It's us, too.

This letter is specifically (and lovingly) written to an activist friend of mine who is attempting to convince people that the economic-collapse is not affecting people “like us” who don’t have 401Ks or money invested in the stock market, but you can read it too.

My Dear Friends,

By now, we’ve all heard the rumors that America is leading the world in an economic collapse. How we got to this point, the meaning behind the numbers ticking across the bottom of the screen, and the tossing around of taxpayer money to folks in the automotive and banking industries only help to confuse the situation to those of us who aren’t economists. I’m writing today to address a very specific concern among so many of my peers who seem to think that this economic crisis is somehow not affecting folk who fit into the category of working poor families.

It’s true. We never had 401Ks to lose. We didn’t lose any money in the stock market because we didn’t have any to invest in the first place. But we did have jobs. We were able to go the grocery store and buy mozzarella cheese. This is not the case anymore.

For sure, prices at the grocery store have gone up. Easy example: standard mozzarella cheese blocks have gone from somewhere around five dollars to eight dollars. And yes, sometimes prices go up on particular items. It’s about more than cheese.

We can’t pay for rising prices because we don’t have any extra money. Thanks to the loss of revenue, we’re not getting a Christmas bonus this year. We’re not getting overtime pay. If we work for tips, (anyone in the service industry – your manicurist, waitress, pizza delivery guy, etc.) we are making less than half of what we made last year. Not to mention the layoffs.

Just because we don’t necessarily understand the green ticking numbers at the bottom of the screen doesn’t mean they’re arbitrary. They indicate a loss of profits for a company. Companies are not arbitrary either. We are companies. When companies lose money, that means people lose money. When people lose money, they make budget cuts. The budget cuts they make are us. They lose money, they fire us. When they fire us, we don’t do things like get haircuts or go out to eat. When we stop doing things like getting haircuts and going out to eat, the people who work at the salon and the restaurant don’t make tips. When they don’t make tips, they go home with nothing. There is no hourly wage.

When companies lose money, they stop doing things like building additions to their workplaces or repainting their living rooms. When they stop doing those things, construction workers spend the day staring at each other in meeting spots around the country, waiting for hours for someone to need something. When that doesn’t happen, they go home empty handed.

The economy is set up in such a way that if it falls, we all fall. Granted, some of us are better at living without money than others, however, the system we are familiar with assumes that we have places we can go if we are in severe financial hardship, like food banks, or emergency shelters. These places are not equipped to deal with the magnitude of jobless folk that the crisis is producing. Many of us have begun to supplement our joblessness with prostitution, drug sales, and theft.

And yes, sweet friend. These are not new ideas. Millions of Americans, generally people of color, generally women, generally in ghettoized neighborhoods have been privy to this kind of underground market for generations. We need not forget about these folk that capitalism already abandoned due to their inability to produce. People with mental illness. People who never learned how to read. People who were born into circumstances which breed more poverty. Life is harder for these folk now too, if that’s possible. Lines are long at free breakfast kitchens. Food supplies are dwindling at food pantries. Shelters are full. Ugly gets uglier.

My point, dear friend, is simply this: It’s not just them and their 401Ks. It’s us too.

Happy Like That

for emily

and she is as happy. as s.pool.s of red ribbon. dusky gold trim. clean. tidy. gift wrap like Christmas. like new lipstick. greysmoky eyes. aren’t really hers, but nonetheless fabulous happy.

like. a swan.ky rug. or a private train-car. making stops. only in Milan and Belize. happy. enough to give back, even though she hates this part, but loves the way he smells so she fancies it happy. like dimples shine. on the long walk home. happy. like the television is. always off. so happy she’s not sure. if she’s sober. sing car songs happy. notice license plates. happy like boun.ci.n.g.

happy like waking. realizing. she hasn’t died. in her sleep. or jumped. off that old barn. in Brockport. or encouraged her sister. to buy. a handgun. she doesn’t want or can’t control. happy. like finally. finish the den. sit. in the new. easy. chair.

like tuna-melts. kisses behind the knees. hot tubs and bikinis. that look terrific. like big. California. blends. or Troop Beverly Hills. happy. like finally. meet the man. she loved her whole life. without. knowing. him. like obedient children. raise their hands to ask curious questions. about science. and Barack Obama.

happy like kicking. crispy leaves. on our way. to the bookstore. happy like hot. pancakes. like watching. the game. and they win. happy. like Emily happy. happy like that.

No Mas de Problemas

No mas de problemas.
Turn the words like a tiny gameshow host.

“Be Better Than You Are.”



And I will do everything to answer or cry
when you make jokes when I ask questions.

And when you want to lose condoms inside me
I will answer and open my legs because
babies are catastrophes I create in my sleep,
& love is as useful as a helmet
when I dive from the side
of a mountainslide
on a motorbike
until I find

another butch
to cling to,

and wonder why
I’m stuck
in this truss
all the time.

Call whenever you want.
Your skillfun working
prickly dick has
solved more problems
of machismo and hopefully,
her name won’t provide
additional concerns ‘cuz
we can’t have any more,
remember?

No mas de problemas, Papi.

The Details

This piece was modeled after Stacy Walsh’s The Kitchen
appearing in Monkey Puzzle, Fall 2008.

I. The Scene

The apartment was ours as soon as we saw it. So far, we only looked at this one, but I knew we had to get out of New Brunswick. It was suffocating me. Killing us. A new apartment would hold fresh energy. Get us away from him too. And this place had beautiful hardwood floors. I wouldn’t have to vacuum.

II. The Reality

It’s cold outside so I blow my cigarette smoke at her sweaters instead of opening a window. I don’t care how many times she complains; if she can cheat, I can smoke in the house. Someone left a bottle of Southern Comfort at the party we had for her 30th and I swig from it. I drink myself into the telephone, calling every friend who might still answer this late. Everyone is tired of my tears by now. Everyone but me, apparently.

III. The Unravelling

I doubt this conversation would be going better if I was sober. I am full of imagined memories of how her love looked when we met. Somehow I am incredulous to learn she has no plans for New Year’s Eve. She wants us to stay home and watch television. Because of my immediate and violent need for her attention, I strip myself of physical protection and throw my nakedness into the radiator. It sizzles me. She stands, reaches. I shriek and grab at her cock on the nightstand. I threaten to cut it up with a steak knife. She smirks when I fall exhausted into a pile of desperation by the laundry. She tells me she can still fuck other women with or without that cock.

IV. The Aftermath

She is driving too fast for an entrance ramp. She always drives too fast. The only thing I don’t despise about our car rides is her captivity. We shout at each other because I found an earring that isn’t mine in the backseat. I know whose it is and I put it in my pocket. She shouts “But I’m not seeing her!” at me. When she smashes into the guardrail, the airbags explode in our faces and splatter white dust in our eyes. Neither of us are surprised. We crash cars all the time.

V. The Final Gesture

Finally I rent a truck so as to escape properly. I decide that now is the right time to call a new girl. Tell her I really like her. Flirt. See if maybe she’ll fall in love with me for the sake of moving into a new relationship. A simple one that I can trust. The new girl hesitates for only a second before telling me that just like Jay-Z, she has 99 problems. I sing along, fake laugh with her until it’s time to sob, and then hang up.

What It Isn't

not a computer but a typewriter. not a partner but a mistress. not a bad-girl but a lone some, willing to consider whatever bubbles of breath exist under skin without loving too hard. soft enough to run away when time gets going. when going gets rough. when rough gets plucked. when plucked like a chicken, these are not friends. he is not her friend. somehow lost a job or a wife in the movement of the second hand. cold economic crash and lungs collapse into tiny pockets of companionship. good timing not to be able to see two inches from the red rocks which are actually bricks.


and this


is not


her husband.

ms. mel kozakiewicz responds to California’s Prop 8

A week or so has passed since the victory dance, and I am as ready as I will be to respond to California’s decision to ban same sex marriages.

First: An explanation of why I waited:

Like it or don’t, I am an American. I did not choose to be an American but I haven’t renounced my citizenship and I do not plan to in the next four years. As an American or “american” I took great interest in the outcome of the election. To me, as well as (I assume) many other A/americans, this election was about more than one Mister Barack Obama versus one Mister John McCain. (Sarah Who?)

A/american history is so full of racism that we still celebrate Independence Day on July 4. You know the story. On July 4, 1776, “we” finally found “our” independence from Britain. Except that slavery wasn’t abolished until 1865. And then legal segregation came in strong, haunting “us” until the 1970’s, complete with lynching and terrorism by police officers. The history is gory at best.

I am a person who believes that when major traumatic events happen to millions of people for hundreds of years, it takes a significant period of time to move past it regardless of which racial side our ancestors lived on. Simply put: I am one of the people who knows that racism. still. exists. I believe racism exists in our psyches as individuals as well as in our collective consciousness as a country. I believe that (unarmed) Sean Bell was shot at (and killed) by undercover NYPD officers because of the emotions or gut reactions buried deep inside the shooters, brought on by his race. I believe that if my white brother was walking out of that club with a group of his white friends (who were the same age as Sean Bell at that time) they would not have gotten shot at. I believe the officers would have trusted their gut reactions to not shoot.

Stay here with me. I’m getting to gay marriage.

I believe that the constitution was written by slave-owning white men who were primarily interested in creating a document to secure the freedom and liberty of themselves, and did not account for the opinions or liberties of their wives or their slaves. (Note that both “wife” and “slave” are words which define folks in relationship to a dominant.) I believe that because of the history which goes on and on, A/americans have a severe problem with race and racism. Still. Because Sean Bell was killed in 2006. Because James Byrd was dragged to his death behind a truck in 1998. And Because LAST WEEK, Randy Gray, a Republican Precinct delegate from Michigan was photographed protesting the Obama victory in Ku Klux Klan robe with his face showing. Proud.

As such:

When A/americans who have been disenfranchised for as long as their cell-memories can maintain are able to motivate themselves to believe that change is possible, and then actually make their belief become a reality, I believe that we have something to celebrate. Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t it wonderful. Isn’t it wonderful.

And no. I do not believe that racism is over because A/americans voted a Black president into office. But I do believe that Barack Obama’s new job provides a visual representation to children (who don’t know about racism yet) that they can dream big. I believe that Barack Obama’s new job legitimizes the possibility that when people work together, change can happen. I believe that Barack Obama’s new job demonstrates that Republicans don’t always cheat, and that A/americans aren’t satisfied with the bloody administration who is STEALING from us RIGHT UNDER OUR NOSES. With our permission.

So I haven’t responded to the haters in California because I wanted to celebrate. We fight and we kick and we scream and when we finally have a tiny bit of reprieve, I want to participate in the celebration.

But now: On to the haters.

I get it. I’m gay too. (Mostly.) I actually prefer the term “queer” because it allows a more fluid expression. The point is that I get the problem. The problem is that the state, A/america, gives benefits to married couples which include really important things like health care (offered by corporations, legitimized by the state), tax benefits, and adoption rights. There are over a thousand of these benefits. These privileges are not afforded to same-sex couples because they are not married. So queers are saying, hey! We’re A/americans too! Let us get married! That way when my partner of 20 years dies in a twin tower, I can get some of that hush money from the government too. (Look up Luke Dudek.)

It’s true. It’s not fair. I get it. And if my tone is flip, this is why:

I believe that queers are fighting the wrong battle, which, in this case, really sucks because it seems like we just lost. Never fear, my friends, we didn’t totally lose, we only sort of lost. Let me explain.

I’m not convinced that as member of this A/american queer community, marriage is my battle. I feel like fighting for marriage is the gay equivilent of “Drill Baby Drill.” It’s antiquated. It’s a short-term solution and it’s only useful to some of us. I wonder why our relationship status affects our taxes or our health care.

(I’m going to say that again.)

I wonder why our relationship status affects our taxes or our health care.

I wonder who sets the goals for the community at large, (I don’t wonder. I know.) and why their priorities are so different than mine. I wonder why we’re spending SO MUCH MONEY on this particular issue. I wonder why the queer community doesn’t seem to give a shit about my transmen friends who can’t seem to get jobs, despite their master’s degrees. I wonder when the name Sakia Gunn is going to matter as much as the name Matthew Shepherd. I wonder when crystal meth is going to be less of a problem, and why no one has put any money into figuring out why so many of us are addicted to drugs that will kill us. (Can I get a shrink over here?)

Furthermore: One of the things that queer communities have been really good at is imagining new kinds of family structures and new relationship bonds that aren’t necessarily parallel to the tradition we’re calling marriage. While we’re fighting for marriage, we’re forgetting our roots and the multiplicity of formats our relationships take, privileging only the ones that look like theirs. Which is ok, but we can do better. We can, at the very least, pretend to care about the entire community, and not just the parts of it that seem comfortable and familiar to the heteros. Just because they don’t care about our wounded members doesn’t mean we don’t have to. We’re family, right?

So thanks to the haters in California for raining on our parade, and for reminding us that to them, even the monogamous cracker queers aren’t okay in the eyes of their Lord, and that our relationships aren’t as important or meaningful or devastating as theirs are. And to the queers who have found themselves swept up in the idea that if we have marriage, we’ll be legit, double back. Make sure.

As always,
peace or justice,
ms. mel

Loveworthy or Lonely Recycled Words

1.

Her feelings around my chest.

She lies beside me, too deep to reach.

I touch her face.
Nice to be home.

She smiles. No where to go.
That wild hair in this horrible marriage.

She asks me to cry. I’m already stuck
hanging around all eternity with her.

2.

Beside me
she lies sharp
scarred joys.

3.

Trust this impermanence
where there is no eternity.

4.

To her,
the wild moment

sober shoulders

my hair already
embracing her cheeks

love stuck to arms I haven’t had
quiet love
four days
that want
to watch and reach
marriage
raised
for calm.

poem for Obama and for us

“Come with me,” he says, “to the edge of this bridge. We will all hold hands and jump off.”

“Come with me,” to the queers with the lip rings and the slippery breasts.

“Come with me,” to the brown man in the wheel chair who fired guns in Vietnam.

“Come with me,” he says, as if an angel or a doctor sent him, “We will stand out in the rain together, learn a lesson about humility.” We wear jeans and black t-shirts even though some of us have much warmer clothing but we want to understand each other so we dress alike.

“Come with me,” to the high school dropouts who recently lost their jobs when they were caught stealing milk from the local Wal-Marts.

“Let us drink from the river and eat ears of corn, extra butter, extra salt,” as if we’ve never eaten anything else together, because we haven’t.

We step steady onto this shaky rainbow as an unlikely group and hope we wind up in a pot of sanity but no one can be sure because we’ve never followed anyone before, much less all as one. We stare at each other, watch the bizarre ways we dance or don’t, wonder how the other learned to move like that or stand so tidy still in spite of the fire energy pervading the crowd.

“Come with me,” he said when all I wanted was to stay stuck in my easy-chair and watch television, but he started to cry, so I cried too. I missed my grandmother but “Lucky you,” he said to me, I could bring her along if I like, so I do.

“She will be difficult to support,” I say, “She is white and not well.”

He smiles and summons four young imperfect strangers to accompany us. Eighty-four years old and Gramma walks or we take turns lifting her. She closes her eyes and makes new memories about this man, these men, this surprising and somehow surreal experience.

“Come with me,” he says, and we scoop people along the way who don’t know or can’t imagine they can move this fast or this far without the comfort of leather shoes and familiar faces.

“Come with me,” he says, and we do.

Alter, Edit, or Move

He wants us to hug strangers.
I don’t hug anything.
I hear the omnipotent voice.
He tells us to go toward the center.
We hold our arms out,
dance to the field
exhilarated and communal.

We begin to stretch and the music changes.
We take out our umbrellas.
I am unsure how many of us are participating in this experiment.

He wants us to hug inanimate objects.
We get stuck on the word inanimate,
wonder if trees count.

He’s trying to relax us.
He wants our excitement contained.
We make sure that no one has stumbled or vomited.

He tells us it’s a disguise that won’t hurt anyone.
I give a high five to no one,
thumb war with no one.
We all stand up – except that so many of us are already standing.

A sudden change
I look
it seems as
if we’re all

don’t think

at this point



He wants to know where I live.



He praises our

We’re supposed to
begin to breathe



We make our way there with our fingers


pose. Touch your nose he says.




people are going to look at us funny.


He obviously doesn’t realize



where everyone else

suddenly forced forward as poetry

poetry as an eruption. how it comes up like yesterday’s vodka. no sleep tonight, or not yet. puke it into a toilet. pressed cheek against a sewage seat that hasn’t been cleaned for at least a month. curious how it can be so vile. erupts like a tupperware party ulcer. a long narrow band of sarcasm and unhappy women who couldn’t possibly care about plastic boxes when they could be kissing on each other. erupts like water and mucus shoots out the orifice of a whale. or hairballs on the rug. wait till it dries, it’ll be easier to pick up. eruption as a forced exit of something soft from something hard. really hot or really gross. erupts from a pore in earth. or a nostril. erupts because it does. as it is.

a response

monday (k)night butch

of course i noticed
how your sentences mirror mine
"you've reached melissa kozakiewicz/
please leave a message"
as if you read it
all ready
said it to me as if
you meant it as if
your terror might be
invisible inside parentheses as if
our names aren't hidden
couched inbetween letters
not obvious but not
secret or at least
not to me

but i know you

Red Giant Phase: A Collaboration

for elizabeth

his toes reach almost the wind or else they direct the eye toward the woman he loves. she wears green when she feels radiant and wants him to know. his tag is exposed but he doesn’t concern himself with matters like shirts or money or trauma or death when she is the distance of one arm out. their toes mingle, tingle into after noon, flirt with the sand because he is in the most shocking love that one can find on a beach. later he uses a stick to carve her initials in the sand and she sends out light because she has waited for him for 4.57 billion years. this kind of far away love that directs climate even when naysayers think it won’t. this kind of love that supports almost all life below the toes and electrifies the body in a way that seems dangerous to the weak. to the smarmy. she tosses her hair and flares when he insists on capturing the picture but he does it anyway. he sets it as background on her phone to prioritize the moment. to discover that as long as their feet are touching then nothing else matters. and she glimmers because that’s what she does around him.

photo: Bob Nardi
text: mel kozakiewicz

better a butch than a man

she and me
we drunk stumble to the rental room.
i pass out dizzy one foot anchor the floor.
she mounts me and grinds,
dirty t-shirt uncovered thighs.
butch emulating a masculinity better left behind.
how often women wake with squirm on limp bodies.
better a butch than a man. no
poke poke puuussssshhh.
familiar fluids flip with women.
on top and inside.
disgust disguised
smirking fiesty.
HORNY because she came
WHILE I SLEPT so
she don't need a wake pussy.

Lonely like This

as lonely as six. hours. of tele.vision. a worm. in an apple.
baby. in an incubator. born early. wilted. lettuce. or rust.
under the drip. as lonely as mountains: miles of mountains.
or snoring. walk. in a restaurant. force yourself. say "party
of one." or "just me." uncalculated. air. one shoe. one
earring. one twin. one parent. one lung. lonely. like writing
poems. in the nude. crying. in coffee. first thing in the
morning. like divorce. surgery. wake up to a mirror in
which your swollen face is the only reflection. or marry a
pilot. speak. only to the babies. you made together. haven't
had an adult. conversation. in months. like alcohol. or
bar.tenders. or choose not to. bathe. lonely. like this. like
this. like this.

Field the Movement

I run in the street
bangin music and beats
slammin speakers and knees
mary j and jay z
poppin rockets for me

and i run

sneakers over concrete
cars cruise and beep
new york city to keep

space while I run

gained weight or lost love
I decided to run through
advisement from dawn
I smash down my feet
in appropriate streets
sweat and sing -- sweet
failure of song

while I run

men holler but I don't bother
an offer of eyes or flex
up my thighs cuz at once
in too long
comfort fumbles toward
responsible :: impossible
perhaps even :: powerful

and I run

toward leaps into energy
saved for sadderdays strong
like mary, the magic, mary, the music
propels anger into shivers of
awwwwww shit

so I run

Terrorists

Terror as in:

summer pudding, filmy.
wooden knives,
Staten Island.

bed liners:
moth cycles:
joke wareshouses (teeth and all.)

american pick up trucks and thunking metal chains.
doing it wrong -- traveling
alone or with salesmen.

birthing virtual babies in public places,
pap smear campaigns.

massive bobcats attack
bloody pirates (gaping and dirty).

letters shrinking & suicide
captured on camera.
squacking birds in clouded skies.
and winded good-byes.





or perhaps:

what happens to men
after they soak us?
establish the seed and leave
us now with impossible trees?

then what happens?

Without Coffee Without Song

Her silent desire:
these seeds, ground up & us
occupied in apologies,

polite urging of harmonies,
pleasing vibrations that travel
into and around our most sensitive organs.

Let us operate and control the road,
chew and swallow the sky,
participate in violent struggle

in rare instances because
divergent hostility
is better than loneliness.

The Woman in the Moon

The Woman in the Moon

Still Chang'e lives, a spinster mostly, on the moon, dances in silk.

Legend says she swallowed the entire immortality elixir

which she had fully intended to share with Yi

(whose do-gooding got them banished

from the highest court of heaven).

Perhaps she wanted a divorce or

maybe it was a fancy mistake.

Either way, notice how

companionless

she sways.

7/14/08