saw Berlin divided into two before the Wall
came down. I don’t feel historical, she murmurs. My palms are clean. I wasn’t wrapped
around a sledgehammer or bullhorn, didn’t demolish graffiti and granite from bottom
to top. She swirls her martini, listens to the music of French tongues, unable to fill
in the blanks with the words she knows in the same romance. She sulks, longs for home
where conversations make sense. She is an interloper here, just a girl with shaking hands.

Leaving him, April 2004

The Monte Carlo on loan is red, slick, missing only gold chains, a salesman. Her hands
slide across black plush, leather, the phallic gearshift, stereo button nubs. Walled
behind sound, she is a flipside Fortunato. Covert behind smoke-grey glass, she is at home
in a car that doesn’t smell like him. She dumps new CDs on the seat, most still wrapped.
She leaves Indiana — his home — and drives towards the safety of her family. The car fills
with bass and her voice. The weight of him sinks like an anchor loosed to a lake’s bottom.

Dorm room, November 1985

Anna stuffs herself into tight jeans, yanks out tangles while Queen sings fat bottomed
girls, you make the rockin’ world go round. She combs, crimps, chews on the handle
of her brush, twists her fingers around pastel bands while her Coke can ashtray fills
with butts. She dusts violet high on her cheeks and her eyelids and glosses her lips. Wall-
flower, she is a stranger in a Cover Girl world, but reads Cosmo anyway, under wraps,
ashamed she spends money on its sleek pages. She is determined to stop being homely.

Apartment for rent, March 2004

Jack from #2C sells what he no longer wants: rollerblades, a crumpled Ziploc of home-
grown from his best friend’s hall closet, two houndstooth jackets. He hit bottom
last week, quit bartending, and decided to pursue acting. The bottle blonde from #1D wraps
herself around him, but she’s staying here. He packs his car with all that one set of hands
can carry. Compact, his dreams of soap opera stardom. In five years, NBC office walls
will boast his blown-up glossy headshot. Daytime’s current fancy, he will think himself full.

Java joint, Michigan, December 2004

Ann Arbor brings peace, the feeling of home. The apron-clad blond, 20-something, hands
the girl a fat bottom mug, says you’re beautiful. Anna blushes, red as ribbons on the walls
behind him. A smile wraps across her face. Beautiful: salve for fissures to be filled.

ash

2007-12-11T20:24:00Z

When we broke, I called myself a mosaic,
poured venom into claret acrylic
to craft a new shade of revenge. I called
myself born again but found myself crying
at stoplights, in the shower, in the bathroom
at work under the pretense of pissing.
I found myself ordering Chinese food
for two, cradling your pillow, wearing your clothes
beneath my own. How desperate I was
for your wound: your clumsy fingers,
your mute stare during arguments, your back
to me when I craved conversation.

But when we were match and kindling, I knew
the cinnamon taste of fire. You knew when
to be newspaper, when to bear water. I became
limber beneath your ministrations, thought of names
for children not yet born, began to believe
forever was coming true. Finally, it became clear –
the Jungian analysis of my dreams;
your almond-shaped mouth a prequel to arsenic;
the breaking point of paper before it bursts into flame.

Fact is cloaked in fantasy, I tell my barren womb,
remembering childhood, fireflies, and dusk,
a bevy of green lights, how I failed to grasp
the threat of entombment. Maybe next time,
I sigh, and start over, though I find myself longing
for your mason jar mouth, glass walls, suffocation.