He came into the building
    for the second time today.
And…
Today he is undoubtedly wasted.

The pungent odor of alcohol,
   holds a staleness as it
   oozes from his pores,
   and the stench thrusts from
   his mouth, hot, with each
   word he shouts.
His voice booms with anger,
    sprinkled with despair,
     holding expectations
    of me to “fix it.”

There is no reasoning with the
    unreasonable. 
Especially when the unreasonable
    is drunk.
Tasks remain undone,
    with hopes someone
    will “fix it.”
I have been deamed that someone,
    by many.

Can’t help but wonder,
How does it get to this point?

In between the relentless
    whiffs of alcohol and sweat
    is the even more powerful
    scent of… shit.
I wince with nausea
    and pity.
Until his aggressive tone turns
    to aggressive stature, 
    as he staggers over me,
    in furry.

Insufferable. 
List after list.
Call after call.
Paperwork after paperwork.
Smiles given in spite of the smells,
   combative nature,
   showing up unannounced,
   and general incessant difficulty.
He sabotages… again.

Slapping the only hand
    remaining that’s willing to
    help him.

Staggering, unsteady, unpredictable.
Unhoused, incapable, redundant.
Eyes drooping and bloodshot.
Mouth gaping open, exposing 
    the lack of front four teeth.

I see what maybe could have been,
    a young boy who was, then, 
    helpable. 
He yells at me for the last time
    today.
I yell back, instructions on how
    not to speak to me!
The door slams. 
The cycle continues.
This is his life.

Cuddled in his round
plush lined circular cushioned
bed comforting him
through the night on his own as
I snnuggle alone in the Queen.

A year later and
you have crossed  Rainbow Bridge
I miss you so much
Percy honors your bed and
never uses it, You would
be a great big brother!

Happy Heavenly Birthday!  Love, Mom

I think the universe is a 17-year cicada brood
and a 170-year brood, and a 1700-year brood,
and a 17,000-year brood and you can add as many zeroes
as you want and never be wrong, the point
is that that the Clockwork of Eons has clicked
into extraordinary alignment
and all the broods are hatching at once, despite
the scientific consensus being that the ancient prophecies
of the Great Cicada Brood Alignment
were mere mythical claptrap, the folklore of fools
who see mystical schemes in constellations and ruins,
and we could protest all day about how 99.999%
of all cosmological belief systems truly are delusional
but our voices would be drowned out by the screaming,
the primordial screaming from the trees,
the bushes, the skies, the air itself, the cicadas
are atoms, they are stars, wheeling
in Fibonacci spirals that are never quite perfect,
always a bit awry of the diagrammatic ideal,
“They are just like us,” we say to ourselves,
“feeling all the feelings at the time time,
seeking each other, trying to line it all up”–

-after Semisonic

The dryer always needs
a bit more time.

Touch the flushed towels,
swear that they are done
only to find, when they’ve cooled off,
they’re still damp.

Quarter after quarter fed
until you give up,
close enough, and
balance the load on your hip

as you turn to go, the heat
radiating through you.
These rituals linger
long after you close the door,

someone else already loading
the machine you just left.

I am become the burrow–root-crack
deepening under concrete, swallowing rain
like the shattered fiberglass tub we threw into the gulley
& Memaw’s chipped saucer, and the echo
from Sister’s barn-loft leap.
Let them think me drowned.

I am become the page. The blank
between words in a text thread—
that hum where meaning was. I let voice bleed
into the machine. No need
to answer. I am become answerless.

I am become the static
promises, pressed hands
to cold glass—until they leave.
A wrong number ringing in an empty room,

I am become the thing that feeds
on silence: the TV’s bluelight burned in the retina,
the blackberries left to ferment in the bucket.
Even the air has forgotten
my name.

I am become the not-wild,
not-tame—ghost
that ghosts itself—thing
that breathes through cracks
in the foundation, that drinks the dark
like water drinks the scrubby bank
of a canopied creek: slipping.

Running. I am become
the unobserved. Free
of every tender
& surveilling eye.

I did love you. 
i dont regret it. 

you’re a great guy. 

But we just don’t fit. 

its no one fault,
but I’m too scared. 

because of the past,
I don’t see us in the future. 

I spy a marvel of June— a fuzzy
young bumblebee on a bee balm’s
violet head in arabesque stance.
So round, yet she pliés up, spins
and swirls from tip to tip,
her yellow and black standing out
against dozens of purple blossoms
highlighted in June sun rays.
She dips-sips-leaps, dips-sips-leaps more,
before time to carry some
nourishment away— determined,
doing what needs to be done—
as we all do in this short life-dance.

Who’d you say your daddy was, again?

I ain’t said – 
No, sirs, I ain’t.
Reckon y’all’d know his name before I ever would
On account of my having never heard it.

Well, you kin to so-and-so?

How am I meant to know who the hell I’m kin to?
Half the holler, quarter of the town;
Throw a stone, you hit a cousin.
Whole home is haunted by distant haints and neverweres.

Swear, that’s a Smith nose if I ever saw one.

I’ll search the post-church crowd for their breed,
Then search my mirror for evidence
Of their nose on my face
And their blood in my filthy veins.

Everwhat’d your Mama call you?

My name.
The name her own absent daddy gave her.
Best sin she’d ever committed –
A dead-ringer for my daddy.

            Pandora
did not open
                        
                        the box
                        without reason.       

                                                              When

            was curiosity a fatal attraction?

 Day after day    
                    
                        she performed the same duties:                        
                        up at dawn—do the laundry,          
                                                                               sort the lentils.

            All
she wanted
                        
                        was to read
                        Edith Hamilton,            
                                    
                                    understand            

            her place in the world,             t
            the context                                    
                                    
                                    of her existence.

She had no interest
in weaving                        
                        
                        and                                    
                                    
                                    unweaving

until her husband came home,
ready for supper.

She had no interest
in living                        
            
                                    in the dark. 

What she wanted
was to defy        
                            
                                     instruction.

She didn’t care  
                      
                        about        
                            
                                    blood                                    
                                    on the egg.