At least those who are framed
on a café wall
in Moline, Illinois,
where I stop to refuel
after my hike
from Iowa.
Coffee before me,
my pad blank with words
I try to write
as Poe and Longfellow
and the like
look down from those frames,
mugs superimposed
in their hands.
They playfully imbibe,
enjoying the site
of a wannabe poet
struggling before
this prosodic court.
There’s this place
That exists
A fold in time
Where I was young
Still full of hope
Though dead inside
A wilted rose
Plucked before
A winter storm
Where I laid
In the back
As we rolled across
the concrete desert highway
The cuts in the road
Rocking and cradling me
Westwardly as we went
The sun ahead and night sky behind
Meeting to kiss the spine of the earth
A million stars shown overhead
The Eagles lulled me to that “far away”, on the radio
No seatbelt
Windows down
The smell of rain
freedom in the air
For at least a little while.
Sometimes
When it’s just you
And me
On an open interstate
Sunset in the review
I feel like I’m that girl
Again
And again
You always
Taking me there
Just in the nick of time.
I wish
more than anything
that I could have had
that childhood moment
with a Sega
and an unlimited
sense of wonder
to burn out a Friday night
but it didn’t happen
it wasn’t in the cards
because she took it away
hollowed me out
so I’ll ache
for nostalgia
that was never mine
6: The Green Knight (2021)
i guess it was on the way back
from my grandfather’s funeral
in saffron-painted Tempe
where most of his children are/were still alive
and explained how he would kill the engine at a red light,
restart the car when it was green.
i turn off the lights compulsively,
grind the tube of toothpaste like a motorized mangle,
reuse the tissue until it’s a melted candle.
i can’t crawl out of the architecture,
trapped like someone too fat to fit the door
of someone else’s Christendom, when people
were shorter and slimmer.
i was too wide for the airplane and any shape
i made myself invited an axe into me,
the way a child permits an explanation through its
feeble fortifications.
i would too shirk at Christmas Morn if my back
would even bend me down.
i remember once on some other less vivisecting family trip
sleeplessly
sitting in a bathtub,
reading someone else’s
cinematic residues as they mused into a memory of
Welcome to the Black Parade and
indoctrinating myself
to the idea that
you never have to be at peace with death.
I don’t just want to see places,
I want to know them.
To walk down streets worn through
with the footsteps of my own ghost
and all those that came before me.
To find stories in every hidden corner
and around every tree or bush
that I have grown up alongside.
Don’t give me landmarks–
give me the mundane, like the
mom and pop shop with the best sandwiches,
tucked away where you wouldn’t find it
unless you were looking.
Give me the best spot to watch the sunset
and the time when the grocery store
is the least busy.
I want to become a map of a town.
Not just of its streets and buildings
and how to get from one place to the next,
but the keeper of its history,
the pages on which its stories are written
to be passed along
to all those who pass through.
People lock themselves up
and hide themselves away,
but places–
towns, and cities, and empty fields
wait for me with open arms,
ready to share their secrets
with anyone that wants to listen.
My ears are open,
and I will be their keeper.
Across the world,
across the sea,
across years and life
experiences,
I hear the same
raspy voice,
and Kentucky dialect
that several decades
in Japan could not undo.
It is as though
we have been in a long
conversation, a forty year poem
of sorts, that periodically
goes through the editing
process for a time,
only to be revised with
the familiarity of old friends.
KW 6/6/23
Don’t ask me how I am—
Spare me from my mortifying honesty
ignore that my happiness seems threadbare
pinned needle-sharp into my flesh
to keep it from slipping off
Don’t ask me how I am—
I feel full of ice-winged bees
voices a buzzing cacophony careening around my ears
standing tenuously rooted to this time
this air-thin space.
Don’t ask me how I am—
Let me press against the far wall a moment
Paint it slick with nerve-sweat
count the red in the room, count the blue
count my breaths whistling between clenched teeth.
Don’t ask me how I am—
Pretend you believe this ill fitting smile
sewn in tiny stitches to the corners of my flinching eyes
and the brackets around my mouth
numb lips fumbling platitudes
Don’t ask me how I am—
twine your anchoring fingers in mine
and let me lie
let me say it’s fine, I’m fine
I’m fine.
The open wound
had already begun to fester.
Clammy hands
gripped an old canvas coat,
a now small body
wracked with sobs.
Emotional anguish battling
a rotting hole.
To feel without love,
to feel without really feeling,
an absence of knowing
what you don’t know.
Only made up
of a secluded wound,
never to close.
That takes,
and as your legs cave,
promising never to give.
