There is snow on Mount Tongariro
in August. 
We have tickets
for a gondola ride over the mountain. 
They’ve closed the road
and we have places to go, 
so we’ll never ride that ride. 
I put on my possum fur headband**
and wish I had a heavier coat.
My friend stands in the falling snow
like she’s singing “The Hills are Alive.”
I shiver in my fleece
and enjoy the novelty of snow
in August
on the other side of the world.

**Possums are quite a different animal in New Zealand.

Hate this, kernel of hope

I’m always running.

I tell people that

My lifeline is arched
like a raised eyebrow 
freshly plucked. Still raw

You can hear
the tanks squeak 

past the crowd
of tens 

Bubbles on bodies
makes the night go by quick.
While the tattooed, clearly adult
men approach.
You bask in their attention.
The sirens on the rocks
vs. the humble sailor.
Unknown who should be feared more.
While the siren has her teeth,
the sailor has a gun.
And you are
fourteen
drunk
and left behind.

It seems I always start out with the best intentions. Maybe we all do.  But somehow I wake up one day, and find that I just couldn’t keep them.  In this particular instance, I just couldn’t write a poem every day for a month.  I tell myself I don’t have that many in me. But then I’ll be driving and three will come to mind and I think, I’ll write about that when I get home.  And I step in the door and the dog distracts me and there is always a chore to be done and oh I forgot to respond to that text and what am I doing for dinner and then I just can’t seem to recall what I was going to write about and I am chagrined to have done that again.  Even just there as I was writing about being chagrined I thought about signing up for yoga tomorrow.  Which would take me to my phone and away from this poem.  A poem about how I just can’t get myself to write poems.   

Tomorrow is a new day.  I wish me good luck. 

we stay strong
not by following along, towing the line
but by speaking truth
being who we be
admitting consistency
of thought
independence
from the very beginning
like monarchs taking flight
rather than sitting on thrones 

Let me stand in this light rain,
iridescent and not very present.
I’ll be made of pixels, and one day
you’ll pull my words from the ruin,
and the isotopes from my hair.
You’ll be in awe of such intensity
and its brevity. I’ll evade capture
by your glass jars. I’ll be a mirage
for the spectators, waning, breaking.
For now we can pretend this isn’t finite.
All is slightly unsettled. The trees drip.
It’s alright. Let me have this moment
to incandesce, feel something powerful.
You know that potent silence pleases me.