Come sit back with me, again
If just for a minute
We don’t need to plan another garden now
Or a grove or farm this land
But we can look at the two trees we planted
Strong and beautiful

Stay behind the line
you say
until you allow
as if we aren’t together  

as if we’re still an unfathomable thing
more than ten years after
rainbows covered that house of white
in a brief flare  

of maybe
it’s alright to be yourself
dissolving into security, now
for someone else.  

The nuclear family
you let pass between us
purposely
while my husband waits patiently?  

waiting
to be called
waiting, again
to be something other  

than the object
of the power
of the assumptions
you make.  

I choose to think
it was just a mistake
that the spirit of June rainbows
remains intact  

that waiting
is something we’ve still moved past
save for brief blips like this one
that just can’t last. 

it has been a decade
since i triathaloned
a twenty two year old body
handled it more easily
than at thirty one 
i look a little different in my jersey
rounder around the edges
but i can still achieve
the lofty goal
of a three sport morning
without adequate training
the biking is the worst
my ass hurts
yet the years
have not made
the difference
i expected 
but i will be damned
if i don’t have one heap of a headache

Instead

of dying 
                    in a puddle of mercury;
                the moon’s 

                          about to faint —
       turns up a glazed white eye

                                                still      warm

like a baby

            feverish

                                                          and fresh.

 [This is an erasure poem created from “Going to the Bakery” by Elizabeth Bishop.]

There stands a little church of white
beside the railroad track,
where mountain shadows stretch at dusk
and freight trains rumble back.

Its steeple points toward Heaven’s gate,
above the coal-black hills,
while Sunday hymns drift through the pines
and echo down the fills.

The engineer blows his whistle long
as he passes by each week,
a greeting to the saints inside,
the faithful and the meek.

The benches creak with miners’ bones,
with widows dressed in blue,
and children who have heard the Word
since mountain mornings knew.

Outside, the rails shine silver bright,
curving through the vale,
carrying dreams beyond the ridge
on every passing rail.

Yet many leave and many roam,
to cities far away,
while that old church beside the tracks
keeps watch and kneels to pray.

Its bell has rung through floods and wars,
through boom times and decline,
through empty mines and hard-bought years
when hope was hard to find.

And still each Sunday morning comes,
the doors swing open wide,
as freight cars thunder down below
and mercy waits inside.

For mountain folk know journeys well,
both earthly roads and skies,
and every train that passes by
reminds them life still flies.

So there it stands, through rain and snow,
beneath God’s endless care—
A little church beside the rails,
and Heaven in the air.

I have dreams of falling victim 

to the shore of red sea riptides 

that ripple beneath my skin & 

boil like cherry glaze on a hot 

plate. And those fruits, spoiled 

to the pit, cannot be saved by 

sucrose nor simple syrups. The 

rot will always overpower 

sweetness. Like the skillet, this 

body is a shell, handed down and 

seasoned by my mother, and her 

mother before her, and her mother’s 

mother before her. But what simmers 

inside cannot be purified, strained, 

or saved. Each sluggish drop infected

by nothing in particular.

I’m here so rarely,  it takes on the shape of an alien world.
        I must reorient myself.
So much stuff I don’t want–stacks of it

in neat clean piles and I worry about the soul
       of our country.
So much wanting.  Malls are filled with happy

music, bright sklylights flooding the space,
       Starbucks and cookie shops–
all the caffeine and sugar you could hope for.

Held in the middle of all this manufactured happiness,
       I want nothing but out of there.
I long for a world where the air is not artificailly chilled,

where we’re surrounded by natural light, no music,
       just the sound of birds,
maybe a distant plane.

Today is for the hoodie
a friend had to gift me on Christmas,
solid black on the front
and a national holiday on the back-
two hands juggling
a pair of very special numbers.

Today is for the new label gun,
a present from the boss
to date the incoming product.
I danced and frolicked
while slinging cases of apples,
oranges, and potatoes, all now bearing
that pair of very special numbers.

Today is for the cheese danishes
someone bought for the occasion
because they were half-off.
We munched on them to the tune
of brain-rot and degenerate humor,
losing our minds to those two very special numbers.

Today is for a friend, not long ago
talking about mens’ mental health. She said
Never lose your sense of silliness.

Today is for the child tapping
on my arm while I’m stocking the shelves
to tell me how much he likes my hoodie,
his smiling mother looking on.
You might groan and say I’m way too old for this
but that’s only gonna make me laugh harder
for all the joys still findable in stupidity.

Happy 6/7, y’all!

A cloth cut of night,
velvet, wrapped around shoulders,
embroidered–fireflies