Posts for June 28, 2023 (page 3)

I don’t know how to respond to emails about dead dogs
You probably don’t have to
But I’d like to be the kind of person who would, easily

I wish my best writing wasn’t unsent letters to all the people I love
It’s the only way I can journal most times, talking to other people in my my head
out loud, on a piece of paper, inside a computer
Some of them have heard my Words Are Imperfect Tools speech in person
but it’s also the best I got

Still, I won’t apologize for always writing the same thing in birthday cards
I like to put that the best is yet to come
Because it is, or I’d like it to be
But it’s not perfect because you can’t put it in an email back about a dead dog
(I’m sorry)

I met a box turtle today
    at the head of our hollow

        beside black raspberries
            just beginning to ripen

        under the trees where small green
            pawpaws grow waiting for September.

She sat patiently as lightning bugs
raised up from the creek banks

        I sat with her for a while
        watching the sunset

             against hazy smoke-filled air

thinking of how wonderful it was
        for us both to be there for those moments

dark creeped over the hills.

we sit and pop tabs
tilt the juice out,
but not all,
spear our meat
with Case knives,
share crackers
from a fresh sleeve
packed at the top
of dinner buckets,
this our refuge,
a reminder of
civilization
that lies outside
the confines of
our hillside work
we never speak
but if you asked,
if you sat down
beside us, and
asked for one,
a piece of vie-eeny,
we’d hand it over,
and nod, yes
that’s exactly
how you say it

haiku: letting you go

one november night
i gave you to the water,
grateful, yet…

bereft.

*Quotation from “I Am Not Ready to Die Yet” in Kingdom Animalia by Aracelis Girmay (BOA Editions 2011).*

I thrust my foot against the shovel,
digging into the soil
& ripping the deplorable (God, forgive me
for using that word) flowers up
by their roots & disposing
those wilted leaves, rotten roots,
browned blooms among the trashed
broken bottles & soiled clothes

I do this, over & over, throughout the heat of the day,
& I ponder my proximity
to these perished plants—-am I just a dying thing?
hopeless? waiting for my loved ones to cull me from their lives? 
unaware of my soon-to-be-discarded state?
am I just like these plants I picked so desperately,
delicately, & yet so quickly decided to rid myself of
as soon as they were no longer perfect?

Aracelis Girmay wrote:
        I am not ready to die yet.
        I want to live longer knowing that wind
        still moves a dead bird’s feathers.
        Wind doesn’t move over & say That thing
        can’t fly. Don’t go there. It’s dead.
        No, it just blows & blows lifting
        what it can.

But I am not a bird; wind does not move me
like that even in my prime. No. Yet
I have braved many seasons: euphemisms
of mothers “passing away” when no one has passed,
instead I am left with a vacancy; lovers who’ve decided
I am no longer worthy of their care, that another mate
is better; insurmountable loneliness. Here I am, still,
hardy & durable, returning with each cycle

I wipe my brow of the day’s sweat & shower away the dirt
before laying atop my quilts & making love to myself…
the tears flow shortly after, with images
of my loved ones dancing in my mind,
& I remind myself that I veered from tradition
& overwork myself by only planting annuals, drunk
on short-term beauty & restless, unneeded labor from removing
the dead. I am still alive; there is continual beauty, here

I do love you,
gift to myself on Mother’s Day,

after 56 years of cleaning

cat shit. 

My first cat at age 11
Louis
black and beaming green eyes,
hit by a car.
His original name was Hercules, but
my mom said I could keep the cat
only if
I renamed him Louis, a name she came up with
after her first glitzy trip to Vegas (circa 1960’s).

So many: Louis II, Louis III, Louis IV,
Blondie–the Siamese who found us,
Little Bear, Napoleon, Gange, Gracie, Phideaux,
Lady Anne, Rosalyn & Nibbles,
my daughter’s childhood cat who had the nerve
to die while she was away at college, 
my son and I buried him in a flowered pillowcase,
on the left side of the house, where old purple iris,
returned every year at the first house I owned,
on Bonnycastle, still drive by every spring to pay my respects.

And, now, crazie Suzie cat, inherited,
my mother’s calico–it’s been 14 years,
she sent my second husband to the hospital
for 3 horrible days hooked up to 3 kinds of antibiotics–
(yes, cat scratch fever is a thing)
his temperature finally back to normal,
he never liked her much, 
she still swats her tail at him, nips at us both.
Suzie gets the deluxe litter box anyways.

I guess we should all be happy to be alive, 
whether scooping the poop ourselves or
emptying that secret drawer
of that sleek $700 litter robot,
with all the bells and whistles.
I love you litter robot
as much as all the cats in the whole wide world.

The moon light pours down, 
Shining throgh the clear window, 
Filling the dark room. 

When Christine Blasey Ford stood
before the Senate Judiciary Committee,
raised her right hand and told the truth,

when Brett Kavanaugh, angry
and tearful, claimed victimhood
and innocence, I tried to watch

the media circus, I did. But 
tears flowed, long buried
memories rode their waves. 

Young and alone in a foreign
country, I trusted someone
who promised to take care

of me, but didn’t. The old tale
erupted, scorched. For the first time
in decades, I spoke my truth

told what happened to me. 

Booming thumping bass sounds seep
from those who come to party cheap

Parked in tinted-windowed tombs
breathing in their gas-pipe fumes

Anonymous visitors to the parking lot
where’s the life that you forgot—-

that you come to park so close to me
your mufflers confused with joie de vivre?

You’ll never find the best of me
in the throes of a downtown midnight.
My nature is too simple for that.

And you’ll never know the worth of me
in the frames of small-talk dialogue.
My mind is too complex for that.

One-track focusing is wonderful for things,
but not when things intersect with people–
no soft way to jump from moving trains, you see–

whereas group settings are detrimental
for there is always a louder voice.
No hard will to hold the spotlight.

I already mourn the interrupted conversation;
those loose threads blowing in the wind.
I’ll be hanged by them by the end of the night.

Cursed is the moment of off-guard opportunity
and that perfect thing to say found later.
I’ll be drowned in all the what could have been?

Sometimes I wonder
how me and others would look
as slightly different shades of the rainbow.

But if you can find me one-on-one,
well now I’m in my element. 
No third perspective to throw off my groove.

In a quiet bar with non-invasive music
or the grounded coffee shops
soaking in their creative environments.

Forget eros.
Let me show you how intimate agape can be,
sliding into all our vulnerable spaces.

There will come a day when I will need to break
and you will have one too.
I want to explore all the cracks in your armor

to learn comfort with you;
trust, safety, and reliability
all in a space occupied by two.

There is rich life to be found in quiet spaces
and perfect contentment in, with another, just being.
I just pray that you’ll be willing to give me that chance.

Whoever you end up being..