suffragettes 

will you put jonquils 
in my hair?

let's planting tulip 
bulbs in the asphalt--

we'd make the streets rising like
bread on the counter 

you make me feel like a suffragette--

like the woman-sun 
as she cuts her hair
into a bob & drops locks
into the lavender rivers 
of our blood

we would make terrifying girls--

what could we do with the vote?

steal it--
ballots in our teeth

sprinting away 
into the night

clutching the hems of our 
long-sleeved dresses--

will you pluck off my
buttons like blackberries?

take scissors to 
my sleeves-- let's make sashes 
& banners that say

We will have what we want--

undress for me in
the quiet space at
the neck of the crocus--

this is where we will
be happy & alone

no i'm not a girl
at least not anymore but
if i were alive in
the 1920s i would have been--

maybe i would have even liked it--

when i was a little girl 
i rubbed dirt into my knees--

i would pull weeds from the
cracks in the sidewalk
& treat them like sisters--
setting them in glasses of
water on the kitchen table--

cut my hair into a bob--

we'll put on 
our beautiful sunday hats--

rims keep the church bells
from clattering out 
of the sky--

does heaven believe in jonquils?

is the sun yellow for us then?

i want to be suffragettes 
because i feel like it
would be wild--

it's not that i think it would
be easy--

just that it seems straight forward--

to believe that my voice 
is lodged in a vote--

waiting to be spat into
the smiling man's face--

his cheeks bleeding roses--

we would meet up after
the great march on a street corner--

you'd light my cigarette
& we would whisper 
revolutions small enough
to sleep in flower beds--

you would tell me
that i remind you
of a crocus-- the first
ones in the spring--

the ones that
come up without warning
in the front yard
of the church on Chestnut street

i'd kiss you & 
you'd make me promise
never to tell--

i'll spend my first vote
on you--

to have us made into
locks of the sun's hair--

feather-falling in the street--