Posts for June 6, 2023 (page 13)

how i enter a room in a way
that can best be described as
a gunshot to a cymbal. the way
my left thumb wields more
blame than my right. my
tendency to speak with little
trajectory. how i yearn like
the dying. the salty flavor of
dishonesty each time i reply,
“yes.” how each nightmare i
have both confirms and denies
a suspicion i have toward myself.
my proximity to an uppercase B. 
the cracks, scabs, and scars 
that dance along my skin with
the grace of a foal. how grief 
prematurely burrows in skin
long before it is necessary. how
i desperately cling to the wish
of an apology that will never 
come. the sins i did not repent
for. how i find that true silence
sounds like a weeping mother. 

in response to the question,
“what about you feels hard to love?”

On the rocks of the height,
you’ve transfigured, viola, fixed and frozen of light.
No voice, but such a voice sounding deeply, 
through everything, and sounding through nothing.

I see thoughts melt the purity of your water,
the slipping snow.
To painters, the look of your profile is flower burning;
Your heart is a bedraggled white dove, released.

Sing, and through unchained breezes 
make fragrant songs: 
to the bright hills, wound of an Easter lily—

while night and day, 
on the corners of pain, 
we weave a wreath of melancholy.

Author: Federico García Lorca
Translator: Manny Grimaldi

caught in a landslide
in the mirror all these years

It must be warm there.
The Moon and I grieved
as strangers.
Our midnight
eyes have seen loyal betrayal
and though we knew love could not swim
in them, happiness had eluded us.
It must be warm there.

Pray we. Get there
I want to go home

still in that foggy morning stupor prior to Wordle
and coffee even though I don’t drink coffee,
wandered into bathroom and plopped on commode.
BOOM! A spontaneous explosion erupted! What
the Hell! Sounded like a gunshot! Am I hurt?

Suddenly, my glass shower door fell to the floor
like a curtain dripping diamonds. Pale blue gems
showered the floor barely missing my feet, my eyes,
my persona.Heart racing in shock, My Westie came to
check on me thinking, “Now what did she do?” (A month
ago he came running with the thud of my head hitting 
the floor) I shooed him away from the bullets.

The sound, the surprise, the shock
are what victims of gun violence must feel. Why me?
Heart racing, adrenaline pulsing trying hard to
normalize. Unlike them, I escaped unscathed but
for an instant felt the horror.

several days without
poetry and then the moon
scabs over the sky

Tight in the seam of a random book, 
a small card. I pry it out, turn it over.
I’m holding Paris in my hand. 

In fancy script, “Hotel Clarisse.”
Below, a watercolor rendering–
red awnings, narrow windows. 

Beneath plane trees, it reigns over
the corner of a twisting side street
and grand boulevard. 

That April was cold and wet. Lines 
snaked long at the Eiffel Tower. Americans
in backpacks swarmed the Louvre. 

Hotel Clarisse was more faded
than glory, a long metro ride
from anywhere. But when I woke

early, I stood above traffic. Out my
narrow window, I watched women
in heels tap sharply down the street,

leave the corner boulangerie
with their daily bread. On Easter
morning, we celebrated a secular mass

of hot chocolate and baguettes
and butter sweeter than salvation.
All the church bells in Paris

that had flown to Rome 
on Ash Wednesday rang
to celebrate their return. 

my body is paper thin
falling as the wind directs me
through its perfect line path in the sky

I follow behind, every push and pull
struggling to fold my own way
and find what lies beyond
the grace of the winds blow

when I resist, we erupt
in a dance that is fury
and you win because there is
only so much paper can do 
to combat its wind

so my mind is angry
and my eyes are tear stained
as I try to grip words escaping
through my breathlessness

if you would just hear me
take a minute and listen to my breath
my words, if you were patient
and kind, if you took the step to be bigger
if you let me go to for a moment

if my anger was valid instead of a mistake
and my faulters were not a crash 
but a moment of trying, if you gave me
the time to rationalize my anger
if you pretended to be something less than wind

I wouldn’t be counting the tear-stained tissues
through clouded anger. if you took the time to
understand m, I could try and harness your wind and fly

I’m from a place where life
Is a little bit harder to live
Coal dust inhaled just to
Eek out a meager living
Some don’t even make it
Out of the mine alive 

They’ve taken our pride
Our mountains along side
Without a care in the world
Slicing off the tops as though
The word reclaim means 
Much of anything when the
Ground water won’t keep
And nothing will grow

We keep on trying; keep on
Living despite what they
Have done; what they still do
From the ground beneath the
Mountain, now to the tops

They fill their wallets with
Our blood, sweat, and tears
We, in turn, give back to the
Land the hardscrabble men
Who toiledin the mines for
All those long years

That is reclamation