Written in a syllabic Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21)
Each
street
houses
resolute
faces surrendered
to the cement, hunger, and chill.
The homeless of the Bay Area will not stop you,
and you can hardly call it begging. Still, they’re everywhere, bundled against their lives.
i.
synapses
snap
crackle
pop
thoughts
of you
then me
on top
ii.
long inky lines thrust into the white space
poems grow pink from heat
bloom
Was I ever that young? And aren’t I
now, the way a flower, late fall,
still holds the seed? That girl,
big hair, big glasses, big life rising
from the girl squeezed into the other
picture, my mother, who grew
in the shadow of the kitchen’s stone chimney,
everybody’s mouth closed tight.
My mother made me that dress I wear in the one,
and her mother made the one she wears in other,
and on and on behind us. Though it stops
with me.
I’ve been catholic guilty,
Two generations removed;
A witchblood mutt,
Neither gravel nor grovelbred.
Godwilling, I’ll be a reign of rain,
A devil dancing, horned and grinning before this.
ii.
Whereas, I’ve been a bloodquilt,
Patchworked of flawed lineages,
I must proceed.
Veinburdened, I must return to that place,
Holyheaded and mantramouthed,
“I have come to collect myself.”
iii.
A beast of clay and labor,
I’ve been as a golem;
A vessel for the sins of the father,
The mother’s altarpieces.
But i can plunge firehands into damp earth and pull life from the land.
I must be something of woodspells and orchid sensibility,
A swordplanter, a worldbuilder, a jester to my own court.
“I have let you see it with your eyes, but
you shall not go over there.”
– Deuteronomy 34:4, ESV Bible
Moses never wanted to go. He’d already borne
the whips and the scorn, the way you can mourn
beginnings, blessings, even the escape, time
and times again. He wasn’t even meant to be
but he was, rescued from himself
and his blood, as if either had ever been
wrong. And that was always the plan, wasn’t it?
Lose your mother to be a prince.
Lose yourself to gain favor.
Lose it all, but your life, so you’ll see
(God)
Burning bushes can be distracting.
Burning bushes can be persuasive.
So he did the unexpected. Did the unbelievable.
He stood tall and in the face of mortal demons.
Discovered a fire and a rock he’d never known.
Moved mountains in the name
of another.
But it was never really you, Moses, was it?
You were fine, competent, useful while an emissary,
perfectly complete and enough until the moment
you let yourself be You. One moment of anger, one moment
of believing you deserved more, and it cost you
the Promised Land. Healthy, never showing
a sign of age or brokenness, yet you died. There
on the craggy face of Nebo. But not immediately. No.
Not until after you’d been shown the land you could have
had, but would never, ever walk.
I’ve stood in that place. Physically, metaphorically.
I’ve walked through the chapel built in your honor.
Looked up at the cross, strangled by snakes, that serve
as the only marker for your unknown grave. I’ve stared
at the olive trees, orchards climbing rolling hills to the horizon.
Seen what you might have seen. Seen what we might have
had, in a different world, with a different end to the games
of divinity. And maybe if I disappeared more, if I became
less, so that He, it, she, all of creation could be
more, then the stories might have ended differently—
for you, for me, for all of us.
But you didn’t.
And I won’t
ever again
be less
than any
of us
deserve.
Instead of lifting weights
at the Y this morning
to rebuild bones
and work the abdominal,
and dreading my time
on the odd-looking equipment,
I went riding on the wave of the breath–
blood rushing through the length of me
sun salutations downward dogs
rubber band steady on my feet
proud pigeon puffing my chest
happy baby back massage
anointed with lavendaer
drifting into Shavasana
Shall I grow
my hair out
and perm it?
Become a walking ad?
This first wig is
too weak and blonde:
some think I’m Luna
when I wander.
My friend, we all got secrets—
yours, the red and blinking man
in your blue bed, on the floor, and mine,
that actions can tell, that words can strike
and scrape.
Once, you told me to become
stronger, a stone. “One day,” you said,
“You’ll rise.” Together, under
the onion moon, beside car and apartment and foxfire,
the sky blued to morning around us us. “Someday,”
I said, “You’ll know.”
We woke up
in the heat, solid and clear-eyed,
our souls rising from our old bodies
like ghosts.
The purple toadshade has never
withdrawn its canopy
from the toad unsure
of its protector’s
mangiven name.
the needle wasn’t what hurt,
it was the dull throb that followed for
months after.
