Serving pizza and beer till something
better came my way for about six months.
One sunny lunch shift in walks my brother
with Larry Rowlands and a sheepish smirk. 
I waited on them and Larry left a tip bigger
than the total bill! Let me go back and fillin
the blanks.

Larry was the car salesman
at the Chevy dealer when Dad went to buy
me a cheap Chevy to job hunt. Larry took
a fancy to me at age 21, a new college grad.
He would call the house hunting me down
since he had our number. Wanted no part of him,
but Mom said just go out with him once.
 
It was a family joke when he called, I told them
I’m not HOME!  They would hand me the coiled wall
phone receiver laughing. Naïve with men, I agreed
to ONE date where the convo was cars and football
not enough substance for me.

The final straw was the Sunday afternoon he brought
his mama to meet me. Like we were an item or something.
I freaked, lied said I had met someone and had a date. He left.
Family finally got the message- Larry Rowlands was
out of the PICTURE!!!

Kindness lays, they claim,
In filling in the cracks.
New life poured in gold that
Teaches value in the bared history.
Still, do you think the break itself
Underneath that pretty gold
Grieves for the loss of wholeness?
I would.

It wasn’t enough to just

Cowboy lingers in the scent of old brass and iron plumbing, rolls a smoke.

I am nearly the enabler of a deer’s suicide.
Glass eyes meet mine, mirror, her breath snared
in familiar agonizing hesitation. Leaves whirl. Tires
skid black drags, she slips back, smoke apparition. 

Airbags off, I am deadweight in a sea of tarmac.
I remember the ill turn, cast over the edge, the tug
towards headlights. Angels buoy me in nurse scrubs. 
When I drive, the roads end. There are always sirens.

/

Geese stare into the lake from their red kingdom
of suburban landscaping roses, waiting for an apocalyptic
grand nothing. Expansive and mystic, dark ripples beckon,
call to the apathetic. Deathless, the geese just turn to stone.

Center stage, cold silver water. I wade, floating head,
body dissolving like a salt block. I was nothing more
than a grain the wind. Now painless and quiet, queen
of detachment, even this far out, I fail to drown old sirens.

Daily I bathe in the water of my tears
But a ring of black grief stains the white porcelain     enamel
Of a clawfoot tub  

Lathering my loofah with bamboo powder
I scrub away the cluster of dead skin
Micro tears    raw to the touch  

The mustiness of sorrow wafts from my body
Lingers in the air
I breathe it
Eyes itch    head throbs   
Shortness of breath  

A favorite song played on the radio
The remembrance of a shared meal
A familiar scent spritzed on the nape of the neck
Each causes a flare     triggers  

A decongestant placed on the tongue
Swallowed with a sip of water
Does not relieve the pressure  

A soak in tepid bath water
Will not wash away
The anguish of loss      residue  

I cannot exfoliate grief  

So I must learn to manage its symptoms
Like any unpredictable outbreak

I reached for a prompt

to put my mind at ease enough

to force a spark to ignite what’s left

of this smooth brainflesh bruised,

abused by hours of critical decisions.

But troubled minds don’t fold in on themselves

through actions squeezed down 

the archipelagos of limited choices,

and satiety does not come 

from doing to get out of thinking.

This whole interaction

between acting upon 

and being acted upon 

reminded me why I never reach for prompts:

They never lead me anywhere.

The seven or eight I happened upon tonight

would lead to beautiful, if coerced, constructions,

but prompts don’t lead to answers;

they only lead to action.

Sometimes the best 

action to take

is sitting back and letting the world

use you until 

it asks you what’s wrong.

You will something to say then.

“I tell you true, I am not mad;
observe my way of speech herein.
How clear each image might be had,
in my account of these here sins.  

“Yes, sir! I won’t lie. I hate lies—
and liars, too—them most of all.
And that damned, deserving-to-die,
Sir Petral has that wherewithal.  

“Well. He had that wherewithal.  
All I did was take it out of him.
It was in his heart, see, there, there, through which the blood would crawl.
And I only fixed my bloody art on that one who deserved it. 

“‘Why did he deserve it?’ you ask?
what a bloody foolish question!
You’d not seen under his mask
if you’d make such a suggestion.”  

May as well ask if a pig deserves the slaughterhouse or if a trap deserves the mouse— “
“Yes, sir, yes,”
—he got what was coming to him, I was the cat—
“I do confess.”
—and all he was was a louse,
and that is all there is to that.

“And you think me, I, mad?
Would a madman lie?
Would a madman know she’s about to die?
Only observe how well I know. How bad.”

you can keep lying to yourself
that it will get done by someone else
prepared that no one really cares
but you
and even then only just enough
to get by
the level is impossible so
why even attenpt or try
to get enough tokens
for a few more seconds
or minutes in survival mode
on Arcade difficulty 
you don’t mind the clock
you watch the other players,
gather the things you need
find a not too obvious
place to hide

and prepare to be the last
standing, or to just
fucking score as many points as possible

because no one
is coming to save you

The best thing you ever done for me
is to help me take my life less seriously.
It’s only life after all.
“Closer to Fine” –Indigo Girls

Sunday mornings, my dad and I
drove to the next town over for church.
He cracked the window to smoke,
but never enough, because it was
always in my face.
He had his music, and I was
never without a book.
I don’t remember any conversation,
but I remember us singing along
with the Indigo Girls and Tracy Chapman–
definitely not church-approved music.
If I put the right song on the car radio,
I can pretend it’s Sunday morning,
and he’s here with me again.