I love late months with their rumpled
and scrolled statements. Presence
of frost and cold moonlight. Sap
descends to root. Deciduous green
disappears leaving fiery scarlet
and turtlehead brown. Shedding
and decay show death but
is it a trick? What does the Monarch
know as it heads for the high
forests of Mexico? What wisdom
does the catfish carry as it lies
dormant in deep river holes?
Sure as morning
life preserves itself.
Falling victim to magnetic urge
the fat pad of my pointer
finger alights the rounded-corners
of a blue square and behold
Inner workings of people’s lives splayed
before me, at least projected
versions descend in droves
on a bright touchscreen
Addictive tendencies paired
with unrelenting empathy leave
me susceptible to the cage
of my highly sensitive self
Bracing for extremes
each one- or two-line story sometimes
accompanied by visual
evidence plunges into juicy
truth, drama, fancy
A warm, hairy sable sheltie schnauze
perches upon my knee in stealth
setting me free
The tension between us
Is a high wire act, our little Hamlet
Played on a stage of rotted wood
A fungus colonizing our substrate
My weed is your Bulleit Bourbon
Your rye whiskey is my Grandma’s Stash
(You say to my turned back) and this land
Is not some Jeffersonian pie-in-the-sky
It’s the fruit of dirt mailed around the globe
Give me space and you’ll find the dapple
In my eye
Again
The shadowed eve of our long day
Allows a slight repair: we’re on the path
To the fallen barn and at the base
Of a mossy ash you find a Scarlet Elf Cup,
Brushing back debris you uncover five black
Eruptions of Dead Man’s Fingers
You don’t bother to look up
he speaks to me in citrus peel,
my eyes burn, my teeth grow weak-
but i can handle this.
there is an arm growing from within my stomach
it is reaching up through my throat to
control my tongue-
but i can handle this.
i keep getting confused
i can’t recognize any of my surroundings
i think I’ve missed my bus stop
but never actually have-
i can handle this.
i search for strength in my marrow
and find violence in my blood
find humor in my burning flesh
find light in my tissues
find myself somewhere foggy
I get tired of myself and living with ghosts
My cats even tire of my being
I take lots of showers – try to plant flowers
Nothing of interest to dream
I do art in my head
Write great songs in my bed
Heaven forbid I should clean
No one showed me how
Too late to start now
It’s a style – everything in a pile
So I try to write
Stay up half the night
Maybe I’ll get something said
Sometimes I scream
To just let off steam
It sends ghostie parts fleeing in fright.
After Wendell Berry
Last night a thought floated through me: maybe
marriage is an inherently unhappy country.
I knew it, immediately, as an unfair thought,
and selfish. A sort of not-thought. I remembered
dear Wendell spent a whole book on the country
of marriage, the barriers we create, anticipate.
Country as not the shared hallucination of state.
Country as in contra – against. Opposite.
As in, this land lying opposite to us. On the other
side of the mattress. Their wild and yonder blue;
Bragg singing Guthrie: way over yonder in the minor key.
As in the fields that oppose the farmer’s hands and plough.
Like my young squash chewed to ablation by flea beetles
with their own hungry agendas. God’s first reprimand.
I picture the circle of my own body and around that
the circle of us; the broken circle of born family,
the righteous circle of our chosen ones. I think
of the living sculpture I saw in a forest:
branches soaked and bent into arches,
which form a giant nest. How dark and safe
it was. How you could see through the cracks.
What it means to compromise. And to trust. How
did it take me so long to realize I didn’t understand
either notion well. A learning curve; the way a branch
has to soften, to take on water, in order to bend
without snapping. Learning the curve of his brow,
his gentle shoulder. Yes, I feel it. The way resolution
adds another layer of protection around us.
Everything we’ve brought to the nest, and hold up to the light:
our ragged feathers. Our stolen baubles, which flash and delight.
two button up tank tops
pit stains faded to a light grey
will look good with jeans
two pairs of jeans,
one black, to be turned into shorts
one light wash to be left as is
two pairs of shorts
need to be brought in at the waist
they don’t make shorts for these hips
one lightweight tank
soft and gauzy
is the henna design on the front cultural appropriation?
no words to speak.
It’s not my song to sing,
not my grief to wail,
yet if I remain silent,
it hurts those I wish
not to hurt the most.
This poem is not
about me. It never
was. Insignificance
protected in white
skin. Willing to offer
as protection, acknowledged
as privilege in a fucked-
up world. I am a mother
who collapsed howling
screaming pain in empathy
that cuts deeper than I ever
imagined as worst fear.
It’s not my worst fear
for my son’s fate. Beyond
comprehensible. I would
burn the motherfucking
world to the ground. Tear
my skin from my bones.
Gnashing, snarling menace
to fucking society, I do
not understand. This is not
my poem to write. I hold
vigil protecting my son’s
spheroidal blood cells
from an unknown virus.
It never occurred to me
to worry about the cops.
And that is exactly the problem.
