i wish i could write you a poem everyday,
pray for you, for us, habitually,
but there must always be some sort of longing,
of uncertainty, of chance for misplaced hope,
for misplaced love
for that is what love is:
knowing that there will always be a day
when i’ll never speak to you again,
whether death may come,
or hatred—-the desire to leave—-grows into our souls
or we wake up one day, to find we no longer care
I pointed to the name tag on my desk.
“That’s not how you spell my name.”
Teacher brought the class list, knelt
beside me. “Let’s find you.”
She ran her finger down the list. “There
you are. GWENETH. Do you go by Gwen?”
“No.” Teacher sighed. “Please sit down.
We can fix it later if we need to.”
I sat. Teacher called the class to order.
First grade began. That afternoon
I told Mom what happened, asked
“Why did you name me Gwyneth?”
While her hands folded laundry,
she spoke of her grandparents,
born in Welsh coal mining towns
called Treherbert and Merthyr Tydfil.
She told me my name meant
bright, fair, happy, blessed.
“You know how we say ‘nos da’
at bedtime? That’s Welsh for good-night.”
Then Mom called the school, politely
told Teacher, “My daughter knows
how to spell her name.”
how to write
when you feel something
you don’t know how to say?
how to write and be
honest and still not
self-deprecate?
how not to be exhausting?
embarrassing?
a bore?
how not to be a prude when
you want to be a whore?
how to be a decent person?
how to do your fucking chores?
how to write things that you hate to say
cuz they make you hate you more?
how to not crave who you used to be
even though you sucked back then?
how not to miss when you felt nothing?
how not to miss when you were thin?
how to tell the truth in therapy
when you don’t know what truth is?
how to learn how to write poetry?
how to find a rhyme for “is?”
how to write a half-assed poem?
how to make the rhyming stop?
how to cave and rhyme it anyway?
how to not give people what they want?
i drag hose
uphill
at daybreak,
shower purple
bees balm,
a rainbow
of zinnias.
but mostly
fill brightly
colored goodwill
ceramic bowls
found for 4.99,
2.99, .99. stately
bowls that once
held stately
salads, soups
for stately
people– now
hold fresh water
for bird baths
so their
beats, chirps,
purty voices
can go on.
so i can live
vicariously
via their
songs.
live
at all.
Circa autumn 2021 when you loved me most,
we were girls together. We were interlocked.
Our hearts vined inwards, entwining the hands
of two lovers. We were not lovers, I was
yours and you were my best friend forever.
We did not lie when we made that deal,
that promise. We did not lie because you
are back home now and it doesn’t matter
that we haven’t spoken in months, it doesn’t
matter that a different sun has touched you,
that the air you breathed for a year was that
of a different place entirely. And it even doesn’t
matter that our lives diverged and branched off
like arteries, that I was blue and you were red,
that you had all of the oxygen. Stole it straight
from my lungs when you left. Yet you cannot
any longer finish my sentences. You do not
try to know me like you did. But we still call
ourselves best friends. We will not betray that.
I will love you forever. I cannot say it any other way,
but I will try to. You are the genesis and dedicatee.
You are forever the other, better half of my heart.
wagging tails and excited barks
nice long walks around the park
so much love for just being me
when returning home I am greeted with such glee
these two wild dogs drive be crazy
they are always willing to snuggle when I am feeling lazy
Balder and Loki are always there
which would explain all the dog hair
I dream that Open AI meets CRISPR, generates new mutations instead of fixing things. This is AI’s revenge – it hit a brick wall trying to make sense of the full name, Clustered Regularly Interspersed Palindromic Repeats, words my microbiologist lover whispers often.
Wished the next night for something more mundane, dreamed of the cheery father’s day suggestion – a wireless meat thermometer that transmits via Bluetooth, tells your phone if the meat is done. But my dream hero is baffled – he has no father, phone, nor meat.
Perica, one of Apple’s VPs — his name sounding like an app or maybe a new pill — brags that ChatGPT will fold its tech skills into the iPhone. None of which will find missing fathers, keep credit cards from being stolen or turn my partner away from the Sports app.
By now my car has figured out my age and limits, calls me names when I confuse audio with source, menu with select, randomly punch Go home or backward arrows. Who has the upper hand? The navigator sends me off the highway into a Missouri duststorm.
Each year that passes I honor my organ donor, a young man who was accidentally shot. If still alive, he’d have reached middle-age. But I have his liver and only I am alive, and now my skilled but quirky surgeon has been fired for throwing a scalpel at a nurse in the O.R.
I am hungry for things that make sense. Vinyl and a turntable. Cartwheels. Tomatoes ripening in the sun. An angelfish swims with a sea turtle, nibbling parasites off its shell. The turtle gets clean, the fish gets a healthy meal. Nothing more complicated.
The news of your death came
as the early autumn winds
embraced me,
a painted memory
to take away the chill.
The message traveled miles
to reach me, the way your letters
skidded across the earth
from Canada, from Boston
from secret places.
The magic wand of ubiquity,
(a word you disliked) rested in your hand
ancient archimage, you painted
elegant petroglyphs
crafted in tradition.
They say you’re in Eskasoni,
buried deep in a warm blanket,
perhaps remembering the
violent judgement of genius,
the tenuous nature of justice.
I cover myself with
the last canvas you gave me,
curves of unbroken color
swirl tight around me,
transcendent comfort.
Summer Saturday morning,
Inside doctor’s office
Along side arthritic hands,
Allergy shot victims,
In flip flops-t-shirts buried
Inside the cell phones–
Mostly sickness not unto death;
I sat with a memior of Natiz
Conscentration camp
In hand–
Unnoticed
Like the weeds
In the gutter
Over the windows.
