Posts for June 9, 2022 (page 10)

If I were a wrestler, 
my signature move would be
The Velvet Turnover:
something to sweep us off our feet
without a thud.

Something that lands in a whisper
and doesn’t have to hurt.

My confidence is 8 out of 10 on this one.
It is gentleman on Valentine’s Day card
dropped to one knee begging
to be involved.

It is pride of stuffed lions,
satin bomber jacket
that hangs alone on a post,
taken down like a feather.

It is rom-com,
loathe to admit its loss.

Why do landings have to linger
like a Kentucky hospital
that might sit for centuries
with its pale green whip?

Acknowledge the
less original move:
a Common Sticky Wing
that slaps, lets up and leaves,
hard and sudden as a pit.

unbound cloth- heavy thatch
                smokeless chimneys
                                           make
        unrecognizable portraits

     beyond the grassless path-
               fourteen floorboards
                                             from
     a brotherhood of branches.

jupiter day
i’d forgive it if it were mercury mind full of words
jupiter doing it’s job in overflowing
i’d rather it not in this case i do fine to fill
the space between pieced semiprecious lobes
atwitter all on my own 
this abundance needs displacement
the day commands simpler sight

Got married in red
velvet. Not bright like a clown
nose but like blackened
cherry, old blood. Grandma
warned: Marry in red, you’re better
off dead. At birth

he breathed 30 fragments
of air & like steam from a tea
kettle disappeared. Bright birth
on the floor. Cheap
apartment carpet red. Theater
curtains the shade
of vermillion & dust. Rust
on the Blazer red. Mom

delighted in the streaks
of a cardinal flitting
in the hospice courtyard
through the bending
willows. I remember the gift
of her last hours, how she stared
at the scarlet sunset before the morphine
trance. Electric shock

of divorce after 40. Then red
hues that birthed
comforts. I said yes
to crawdads in the shiny
vat, the eruption of flame
maple & beetroot. Lucky
as a bloodred cornsnake
who sheds her vermillion
skindress, I stake

my claim. I breathe. I am
not Plath. I’m no Sexton
or Woolf. Though I stumble still 
into mudslides of heavy
heartedness I gather
myself like a disheveled
bouquet, red
tinged petals
tumbling.

1.

INVOCATION

Bury me alive in cups of wine,
& let your antic nightcap
sing the ancient song of moon folk
that usher low thoughts out of me
with their dances whirling and dervish.

Black and blue.

2.

MOTHER

Your mother hunted for days,
squinting for the sight of you
in predawn twilight stillness:
in the peeling back of hovering night, 
with the diamond of the horizon,
half shell Venus over distant black sea.

On the sixth day
from a dusty forest floor 
came the third in the family.
& then the evening & the morning
& the mother took a rest.

The seventh day.

3.

BIRTH

The ruffian scowl
on your face 
cased in caul & blood—
not a sound came forth
from those lips I’d come to kiss
a thousand times.

The ruffian glanced at the room 
fists turned in, apelike,
knees bent as if to spring
from a hole, a little trudging faerie 
in solemn Queen-like protestation.

Salute.

4.

NIGHTMARE

Scutterput she is
in a deserted forest blanket 
covered in webs.
Such spiders speak in screeches, 
& sibilant whispers, gasps
frantic —as a bat

hanging in the trees,
& I never dreamed they’d take me,
never dreamed this of my own child—

that she would eat me alive.  

5.

FOOD/CODA

Looking for blueberries, we find
before sky dawns
there is a blanched tint 
like the ghostly mycelium 
and a blue within black
which holds the moon before
it dips to bathe in water.

Above the coast, laughing
we tripped in the barrens
of the shadow of the mountain,
sprigs of heather guiding 
our lumbering falls,
and a cluster of wild blueberries

arising
with luscious red leaves
almost as if we could eat them
with the heavenly mushrooms reaching
upward to greet us

in the dark.

Love me when I’m tired of life, when I feel like
anyone who loves me must be wrong,
when I tell you that you’re mistaken, that I’m a mistake.
Love me when I feel like I’m simultaneously a door with no handle
and the frightened thing that can’t find its way out.  

Love me with your hands like I’m all the money
you can grab, with your mouth like it’s happy hour
—drinks half off—with your whole body which feels
like a river when I feel like a fish, several hooks in me
like prized scars. Love me by kissing my scars.  

Love me on your hands and knees like a tatterdemalion
on a desert island scooping up a bottle with a message in it.
Let your love for me be uncharted, unchartable, off the charts.
Love me blind as justice. Love me blinder than a gigantic roosting bat,
satisfied with a thousand mosquitos in its stomach.  

Love me as the upper rim of the sun appears above the horizon
as a result of the diurnal rotation of the earth. Love me
in golden afternoon light, in the darkness behind your eyelids
behind your sleep mask. Love me in every room in our house,
in every stanza of every poem you write.  

Love me like I’m a bookmark holding your favorite page
in your favorite book. Love me like I’m a word
you just learned and can’t wait to use
such as cockshut which means twilight
or titivate which means to decorate.  

Love me when I spill beer on the book I borrowed
from you and sheepishly return it. Love me until your love
for me makes the ceiling spin, makes you sweat cold,
makes you need to lie down, makes your head pound, until
you swear you’ll never love me this much ever again but then you do.

I lived with thee and was your love
Your vows of pleasure did me move,
I hid my fears of fickle minds
To join you, left the world behind.

Oh, we did once sit on the rocks
And watched one shepherd feed one flock.
We traveled once in forty years
To hear a river with our ears.

You once did make a bed of roses
Then plopped yourself and took to dozing.
I made my own cap and kirtle,
Upon which none are decked with myrtle.

I have no time for fancy threading
I have to make up all the bedding
And comb the lambs and card the wool
And line our slippers for the cold.

Your belt of hammered leather made
By my hands, while ivy buds and coral fades.
My body bore a brood of heirs
My hands have given all their care.

I ne’er saw dancing, singing swains
By night or in the mid-morning.
I wash and clean and sew and cook,
I raise the corn and fish the brook.

Youth did not last, love failed to breed.
Joy had a date, age has a need.
But your delights my mind did move.
I lived with thee, your words disproved.

                                                       Imagine

					planting chestnut trees
					immune to the blight
					that wiped out
					old-growth forests.

					It is possible for purists
					without
					apologies to incite
					chestnut tree

					to make a comeback.
					Last year I planted five
					bare-root sprouts on the steep
					slope behind my house.

					
			                Today I startled a wood grouse,
                  dug three wide holes deep
		  in black soil and planted three live,
                  four to six foot tall trees. As payback,

					after two days and nights of rain,
					I slid, I rolled like a log, I broke
					my glasses and the steep 
                  hillside feels none of my pain tonight.

					Imagine none of those things
					will matter in a hundred years.

Scrolling through my instagram feed at 2:45 AM.
I look up and think,
oh no. 
My math homework, it’s late..
I jump up in a tizzy and I see the date on my phone.
June 9, 2022.
It’s summer, that means no math homework.

Watching a movie with my sisters at 4:32 PM.
Didn’t I have to do something?
OMG! My skate lesson! I’m late!
I hurry and grab my skates and stick.
‘what’s wrong?!’
‘I have a skate lesson!’
‘that was yesterday, it’s Thursday.’
‘oh..’
I lay back down on the couch.

In my dream at 7:30 AM.
I hear random buzzing noises,
I slap my phone on my desk.
The buzzing stops.
It starts again.
I open my eyes.
I wasn’t late..
I missed my entire therapy appointment.