What is the best way to
face a disappointment?
Cry, run, scream, obsess, disappear.
Find your way along the river’s
edge, listen to the rush of water drenching
rocks. Feel its balm over your feet.
Climb up the trail to the
mountain’s ridge. Breathe in
the luciousness of laurel and pine.
Lay in a meadow cushioned
by pillows of wild bergamot and
rue-anemone, blanketed in the breeze.
Travel into the garden of your mind
and cut bundles of hydrangea and lilac
in fragrant grace.
What absolute power
watches with interest,
As Daddy’s little girl, I was a Disney princess—
spinning in Barbie’s plastic heels,
wishing upon a star,
where Prince Charming was brave, and love
was a glass slipper away from happily ever after.
As a teenager, I was called his Queen
determined by a school boy,
who promised to protect me.
Instead, he clipped my wings,
dictating the kingdom without me.
[I wanted a throne
declaring mutiny on the hierarchy.]
As a woman, I rise— an Empress in my empire
where I chose the man,
who stands beside me,
who worships me,
not just the crown.
And with his love, I found my own.
this grandiose idea we’ve fattened up as a society into a moment of monumentous action, taken note of in the history books.
We’ve been together over twenty years now.
I used to keep you clipped to my waistband
then in my pockets but you would fall out easily.
Now I wear you close to my heart in my bra
night and day. We’re only separated when I
shower. You’re not waterproof. The thing about
this closeness is you beep when I’m high or
low, when your cartridge gets below 20 units,
when you stop the insulin flow for some
unknown reason and you do this night or
day interrupting my sleep, conversations
or whatever. But when they took you away
from me in hospital deciding they knew
BEST giving me multiple shots instead
Putting my blood sugars on a roller
coaster. I was livid wanting you back!
Chelsea Physic Garden, London UK
I found him there—
between nightshade and lilies,
basking in the hush of a March morning.
He had sprouted from the soil:
eyes the color of treebark,
leaves budding at his collarbones,
sweet yellow fruit in his palms.
With dimples full of snowdrops,
his smile curved along
the winding paths of Chelsea.
He belonged to the garden,
with all the shades of spring
blooming in his heart.
After Burning, Read:
Trucks and horse-drawn vans rumble through Lexington’s streets
hauling the dead to Union Station. Pyramids of caskets
sway precariously, ten on the first layer up to poignant oneness.
A crying need for coffins echoes where lumbermen lie
in their beds, felled by influenza.
Doctors’ prescriptions and home inventions proliferate:
rot-gut whiskey or the real deal, fresh-cut onions,
snake oil liniment, laxatives, camphor, quinine,
asafetida in red flannel hung from a neck cord,
gravy or Oxo beef bouillon, fumes (nitrous oxide? Opium?),
blood-letting, saltwater gargles,
exorcism.
