Painted lines, shapes and marks
riddled my body and gnawed like sharks
One asks what good could come of that
Did it happen outside the realm of fact
Pulsing bolts of adrenaline divine
Ripping away flesh from my body to find
One lost child in the train station waiting
Gazing eyes on the curious painting
No one saw the adoption take place
Van Gogh drank me gone with no trace
It was clear that he had come just for me
And that we’d live in Arles for eternity.
Lock your doors
Don’t open for strangers
Don’t open for friends
Don’t go to church
Or the movies
Or the store.
Don’t go to school
Don’t send your children
Don’t run a marathon
Don’t watch
Meet in secret
Or dare
Don’t turn around
See behind you
Wear your headphones
Keep them silent
Listen
For footsteps
For breathing
For keys
For screams
For gunshots
Do you feel that?
Hair rising
Chill down your spine
Will it always feel
Like something
Or nothing at all
Just another Wednesday
Until you’re the one dead
Except everyone’s got ash
On their foreheads
Like gunpowder
Next we won’t be able to go
To the grocery store
Or the gym
Or the library
Or a museum
And who will want to
Walk dead?
Maybe they will
Change the laws
When no one is left
In one, Mom radiates joy,
young dark-haired Dad beside her.
Parents smile on either side.
More than fifty years later
the second shows them gray-haired
dancing close. On Mom’s face, bliss
seconds away from a kiss.
school
Ode to cigarettes
and Mountain Dew.
Ode to lottery tickets.
Ode to secret handshakes
and secret phone calls
asking for help.
I’ve always
admired your
stick-it-to-the-world
attitude. Feared
your funny way
of flipping off
the man who cut
in line.
Ode to the fishing boat
you still believe in. Miracles
kept themselves from you.
Your hands
are not marred
by hook and sinker,
but by paint,
cardboard, tape.
Back broken
by the burden
of dependence–
you worked hard
for your recovery.
Ode to moving out.
Ode to sweat.
Ode to new walls
stained by smoke.
You are a man
who leaves a mark.
He’d be proud of you.
Ode to you, brother,
for laughing at odes
but believing in the one
who writes them.
And what you don’t know
Is your favorite song plays everyday at my work
The bartender and I sing it to each other,
But only I know what it means
I remember the night you showed it to me,
I bought it on vinyl
And I wanted to hear it so bad that I listened to it without you
And when you finally came over
You were upset I listened without you
(I would be too)
So you laid on my bed and I laid on the floor and we just listened.
I always wondered if you thought of us like that song
That we weren’t in love and we were just reckless and bored
But it was just the opposite for me,
And every time it comes on
Everything just stops
And you flood into my thoughts.
I guess the mystery I’m workin on,
Without any clues,
Is if you love me like this song or
If I was just another black-haired beauty
“I’m leaving and I’m never coming back”
18-year me says to herself
As she rolls down the windows and drives west.
But she is pulled backed every time someone
who has never been to her home
Makes fun of its people
and their vast and varied struggles.
Or when they laugh
at the way her mom says “fix’n’ta”
when she drives three-hundred miles
to cheer for them by name
and buy them groceries for their dorms.
“This is where I’ll settle,”
24-year old me says to herself
As she rolls down the windows and drives south.
But she is pulled back every time
cowboy boots in bars start tapping
to well-meaning covers of bluegrass songs,
or when well-oiled men ooze
“I can teach you how to drink bourbon,
pretty lady.”
As she stands on a bridge —
A real one —
Because this is my life, not a poem —
And watches the day break over a sleepy Austin,
25 year-old me says to herself
“I have to go back.”
Jesse Stuart told us of the blood
That binds her and us together
because like the iron that builds blood,
Kentucky is magnetic.
She is the heart
to which we return
to find life.
To stay alive.
“I will never leave her again,”
The me of today says to herself
As she rolls down the windows and drives Home.
cotton candy skies
rushing by
with every single beat of my music
a memory flashes by.
cotton candy skies
i smell the sweet smell of sugar
i dont want to go home
but i want to see him.
cotton candy skies
you make everything feel fine
with trees rushing by
i feel as if everything is okay.
cotton candy skies
i know youre leaving
but please come again
i like the way you make me feel.
This scar was the first (as far as I know).
Riding my tricycle and looking behind me,
I went down cement stairs. I was three so
I don’t remember. But I still have that habit
of looking behind me.
This next scar is very faint. I tripped as I ran
away from my first heartbreak, tripped up the
stairs. My eyes squinting so hard against the
impending onslaught that would mess my make
up.
These scars here are camouflaged by freckles.
These are the spaces where I was sure that
bleeding would release the pain that built up
inside.
This scar only I can see, it lives like a whisper
in the back of my brain and occasionally
reminds me that it will always be there.
This scar, my favorite scar, brought forth
life, demanding my complete devotion.
Monopolizing my attention and leaving fresh,
prettier scars on my heart.
we chose ‘snail’
to start the morning Wordle,
immediately wondering
how many moved in grass
bryond our porch
this dawn
their purpose at odds
to helping win a game,
or so it seemed
you’d think they just
digest leaf litter, detritus,
their place on life’s circle
assured
or, perhaps, as escargot
their life bringing life,
or maybe metaphor,
their movement turned
adjective for life’s moments,
then there’s
cultural significance, stories,
or history, as famine food,
or even symbolic
(ever see a snail tattoo?)
we finish the Wordle, and
the answer has nothing
to do with snails,
of course,
yet we sit and wonder, how
its five letters hold
such significance
and realize
nothing in life
should be taken
at face value
