salt
in a shallow sea
the sound in perfect silence
waves on the shoreline
Bodhisattva showed us how to combine
all our fears into one living thing
So it can be seen, instead of just felt
All our fears go into forming a great monster,
from our kid stuff to our current stuff
It’s a combination of oldies and greatest hits and new stuff –
which really is just a buildup of all the old stuff
When complete, and standing in our doorway,
we can assess its height and weight,
just as we would a persistent bully on the playground
The hope, and the enlightenment, is that
once seen and faced,
the beast will lose its ability to frighten
Instead, it will awaken our ability
for compassion and understanding
There will be empathy for it, and, in turn, ourselves
His monster was named Mara,
and he was described as a Demon God
I picture a huge, hairy beast
with protruding fangs and malicious intent
Today, my monster took the form
of a Metro Bus driver named Bob
He said that he wanted to be called “Robert,”
but felt that it might come off as pretentious to his riders
He was stopping by after a long, difficult shift,
looking horrible and sad
He smelled of stale cigarettes and the city,
and every minute or two he would knead
the back of his neck and clear his throat
I offered him tea, which he accepted,
balancing cup and saucer on his knee
A little bit spilled on his pants,
but he seemed not to notice
His clothing was worn but clean,
his face deeply wrinkled
with skin that looked as though
it had rarely seen sunlight
His life, he realized, had been focused
on making sure that all his passengers
got to where they were going
Right on time, every day,
after day, after day, after day
Bob was a tired old man
who had traveled many miles
in service to many people
But he had no journey of his own
He knew no joy of his own
He held the cup up high to get the last sip of tea,
carefully placed it back on the table
and quietly left the room
I looked at the empty chair and still warm cup,
while listening to his footsteps retreat to silence
I found myself wishing he had stayed longer
A hairy beast with fangs and malice would have
been somehow better, the fear for bodily harm much
preferred to deep and genuine sorrow
Bob, the monster that showed itself to me,
was actually selflessness
The belief that being committed to everyone’s journey
but his own would somehow find him favor in the eyes
of loved ones, peers, and a deity never seen but believed
Selflessness showed itself for what it truly is
Self-neglect
Now, the room is so very still
I find myself in a new alone
Asking if those I serve so faithfully,
I serve out of love and caring
Or because it’s easier to serve them
than to love myself…
Will the anger ever truly go away?
Or will it always wait in my darkest corners
like a venomous spider ready to strike
in the moments I don’t recognize it’s there?
Today there was a box caught on the ramp and I asked
my coworker if he could do me a solid–just a little nudge–
and he said no I cannot! without so much as looking up.
I wanted to fill his veins with poison.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Brazilian wandering spider
and it’s all-fight-no-flight aggression.
Fuck your crushing foot, fuck your sweeping broom,
it will find a way to sink it’s fangs in you.
You know you’re in danger when it raises it’s body erect,
front legs reaching to the sky,
back legs cocked, ready to spring forward,
and maybe that’s closer to how I need to be.
Most of my enemies have shared one thing in common:
my empathy to use, misuse, and manipulate
so who is the real villain of my story?
I don’t really want to be kind anymore
or rather, I don’t want to run from battles
that need to be fought for the sake of my soul.
The wandering spider is such a small fraction of our size
yet it is feared. Respected.
What if I was just as assertive? Confident?
Nobody would be able to take away from my spiritual stores
but that requires a step away from myself
choosing suspicion of evil over forgiveness.
Will it work for everyone?
That one coworker seems more practiced at wandering spider than I am
so he’ll be hard to beat.
Nevertheless, my hands are raised, ready for a war.
I can’t change a world that I’m barely surviving in
and I can’t start turning things around while I’m still rolling over.
There, somehow, I’m finding a way to build a better me from the anger,
as long as I can also keep the venom out.
Or maybe I’ll leave it in…
Let’s dream away the darkness
after the car wreck. Let’s put our brightest lights
back inside of ourselves.
Sleepwalkers carry flashlights, knives,
mouthfuls of spit. Let’s ignore them.
We’ll sleep to music and cicadas the cat loves.
Our last day on earth was yesterday.
I never forget a face, even buried
beneath sooty soothing ground.
Tonight, alone or loved, it’s complicated,
our bodies caught in a net,
tongues turned to three-piece suits,
all stiff and unexpressive, I mean,
our breath still floating somewhere
far, far away from us.
Rush to the door, yank it open
to head to the university
read my poetry
urgency vanishes
A young woman, lips
pomegranate purple
reaching for the same
door, stands startled
she in her stiff, white
apron, bulky black shoes
thick dark hair tamed
but wisping free
beneath her crisp maid’s cap
hands clap, her breath, a whisper
Your scarf color means good luck
in my country, Iraq!
she moves four fingers of
her right hand as if talking
to the thumb Wear this color
and nobody can say bad about you
She grins a yes, eyes bright
At the lectern, I touch the
lime-green, thinking of her
thanking her, for protection
abandon planned poems, tell my Rana
story, the scarf warm, seeming
to glow around my neck. My words
sing finer, the listeners lean closer
I learn that Rana means beautiful, eye-catching,
from yarnu, to gaze at longingly, a name so apt
it rings in my ear like a singing, crystal bowl
so in place of four dark chocolate squares wrapped
in gold foil she’d left on my pillow as goodbye
I lay the lucky scarf.
When she started flying
in dreams, it was a supernatural
relief: she could escape
whatever difficult situation
she found herself in.
But the point of dreams
is to work through the hard
stuff, so power lines began
to show up when she launched
herself skyward.
Still she didn’t stop
flying, the possibility of electrocution
less terrifying than what awaited
her on the ground.
You taught me I couldn’t say no.
I couldn’t say no to doing chores
or to leaving my phone in the hallway at night.
I couldn’t say no to church every Sunday
or to lights out at 9:30, no matter what day it was.
I couldn’t say no to changing into “less slutty” clothes
or to you holding me back a math class, even though I had straight A’s.
I couldn’t say no to you making me break up with my boyfriend over text
or to being grounded for weeks on end for “having an attitude,” ironically, another way of me trying to say no.
You would scream at me about how selfish I was
and that this was why I was bullied in school,
that this was why my suicidal brother doesn’t think I care about him.
So when a boy told me I didn’t care about him
unless I had sex with him,
who was I to say no?
When my best friend spread rumors about my sex life,
who was I to tell her she was just being cruel?
When my classmate yanked me over my desk
and shoved my head into his pants
what could I have done except laugh awkwardly with the rest of the class?
When my boyfriends roommate started rubbing my legs under the blanket,
what else could I do but sit there and take it?
When my childhood best friend’s brother tackled me to the ground
and grabbed my chest when I was seven,
who was I supposed to tell?
You taught me I couldn’t say no
in a world full of people
just waiting to violate me.
someone asked online today
when you think of Appalachia
what visuals come to mind?
and a flood of home
washed across my conscience
as I remembered the many
yesterdays, like
Friday’s rain that floated
steam up from green hills, the
tomatoes staked out in rows
in yard gardens,
the creak of the wooden bridge
whenever I drive over
to the old home place, and
that’s what I decided,
those three things were drawn
on my personal canvas, yet
as the day wore on, I kept
visualizing it all
poke uncut on yard edges
as we wait for supper
or those old-timey roses
pink ramblers, seven sisters,
and on, and on, until
a flood gate opened in my mind
and I weeped words,
bled portraits, like
cornbread coal trucks honeysuckle cornbread dinner on the ground red-cover hymnals creek crawdads swinging bridges goldenrod porch swings railroad spikes red dog shuck beans broom corn tractors tire swings possums quilts blackberries iron skillets bluebirds rusty dozers dewy morning glories sorghum-making brown water skipping rocks mud dawbers, and
then I drew a breath
stopped, realized
I would never stop, like
an old dirt path up the branch
taking me home as I stepped
into the smell of wet dirt
and memory
