If your skin is a coat,
   wear it inside out.
    When the snow arrives,
      let the lining twist and shout.

               If your skin is a house,
                 thank the demolition crew
                   for each new day they clear out
                     an old version of you.

                        If your skin is wallpaper,
                             don’t trust the flowers.
                               If your bones are wind chimes,
                                   stay awake after hours.

                 If your skin is a map,
         just for once – fold it wrong.
     Allow your routes and your rivers
 their meandering songs.

If your skin is a palace,
     let us scuff its marble.
        If your scars are starlings,
           let them whistle and warble.

                  If your veins are blue handwriting,
                       let them finish the sentence.
                              If your blood is a fortress,
                                   abandon your defences.

                   If your skin is a garden,
               water the weeds.
           They’ve been there longer
     and know what it needs.

If your skin is a library,
        misfile the pain.
            Put grief under “weather”
                    and joy under “rain.”

                             If your skin is a country,
                                 ignore every border.
                                    Let the freckles establish
                                       their own sort of order.

               If your skin is a lighthouse,
          remove the bulb.
       Let the merciful darkness
   do some of the work.

If your skin’s an aquarium,
          feed the sharks some torn pages.
              These things have survived
                     on reflections for ages.

                  If your skin is a beehive,
           stop keeping count.
     The honey arrives
despite all your doubts.

   Keep knitting your nettles
for each sting and each scrape
    brings the rest of us
          closer to
              our
             own
           human
           shapes.

melancholy over me

The sun comes up some-
where I can’t see it.
I track its movement
in the clouded skylight.
Management would never
give us clear ones; we
would fight like cats to
bask in the sunbeam.
My doctor says I should 
get outside more, that
Vitamin D is a 
precious commodity
I could get for free.
I ask her where I 
could block that out of
my schedule between
overtime shifts and sleep
so I can take on more
overtime shifts. In winter, 
I can watch the skylights
go from dark to light
back to dark in a day’s
shift, knowing what I’m 
missing.

grief is a season that keeps
its own calendar

that ebbs and surges
with the gravity of loss

the broken heart
now an inconstant satellite

circling the empty space
where the beloved once moved

“Oh, but mama, that’s where the fun is.”
— Bruce Springsteen

The afternoon light is so strong
we can’t bear to be outside, 
swap exposed patio for darkened room,
shades down, curtains closed.

Sun mirage lingers in the eye, 
somehow we find each other,
discovered by touch, ready and willing, 
half-blind, whole-hearted.

of swallows swoops and swerves,
they scoop a perfect winner’s serve.
My whoops can’t match their fearless nerve—
those loops made up of more than verve,
their hoops a risky dead-man’s curve—

The thing that haunts me is I didn’t even know the man’s name. Didn’t know he was only 4 years older than me. Didn’t realize that it was his son who was banned from our property. Didn’t hear the sirens or see the spinning lights on the emergency vehicles called to do a wellness check. I didn’t know any of this despite he only lived three doors down.

I still wouldn’t know now if Rhonda hadn’t stopped me as I scurried inside my place. Rhonda is the good neighbor who waters my poor impulse flowers. She’s the one who hadn’t seen him since Sunday. Who noticed the flies. Who called 911. She’s the one who shared the pain of discovery and fear of shady death– windows closed, air conditioner off, signs of struggle– in our peaceful complex. So what’s worse- to know or to be oblivious?

My world sharpens, clarifies
Claustrophobic knowledge
A small world threatened

Mist peels off the mountain
like old skin,
and the breath of the earth
smells like fern.

Beneath trees that remember,
bare feet pressed into moss,
women rise.
Eyes full of rivers,
hair snared with pine needles and wind.

The wolves are waiting,
silent as falling ash,
their ribs echoing hunger.

Together they move,
not as a pack,
but a storm of flesh and fur.

The lake opens her dark mouth
and takes in their reflections
without question. 

over time, the fence had grown
in height and width,
in depth and strength

the old, thin wooden planks,
long gone–now, tungsten steel,
which could withstand
anything short of tank fire

the house was largely unchanged,
which is odd–why so
much emphasis on keeping things
out, when the inside was steadily
succumbing to the slow march of entropy,
the unforgiving whims of sun and 
wind and rain

the aerial view revealed the feint–
there is no such thing as “safe”,
“secure”

the attack can simply come 
from a new angle

ironic, no?

the fence began as a response–
the low, white picket fence of childhood–
now replaced with ugly,
indifferent prison walls

yet the vulnerability
remains unchanged and
cannot be eliminated

as realization hits, 
his therapist says,
“so why not just tear it down?”

When morning light across her eye
first cracks its gentle glow
she rises like the great undead
and whispers time to go

she finds her little apron
with the pockets all adorned
and ties it ’round her waist
so she can start the blessed morn

she stops quick by the wooden box
she keeps beside her bed
and softly pets the words inside 
while thoughts grow in her head

she pads soft to the dining room
and sits down with her phone
oh my oh yes the friends are here
they’re coming one by one

now this one’s new, igniting,
and that one smells like home
and this one’s sad and that one
makes her feel much less alone

she fills her little pockets up 
her hands no longer shake
as she puts down a poem, then
she will more poems take

take a poem, leave a poem
give thanks as you go
you know she really loves it here, 
the packrat of lexpomo.