Woman,the word between us
Today I will not contemplate my father’s
mortality. Kendrick croons through my
earbuds, I solid promise beneath a
heartbeat drum, We gon’ be alright.
All my life I had to fight—
and in every life my father has been
a soldier; a psychic once told him
he had defended Rome in battle,
and though I don’t believe
in past lives, I wonder how many
empires have failed him.
My rights, my wrongs, I write
till I’m right with God
and my father hides
in every line of my poems;
and how much we have had to forgive;
and how many photographs have gone
untaken, left in closets in houses
oceans away; it’s all too much to bear
so maybe I should pray, but I grow
weary of asking for this fear
to be taken from me, so I let Kendrick sing
Do you hear me? Do you feel me?
We gon’ be alright
and in the years to come
maybe I will come to believe it
for now all that can be done
is to press replay
“You make it look like it’s magic
Cuz I see nobody (nobody) but you.
I’m never confused; I’m so used
to being used.”
— The Weeknd
You were almost the One
who got away.
I drove by the site
of our biggest fight, today
six times, in coming and going
to an event I was DJing.
Last night, I shared with you
how I had fallen in love with you
all over again. How who you are
and who you’d been for days (and months)
was the single woman I had ever fully trusted
to take my heart and to guard it
in your hands.
The single woman I believed
truly loved me. Wanted me. Believed in me.
And chose me.
I stared at the alleyway in which I’d hid
that day, so others wouldn’t hear me yelling
or crying, or see me chainsmoking on a smokeless
campus. I looked at the tree where I’d leaned
to support the weight of knowing
it was all about to end.
Everything I’d believed.
The You I had believed
to exist crumbling inside my mind
like the shatter-less vase you realized
you’d paid too much for when it slips
from the counter and does, indeed, sha
tter
into plastic pieces.
That belief:
Love at first sight.
I can still see you on the loveseat
that first day. When our eyes met
and everything, everything
in my life finally made sense.
Like a bell ringing somewhere unseen.
Like the guts of a lock with its tumblers
clicking into place. I knew,
right then and there,
for better or worse,
the rest of my life
was in your dark,
elegant hands.
Driving home that night,
I prayed. I confessed. I told our God
(the one I hadn’t talked to in years)
that if it wasn’t you, if you hadn’t felt it too—
I would never believe again.
It was too much. It was too much
and at first sight.
Today, I looked at that alley
and that tree, six times, and I stared
into the eyes of a reality that almost
was given breath. That almost
rose up and ripped out and tore us
apart, believing it had all been
a worthless fantasy.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
“So quick bright things come
to confusion.”
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever;
it’s loveliness increases; it will never
pass into nothingness”
“Nothing gold can stay.”
The voices of the great romantic writers
are the voices we, ourselves, speak
in clichés, like when we say:
If you love something
let it go.
We almost let it
all
go.
There, in that alley way,
by that tree, everything
I believed (I believe)
was almost erased.
My prayer, as we say goodnight
tonight, is that we would never
forget. That we would never
not see, not believe, never
let go of what we know
to be fact.
And that, just as every cliché
became a cliché, because
one person experienced it
and said it, and others
recognized themselves
in it, and still others
repeated it, whether
or not they believed it,
until the words were
tarnished and lost
all meaning…
Our testimony would remain
when everything else has gone
and the words no longer matter.
Our love would remain
when everything else has failed
and words are no longer
necessary:
Our hands would hold.
Our eyes would see
just as we saw
at very
first sight.
* Text in quotes are, in order, from William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 & A Midsummer Nights’ Dream, John Keats’ Endymion, and Robert Frost’ Nothing Gold Can Stay. The other italicized phrases are cliches. And true.*
In the 13th, Johnson’s bear’sclaws swat! shiner! hoo!
he brings fight, he craves adoring, wildering light.
Tossed up! backed up! ropes-the-dope, pow!
he’s here to fight, he craves the raging light.
Bloodboned from both hands caves a mug.
He wants to fight, he craves the bloody light.
The vine’s bloom breaks—flow down like wine.
He strives, shatters, craves the flooding camera light.
He slip, he move, he counter—move four feet away,
he fights to bust a maw, craves the flooding day.
For honor, booty, carnage bleed iron knives,
he fights to live, bones he shatter, craves a dying light.
Gloved with KenWel’s he tore down meat today,
thumped the chump to spasm, craved the lights hooray.
Jack the Lion trembles, wheelin’ Rolls in the wake,
he fought to live, with his fair lady, in the light of high noon,
Ran the “Black and Tan” the country knew—
I fight to eat, I fight to live with stars by night, amen, O, God.
Far too long I’ve spent
filling two spaces
for which only one is present.
A question remains unanswered
until I stand from my chair at teatime
to sit in the one across—
smiling and laughing at my own quip,
offering myself another pastry.
Far too long I’ve been trapped
in my own safe fantasy.
I’m not as whimsical
as I think I am
when I actually have a conversation
with another person
outside of that bubble.
Most of the time,
they’re outside looking in.
If not,
I never get a glimpse
of where they entered from.
I don’t do—
and haven’t done—
very much,
outside of staring blankly at myself
in the mirror for hours,
taking a stroll in the same loop since 2020
in an antisocial neighborhood,
taking the same nightly bath
I’ve long indulged in,
no matter how red my skin becomes
from the heat.
The newest thing I’ve picked up on
is shoving vibrant words together
and making them mean something.
I’m free to leave this loop
whenever I please,
only—
I haven’t yet found the exit door
where the sky
meets the water.
Walking with my daughter,
I found the paper
grounded in the gutter:
Study: Bagels linked
to increased risk
of lung cancer
Walking on, looking back
I watch the wind whip
the rag down the alley.
My daughter, all of 7, had a
bagel for lunch. Still, she
scampered up the avenue.
Dead ahead, plum trees,
exploding in purple, rustled
restlessly like the paper,
Never looking back, she
separated. Now, I would
worry about bagels, too.
I never cut my nails on a Sunday.
It’s country as fuck bad luck.
I don’t know where the superstition started,
all I know is it got handed on down to me.
And I took it up like Granny gospel.
In defiance of the way they rob our magic
and try to replace it with shiny truckS
that won’t even haul a load of logs.
We need the psalms and the songs
of the Papaws and the Mamaws
who loved the land and not the state.
The Granny gospel.
Like how you put a pot of coffee on
when your left palm gets to itchin’
because you know somebody’s coming.
Like how you make sure
there’s a pone of cornbread
and a pot of beans already on the stove
to fill all the hungry bellies.
The Granny gospel says
plug your jugs with red bandanas boys,
the book of Mother Jones
the holy fire of moonshine molotovs.
My palm is itching something awful
and revolution’s never all that far
from gravel roads ’round here.
My trio of grandsons,
Six eyes, shades of blue, hazel and grey
Three bodies-
One dark-haired, thin, long limbed,
One muscular, tall, light haired
One tiny, fair, with translucent skin
Constant noiseFootfalls, slow and fast,
Stomps, leaps, jumps, light and heavy
Calls for paper and markers, bee keeper items cut from cardboard,
Paper and pencil to solve ciphers in mystery books,
Games of Spiderman Uno and Junior Scrabble,
Voices creating
Fantasy, wizards, potions, spells, complex rules, protective shields,
Ever-present battle plans and weaponry-
Storm trooper guns, nerf guns, light sabers (red, blue and green)
Ninja stars, swords, costumes
Spotify playing the Darth Vader playlist and Kung Fu Fighting on repeat
Singing, dancing, swinging, punching (fake and real)
Stuffies (dogs, eagles, owls) in the mix
Building with Legos and Magna Tiles
Reading books
I will miss it all,
Especially this trio.
