And even after nightfall,
the heat did not fade.
Hunger welled up within us,
threatening to consume.
The cry of a coyote
sending chills down
our sweat-covered spines.
No door, and at
the edge of a forest.
Waning moon and dim stars,
covered by a straw roof.
But nothing about that
night struck me more than
the sheer depth of the darkness
and the fear.
I can only imagine
the pain you’ve suffered
living in this world
as a woman.
Now imagine a little girl
picking up Sorceror’s Stone
wanting to be Hermione,
poring over Chamber of Secrets
and crying with Myrtle
for being different,
too.
Imagine that girl
growing with these kids
that you birthed
out of your biological
imagination,
growing in this world
where her hero
won’t acknowledge her pain
as a woman
with testicles
or an extra chromosome,
won’t sympathize with the story
of when she learned about
her clitoris
and how the doctor called it
a “micropenis”.
I can only imagine what it’s like
when half the world is against you.
Now, can you imagine a world
where your hero is,
too?
–or I Try to Stop Thinking About Humans
Red hornet is dead on the dashboard when I get in the car.
I honk and swerve to miss a skinny dog,
an eastern box turtle, a black snake,
an already-splattered chipmunk.
The brown sheep blares like a foghorn for feed
and handfuls of corn when I return.
A thousand no-see-ums feast on my arms and legs
in the garden, bees beside me in the clover.
Calico with a dead mole preens, self-satisfied on the stair.
Five dead chickens in the coop have no heads.
While I bury them, the chihuahua mutt barks
playful at momma deer and her fawn,
come down from the abandoned house seat
into the buckwheat field to see what we’re all about.
During the evening mile walk, cardinals on either side
of the shallow river machine-gun at each other.
Cottontails spaz and dart under the roses.
Mourning cloak butterflies sun their wings beside a mud puddle,
two turkey buzzards in a lazy coast 100 feet above.
There is tiny peeping from the Carolina wren nest greeting me
in the porch rafters. I close my eyes, head tilted
to one side, try to count how many voices I hear.
Stirring in ash, I awake
within the charred body
of my former self,
fire’s last consumption
before the world escaped with my flame.
Desires unmet
charted a new course
through the valley of death.
I found a place to lie down,
preparing for the long anticipated act
of self immolation.
Far as I know,
I did everything I could have possibly done
flying through the four corners
of the earth
for you.
I knew I was going down
as feathers floated away
mid-flight.
All I had for comfort
in the bottom of that dessicated valley
was the conviction
that I always flew straight.
I just didn’t have the strength
to finish the journey.
Yet it’s a sense of mission,
of potential unfulfilled,
forcing me to rise
once more fledgling,
studying cloud and wind
to find my new direction.
I now stretch my wings
trying to remember what it takes
to lift a soul to heaven.
I’m hoping to relearn fire as passion
and not as a waning flame
waging war with winter’s might.
All I’ve needed
is the spirit granted
by a beautiful heart
who believes in me.
Then, altogether again,
I’ll once more take charge
of my limitless skies.
And many watching
will have no idea
that I just survived death.
My stomach has been in knots
For a while now
Depression falls down and lands right on me
How could it not?
My mind plays tricks on me and
My mental health starts to poke me with a stick
Jerks and tics
And unwanted thoughts
Not the time
A shaded wood in afternoon,
all my labors through,
heat is a mosquito haze,
breathe the only breeze,
even leaves perspire
to leave their pollen musk.
Stretched between hackberry
trees my hammock swings
as I have shifted in a mid-nap yawn.
Gone are all youth’s inhibitions,
tempered, my college ambitions,
my natural inclinations,
at last, have come to full fruition.
To have sweat and worked the day,
dug the soil and cut the hay,
now I’ll study on a leaf of grass,
read Whitman and perhaps,
my nap will last til dusk,
and then I’ll roam while others
sleep, by moonlight I will weep,
my lady, for the lilac dress,
for this world torn in sure distress,
forbidden the caress which
would make us whole.
I am immense in passion
and in sorrow, but tomorrow
I will still be after that which
brings us laughter even if
the toll is paid in tears.
I’ll no more number fears
but live out these longest days
like they were numbered.
I’ll sound my yawp with courage raw
and act out unencumbered.
The gift of knowing who I am
is the greatest peace I’ve found.
I startle from my rest,
a mourning dove up in her nest,
does coo her hollow sound.
our country in turmoil, I stay home
in a shameful cocoon of self-preservation
told to use this time of isolation
to examine unconscious racism
to find ways to make a difference
to express gratitude to our doctors and nurses
to reflect on life’s priorities and meaning
to redefine relationships
to write, every day
I fail
the news of deaths and violence
the masks and the fear and the heat
relationships transferred to digital screens
the quiet of my house
leave me lost
suspended in fog
barely moving
With wonder in her heels
she pressed herself to the Russian display,
filled herself with fascination
at the array of Barbie dolls
and beanie babies
so foreign to her.
As children often do,
she will finger-paint herself
with longing,
day-dream of beautiful dresses
and the forms that fill them.
Her children will inherit
the bounty of her desires,
prod plush with tentative fingers
before setting it aside
for another passing curiosity.
She will retrieve them,
take in their individual splendor,
and recreate the display of her youth.
sometimes the only way
to truly know a woman
beyond the feel
of her teeth against
your tongue
is to find her perfect
song
and only then can you
see her smile
through those narrow
beautiful dangerous
heartbreak eyes
when the true
poetry
of her body
can finally be read
when she’s not
thinking about
you
at
all
