I’ve filled myself to the brim with chili
I fold into a familiar spot on the front steps.
It’s been dark all day
The day after the solstice,
The sounds of cars on the wet street sound different from inside my echoey wooden box of an apartment, plastered floor to ceiling with stacks and boxes of rolled, leaning and hanging canvas.
I gaze around me at the green air, feeling drugged, holding a lit cigarette under my hand so it doesn’t get wet.
I feel so proud of my Miyazaki-worthy outfit today. Green and red frog socks, yellow sandals, pale pink jeans, avocado green and white-striped pocket shirt, burgundy, cream, and brown plaid overshirt.
It is a weirdly cold end of June, Goldie says,
He’s tickled he gets to wear his brown sweater, just about anytime it isn’t sticky out. A frousy bit of drab, stretched down several feet, pockets bulging with heavy packets of paper.
Between poetry and thickly buttered bread,
I’m halfway between here and somewhere
A few things give me a start as my eyes fall upon them-
A chore I started this morning and completely forgot about finishing
“Save ya later, Begonia”
I sure get into a churn
flushing away the day
Carrying strips of cardboard here and there
Drilling holes with a screwdriver
Folding the new tshirts for market
Seeing how many clean laundry cubes I can squeeeeeze into the dresser, it’s all in the arrangement.
I put off putting those away.
An infection spread into my lungs before I knew it and it’s kicked me in the chest
I’ve been on a hiatus
From coffee and cigarettes
For three days the world has been a different color.
Gazing into the neighbor’s lilies, I see The Kitten’s face under a big low hanging lily pad (It’s not a lily pad but I like to call it that, as that is what it resembles), she wears it like a hat, she sure is a Totoro.
Everytime I look back she’s still there, just her head sticking out enough to see.
Even though I haven’t been smoking much, plagued as I am with mucous,
I keep hanging out in the yard, admiring all the littlest and the biggest plant and stone and ant residents. Occasionally I walk in the wet grass, between stints of heavier drizzle.
Very suddenly it’s night again, it seems like it came so early.

Another day, another symptom shows itself anon.

On the playground as a kid
Standing in a line
Waiting to hear your name for the basketball team

High school gym
Five names have been called
Will you be the sixth man on the basketball team?

Only 64 teams will make the NCAA Tournament
The team holds its collective breath
Will they make the big dance?

Tonight’s the NBA Draft
Should you stay home
Or wait in the Green Room
For your name to be called

It will be
 The Final Pick

I
stride 
through crowded
boulevards, crimson cape
swallowing my humble shadow,
and I become more than my wiry silhouette
suggests.  My cloak billows in the breeze as I soar
over solid earth, a comic book character come to life, a superhero.

She said 

Why am I the only one
with just a mom all the time?
Everyone else has both

As tears filled her eyes.

And why are all the other girls
not always fighting with their mom
or stressed out like you are?

More tears.
But not just from her eyes now.
I sniffle silently, so she may continue.

Why do they all have big houses
and backyards
and don’t have to choose
one thing or another?
They go on vacations
and go out to eat whenever
And buy and do whatever they want.

The same questions I ponder upon
in times like these.

Then she asks an interestingly loaded one,
with acute irony,
but more so,
an irony within irony,

Is this all just karma? 

Huh?!

Yeah. Karma. Like your car breaking down,
your phone messing up,
all the stuff I just said.
All of this.

Sigh.

My baby girl,
These trials and unfair happenings,
my dear,
are not in response to what we’ve given
or not given this world.
But a chance to learn.
What I do think,
I do think, having you and I be a team,
would be the best this earth,
God
and karma
could have given me.
The rest can go.
And now…
It’s what we do with these challenges.

I haven’t done very well lately.
I think I’m not learning my lessons.

Forgive my words
filled with fear & doubt.
Because…
we have less distractions,
we can more easily notice 
the beauty of the helpers
and love around us.
Just like how I see…
you’re the first of your friends to notice,
comment,
and discover
pure beauty, joy and connection
to a magical sunset,
and details of the sky
Or run to nurture a hurt soul.

We can notice
because we have less than.
But. With you,
I have more than anyone on earth.

From your pockets

The circular saw blade cuts a straight line, across fingers and our souls.

#americansentence

Old dog, at fifteen 
your age is showing, 
salt and pepper snout 
and eyebrows, 
you feel vibrations 
but hear almost nothing. 
Getting up and down 
has become a struggle 
but your buddy, Legolas,
can get you running. 
You demand little 
but always show
excitement when I 
come into the yard
or open the door. 
You have loved four
little girls, all grown 
and moved to other
places, leaving us here. 
Old friend,  you’ve seen
me through rough winds.
I will help you through
the summer storms. 

KW  6/22/23

At the city pool I pay my three dollars
and the kid on duty tells me
about the new clear bag policy
so I put my towel, phone,
keys, and water bottle
in the plastic bag he gives me
and he asks about the book I am reading.
It just won the Pulitzer prize, I said,
and he looks at the cover.
Kingsolver, I’ve heard that name.
A Kentucky writer, I tell him,
then suddenly I find myself
in a great conversation
with a dark-tanned teenager,
a shaggy blond-haired kid
I never would have thought
would be interested in literature.

at what age
do we stop pretending 
that we don’t see
little kids in their hiding spaces