Posts for June 7, 2019 (page 7)

When I pass a big truck
near the stockyards
I hope without hope
the pink flesh pushing
through the slits
is not a living
breathing being
on its way
to slaughter.

met yours in amber sunlight on the browned field where our bodies became lovers before our souls. I betrayed you, you said, told them every detail of our insurrectionists’ affair. And blamed you for it all. As if I hadn’t done the same, speaking through pain like some untried teen-aged poet going on about the most common events. I even begged and hoped for you to suffer. But that was not my real burden. Even as our ghosts parted, sunset fading as the snow began, I enacted my betrayal once again: I didn’t say that I still love you.

fall on your knees before me. it’s the surest way
to prove true love. you may think it unusual
and cruel, but men have been falling before
their gods for millenia, before time even
ever existed, when there was only space
and humans were unblessed with the curse
of memory.
                     it may seem fealty is no substitute
for the kind of love to which you’ve grown
accustomed–soft caresses, roses opened
to their fullest possible bloom–but obedience
is most sure, most stable. it is timeless
and certain, the only true way to know
if this is the real thing. that you’ll never escape.

People only seem to love us 

when the coal is still being mined 

and we’ve gave all our part of the earth could give 

to greedy hands always wanting more. 

They seem to only want us when election time swings around and they promise 

to fight for us and our children 

but soon after they talk about cutting our pensions in half 

and taking our insurance because we are the laziest bunch of people 

they have ever seen.

They love us for a charity case 

and a scapegoat when they cannot face their own problems

as we are those poor mountain folk 

who do not know any better.

We cannot pull ourselves up by the bootstraps 

they say 

because we do not wear shoes. 

They love us for the food and music at our festivals 

that they refer to as folksy 

and they are stupid enough to buy for twice the price they are worth. 

They stomp their feet to the beat of the 

band and then claim 

the music has no art behind it. 

They’ll listen to me read this poem 

and not notice the power behind the words but instead talk about how cute my little accent is 

trying to make a difference in such a big world 

that they will never truly let me be a part of. 

but a poetry writing prompt has released
a childhood memory; incidents
that barely registered at the time.
A morsel of my mom’s inner life
that I might bite into and taste bitterness
like a slow melt on the back of my tongue.

Laced through the recall of our upstairs dormer
where my sister concocted an entire
make-believe family for me and read me
Debbie and Her Nap, my favorite,
there was the handsome, older guy
from across the street
drinking coffee in the kitchen with my mom.
There were whispered phone calls
that seemed odd,
that I was not curious enough to question.
There were afternoons at the babysitters.

Once first grade started, I never wondered
what my mom did all day.  I wonder if my dad did. 
I can picture the confrontation; my dad giving her
an ultimatum, quietly, behind closed doors,
after we kids were in bed.
No scandal, no divorce.
My parents’ day-faces revealing nothing.

I once married soil   
And was happy  

Soil fed me sweet carrots
And lemon balm tea  

Let me walk its fuzzy
Green back in bare feet  

Soil’s friends serenaded us
On frisky summer nights  

Even beneath snow and ice
Soil remained faithful  

But I left soil
For asphalt and parades  

Was I sorry?
Did I fall out of love?  

Yes
And No  

Soil is with me always
No matter the manicures  

I can’t get soil
From under my fingernails  

It smudges my dreams
Invades my waking poems  

With pine cone fever
And hummingbird throats  

Sirens that sound
Like whippoorwills  

Soil plants words in my way
And watches sentences grow  

It’s the remembered language
My fingers whisper in the dark                   

My father said he could not dance
to the city girl he’d just met.
Buckshot, he explained,
buckshot in my butt:
cowpoking in the 40s,
drinking too much
cheap whiskey,
getting into fights
with the boys in town.

I take after him.
Same crooked smile,
big hands, skinny legs.
Love whiskey,
and stories spun with sass
and half truths.
I, too, have metal in my butt.

But how will I explain it?
No one will believe buckshot,
if they ever did.

As I tick off the days,
outlined in teal with a star marking
the last, I realize that
somehow, the chronology has been
wound tight, only recognizable
through shreds and small scenes;
nebulous journal entries.

Where did they go? I know nothing
of most of them, only the markings over
their numbers, tedious things that I am
gladly done with. 
I was not living during those weeks.
I could have been somewhere else perhaps,

but not there.

I used to wish fire—
to suffuse these words,
to enshrine this heart,
to engulf this life—

but I am, now

wishing at the well—
whispering and breathing—
lips against the silence
of a lotus, balancing
on the water—its roots
swimming to, and buried in,
the source
whispering
back

You were
always
Fire.

I love you a pie that hurts our tummies but satisfies our souls