behind each cabinet door
and in every kitchen drawer,
my mother waits.
in ladles and gravy boats,
in butter dishes and silver serving spoons,
she holds space and time
– mine –
since she left me behind,
with only tea towels to dry my tears
and old tupperware to hold
my kitchentable memories
of her.
her kitchen was a castle.
mine is merely a time capsule
to recall her love.
I love the ombe’ing green of leaves in Kentuckys June where near downtown its heart the afternoons smell of the Jif factory buttering the air with roasting-smells for square-miles is the way back to forty years ago it’s been the same ever since my childhood was outside playing with the neighborhood boys and walking home from the bus stop on those streets wrapping downtown where the neighborhood man with schizophrenia all the kids called crazy Jack I used to go all-heart-out-involuntarily for had lost his ability to see the facts
before I left I didn’t understand the grass here being called blue the way water isn’t really blue if you hold it close to your face but now my eyes having been greened by other states’ long Sunday afternoons patches of prairie and wheat where from above me flying over in a plane you would never have seen me sewn inside those quilted patches of green brown and gold (but I would have been there (for twenty years)) & I understand far more about landscape shaping who your body is & what it knows and will remember than before
the sky view here is woven with the tangle of vines branches and trunks so many wise trees I’ll never know the names of them all not the way they have come to know us slow without the judgement we arent worthy of watching over while we sleep on the other side of window-glass or walk below them cocking our heads back like baby birds mouths open gulping air for green splashing of their-leaves to help us forget some things and help us remember others
the air in may was sweet everywhere this year along the downtown streets cobbled in places by brick and mansions 200 years old and now June is an early morning every morning the birds seem to sing my dreams their ends the air thickens with the notes and the encroaching mug of summer more and more each day glazes skins from all the atmospheric juice in the air : the way a person feels draped in the summer of it is not unbogged breath but honey-ier heavier everything is honeyed-heavy and anticipated with the clink of ice and glass
I was a girl still when I once wrote a story about this place about being a girl who lives and dies inside one of these beings that now tangle my sky it was triumphant because it did not deny what it was nor could it in the end be anything other than itself — a vessel of bone skin and blood emitting minerals oxygen carbon inside another vessel of trunk and vein doing the same
Empty pages on the internet contain
lives of our friends who didn’t
make it to the present we so enjoy.
Their pictures are time capsules,
their words logs of life long lost,
their friends still posting on birthdays
“I miss you. You’re gone too soon.”
The memorials of binary baubles
ever present in its coding. Its flashbacks
remind us of love left in the ledgers.
I wonder if they still read the adverts,
if they can solve the evolving Captchas,
or when the servers will scrub their data.
Five things I can see:
beam of sunlight peeking through dusty curtains
two-toned purple water bottle with the straw up
my favorite pair of jeans wadded up on the floor
Robin Williams inspirational magnet on the board
vibrant orchid pattern on my new bedsheets from my mom
Four things I can feel:
thick plush grey blanket weighing down my limbs
smooth shellac of the polish coating my fingernails
mosquito bite on my ankle itching from mowing grass
wooden grain of the nightstand traced by my fingertips
Three things I can hear:
consistent hum of the air conditioning vent in the floor
muffled giggles of my nephew playing outside with my sister
tapping of a pen in quick succession against the back of my phone
Two things I can smell:
scent of bacon sizzling in the air fryer for a late brunch
remnants of lavender pillow spray lingering on my pillowcase
One thing I can taste:
wintergreen mint dissolving on my tongue before I bite it in half
And, unexpectedly, another thing I deeply know:
I am stronger than I have ever been
In the days before answering machines and voice mail and caller id,
I let your phone ring fifteen times.
Fifteen times I imagined the rings hitting the wall, bouncing off the floor, echoing through your apartment.
Fifteen times I thought of what I would say when you picked up and shouted, “What?” Fifteen times I thought of my love and my loneliness and what I had lost.
Later I learned that you were at her place
and not there to hear the fifteen rings,
the fifteen times I said your name.
How can I
Get you off my mind
When everything reminds
Me of you?
Say I’m fine
Can’t call your line
So who can I tell what I’m
Goin through?
Wasted time
Can’t face my life
If I can’t make it right
Then what can I do?
Love is blind
Open my eyes
But ain’t ready to
Share my light
With someone new
Your clothes still in my room
And your creams
And your perfume
Guess I’m supposed to move
If I wanna leave
Being reminded of you
But how are we supposed to move
On when our memories
Have been fused?
Don’t know what ima do
So hard to leave
What I’m used to
It all fell apart so soon
Drain each other’s energy
Hardly got enough
Just to get through
All the shit that we’ve been through
I’d be there through anything
And I know you would too
Everything in my view
Only brings
Me back to times
You would lift my mood
How can I
Get you off my mind
When everything reminds
Me of you?
Say I’m fine
Can’t call your line
So who can I tell what I’m
Goin through?
Wasted time
Can’t face my life
If I can’t make it right
Then what can I do ?
Love is blind
Open my eyes
But ain’t ready to
Share my light
With someone new
I fiddle with my ring again
the one just like yours.
Pick up Jane Austen
Just to see your name.
It’s the little things
That keep me sane.
Write a hundred love letters
But never press send.
Complain to my friends again
“Why won’t this crush end?”
Wish you’d see in my eyes
I don’t want you as a friend.
God will send me to hell
For obsessing over your lips.
One day I’ll show you the poems
About how you’re the girl I’m in love with.
A pair of young women gathered
on a dingy corner in little Bellevue,
singing playful earworms,
reciting lines from Hamlet—
infecting joy where joy was due,
where it had seeped through cracks in dry concrete
into the current of the muddy river nearby.
Joy blossomed in song
and in “To be or not to be,”
creeping up old gutters,
flowering into dainty petals
that gave off a pleasant aroma.
Joy crept over the fence,
crossed the street,
and reached the formidable man
outside the Liquor King—
who yelled, “Get the fuck away!”
from beside his mighty steed,
a hair-raising black 4×4,
guarding his post
and his paper bag
with everything his larynx could give.
Surely, the king of trucks
could benefit
from joy’s gentle presence—
but he’s not ready
for that conversation.
