Were born molding, moulding, molting
Maybe
a stronger woman could handle you.

Womanhood is maybe
Womanhood is reaching
Womanhood is audience silence.

Advice for all women of 2024:
Stop trying so hard
Men are fun; whatever you think this is,
it probably isn’t. Practice thoughtlessness
for peace.
Tell everyone what you mean and need.
This weight is a weapon. This apathy, a lesson.
Layer the pillows out on the side
of the bed like a man who never farts; 
he’s perfect, expect him to never hug
hard enough.
Remember this is true for all of them.
If you’re a woman wanting: Abundance.
Be thin with your words and your space.
Woman is a state of Re:
What will you lose?
What will you produce?
What do you dare let breathe?

How fragile and queer for this to stay this way—

The horror, the honor, the fiction, the choice—
Of a woman and a full day.

Children are being killed
struck down in front of their
homes, grains of corn only
sprouted, never a stalk nor an ear. 
The somber music of madness
permeates streets and overpasses,
an opus for the angel of death
to reap his bloody harvest. 
The dove bearing an olive branch
shot down.  Now, only vultures
circle the sky along with
the rockets red glare.  When, O God,
will the lion lie down with the lamb?    

Hey Siri, Make a Note
What do you want it to say?
Back in the day before suitcases had wheels

Hey Siri, Make a Note
What do you want it to say?
Cracks in asphalt green with moss

Hey Siri, Make a Note
Bridge shadows on the road

Make a Note
We were at the age where we hated our parents

What would you like it to say?
Fast food and a slow carousel

Hey Siri,
Downturned eyes, the click of a cane on the pavement

What do you want it to say?
Grandma and Grandpa
pushed through the airport in wheelchairs

Make a Note
The remnants of matter

Spoons clink against cups, passengers ponder tea leaves’ puzzled predictions.

Bri and I get good
and hammered
on vodka and soda
on the way to work.  

And no one says shit
cause zombies are great
drunks, or drunks are convincing
zombies.  

Or something.
The Director of Photography tells us
how great we are. “You two,
keep it up! You’re great.”  

Maybe one day, I’ll show him
the thing with the mortadella
slices that Bri and I do, privately.
It’s perfectly disgusting.  

I hope he will use us more.  

farrier’s tools,

I close my eyes and am engulfed
by the expanse of this day’s
black sky

On this day I find the courage
to sit and I do not want
to run

Slowly and more often I 
give myself permission
to see.

when the judgement comes in
the form of a backhanded compliment
from an eleven-year old
that you’ve spent a large sum of money
on a vehicle that is as gaudy
as it is hideous
as it wasn’t a rolling visual reminder of all that is wrong with us
collectively
as it was a main character on the road
always appearing as an antagonist
to those of us who dare gaze upon it
and it’s summarized by young eyes as
exactly what it is

it’s so ugly that it’s cool to look at
no one will make one like that again
or, everybody will do it too because
they’re trying to fit in
maybe five years from now there will be a crop
of stainless steel style cars
and we’ll think differently then
because theirs looks closer to ours

until then I will call it like it’s seen through the eyes of a child
you can spend it all on trends
but you can never buy
style

paradise might be ok
but then again, who knows?
the young with sprite in their bellies
think heaven is like santaland where
you wear white and no one cusses 
adults know better but tell the kids
that someday they’ll go there
and see grandpa. once I was sure
Eden must be in the Mekong Delta
of 1962: beautiful beaches, ethereal 
sky, breezes right out of Life Magazine
like any paradise it soon went to hell

my Naval Times shows three cruise
lines there now. yes kids, all’s well

“Grief is only love
That has no place to go”
And I think I’ll grieve you
For the rest of my life
And I can understand now,
It’s not my fault,
My love knocked on your door–
Banged, kicked, squeezed in the cracks
You’d barely open the door
The chain lock still in tact
You’d let some seep in
But what I gave could never
Fit through a crack
It engulfed the house
Raided the trees
Tickled the clouds
And finally I can see
That it is up to me
To step off the porch
And take my love elsewhere,
But I’ll never get back
What you keep locked inside
And I’ll grieve that
For the rest of my life