i am calm with cold feet
i am a nap taker with full
bellies, a fourth time
mother to plants, a
book at the bedside table
placed just for show i am
laughter when you need it
quiet when i shouldn’t be.
i am twenty five not twenty
one
an age where i desire though afraid
i am a lonely keg of thoughts
a pixie stick made at home
a porch sitter, friend,
cigarette lighter. an eye batter
and hair pusher, a lover
a lover in the past tense
long leg bones
furred with lacey moss
a single cracked rib
a skull with good teeth
pretty girl
returning to earth
would any other
meet this lonely death?
All lives matter,
what a
joke,
that’s the
whole
point.
There are
African American
lives
being taken
and those
who are
peacefully
trying
to support
them
are
being
tased, maced,
and shot
for
no reason,
and people
have the
audacity
to
say that
all lives matter?
Such ignorance
makes
my blood
boil.
All lives do matter,
but
that isn’t
what all of the
discrimination
and
brutality
says.
Maybe,
if we all
just
listened,
we would
finally
realize
that
is
what
we’re trying
to change.
We all matter.
Now prove it.
He’s restless, wants
to keep moving, flings
his forearm back
& forth & back & forth
& back to prove – to
himself; not me, I know –
he still has control.
His right hand – no longer
the dominant one. He eats
with his left – at the wrist,
it flaps in dismay, chooses
not to cooperate today.
some nights, a heart turns heavy
wells up with water like you fill
a latex balloon meant to grow
with gas and air and lighter particles
that expand and lift it into sky
but some nights, the faucet’s on
full blast and the balloon drops
into steel-cold kitchen sink
stretches down to touch the drain
gets so weighed it flops, falls
water gushing out before its end
can be twist-tied up and you thank
god it wasn’t knotted, it didn’t bust
The steps of the ladder rose
One above the other
Sweat above her lip and brow
A low belly sick
Paralyzed by her fear
A superstition not able to rationalize
She stood to the side
Passerby’s in quick step succession
Heart vibrating her breast plate
Eyes darting to and from
Her eyes to the strangers, the strangers to her
Fear shooting up her neck
Sweat trickling down her back
Anxiety growing
Heat unbearable to feel
She could just turn around
Quick shuffle to across the street
No ladder to cross under
She stood frozen
Unwavering like the wind
The wind that swayed the ladder
It is the silence that I find
most frightening-
those frozen moments where
dissecting oneself
feels inevitable.
Today is among
the many
where I’d like to be
a non-entity-
tear away fingerprints
and lose identity
in the haze.
I oscillate between
wanting to burn
behind every pair of lips
my name grazes
and hoping to be reduced to
unrecognizable ash.
As spring loses herself
in the death of a season,
I watch, enraptured,
and wait for the
chiarascuro of the heart
to define me.
Is it the poet’s responsibility
to record the raindrops
or the spaces in between?
the words, or the silence after?
It’s been almost four years
since I put down my dog.
Was the poem his life
or the emptiness in his wake?
The mosquito on my ankle
left a red streak. Was the poem
its life? the itch it left? was it
me scratching until it bled?
They seemed loyal enough,
They seemed conscientious enough,
They did their jobs.
But when push came to shove,
They didn’t care.
It wasn’t much to ask,
Maybe an inconvenience,
An hour or two out of their lives.
But it was a matter of life and death,
And they didn’t care.
Inert and surly shackles sun-sick mornings wreath
around worsted nostrils, bunged again
as the fresh-fleshed infant’s
slickly split from shadowed stocks
in writhing, thrashing throes that foremilk clots
and cloys; stiff sputum callow noses know;
wet, pealing wheeze of tummies sunken
squealing from this sapling shucked;
some succulent’s frond,
a soulful palimpsest
potted in fresher flesh—
thin, spirited forebears throwing voices sharp
as curraghs’ fey and fumbling husks
glissade across prickling crests that woefully
low and sepulchral whalesong seeps through
lissomely simple as stars unfurl
first-light’s wet, waxy olios yanked
to welcome a blithering Drummond’s glare,
learned lines, and properties scarcely panting—
A black cat’s cringe claws corns from
barnacled glims warm, slumberous seas encrust
and caulk like shades drawn taut and stickily
stitched in sand-chewn sills, stripped jambs that,
erstwhile threadbare, longing lenses slowly smeared
to summon in scintillant swathes iconic,
echoic, and nacreous glimmers
some vitreous gods, among glib gambols,
skimmed from filigreed waves what
bleary horizons gleeked, then gulped and gushed with—
stirring still this frothing day,
which wets wan napes with labored breathing, begging
fingers visions sutured stiff as
ships sharp, shore-bound crags upend,
to grope about auric ears and flaccid,
foetid, quern-cracked grist,
or whatever enshrouds what bison once
would roll about dreamily dreeing grasses’
graceful lilt and sapid sway,
what writhing plains that sobering Kansas claims
and cramps, encages, blears by but a name
old, restless soldiers stole,
allured by illegible lines of a free state—
unfold those curling portals shrieks inflame
and sting as sullied scratches swell;
abide by what a tabby tells,
in jabbing her graven M,
slid smoothly as planes
lathe bumpy boughs of
driftwood, stamping
redundant as stammering,
diffident voices clamp at
mnemonic anemones enemies hem and indemnify,
raking inky rills of acrid mmm’s
through a furrowing scowl’s
bleak, chasmal creases:
a cat’s percussive nuzzle cribs
like blades ensnared in stridulous scrimshaw.
Knaves at play cold mornings wrought
in gnashing asyndeton streaking,
bald and raw, what soft parts freaking
cracked macadam some strawberry roan;
now, a kitten knows how laws are bent,
how claws are buffed and whetted snapping
rickety ribs of a rambling orrery;
Kittens arch and belly with low mincing moons,
in gambols grey and gay,
in stardust stylish quiffs most moon-borne
rabbits scorn and discreetly covet,
and every gilt, Jellico earmark
slumberous tails ensnare come shadowless hours
that charred macadam must melt and kvetch with—
lour at powerless rabbits proudly,
weed-wracked, cracking, cross if crossed,
and always crossed, and never acknowledged,
an aggregate Atlas smoothed from molten stone
no sole should deign to polish.
There upon the ragged bluff
our star’s brash, rankling ankles stab,
alights amid onerous crepitus creeping
murder ballads grackles bay
and, bothering low-borne blood to boil,
wry clarity emeralds bend and tinge,
blithe sunrise prying glims to seethe
when weighing clots of powdery tuna,
salvaging glaucous flesh from sunken peaches,
skulking, scarring navels bared, and
brandishing bilboes blood inspires
long and thrawn as borders’ stories sicken,
mere lice-lengths shy of empurpled shells
a twig, a lash, an asthmatic breath
could tease to share sweet, supple pearls
a kitten’s nail, unclipped, should wantonly puncture—
or deign to benight the world.
A baby bunny bolting from but silent sighs of slouching gates,
this cold and unplumbable grog one greets the quay with,
harbored along bright Hellespont’s beachhead;
Or, as my darling swears,
You’re only ever distracted
from the beauty,
and nary by beauty misled.
