Posts for June 27, 2025 (page 8)

I am not a robot just because I understand how em dashes and Oxford commas work—the woods are not lovely, dark, and deep; “the woods are lovely, dark and deep” and poets with promises to keep know when they are and aren’t connecting and do not welcome implied editing by assuming a punctuation is or isn’t there and do not enjoy the suggestion that whether they are ems, ens, ‘phens, asterisms, or interrobangs that they were generated as statistical probable outputs of prompts and not the eclectic, elegant, and nuanced clever creations of characters that they are. I will ampersand with ample ands & there is simply no way I will allow the AI-whisperers to tell me it didn’t happen just because they couldn’t read it—just because they couldn’t believe it—just because they didn’t receive it.

all my wanting chokes me like bile
in the throat, acidic, thin black
fluid that tastes like something
just out of reach

he tells me he cannot wait
to meet the person I will become
in only a few month’s time.
she will be different

but I want to be wanted now
as I am; broken and shining
like shattered glass mirrorballs
against an empty dancefloor

because I have no dreams anymore
but to be held and recreated
in the image of someone
who loves me

He is arson
I am ocean
We ride the same apartment elevator
He flames commie libs and pushy dames
The floors dawdle past like window-shopping slugs
My waves thirst to tsunami his rant
I flood my mind with oms instead  

For days I go out of my way to avoid him
But fate savors its practical jokes
The next time I douse his spark before he ignites
Happy Donut Day, I gush sweetly
He gawks as if I have boogied naked through a church
What kind of donut do you like? I ask the silence
Don’t eat them, he spits
But I can see the glazed circles smoldering in his eyes  

The next time I am ready
Happy National Forklift Safety Day
His eyes fume at the floor unsure if I am joking
Hard shuffles one foot over some unseen smudge  

Happy National Bourbon Day
He drags a rough hand across his mouth
I imagine him getting home from work
Uncapping a thirsty bottle
The calendar now an alibi  

Yahoo has proclaimed every sun circle a celebration
And I, pushy dame that I am, push
Happy National Corn on the Cob Day
Happy National Stick Out Your Tongue Day
Happy National Take Your Pants for a Walk Day  

He guffaws at that one
Catches himself and translates it into a rough cough
Still wary, he says, Good one
We have forged a precarious foot path
Laden with shardy missiles, blazing coals, potholes the size of Ganymede
But for now, for a short span of floors
We share this world, this elevator, this primordial wink         

How can I put this politely?

i feel myself flip

between existential dread/

optimistic joy 

Walking barefoot through
our grass watching for bumble
bees, searching for that
elusive four leaf clover
treasured for lucky bookmark.

1. Thou shalt include
a seasonal
reference
2. Thou shalt not
refer to multiples
as haikus
3. Nature shall
be featured
heavily
4. Thou shalt not
include a
title
5. Thou shalt not
impose wit
on the art
6. Five-Seven-
Five is now
incorrect
7. Thou shalt structure
in two parts
Hook and Truth
8. The poet’s
ego shall not
be stroked
9. Locations
and dates are
right out
10. Thou shalt capture
a moment
of insight

He shuffled her memory, a dealer with a deck of cards,
she watched unable to stop him as her awareness
became some one else’s mingled on a misty night.

Her voice was like the smooth silks of a jockey,
soft, colorful until he took it and locked it
in his heart as a bank teller with the coveted key.

A malodorous smell of time decayed
slid over her body like the runner rounding
third base, sliding into home plate.

It happened so fast she had no time to react,
feel swollen in the muddy driveway, laden
crust of red clay too heavy to run, like Lot’s wife.

For a handful of blackberries,
a bucket of sweat.

A dozen webs across my face
to hear the thrush’s song.

Muddy boots, grassy shins, gnats in my eyes
for a single centimeter of purple silk,
chicory petal pressed
between finger and thumb.

I tick check, chigger check, poison ivy check,
but mostly, I am out here checking—
Am I alive?
Am I a part of this?

The spider dangling from my lashes
assures me
I am.

I remember the six of us – 
 piling into a Chrysler,
a cooler packed with colas
and bologna stashed in the trunk.

We’d drive to Daddy’s old farm,
before his parents sold it and moved
to town. Park along the road and
hike through the undergrowth
carrying that cooler between us.

The farm sat untouched for years.
The owners dead or in a home. Their
children miles away from caring.

Down we walked the overgrown roadbed,
a remnant of tracks that led to their house,
now gone.

Past the tree Daddy said 
he and granddaddy slaughtered goats.
I could almost hear the bleating, almost
see the blood, dried long ago.

On we walked, over fallen limbs,
dodging briers in the stand of cedars.
We’d come back to them in December.
When, if we were lucky, snow would fall
as we chose the perfect tree
to sit in the living room corner,
covered in tinsel and hope.

Sweat would trickle down our necks
by the time we finally reached our Blue Hole,
a pool of sparkling green, not blue.

Trees stood high above it –
filtered light danced upon the water,
and summer heat vanished as we
stepped in letting the water rise above
our knees.
Let the cold catch our breath as water rose
to our chests.
 
Schools of small minnows
flickered away. Water skippers
skated on their arachnid legs.

Here, Daddy told us, he and his boyhood
friends came to swim in their summers.
I sometimes  thought I could hear echoes
of his laughter in the leaves
and the moss-covered sandstone.

Now, so many summers past,
I wonder if bits of our laughter
can be heard there, too,
among the cedars, or lifting
from a spring- fed pool where
minnows flicker in filtered light.