May cardinals sustain us,
may honeysuckle preserve us,
may possum protect us,
may the way of the goldenrod direct us.
(Where I’m headed there’s plenty)
May the fellowship of Kentucky go with us
this day and forever. Amen.
I hope I die before I lose my teeth.
Watching everything I know about femininity crumbling
into beer cans and those hidden places only grief may bore
behind the shelves in the garage-
we find old bottles cleaning
she’s forgotten
we find old memories shriveled in sniveling corners
vermin claws tracing spectre of auburn hair fly down
sobbing on a sidewalk in an outlet mall parking lot
I thought I’d lost you where did you go
These days she’s chipped her mouth again
and no longer grits to speak. When the addiction
cracks my mother, I hope it calls for me.
my friend said yesterday, and I paraphrase:
today’s world wide web, media, social
it’s telepathy
what you’re reading now, used to
we would have to go to a café, poetry slam,
local library (if I were famous enough)
yet now, in this electric forest
of interconnected synapses
we walk each other’s minds in
immediate sense, with connection,
without hesitation, thoughts
beamed into our laps via notifications, and
it’s miraculous
then again, books have always been
miracles of mind reading
(Carl Sagan called it proof that humans can work magic)
so, perhaps
we have traded ink, paper, libraries for modern
telepathy
and while I sometimes grieve that my future holds
less tactile adventures amid pages,
I am relieved at how easy it is to share ideas
and compassion and anger and humanity
so easily, so quickly, so wonderfully,
so miraculously
these thirty days in June
all the little girls inside of me
rub their pink hands along my bones
to keep them warm;
they hold each other closely-
whispering secrets and singing little songs.
me and my grown up body haul boxes,
move dressers, cry at photos on the floor.
all the women i will be
place their hands on my lower back to correct my posture
and brush the hair off my face.
one of me is singing a song i haven’t heard yet
from somewhere in the corner.
i’ll hold this baby close to my chest,
and then tuck her back inside of it-
we owe it to each other now.
Red lips
Sealed in a saccharine smile
Hide teeth
Clenched so tightly
Enamel threatens to crack
Set like steel bars
To imprison a scream
Knowing once it escapes—
And it will escape—
It will echo so loudly
The clouds will dissipate
The birds will fall limp from the sky
Like used tissues
The trees will arch
Like acrobats
And stained-glass windows everywhere
Will shatter.
1847 Members of nine Catholic families,
Joseph Nöltner’s, Ruschmans, all could see
out from this hilltop:
Licking River, all good bottom land,
sort of like the old place, southwest Germany.
Plenty timber close. The first church was logs,
on top of John’s Hill Rd.
1858 Now a stone St. John the Baptist Church
was built. Ignatius Ruschman and his family
farmed on Three Mile Road. A town grew up
along the river, Wilder, after William Hamlin
Wilder, ophthalmologist.
In the church they sang:
Großer Gott, wir loben dich,
Herr, wir preisen deine Stärke.
1920s, Neltners found a place out in Camp Spring.
William and Loretta Ruschman, the three kids,
moved to a farm in Cold Spring, halfway up on
Murnan Road between the river and the ridgetop,
the nearest church, St. Joe’s.
One day William went to church, walked into
the confessional, knelt, and started in. “Now stop,
Bill,” said the priest. “Use English in confession
now.” When he got home he told his kids, “I did the
sins in German. Why not tell the sins in German?”
Some days, espresso is all I need
to pour into the vessel that once held
the part of me that treasured
new novels, relished in ink pens,
fresh sheets of paper, new words,
fell into a cozy stupor watching
the way Rhett kissed Scarlett—
often, the way she should be.
White mocha seeps into my being
on these days and I feel I can keep
placing both feet on cobblestones
of memory, reminding myself
of who I was before 14 years passed.
Some days, no amount of caffeine will do,
only the cavern of my down comforter,
the blanketing blackness of a room
curtained in clandestine mystery,
lavender and eucalyptus steam billowing
while I’m digging deeper in a fortress
of pillows, covered up and dreaming down—
pushing thoughts beneath the rug,
sweeping the cobwebs into a pile
of broken stone memory fragments
that I can no longer piece together.
Some days, I do my best to sort through
the shattered pieces of who I used to be.
One spidery strand I manage to read
in a voice that does not belong to me:
You can sleep when you’re dead.
No, no—that can’t be the one
I keep searching for; it can’t be
the elusive piece. My mind rearranges
the stones, picks through them,
finds it properly, reads it to myself
in a whisper that does belong to me:
You can sleep when you’re dead inside.
I stood
in the box and watched
lie after lie find everything
but where I want it
in front of me
I wait
My patience seen as weakness
is that of a cheetah
I see that two seamer
losing some speed
drifting back over the zone
looking for a full count
Now
Barrel meet ball
The crack you
heard
and the look
I gave
is why
you should have
thrown at my head
I don’t have the right thing to say.
Ask me for my death row last meal menu,
not some frivolous closing remarks.
It’s nearly done.
Our words have run
and slunk and jumped
and danced and bumped,
they’ve filled the page
and the airwaves,
they’ve made us think
and sometimes blink,
they’ve touched the heart
and made us smart,
they’ve made us laugh.
Let’s raise a glass—
it’s been such fun—
new words will run!
