I count the years by the number of frames
perched on foreheads,
by the number of letters
I can see without squinting.

Usually, it’s the elbows that gives up my age.
No matter how many creams
I spread across my throat and elbows,
myopia and elbows betray.

My friend told me about the bastards
on one sunny Southern California day
while I pushed a stroller
and she paid off her son’s college debt.

It’s the elbows where all the skin gathers,
like rings on a tree.

Her glasses hung around her neck
ready at any moment to read something important.
But it seems, as the details fade,
those black-and-white runes evade me,
that the big picture comes finally into focus.

The heart of a pig rinsed blank white
infused with human stem cells
to insure acceptance by the body-
the hybridized organ assimilates.

Do the happy rooting mud memories,
the grunts and squealing rolls
get deleted or transferred 
to the new owner’s muscles?

Imagine all that rebranding
only to fight the urge to bask
with your belly to the sun in a puddle 
for even more years. 

I get my nails done
Read sexy books
Play with my kittens
Live a life distanced

I count down days
Until my eighteenth
Watch hours of movies
And kiss my girlfriend

I take long long naps
Write short short stories
Pray to Jesus and Mary
Delete text messages

As eyelids grow heavy
So does the quarter 
Tucked in my brain
Just behind my ear 
Waiting for its turn

Darkness prevails
And the quarter rolls
Pushing its way
Into the slot 
Excited for what comes next

The machine dial turns
As filled balls
Tumble about
Until one falls
Out of the opening

My brain eagerly
Breaks open the ball
To discover what sort
Of bliss or horror or oddity
Appears tonight

Dissociation from complex trauma means
I can have the home I always dreamed of
and the family I always dreamed of,
a wife of thirty years who loves me
four young adult kids who love me
and even their friends love me
as they say that their dads are assholes
who hit them yell at them scare them,
and we can watch a movie in my basement
my favorite place, my safe space,
but trying to stay here is like trying
to keep listening to a radio station
as you drive out of town and through a tunnel
and the tunnel is as dark as a magic hat
with all the magic suctioned out
or maybe it’s black magic because
on the other side of the tunnel
somehow I’m in another car forty years ago
and the driver is mad in both senses of the word.
She says she doesn’t like my attitude, she says.
I need to straighten up, she says
She speeds through a red light
and weaves through traffic.
She says she has half a mind
to drive into a wall, end it all
for both of us and it’s all my fault.
It’s all my fault.
Meanwhile in my basement someone
shakes a bowl of popcorn in front of my face
and my hand reaches for some
and stuffs it in my mouth
but I’m not really there
and after the movie my son wants me
to get to know his new girlfriend.
She’s lovely and he’s smitten with her.
I smile and look super chill.
I learned to look like that
because you don’t let your abuser know
she’s hurt you.
You make your face look super chill
until it freezes like that,
so I look fine but I’m not
really there. I’m in a darker place
than any home theater
or any home or any theater
should ever be, and since this
is my poem I can make anything
I want happen in it, and what I want
Is for Robin Williams to unhang himself
and look me in the eye and say
It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.

Rolling hills
Bluegrass
It’s green with a blue hue
True Blue
Go C-A-T-S
Bourbon barrels and
Grapevines  –  Wine
Beautiful women
Fast horses
Kentucky-bred
Thoroughbreds
Foles
Yearlings
Kentucky Derby Winners  

What do you call

So what if I have a landline
and a clothesline
and I wear housedresses and hair nets
and smoke a Camel or two
in the backyard with my friend Gert
who has a potbellied pig.
So what if I wear my rosary as a necklace
and slippers to the drugstore
and rub smelly salve on my chest
to ease congestion and
loosen the phlegm.
So what if I eat my cereal out of
the lopsided bowls I made in
Pottery for Seniors class
and have paint-by-number kittens on the wall
and a knitted doll with a wide skirt
slipped over a toilet paper roll
sitting on top of the toilet tank.
I live the life I have in the atmosphere I made.
So what’s it to you?

I pray in the mornings 
To the blessed, the saintly and any other guardian angel that watches over me 
Father will you hold my hand 
I’m a child again
Almost
im looking at the reflections of myself
Back before I was found 
like a child lost in a crowd
no one knew I was missing 
Father will you hold my hand 
and never let go again 

in my dreams,
you are sent
to me
as a blade.
i can tell
you reside
in your anger,
it is a punishment
from your father too.
you look away
from optical illusions.
i do not believe in curses.
i am from you,
i am sexless, you are too,
both part petal.