If life didn’t go south, so long ago
I would not sit here now
Missing my dog
And the other one, too
Driving for hours
Sharing a bedroom
Arranging visitations
Listing my grievances
If life stayed simple
Like little me thought it was
My sister would not work in the city
I would see her more than every other weekend
I would see my mother more than two days in a week
My whole life would be in my one home
And I would not sit here now
Pondering on the past
Because it would have never happened
I would be peaceful, I think
One house,
Two parents,
Two sisters,
Maybe one dog
And I would not have to travel north
For another half of my life
Which turned into a third,
Maybe a quarter,
Soon a fifth,
Eventually statistically insignificant
But I would not sit here
Writing of a split life
I would sing of a family, held together
Only by walls
Of turmoil and feeling trapped in only my one home
But I would still suffer and listen
To a mother condemn my own
To spouses unloving
To what we are supposed to be
In a church happy with the hidden
If life had not gone south,
And burst at the seems,
I may still be happy,
But I may still be broken,
Struck by a different hammer,
Different pieces of the same whole.
mind-Addled
through the point of a headache
I hear the words shouted
in a crowded restaurant.
“Ocho, lo sabe.”
While I wait,
for a chocolate chip milkshake
I puzzle
over the meaning.
Eight
“lo sabe”
“I know”?
No sabe is third person singular
if present.
It’s reflexive, “lo”.
“It knows.”
Yeah, that has to be it.
“Eight, it knows”
I find satisfaction
in clumsy Mind games.
The chase of translation.
Two semesters of college Spanish
put to semi-good use.
Only to come home
pull up an online translator,
and realize I was wrong.
“Eight, they know it.”
Flatwoods, Kentucky
A poet friend once gave me a book:
Crystals for Everyday Living.
I read,
created in the dark heart of the earth.
She is from Pennsylvania and I am from
Kentucky, so I thought coal, I thought Santa –
like the table filled with red-shorted Santas
at their June coffee shop club meeting
that invited me to become Mrs. Claus.
While flattered, I demurred because
I am not demure;
I am naughty, lump
shoved in a stocking’s toe.
Lump,
like the one in my throat after
I corrected Daddy’s “Appa-laysh-uh”
with a snapped “Appa-latch-uh”
like I knew better –
like he didn’t just bury the only son he created
in the dark heart of the earth.
My love for you blinks in and out
of the conscious field,
my body, my mind.
I’m trying to decide
if this is a sign,
so I peel back petals,
one at a time.
Touch me, touch me not,
Touch me, touch me not.
I need to see
where the stem connects
and nectar flows, but I can’t
pluck the bloom, and I won’t
promise anything,
which is ridiculous, I know.
If everything is a sign,
then nothing is a sign.
If it all demands such scrutiny,
shouldn’t I scrutinize
my scrutiny, too?
The sun burns at 3.85 x 10^26th watts
but tucks behind a single oak
and seems to disappear. I do not
lose sleep.
it sits on my table, sans anything
now, except wishes
it once held [redacted for church family]
the bright yellow-check tablecloth
shines all the clearer in the glass
makes me wonder what sand
blazed in what furnace, and where
just to hold my [redacted]
was it from Ozymandias?
aside those trunkless legs of stone
representing
“lone and level sands far away”
or maybe some beach somewhere
Santorini, Venice, Aruba, Boonesborough
doesn’t matter, for there’s a simpler
solution, than this dreaming
and I stand, on two legs of flesh
retrieve the bottle, and pour
another drink of [redacted]
Loose pebbles tumble in downward descent.
The crashing splash of ocean erodes rock
and cliff, louder with each crunching step.
Blue water appears still in the distance
but thunders with color when witnessed.
Who knew that water had edges:
white, foamy, green, and veined like skin.
Spittles of salt coat my hair and hands
like evidence of an oceanic battle.
I fell into a very deep sleep in dark purple Octopi Ink
I watched myself sink, sink, sink into a zinc white sink
My beauty reached out for comfort, care and love
but got stretched by the neck by your gardening glove
As your clippers snipped off the bloom
that once was me
I was set afloat in a glass of Chablis
