Master of puzzles:
She’ll spend hours examining the pieces,
Fitting them together in her mind.
She sees every gear,
Knows every part like they’re extensions of her body.
A conductor of metal and energy
Envisioning solutions nigh impossible.
She works into the odd hours of the night and wee hours of the dawn,
Fueled by caffeine and imagination:
For the problems of the waking are mended by her designs,
While those of the sleeping can neither be fixed nor killed.
They’ll dowse
for a viable vein,
divining rods sharp
and butterfly-small,
for any good fortune,
to tap the dread, honey-
slow, watch it well, flick
and coax the last lingering
red blessing into a test vial.
at 16 & 20 we used to look like twins
small & BIG
paper dolls
same mold
admired my baby sister’s
Born in the Horse ~ Horsie Speed
fastest pace ~ first place
#1 runner in the mile’s relay
ate pasta ~ never got fat
1st Place Modern Dancer Senior Year
an angel’s voice
made Mercy’s Chorale even cut a record
cute & sweet boyfriends
my brothers
first one ~ Sicilian
spoke Daddy’s lingo
funny warm brown eyes
killer tennis player ~ San Diego surfer
second one ~ twinkling eyes
made me your maid of honor
you wore Mom’s wedding dress
I AM THAT I AM inscribed inside golden rings
encircled us all
you both, holy yogis ~ disciples of Yogananda
i placed a flowered lei
around your tiny waist
our laughs lingered in the sacristy
i was Cadillac car chaffeur
Daddy took me aside on your wedding day . . .
“This will happen for you one day.”
hard to forget how strong you held me
your yoga headstand shoulders ~ such family support
i wasn’t alone
blind at the time ~ i hit a dark bottom
Daddy’s words of wisdom bubble up . . .
“hindsight is 20-20 . . .”
smiling he chuckled,
“too bad you get your brains too late!”
today . . .
the
Love
is
EZ
to
see
I wake while birds sing their songs of sunrise
(The belly of the beast is full of grease).
Hot tears of Lilith make fords in the street,
Feeder goes off, coffee machine beeps twice.
Open your mouth wide to get a big bite –
Don’t look too closely lest you split the seams.
Is that a smile or is it your bared teeth?
It matters not: we’ll just avert our eyes.
“What the hell are you talking about?
Just give it to me straight, you horse’s ass!”
Three lines left to explain are not enough,
But this is where I have to turn around.
Plus, I don’t think it’s all that hard to grasp.
I’m done, enough. I’m done, enough. I’m done.
Growing up in the suburbs
a backyard was just part of the residential package.
Ours, like most of our neighbors’,
was a well-manicured, chemically-treated extension of the house
rather than its own entity.
My father had conquered the yard —
grass always trim, deck freshly stained, pool perfectly PH balanced
Returning to the suburbs as an adult
some combination of lack of skill and lack of shits to give
left my backyard ever-wild.
I planted, I weeded (with heavy reliance on a plant ID app), I trimmed
But it was never enough to stop the creep
of the yard’s own intentions.
Completely foreign flora was two-feet high seemingly overnight,
unnamed greenery sprouted in the raised garden beds supposedly stocked solely with
carefully chosen seeds;
it didn’t take long for me to cede it all
to the elements.
By my fourth summer
I had surrendered so much
the back yard became an escape,
and I let it speak to my lost self.
Maybe I was never meant to control it
Maybe the wildness was the invitation.
6/11/26
I miss you like a self-inflicted wound,
not like a sweet, longing ache,
more like a burn
that hurts more every time I touch
the memory of you.
I shared tears
instead of a poem
they caught
on my sister’s
collarbone
and salted
our golden
sutures
her flesh
cradling
these words
my body
cannot
hold
Can you see the blurred lines glidin’ where the trees and roads once divided?
The creek’s trickling and blue birds sing,
yet, their edges melt into one horizon.
Weaving roots come undone
and I’m left all alone playing make-believe, and who is me
like jane doe, I’m on the run.
Can you see where the blurred lines run where I drift and merge to be—
what we are made “to be” while tomorrow waits
beyond the bend.
Or am I trapped staring at my identity through the stained glass room, far above
mistaking reflection for a boundary
far away from could be love.
My feet haven’t sketched the push and pull
of a beach in years, so you offer to lead me
to Atlanta and its aquarium, the largest in the States,
the one I told you a friend told me about,
as if untamed ocean matches filtered water
and screens with my blanched face staring back at me,
distorted and cerulean. You never learned
that I never did adore the beach as you do,
how the tides take and spit, how they become soft
before they unhinge their jaws, swallowing.
The dog at the table—
I slip a nibble.
The grandson asks, just one more time,
on guitar? I lean down: Yes, strum again.
It’s warm outside—
I fill the pets’ pond
and the tot dips his toes in,
it’s clean after all—
and I step in, too.
We twirl around in this verdant garden spot
bursting of colors and birds.
I say, Breathe in deep. What do you smell?
He does, smiles, says, Poopy poop poo,
and I laugh.
His mom, my child—
Stop encouraging him.
But it’s fun when he’s silly—
I must giggle, too.
At night, the cats rub against my calves—
I pull out some treats—
and of course, the just one more story gets two.
I hear the whispers, He knows the weak link.
Then cutie Q hugs me,
and asks for poetry.
I write it myself, he says.
About what? I inquire,
to which he replies, About my muddy feet?
I look at his toes,
ready to sprout,
nod Of course
because Oma almost always says yes.
