Posts for June 22, 2023 (page 2)

From your pockets

The circular saw blade cuts a straight line, across fingers and our souls.

#americansentence

Old dog, at fifteen 
your age is showing, 
salt and pepper snout 
and eyebrows, 
you feel vibrations 
but hear almost nothing. 
Getting up and down 
has become a struggle 
but your buddy, Legolas,
can get you running. 
You demand little 
but always show
excitement when I 
come into the yard
or open the door. 
You have loved four
little girls, all grown 
and moved to other
places, leaving us here. 
Old friend,  you’ve seen
me through rough winds.
I will help you through
the summer storms. 

KW  6/22/23

At the city pool I pay my three dollars
and the kid on duty tells me
about the new clear bag policy
so I put my towel, phone,
keys, and water bottle
in the plastic bag he gives me
and he asks about the book I am reading.
It just won the Pulitzer prize, I said,
and he looks at the cover.
Kingsolver, I’ve heard that name.
A Kentucky writer, I tell him,
then suddenly I find myself
in a great conversation
with a dark-tanned teenager,
a shaggy blond-haired kid
I never would have thought
would be interested in literature.

at what age
do we stop pretending 
that we don’t see
little kids in their hiding spaces

The stories are swimming in my head. 
“My daughter tried to kill herself. 
I live in fear of her death.”
“My baby is hungry. 
How do I get food?”
“His fever’s so high.”
The joys of
mother-
hood

on june twenty-fourth
i’ll distract myself with work.
your birthdays…    break me.

i would be so much hotter without acne
red painful splotches on my cheeks
a giant bump on my nose ready to explode
unconsciously picking at them in class
my bra strap feels to tight but its just another lump
“whats that white thing on your face” 
a pimple Britney shut up.
my mom doesnt believe in dermatologists 
maybe if i went i would be so much hotter 

I kiss her through you

across the centuries,

my first love

whom you resemble so.

I don’t know

if I believe

in reincarnation

because

I don’t know

if I believe

in the concept

of a soul.

You kiss me

but really

you are kissing her,

the girl you left behind

several states away,

love interrupted

before it could

grow beyond a crush.

You only love me

for my fangs,

the pain I give you

that you’d rather not

give yourself.

I love you

because you taste

like something new

and something familiar.

We hold each other

in the darkness

and share the pain

of being alone.

                                                      for the five-member crew
                                                     of the OceanGate Titan  

Dared to dive deep, to
live a slip of history, to
break landlubbing chains
and sit beneath the sea
trading legends and myths. 

You did this, striven
and driven to risk it all
to dive where the Titanic
did fall and fail to return
its fading souls to us.

Now see Titan’s nose
cone, its pressured hull,
fore and aft, asleep near
the great ship’s bow,
married vessels vowed.

She will watch over you,
keeping you warm with
White Star linens; sailors
standing guard over your
remains from her masts.

John Phillips will man
the wireless as he did
his final night, telegrams
transcending time
to minds above: all is alright.

Far from chilling waves,
your harvest of salvage
someday will be harbored
for verdant voyagers
in exhibits yet unmade,

for sometimes
bits of history
are all we have left.