Greasemonkey

This poem is about a tomboy… and about how difficult it can be sometimes to not be the most feminine girl on the planet. There are definite folkloric links in the poem, in the description of the culture, in the identification with that culture, and quite simply, in the way that gender roles are transmitted in the poem.

I come from cars on blocks and the

brown yard  underneath

fingernails stained black and

greasy handprints on a once white sink

where the bar of Ivory is gritty and gray

and fifty-five gallon drums of used motor oil

leave lovely leaky rainbows in puddles.

I fear nothing because I had to be stronger

and smarter and unwilling to cry in the face of

boys who wanted to be tougher than me.

So I gritted my teeth and picked up earthworms

and dangled spiders in the faces of other girls

who were not like me, who shrieked and

covered their pretty faces with their white hands.

I come from engines hanging from low tree limbs

in place of swings, fastened to

chains thick as your wrist.

I come from six ounce Cocolas in the ice chest

and a crate of returnable bottles in the floor.

I come from showing off the slicks

mounted in tubbed-out wheel wells

and bored over 454′s.

I come from a son who wanted a son

and found one in a daughter

I come from displacement, from disappointment

from falling asleep in my bed smelling paint  fumes

and hearing hammers pound out dents, from

wishing I was wearing grease-stained jeans

instead of crinoline slips, pony-tails instead of

french twists, Castrol instead of Cover Girl.

I come from dirty hands and well-polished tools

the torque wrench, the ball-peen hammer,

the sanding block and the phillip’s screwdriver.

I come from red necks and tattoos on biceps

straining against valve cover bolts

When I was a girl, my daddy told me

I could be anything I wanted to be.

I told him I wanted to be a boy. I wanted to be like him.

“Anything,” he said, “but that.”