kitchen trance:
the stove says, ‘flip the motherfucker,’
the spirit says,’‘when the dishes are dirty, damn it just buy more dishes.’
can you feel a heave of tired in my cheeks and skull and soul?
can you see the sky is black and blank? that’s contentment spelled out.
you can’t cook a sigh into the smell of sunny-side-up.
not a glass of water
another story
trip to the bathroom
another blanket
I give thanks every night
you require snuggles
like always
Very very fast. I am so so fast. oh my god
I have see n others smacsh our skull
against the railing
that the fake prey skids along/
But I am very fast and perfect.
Good Dog.
look like I’m am made of grey licorice
And My Body Will Not Break
Against The Edge of The Track
I Pray To Feeding hand that
it will not and it will Not
I will not twist my thin back
into two dog sections and
die . Like Discoramadama or Smokemout or Speedypebbles
Who were fast but did not outrun body breaking
Like I, perfect and springy noodlespeedy. Beautiful
carry me
whimper legs! I am a little worm god by light. Hubris he cannot grab upon me
The places I end up
where I don’t belong.
Tonight it is a homeowner’s association meeting
for a house I barely own.
I have come to cast my vote on a matter
that concerns me not at all.
The cost of removing and replanting
trees and shrubbery at the entrance
to the neighborhood.
A subject that will be tabled before I can even vote on it.
Because that’s how committees work.
One person does a lot of work on a proposal.
One person asks a question.
Another person gets offended
at the very need for the proposal
in the first place.
Yet another person claims to be able to get the job done better and cheaper.
And the issue is tabled for six more months.
My contribution is that I have brought cupcakes.
Four get eaten.
A few other unpopular ideas are discussed.
One man’s request to build a pool shed and a patio roof goes uncontested.
I leave with
a burden of cupcakes
and the same existential questions.
Why am I here?
and
What strange chameleon-like quality
do I possess that people continue
to welcome me in to places I ought not be?
Living into who I am
meant to be
without hesitation is
to move
to be
to offer help and hope
To have others who I see
with skills I lack
see me as having skills
they lack
I am called to live with confidence
always hearing the whisper
Make a significant difference!
Lord, let me love something more
than being cold & alone.
Now They Call It Parrot, But
My memaw was born in a community named Letterbox,
because, for a time (the US Post Office hadn’t yet opened),
the residents took their mail from wood or tin letterboxes
they’d nailed to the trees. There was a Letterbox School.
My memaw, for a time, learned her letters there.
Still is a Letterbox Church.
In our neck of the Rockcastle, community names morph.
Eventually, my memaw married a boy from Ionia
(or was it Holt? or Mount Pleasant?), and then they left,
briefly, to Pensacola, where, before home called them back,
they walked the tumultuous beaches of the Gulf,
beaches whose names are unknown to me.
