Painting you
Before you say good-bye, you tell me you plan on going home & getting naked. I do not imagine you by your bed with one leg arching over your space. With a poet’s eye, I paint you outdoors in shadows & light, revealing you the way raindrops on ivy by the chimney would. Your skin glows. Your cheeks flush. Stealing innocence, you sit beneath a blue sky on rocks warmed by morning sun.
Is saving a glob
of unformed tissue
worth re-granting
control of your body
to vengeful insecurity?
Why aren’t your reeling
from this backward
trajectory? Can’t
you feel the deep press
of their thumbs?
Will you be first
in line to adopt
the unwanted?
That is,
if you’re allowed.
ripe plum
split open
pit removed
slick sticky
sweet tang
of you
let’s sin
in Eden
for now
Hope
like the grip of gravity,
like a cage around the mind,
like river rapids
capsizing my peace.
Thought I would text her,
ask how she was doing
because it had been a little bit.
Just never prepared myself
to receive silence.
It’s not coming together
as it once seemed it might,
like always.
I’m not ready
to go under again,
the very reason I wanted
to be done with wanting.
I was so on guard, shielded
from the cry of the hurting,
the voice of Jesus.
Then I ran heartfirst
into something so desirable,
my convictions shattered
on the stones of reality;
lungs filled with water.
People in need are my weakness
because they might want me around.
I create the lie, the story,
the river with its flow
but I can’t get rid of boulders
even before she creates
more innocent disruption
through general affection,
a light hug, shoulder squeeze.
God I want more.
The current has me good now
and the only way out
is to be carried by the river
afloat or not–
love or fear–
until I’m deposited
into some moonless ocean
far from myself
or dry land to cling to.
Fodder for the sharks.
Scoffed at Handmaid’s Tale
Onslaught, up caught feelings
overflow anger shows
No rest for the righteous
slings and arrows avail us
not marches but votes
I am a body
I am a woman
I am a Jew
I am a Lesbian
You can legislate
You can spew hate
You can shove me
in the fiery oven
But behind me
more will rise
In every generation they
have tried to annhiliate us
We will not go quietly
Only the dirt knows
the heart weight of news
a horse hoof on a single egg.
It is a lie that you are missing out
on something everyone else
is doing, a great fabrication
that justifies all the churning
fetching forth, gaming gamely
in a zero sum ploy.
A blind hag once told me
only a cup and a half of grace
exists to bless the world.
Tender this notice that I
am anchoress of the back porch now
counter of ants and beetles
in retreat from exchanges
urgencies and agitations
a moment to moment poverty
of clammer and hush
of puny voices. As their chief,
I sink into stillness.
to walk toward nowhere
to drink without desire
to work for no gain
except this: that I know I am
faithless and callous
a handicraft of holy lack.
and this is news to celebrate
a retreat from all battles
to sit on the chaise in the sun.
Last night I dreamt
of a gold bracelet–
golden threads connecting
together, a spiral coiling
at least 3 inches from my wrist,
with tiny twinkling stars
that began to orbit my entire body,
pulsating sparkles & shimmer–
illuminating the entire world.
Could this be my super power–
invisible awake?
