No Beat
for kd who taught me
when you find the heart of it
sometimes there is just a pit
We know we can talk about the weather,
no argument there.
But what if it were different?
What a beautiful day,
becomes a source of contention.
What kind of sicko are you?
Who’s standard of beauty are you using?
A well-dressed couple comes to your door.
We’d like to talk to you about the latest forecast.
I have my own forecast, you say
as you slam the door in their faces.
The talking head on T.V. gives his opinion.
Disaster Dan on that other station
says there is going to be a hurricane
like he knows about hurricanes.
If I say there is going to be a hurricane,
it’ll be the most destructive hurricane
anyone has ever seen. People say
I forecast the biggest hurricanes.
Everyone says that.
People fighting over clouds
People fighting over thunder
People fighting over rain
Maybe we should go back to talking
about politics or maybe religion.
It might be safer.
the children, but I’m so lonely everywhere
& this foreign place just amplifies it. I stop walking
along the pavement just outside of a closed down
convenience store, & I look up at the building across the street:
it’s a nightclub (I’m past my clubbing days, but I remember
them too well), but it’s morning, of course, people commuting
to work, & the club’s been closed for a few hours now.
There’s a dissonance to this facade: a few of the windows
actually have plywood over them & the sign is dim
& the smoking area looks desolate, uninviting, grim.
This place must’ve been so lively just last night—-
how has it changed so quickly? I never imagined this freshly unmarried state
I find myself in; the sex was such a minor part of our loving,
but all I can think about now is the way his body
would relax onto mine after he came, how he’d kiss
my neck, spread my legs apart & lick my cunt until
I’d orgasm oh so sweetly. I may never touch his body again.
My phone lights up with a message from tonight’s hook-up—-
I told him I wanted to be bound, spread apart, fucked so well
I went into an ecstasy that made me forget every past lover,
even my husband. Ex-husband. I look back up at the club,
forgetting how long I had just been standing there.
I reach into my purse to retrieve a cigarette, light it.
The club will open again later tonight, fill its doors
with college sudents, drunk & making out with new,
fake lovers. Breakups ached back then, but
you still had time to heal; did I have time to heal? But,
even then, must everything be rectified? Or once things close
their doors in the early morning, may it just stay that hollowed shell?
Must bustling life always reenter come nightfall? I stub out my cigarette
& continue walking down the street, looking for a cafe
just lonely enough to soothe my soul.
Sam, baby.
It’s over. It’s been over.
Years now.
A physical, literal, absolute impossibility.
When you wake up,
You may be tired…
You won’t shake
You won’t shiver
You won’t
You won’t
You won’t
Just go to bed, my love. Just rest.
What’s that raucous in the kitchen–
at the start of bewitching hour?
a little grey mouse
stuck in the wire garlic keeper
wasting no time,
turning, ripping the fragile pages
surrounding the monster garlic bulbs,
trying to finish the book
before being banned from the blue soapstone countertop,
Yet again, yanked up by its long pink tail,
blindly thrown outdoors,
landing into a fragrant clump of lavender.
I paint my nails orange
and put a transfer tattoo
of Wonder Woman on my ankle.
Seventeen, sunscreen,
Tab, Twizzlers,
and a transistor radio
go into a big straw tote.
I put on Holly Golightly sunglasses
and wedged sandals.
I jam my sister’s floppy hat
on my ironed hair.
In my polka-dotted sundress
I am a fourteen-year-old
headed for summer.
Try and stop me.
I watch you,
Across the table from me,
Light spilling in
Butterscotch honey lemon
Pooling in the sweat at your temple,
In the dips of your collarbones,
The heights of your cheekbones.
They are gold leaf
Laid by careful artist’s hands
And I want to run my finger over it
Gathering gold flakes along my fingertips
Taking a piece of you with me
When night shutters the day
And I am left
With only a picture of you
Here across the table from me
black raspberries slip stitch creek bank
red monarda parades as side garden’s crown jewel
cool porch mornings butter me with unexpected verses
Provider beans graph full rows to sate late summer canner
wren visits veranda for friendly chat about tenant nesting agreement
smiles perch on newborn lambs’ milky faces as they attempt a gambol on bell-bottom legs
every day offers a new opportunity to step out the door
courageously persevere in doing it
anyway
staying alive and believing for beauty it isn’t easy
I can recall that first glimpse of light
the doctor’s hands holding my slippery body as I entered this world for sure there
was no easy button I neglected to smack upon entry
I’m not missing something nor set up from a faulty starting gate
it
is both pain and promise
beauty and disgust
even flow and stagnation
It
is all the definitions and then some
maybe also a bit of making space
leaving space
in the passageways of one’s days for
surprise
coming in to offer up experience and maybe enlightenment
though not as the sage would have you think it
a high open-mindedness that parts the veils of this world
there is no scrim-
there is this-
world
life it is.
