I am so wonderfully-made there are days
I can hardly stand it:

can hardly stand the fit of my tongue
in the plush coffin of my mouth;

can hardly stand the extra pinch of skin
which gives my elbows room to bend;

can hardly stand how I can aim a stream
and cursive my name in snow;

can hardly stand how well my ears 
accept sound waves and usher them

through conch and canal to tympanic drum,
beats that I recognize as the rhythm of my lover’s voice;

can hardly stand the toes that curl 
tight as testimony when other parts are being pleased;

can hardly stand those folds in the larynx 
that open and close smooth as scissor legs

and cut loose the balloon of sound 
when I just can’t stand it anymore.

took nearly seventy takes over five days.
I watched this film with my three young sons. Two
fell asleep and the youngest one cried
the next day: “Sniffles died and we watched that scary
movie.” (We had just put our eighteen-year-old dog
down, so I suppose it was not good timing).
I just wanted to share my childhood.
I came of age reading True Crime and Horror.
My children and I read tales from the Brothers Grimm:
all violent and no happy endings.
Hansel is cooked in the oven. The eyes of Cinderella’s
stepsisters are plucked out by crows. Even
“The Happy Prince” by Oscar Wilde
begins in sadness and ends in heartbreak.
Tragedy sticks, lingers.
I would much rather die on a stone slab
at Stonehenge than marry a prince. I am not sentimental. 

i wonder if slanted 
rain drops ever fall
sharp enough to 
pierce the veil? 

She’s manipulative; she plants false futures and takes everything.
She’s manipulative, pulling at my world by the strings.
She’s manipulative; charm-filled distractions thrown with a fling.
She’s manipulative, hoping circumstances bring actions to invalidate promised things.

On the bright side of today

I got to be in an ambulance for the first time

Which was actually on my bucket list

Even though I fell off that pool ladder

And grizzly dislocated my right knee

After getting a brutally invasive surgery on my left

Even after strangers pulled me out of the water, screaming

An elderly man and a middle aged woman

Gently carrying me to the stairs

Even as my wails

Pierced the air around me

As I fought hyperventilation

Even as the paramedics hoisted my body

Out of the water

Still in a bathing suit

Even as the fentanyl made my head spin

While I tried to hold steady conversation

With the man in the back with me

Even as the doctor popped me back into place

And supplied me with a large, bulky brace

On my only vacation for a year

Even as it set in

That I would be starting this journey all over again

When I wasn’t yet done with the first

I got something good out of this, I guess.

The date sweeps across the top
of this postcard from the Berkshires,
unfurled like a famous name
on the Declaration of Independence.

It’s a proud penmanship, written for
remembrance, its loops and lines
sweeping, not creeping, across the card,
its sender hoping to be noticed. 

On the front a colorfully painted scene
of a motor car rumbling across
a stone bridge over the Deerfield River,
the “modern-day Mohawk Trail” – back then.

“I’ve been over a good part of the U.S.,”
Carpin writes, “but here in the
Berkshire Hills is some of the most
beautiful scenery I ever saw.”

Not that it matters, but elsewhere
that day Germans and British killed
each other along the Menin Road
Ridge in battle-brittle Belgium.

Gotha bombers pummeled London
by night, their pterodactyl wingspans
grasping the sky as gunners in forward
cockpits fired from the creatures’ eyes.       

Washington’s worn face slipped from the man’s thin wallet to the boy’s small hand.

                        Laughing, sharing
         With frIends and             
             My Siblings 
     Playing BAanannagrams on       
                   fAcetime             
                waTching Acorn TV 
            napsS            
                    Eating            
                    Veggies and
      afew fishEs 
                    Nuts and seeds     
hoping I don’T miss           
                    Yoga
             too ofTen             
                      Hours spent
      reading, wRiting,           
                  spEaking      
           To sadiE (my dog)