My Alarm
My alarm
Went off
Not meant to wake me
It’s 11:00 p.m.
A harsh reminder
Write your poem
Your goal
A poem a day
The LexPoMo way
30 poems
Challenge accepted
You can not miss
Even one
There’s a ten buck bread machine come home
and a coconut cream pie, blueberry lemon scones
and oatmeal banana bread
Tomorrow we’ll have to get dry milk
and check the yeast for signs of life
and pray we get it right first try
To all the life I’ve lived so far this month
and all the life I’ve lived so far
and all the life I’ll live so far off
Try to remember the things worth remembering
and forgetting the things worth forgetting
and not holding onto those familiar cinderblocks
There’s a ten buck bread machine back home
and enough warmth to go around
and it’s always better when we’re here to live it
We talk for an hour
Eating leftovers over the counter
Spouting stories as if we
have known each other a lifetime
I have heard your voice countless times
You always manage to call over
our ever-changing dinner time
But this time I am looking at you
And I see my brother
That I have hardly ever known
And we speak as though
we have never been apart
I buy all the ingredients
and put them together,
use sharp instruments to destroy them
because they need to be destroyed,
chopped into chunks of matter
and fiber and juices that leak out
when the skins are pealed away
by fingernails and thumbs.
It’s not just onions that separate
into small domes like nesting dolls,
red lips and babushkas
tied under painted chins,
cubed potato and rutabaga and turnips,
slant cut celery and round carrots,
garlic pulverized under the flat of a blade,
and all the leaves plucked from
woody stems of garden thyme
and oregano and marjoram
slip between the needles from a rosemary bush,
a Laurel leaf rolled between my palms
until, like magic, they release my soul.
Just add heat and salt and wait
for something left over
from the wreck that I’ve made.
If lightning takes the path
If our planet revolves around the sun,
What do the humans revolve around?
Surely every person on earth revolves around something
I know what I revolve around
Plants are something of an enigma to me
Some people say they’re alive
Scientists say they have no feelings or thoughts
I think plants have a way of getting back at someone for killing them
Wether it be a cactus that leaves pricks in your fingers
Or poison ivy that leaves you itchy for days
For me, plants affect me differently
They leave me thinking about them all day
For every thought I have
I think about plants
I think about how beautiful their colors are
I think about the way they make me feel
I think about what it would be like to simply grow out of the earth
No matter the climate
No matter the hardships they face through natural selection
They can disappear, and come back 3 years later like nothing happened
I want to be a plant
I want to sink into the soil
I want to live and die like nothing ever happened
a little Mexican girl was walking down the sidewalk with her Abuelita
they stopped next door to admire a front lawn fairyland
created by the children who live in the home
i smiled at both of them and said hi
her warm brown eyes smiled back
her Abuelita diligently watching over her ~ carried a heavy vacuum cleaner
with a long hose (possibly coming from a job and going to the next one)
she guided her granddaughter’s tiny steps
i said hi & told them to wait a minute
i ran inside to look for a present
tore into my art bag and found a brand new pink bubble wand
grabbed it & ran to the sidewalk
broke open the seal ~ pulled out the wand
i began to blow big bubbles ~ her face lit up
i reached out, gave her the bubble wand & asked her name
she smiled & responded softly, “America!”
as she walked away wearing an ear-to-ear smile
she continued blowing magic bubbles all the way down the street
her grandma smiling ~ still carrying the heavy vacuum cleaner
with the long hose
bubbles lilted all around them lighting up both their hearts
i blessed them & gave thanks for:
“America” to be walking freely with her Abuelita, on a residential street in California
they were not locked up in a concentration camp because of their ethnic background
they were both free to enjoy a fairyland created by little children
a little girl received a magic pink bubble wand just for being who she is
this little girl was proudly wearing the name of a country currently circumstantially providing her all these opportunities of freedom
The room that no one lives in anymore
is like a time capsule.
Posters for shows that have been given revivals
and guides for Dungeons and Dragons
that are an edition and a half behind.
The room that’s lived in
is like a piece of art.
Everything matches
like its all been curated.
Did they just have this stuff
or did it take them years to collect it?
My room at home is just all of the random crap
that I happen to own.
It does have a better bed though
than either of these options.
That’s just an objective fact.
Showers are another thing.
Something’s always off
whether it’s too hot, too cold,
the water pressure is too high,
too low.
Maybe it’s just the thought of that foreign
shower curtain
paired with the fact that
this shower is smaller than mine.
And why is the toilet still making that noise?
It feels wrong that it’s gone on for that long.
Waking up in a house that isn’t yours
is always weird.
Is anyone else awake?
Which floorboards creek?
I really need to pee
but the neverending droll of the toilet
is sure to wake everyone up.
Finally I get dressed out of a bag
and find a window with a view.
The scenery is beautiful
out there.
Even with all of the rain.
It’s quiet enough to actually hear
all of the wildlife.
Secluded enough to actually
maybe potentially
even see some of it.
I do like being here.
In small doses.
Weird.
That’s what staying in a house
that isn’t yours is.
I ran into a former classmate today
I didn’t know how to hold my face
I often remember too many things
about people and places that
don’t return the favor
I didn’t know how to hold my face
I guess my expression registered
confused
In my failed attempt to feign forgetting
I didn’t show that I remembered
we cut fabric shapes that day
so mamaw could stitch together
and tell us stories as varied
as quilts shared on cold nights,
their warmth threading us
together in tapestry
