Posts for June 26, 2025

Sifting through a row of clothes
hanging listless on their hangers,
I noticed an article missing
that I wore each day
as a symbol of my bookishness.
Though I have become no less studious
in the last few years of my enlightenment,
I no longer wear my cardigans 
punctuated with acrylic wooden buttons
and colors that warm
even the most tepid blood.
I don’t recall
ever consciously deciding
not to wear my lovely cardigans,
yet they seem to have disappeared
from my closet all the same.
It is not until I shift
deep enough into the columns of clothing
that I find some of my other misplaced thoughts,
solid like the shallow grey,
no less fresh than the letters exchanged
among friends long since separated
by circumstance or setting.
I pass the fabric
between thumb and forefinger
and wonder about reaching out to friends
who would remember me
in the cardigans of yesteryear.

they come in the night 
tall and sleek and brown
theres no worry or fright 
they move with heads down 

honed in on the porch begonias
the stakes are high at being caught 
ignoring any of the cats ammonia 
they nibble without a care or thought 

of us sleeping soundly in our homes
dead center of our sleepy town 
where all of the college kids have gone
there’s nothing but us locals to be found

Jerry in his wisdom
as if he knew we would need it 
talked about his farming system
in his voice and sharp wit 

so tonight I spray liquid fence 
along the boundary of the porch
I’m not sure it’s such a good defense
but I’ll trust a man and his research 

If 3 a.m. is for lovers,
then why is it

also
the Devil’s Hour?

I can’t sleep
& you can’t

be here,
or there,

& he
& they

never rest
when I try

to dream.

I’ve been living on borrowed time 
With your love forever etched inside 
My broken womb, trying to build a home
Where your ghost is the shadow 
That lives in the window sill 
Of our kitchen, where the rest of our
Children gather ’round a crowded table
And I still dream of you in colors that don’t exist
Where in my sleep, I cry for only, You— 

Your name lies silent, on the end of my tongue
My heart reaches for you in the stillness 
And in the darkness of the silence
With baited breathe until my lungs 
are borrowing air just to keep going. 

We are stooped again under the weight of not recognizing
Our country, Our culture, Our leaders, so we recondition
Our protest muscles and fight to reclaim what is Ours.

The unconscious dreamer within knows no bounds
I wake astonished and amused

When did I distrust my own imagination 
permit creativity to bite the poisoned apple

Tender sorrow for that little girl
holds hands with bitter envy
They kneel to pray

Now I lay me down to sleep

Slipping slightly sideways 

Suffering is a skill. I am
downstairs in the cold,
balancing deformed feet
on the scale, throwing up
water. I don’t need to paint
my nails, they are already
this fascinating cyan. I am
blanching at every touch,
a preview of a ghost, pressured
to dissolve. I stopped blinking,
my pupils expanding to catch
the visual snow, ice blue irises
burning. The supplements
mimic salvation, there is no
real bypass to avoid this 
devastation. Its devotion,
entrenched by image catalogs
and spreadsheets, these white
hands grip each digit tighter
as months pass. I am dedicated
to misery, locked in rituals, fingers
clamped around my upper arm.
The skin pales with the imprint
of a shackle, my own claw marks.
When the blood doesn’t return
it heralds something malign. 

I become so enamored
With the pot that I address
It anthropomorphically:
My dear pot
Your enamel is a bit chipped
But your soul seems intact
Your lack of bacon
And portly shape engender
Only a smidge of R E S P E C T
Though that slice of ginger was nice
And your bottom line of brown sugar
Carmelized with garlic wafting
Through the air like hookah smoke
Sent me half way to heaven

But heaven is only a lonely place
Without a friend, so Mr. Pot & I
Spend the evening in the warm embrace
Of human intercourse and, of course,
We become occupied with the scarlet life
Of the Octopi

It’s a feeling
a power
a shower

a wind
a storm
a sweet

a treat
sudden hug
my feelings for you

a sudden halt
that says
too wild for me