1 1/2 cup Jasmine rice 

annoyance morphs into a slight tinge of anger
I learn to withhold it
accept how life goes
I could share all of it
or simply a piece that pertains to the day
mostly because we don’t have hours
and I didn’t plan on today being that sort of day

longest day’s sun sees
me round fence line’s bend, hands stained
black-raspberry red

Stones encircled by dark, bare
branches of thorns.

Fenceposts throttled
by grasping vine skeletons.

Trellises, gloomy in fall’s grip
show the scars of growth & removal.

Does it have good bones? Plan
for what it looks like when the garden dies.

I woke to a sky
as black as the backs of my bleary
eyelids, turbulence shaking
me from fitful rest, but Pacific Standard Time shoved dawn
back into the East, rewinding
Wednesday morning.  I am granted a second sunrise
as my day begins anew
with purple petals and postcard palms.

Her self-defense mechanism
was to stuff him in a predetermined box
without checking if he matched the label.

Guys only try to be your friend when they want sex,
she tells a mutual friend
as her way of blanket dismissing any hopefuls.

The right, and sometimes duty to herself
to keep such protection cannot be denied
but it doesn’t mean she is always right.

His heart was genuine. Learning love through her,
all he wanted was to see the girl she could be
after allowing herself to shed some anxiety.

But his heart was also damaged. Low on self-esteem
he couldn’t fathom why a relationship wouldn’t form
unless he was just that messed up. A flaw in his code.

This was the unfortunate tipping point for him.
Revengeful fury at another rejection
was never going to turn the momentum around; he’s just so

tired. Immediately regretful of the breakdown,
he’s spent years trying to leave the beginnings of toxicity
in that place where nothing grows. His wasteland.

You would think time would soften the hurt,
but every comfort found came from temporary distraction.
He always falls back into this.

Because she was so unlikely compatible.
Because her wisdom bounced so well off of his.
Because that spiritual connection was so electric

lost in a moment of misinterpretation–
he looks like every other asshole who’s crossed her path
and that is the last thing that she needs, it’s just

not what she was initially getting from him.
He’s aware of that, and it casts a long shadow
stretching through years and years of silent unfulfilled yearning.

A cool solstice eve:
it rained all day.
Ducks lolled, alert for drizzle’s ebb,
under branches, ducklings sheltering
under their outstretched wings.
Here & there thunder undulated
from one side of lake
to the other,
then off to a wild yonder.
The bustle of shower slicking off leaves
kept up a steady pace
while wind grayed the green day.
What was a casual twilight stroll
became a shivering briskness.

The next day
sun broke from clouds
& humidity settled on spiderwort
& thinning lily.
Lilac shards & confetti salvia
threaded flowerbeds & dappled grass.
Robins assaulted the wet soil
throbbing with earthworms.
Ducks cast off from shore,
darted, sailed, darted, their quacking & rasping
cutting thick air.
Ducklings’ peep, peep, peep
punctuated lake’s expanse.
Midday heat alit on skin,
lodged there for the duration of an amble.

Now, in the evening,
ducks are silent
while pickerel frogs let loose their drawn-out croaks,
creaking under moon’s bright eye,
joined by spring peepers filling up the air,
shrill cacophony.
Strains of crickets’ strident stridulations begin,
& katydids add their rasping pulse,
two, three, four, two,
to the sonata.
Time flickers in fireflies
rising like slow embers of summer’s bonfire.
A shock of daisies stands still
like a crepuscular pause
by water’s brink,
smoldering.  

I can never hear that song without picturing
my granny, her gray hair roped up in its bun,
a wad of tissue pulled from her cheap cracked
plastic purse, spilling out coins. Yes, warden,
I’m just here to get my baby out of jail.
Maybe Uncle Willie. His baby-round cheeks
and shock of black hair on his forehead. Or Ben,
his sharp-faced older brother. In the pen. Again.
Around my mother’s maple table, all
the sisters sit. Coffee’s percolating hum.
And I am…where? Invisible. Waiting for bright
coins of story to fall through the cracks to me.
This time, a gun. The sisters shake their coifed black
heads and pat my granny-s wrinkled hands.

(“I’m Just Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail,” recorded by the Everly Brothers, written by Karl Davis and Harty Taylor)

an erasure poem from an excerpt of “Twenty Thousand Leauges Under The Sea” by Jules Verne

The light                                     astonished me.
           And     I      distinguished
gradations of
                                                           obscurity.
Truly,
           the impression
                                           of the sun.

Shall I be believed when I say

I was     broad daylight           sown with the
impalpable dust of
                                       degrees?

Darkness should           help,               outlined
in the distance—a tapestry         at
    ten in the morning.
                                        The touch of         light
as through a prism.

Shell-                  shaded     edges,   a feast for
complication:               green, yellow, orange,
violet, indigo and blue. In one word:

                         admiration.

I                                         want      better. (I talk
to myself,           more air            than     wise.)
Various         clusters of                   brilliant

          grief           prickle             under
me,
                                            inexhaustible.

But we were bound to walk, so we went on,
           a band of         us,    in sun and fiery
   darkness.

Lil’ Bub
Swee’ Pea
Apple of my eye

You are
dinosaur rawrs
crawl on all fours
giggle at peep eye

Let’s
roll ‘em up
out came the sun
diamond in the sky

Let’s
wheels on the bus
count your toes
throw you way up high

Lib’ Bub
Punkin’ teeth
You’re the
Apple of Mimi’s eye