Posts for June 25, 2020 (page 2)

Someone lives on the right,
Someone lives on the left,
In between is the monument of “HAMBLETONIAN,
THE GREAT PROGENITOR OF TROTTERS.”

Hambletonian was a horse,
The monument was erected in his memory
In Chester, New York.
It stands in a small lot between two residential houses,
Resembling a small Washington Monument.

It is unlikely that anyone wants to tear it down.
It is also unlikely that many people even know about it.
But two households live next-door to it,
So they know about it.

I hold my fish up to the sky and squint
beyond it to compare colors, mark

how the shadows that cast billows
of cumulus in relief resemble scales,

notice that the daylight moon exactly
matches the fisheye reflected light.

Most every girl joins a cult 
at least once in their lives

Fixation runs in our blood
As we feast on validation

We run in packs
We run from rules
We run from the boyfriends
We never wanted

Sad Girl
Bad girl
Scared girl
Mad girl

Unspoken dress code
Of Kate Spade, Sperry’s
Uggs & American Eagle

One unit
Operating unknown
From the rest

(Title from “Ways to Sustain” in “How to Dress a Fish” by Abigail Chabitnoy)

We all do our part:
The charge today is to act
as a human shield.

Growing up,
I had practice
as a chi buffer. I’ll start there.

It was never them.
Never about them.
In Feng Shui you must take
measures if the front door opens
to a back door or open window.

The chi runs away.
The chi is faultless.

We all do our part:
Enhance or multiply energy
with a mirror.

One must never tend to their quick,
wild chi by empowering
an exit point.

It was a flaw in
my childhood home:
A front door,
a small entry
direct to a sliding glass door.

Chi only chased its tail.
Chi was confused at that entry.
I think. Because

it was lack of knowing:
The heirloom mirror beside the entry.
But thick blinds and a rug
for mud banked what chi it could.

It was stylistic. A defect:
Upstairs the wall of mirrors amplified the
kitchen table’s chi and the piano
with my grandmother’s painting on top.

The percussion of
summer green bean snapping
and music lessons and
sharp remarks.

The chi itself is blameless.
At that table I learned.
I learned what I unlearn daily:
I was convinced I could protect
everyone else’s chi.

i got exactly

what i wanted

from tonight.

and now my writing

has become so dull.

i sometimes wonder

if i was ever in love

with you at all,

or if i was in love

with using you

to make a metaphor

out of me.

Raise the lights (a toast to our return)
Part the curtains (but not the mask)
Breathe in (feel the dust and the heat)

We sing (but for ourselves)

I am no dull spoon.
The scissors were there when I woke.
I cut the white sheets to get out of bed.
I admire my edges. 
I wear a skirt.
I stab the sidewalk when I check the mailbox.
I pirouette on one point. 
My scissors glint in the sun.
They click together like castanets to create my cadence.
My scissors sing against the whetstone in the kitchen.
We snigger at the teaspoon on the counter that needs another for music.
We chop chicken bones and metal cans.
The little girl in the cart at the grocery stares.
She says that her scissors at school aren’t sharp like mine.
We say, just wait.

There are days when my head
Is full of sawdust
A collection of 
Tiny pixel particles that I can’t, 
For the life of me, 
Sweep up in its entirety 

It’s in my eyes, my nose, my mouth
I try to talk but I don’t remember
I fall asleep and hope to wake up completed
Built
Whole
 
But sometimes
I’m still just
Tiny grains of sawdust 

They run to the hills
when I write the cleaning list
They cringe with each stroke

as I assign names
color code respective tasks
and hand it over

If I did not dare
to be specific with them
the house would crumble

Better they mumble
and complain all the day long
than deny virtue

from kids who need a
lesson in “hush and do it”
’cause back in my day…

requires one-thousand-  

piece-puzzle eyes & love of 

           green green—

why not eat the leaves!