Listen:Retain
Today I tried to learn
how to organize from someone with ADHD
and got distracted
tomorrow, take two
because she said
we can always try again
Today I tried to learn
how to organize from someone with ADHD
and got distracted
tomorrow, take two
because she said
we can always try again
A social media memory from 6 years ago;
Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary
in the foothills of Tennessee.
We walked through the cells,
and then out the back to the exercise yard,
where they now have concerts and events.
At the back, the stone fence built by convict labor
that James Earl Ray went over
when he escaped for three days in 1977
then mountains as far as the eye can see.
I could look on those mountains happily
every day for the rest of my life.
I wonder if that view
gave inmates hope, or only more despair.
We delight in this liminal space between seconds and years,
Stealing a moment of solitude in back alleys and fire escapes—
A fondness borne from our habit of keeping eyes open through the
Vacant darkness of estranged, nocturnal asylums.
He looks like Hades, flicking his cigarette into the pooling mirror of night.
These spaces are odd, steeped in a drunken, glinted blur, but he takes my hand—
Leading me through all this oppressive architecture, cast-iron shadows,
And raining stars.
I pray no one discovers all the time we hid for ourselves,
But we are one being that bears a sorry hand
The two of spades and the seven of diamonds.
This night is waxing and the clock is off—and yet,
We dream in these shades of noir.
The tasteful gradient of tragedy and magic
Sustained between black-and-white scenes.
He sees the beauty in a simpler tone—
Waving off doubt like shedded strands of hair
I’ve left on his shoulder.
His love has discovered no sin,
It does not tremble nor find temptation,
It looms monolithic against arbitrary impulses and authorities.
I call and he comes—the same romantic song over-and-over—
Steadfast in its certainty.
Somehow, the days and nights have overturned—death and life press me into liminality.
He remains my Polaris by sound alone—
His name ringing out like a church bell.
And for the chance moment of our meeting,
I think nothing could be better than this.
This smoke, pooling out from the little threshold we inhabit,
Scores everything in a hazy grayscale—
Muddling the world and all its odd subjects,
Obscuring fate from finding its cold finality.
by white patches, pieces of sky torn
like pieces of gum.
Do they taste like papery medicinal strips that dissolve
on the tongue or the air after a cold rain?
Birds on citrus branches peck at peeled paint,
chew blank spaces and blow out lemon cloud bubbles.
What a wonderfully weird sky.
I plant beans the way Mamaw taught me
three to a hill, like sisters
leaning on one another in hard times.
She’d say, Keep the good seed,
even if the season’s cruel.
I didn’t know then she meant more than crops.
We hold onto things differently here.
Not in glass cases just to gaze upon,
but in the way we say a name,
the way we hang a quilt
so it catches morning sun,
the way we grasp hands and
whisper secrets across rows.
I’ve written women into pages
they were once kept from,
carried stories in baskets
with kale and failure and hope.
I teach my children the names of trees,
not just for science, but survival.
They need to know what heals.
Power doesn’t knock here —
it paves.
Digs deep.
Calls it progress.
But the land remembers who tended it.
And I remember too.
Each time I put my hands in soil,
I am speaking back to every silence.
“Hey, diddle, diddle”
sawed Pa on the fiddle
while we all clogged
‘neath the moon,
and what a moon!
The cowdog howled;
the barn cats meowed,
and the bride waltzed away
with the groom, the groom…
the bride waltzed away. with the groom!
A Sunday like most others,
sitting at home
curled up on the couch
with our favorite tv show on repeat.
Burgers grilled for dinner,
and ice cream before bed,
Wishing a very happy Father’s Day
to the mom
that never hesitates
to lift my chin, dust the dirt off my knees,
and face every challenge beside me
never letting me see
the vacant hole
beside her.
