Posts for June 6, 2025 (page 8)

after sunrise
witnessed through heavy
cumulus clouds,

                                                    she moves westward
                                                    and is greeted by
                                                    another boisterous
                                                    purdy purdy purdy.

            she settles
            upon a wooden
            periwinkle
            swing,

                                    near desire-colored roses—
                                    wild, filled with rose hips.

                                                                                    she flaps up
                                                                                    onto a thin branch
                                                                                    above a crisp green
                                                                                    clump of clover,

                                                    trills at the woman
                                                    she now sees
                                                    come out
                                                    the dark box.
                    
                                                                                                not her again!

                                    with pruners and gloves!

why can’t she just
let all this be?

When I was sixteen,
I sold hot dogs at the beach
burnt lips, sandy shoes,
the air tasted like salt and mustard.

That’s where I met Louie.
He was twenty-six,
with long, dark curls
and jean shorts that looked like
they’d survived more than a few wrong turns.

He said hey like he already knew me.
That first day,he drove me home in his old blue van.
I remember the cracked dashboard,
windows that stuck halfway down,
seats that smelled like sun and cigarettes.

and mom said he was too old for me.

After that, he’d show up some afternoons,
leaning against the stand
like he had all the time in the world.
And maybe we did.

Later, I’d ride my bike a few blocks from home,
lean it against a telephone pole,
and climb into his van like a secret.
We’d hit bars where no one asked my age,
or walk the piers, me talking too much,
him smiling like he didn’t mind.

His house smelled like laundry and coffee.
Sometimes I’d sit on the edge of his bed,
watching him move through the kitchen
like he forgot I was too young
for this kind of real life.

but mom found out.

And I stopped showing up.
But for a while,
my friends said they saw him
driving slow through the neighborhood
like he was looking for me.

And even now,
on certain hot days,
when the sky turns that early-evening blue,
I think of him
how he looked at me
like summer would never end.

Relatives and friends
Gather round the dinner table
Feast of Love

“The Great Dying has begun,” 
says the grim woman in this online group,
referencing the cicadas of Brood XIV.
And yes, I hear them less–but there’s so much
I tune out now: the heartbeat puff of air
from an oxygen condenser, certain TV shows
that pass through me like water,
and many other things I have loved once
before becoming consumed
with what was right here: the cicadas,
the sanitary bed,
the page its own kind of bed.
And the million little stories I make up
to get through to the other side. 

beloved formalists will say
with feet and toes and rhymes and song
that sonnets must be writ this way
fourteen lines and quatrains strong

what they don’t know is that they’re wrong
and why they’re wrong they’ll never guess
and why my poems won’t belong
and why sonnets get bad press

fundamentally poetry is anarchy
word-fields rewilded by sumptuous metaphor and over-long lines and long-held grudges
begrudgingly relinquished into uncooperative line
breaks

I will take up whatever space I want thank you very much and if my poems have feet
it will be for dancing

My body is a swath of silk dropped into a vat of indigo dye
fibers drunk with a blue elixir drown me as designs imprint
my silken body flirts with the sun blowing in the afternoon sky

My body is a rough sheet of french drawing paper
hand made pastels chisel the bold architecture of her face
and forcefully darken the shadowy mysteries we can only sense

My body is a small pocket sketch book that makes promises
with each fine line mark  lassoed from unknown regions
landing in my hand making me feel a sense of continuance

Did you always believe I’d lead you to doom? 
Blame was always more your language than mine. 

    Your language was mine, and mine lost to the sea. 
    You heard something no man could then bottled it. 

No other man could be as cruel as this. 
Stifle the songbird then detest the silence.  

    The silence creeps in like a dark blue mist. 
    The resentment binds to my soul like a curse. 

You curse the day you met me, swear siren song. 
Censure my tongue for the wreckage of us. 
 
    The wreckage of us or the wreckage of me? 
    You burnt the temples and you denounced the hymns. 

But my hymns weren’t as dangerous as my teeth. 
Did you always believe I’d be your undoing?

Cicadas shriek
up from the grass
and down from the sky.

I walk
in a scream,

will my mouth
to open like earth,
hatch something red-eyed,
something true.