Posts for June 4, 2025

Rusalkas are water spirits in slavic folklore, often portrayed as demons or the the vengeful ghosts of women killed by their lovers, however it is possible that once they were considered gods.

men have called me
    beautiful echoes
gold rose indigo
    this vital flesh
sky’s shadow
    mirror skin
vapor softening
    my soft body
many long nights
    beside this river
a cast down
    feather-soft glance
watching fine mist
    silver river halo
form from itself
    forming itself

perhaps my heart
    stirred in the torrent
rose

        carried somewhere
            during thunderstorms
        rain sinks through me
            reemerges where my form
        becomes the river lost
            hearts for the current

        below the water
            vast rippling disk
        the sky’s dark belly
            concealing iterations

if it’s true that once I was a soul
    I think it is like drinking

In all your Pinterest boards,

Where does kindness come from?
These five friends have enjoyed each other’s company for the last several days,
one always having the suggestions,
one always with something to say,
one always willing to try something,
one always curious,
and one always quiet.
Whether it was the flan shared as if made by her own two hands
or the constant invitation 
that every word represented,
this table embodied the world I always imagined
as a young, young child.
The end of the last millennium prepared all of us for a future
of gleaming cities carved
from the resin of paradise;
abundance sheltered behind spaces we had not yet imagined,
and people who were beautiful because they were happy
gathered in a world as wild as antiquity
just outside every transtechnological window.
Yet as I grow older in this place refilled with disappointments,
I no longer hope for sleek bannisters of glass and rhodium
or for floating vehicles and dwellings.
I hope instead to see 
my colleague feeding the unhoused
as if the meal she shared was made by her own two hands.
If I saw such an experience every day or even every week,
I would know that the rest of that future
would be here soon enough.

There are times I want to say things, a 
turn of phrase, a
joke, a
metaphor for the way my brain knows
—knew—
the waves of your brain.

We, oscillations of mirth and beseeching, “please 
don’t ever leave me, not one other
else knows the banter.”

I go through my phone to find one 
other else who would get it and

I know who would try
—I thought, I think— but I 
know I will hold their scatter of responses to my ear and
hope to hear the

ocean.

When words are few 
Frustrations are many 
For a wannabe boss who knows little 
About the real world of actual life 
All I can do is get through the day 
Grit my teeth, bear it
In a another meeting
Listening to more bullshit
That could have been summed up
In a short and sweet email
Humble enough to I’m replaceable 
Confident enough to know that 
After all my years of experience 
It would take three to replace me 
I stay out of convenient, convenience
Nothing more, nothing less.

cicadas 
calling out through 
the ghost smoke 
of a wildfire over 
one thousand miles away 

they’ve never been a problem
a rhythm that reminds me 
that no matter what we think

all things continue 
as they have before 
and will do after 

it can be so dramatic 
this peace lily called Fred
drooping one day,
perked the next
reminds me of someone I used to know
not who it’s named after
just the namer

I don’t want to write
a poem every day. I
want to go to sleep.

After I left,
Mom went Cargo Cult
on my bedroom desk.
Carefully boxed up were:

-Report cards I never read -Yellowed rolling papers -old fashioned hand sharpener (green) -letters from a girl I met at Philmont (and never wrote to) -small pine cone – Topps card #5 from original Star Wars series (Princess Leia) -Strat-O-Matic baseball team from 1982 (Washington Dead Kennedys) – two flint arrowheads -Photocopy of “Harrison Bergeron” annotated for speech competitions – index cards -Boyle County Public Library card -Chemistry notes, Physics notes, Calculus notes (became an English Lit major) – stack of party polaroids -old glasses -stack of old Far Side page a day calendar pages  

I bought the Collected Gary Larsen Far Side years ago.
I glued the princess to my laptop.

Some dried corn was just left on the ground
When a jolly old squirrel came around
He stole from bird’s beak
And robbed chipmunk’s cheek
We think he gained more than a pound.