Posts for 2020 (page 211)

Dipping lightly in and out of sleep, half-seeing the movie, she imagines lying back on the beach as the sun sets, or being embraced in the grass at the edge of the woods. She thinks of fingers tracing her collarbone, lips tasting the nape of her neck. Her head just right on his shoulder, the images are wonderfully calming and blissfully not. He thinks of those fingers and lips being his, of the neck and throat as hers. An hour into the movie, her head just so on his shoulder, he feels the familiar sensation as the circulation in his arm slips from asleep to comatose. At a certain point, this, too, is romance after the kids are asleep.  

Like the ocean waves
continuously crashing on the shore,
you run through my mind,
fragments of you left behind.
Broken, I’m trying
to collect them
without touching them directly.
For if I do, I know how it’ll affect me.

When I was a kid,
I played tennis. My coach would tell me
“Always keep your eye on what’s coming”
as if I wanted to be hit
by a rogue ball.

I learned as I grew older,
that tennis is a discussion.
The players must contribute equally and play fairly
for a good, long discussion to take place.

But when one side steals the other’s rackets,
the defenseless players can only cower
and run away from the onslaught of fist-sized balls.

No longer can they play,
for they have to defend themselves.
(And the discussion is ended with violence). 

If they played like that on my team,
my coach would have stepped in
and punished the offenders.

For it is never fair
to meet those without weapons,
without rackets,
without defenses,

with senseless, reckless brutality.

Black Lives Matter. 

Three fair-skinned
blonde-haired girls
Huddle around a desk
One whispers: “I wish I was black”
Loud enough for me to hear
My poor heart leaps
At the thought of it
does she really? I think.
“You do?” One girl echoes.
“Nah- I’m just kidding,” she says
And they all burst with laughter

That’s what I remember
From the third grade.

I remember the rocks
That met my skin
When I went across the street
To play with two white boys
I hadn’t yet met

I remember the fear
In my mother’s eyes
As I laid on the couch
Concussed after being hit
In the head with a tree limb

I remember insisting on her silence.
Insisting that it was an accident.

But was it an accident?
As the three of us
Two white
One black
Stood by the pond
Swaying sticks
And feeding fish
A force so hard
It knocked me off
My feet and sent me
Spinning
As they searched
For frozen peas
And I fought
To stay awake

When I was a child
The hate I had for myself
(Because hating myself was easier)
Ran so deep I cursed god
For thinking of the creation
That was me.

I walk for the fallen
And I walk for the girl
So beaten down
She wondered why
She was even created

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 ball thrown high
into the air
is slammed
with such force,
it sears the air:
perfect shot,
cross-court.

Unable to return.

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