Two sides of the same damaged coin
The same sort of wrongness in our chemistry.
Listening to The Killers on car rides to Marion County
talking superheroes and TV shows.
Feel it all
NPR, get your hands dirty
Work to the bone
Increasingly patient
Increasingly stubborn.
Sacred conversations
had at the kitchen table
bringing ease
to my tormented soul.
We talk about the news,
local and world wide.
We talk about the weather
mapping out when it’ll next rain.
We talk about our lives
and I think about how fast they’re moving.
Talking and talking,
I close my eyes and listen,
soaking it in to keep
as a precious treasure
for when they enter
the final, sacred sleep.
A wild raving Robinhood sinks a hook into my amygdala’s heart once I
Spot a family, like a murder of silky crows soaring into view,
Smiling fervently at the cherry blossom field
genuinely joyful, Love incarnate, as their figures dance in the golden sunlight and the pre-pickled leaves
Well-adjusted and well-kempt without a pit-of-hell or a parasite in sight
I become a tall, grown child with tears larger than my own body
Setting off a 20-something-year-old sickening stirring inside me that will soon
Tear me up
And spit me out
before I am back up on my feet
let me become
something beyond
a variation
not new and improved
just rotated
altered by surroundings
original
resolute, open
unwaveringly me
I draw a scene on my canvas
of a model as I imagine her,
leaning back,
resting on her elbow
in tall grass.
I have drawn leaves hanging down
to the left of her head,
but the leaves are not held together
by stems but the way words
keep a poem from leaving
the page.
I have drawn eight oak leaves
on the right side above her head,
one partially hidden by her head.
I have not drawn trees.
It is said that da Vinci may have
utilized students to draw backgrounds
for his painting, perhaps the Mona Lisa.
My model will have green eyes,
and they might captivate some admirer.
Her hair will have the hint of a part,
hair blond and hanging straight.
Her nose and lips will be hard to convey
her thoughts, her feelings,
her age.
You will know that she is young
by her breasts.
I will make no apology for that.
Kitchen windowsills embrace collections
of all sorts, random in design,
pleasureable pieces of history.
Vintage saltshakers, scavanged cobalt blue Noxema jar,
dried sprigs of lavender and rosehips,
the carved horse from the old man in the hollow.
She never had an empty kitchen sill,
its own magnetic field,
collection of accidental treasures.
she packed the bags under her eyes
with all the things she used to be
she was taking them with her
no way she was leaving them behind
she put on the red, yes, red sweatpants
the ones that yeah, make her look fat, fat, fat
she was wearing them out the front door
but no way in hell was she wearing a bra
left everything that squeezed the life out of her
sitting on the gray couch in the living room
he didn’t get up
Glitter makes things sparkly and I use it all the time
Grace can never be over used and and it doesnt cost a dime.
Glitter comes in all shapes, sizes and colors that are special in their own way.
People are much like glitter and the grace we show makes for them a brighter day.
I will never let myself run out of glitter or grace and will always keep both handy.
If more people used these things more often this world would be so dandy.
I’m retracing my life, the lines of which
run in rapidly radiating circles of I’ve
been here before but this time… This time
I know some of what it means to shatter.
In a bar last night, I drank with a woman
who I knew from forgotten rhythms—
margaritas, salt shrubs & we watched
as everything broke down around us.
Glasses & bottles let loose to their own
jagged ends as if one loud, leapt noise
could make certain everyone listened:
yellow rose wine stem snap, five thick
bottles brash-cascade & then, at the
table behind us, half the whole spread
in a slippery clatter. This while we watched
& drank & laughed in a room that spun
until it pulled apart around us. All that still
made sense were my sterling silver
earrings in long tangled threads & the light
that lingered on the wish-thin straps
of her white camisole. When we shut
down the bar, we went to part ways in the
night-stripped heat of mid-June Manhattan.
Without thinking, I put my hand to my chest
or to hers or she to mine, right where our
soon-bare skin already shone an immediate
glisten. & something felt different, the kind
of blank gasp that starts inside all of our
growth. Here, at the edge of a darkened
room, my once-necklaced heart spilled open.
why am i the thing that
doesn’t get gone.
that holds feverishly
onto space
yearning for you
apathy
& all you are.
hollow boy (man)
quick to tell me you love
me, quick to
leave a nest i built for
us, for you
i’m nothing to
you now. dead
gone, a whisper
long nightmare
i feel like a cold corpse
trying to
haunt you. but i know you
shallow boy (man)
bet you’ve lost my
name & face
like we never
even met
