On the hottest day of the year,
so far,
the power went off
with a thud and a dying
of the humming air.
The fan blades slowly
spun themselves out —
a blur turning clockwise
from the ceiling stopped.
Even the small box fan, loudest of all,
ceased it’s incessant hum.
A paperback copy of Dante’s
Inferno had kept it from sliding
across the floor.
Bloody irony, don’t you think?
Three thousand other houses
on the outage map lit up
a bright orange. The whirling
hum smothered everywhere.
We sat for half an hour,
trying not to stir, the air
growing warmer in silence.
A small penitence for
being alive.
and you feel helpless in the face
of the enormity of problems
you can’t solve, think small.
Put out food for the skittish, skinny
feral cats who sing their hunger
outside your window at night.
Stroll through your neighborhood,
revel in the scent and beauty
of gardens, the miracle of butterflies.
Carry books to place in Little Free
Libraries, canned goods to donate
to Little Free Pantries.
Pet every dog you meet, tell each one
they are very good girls, boys. Tell
their walkers their charges are beautiful.
Do good wherever you can. Love
beauty wherever you find it. Maybe
it won’t save the world.
Maybe it will.
Second day of summer kicks off pool season
the steam from my inner volcano blurring my sunglasses
sisters float and read as the afternoon light continues filtering through the deck spindles
as the sun shadowed leaves rustle in the trees, we lazily pick our favorite one
jojo likes that one for the shade,
Shauna likes this one for the symmetry
Cheri likes this one for the new blossoms
we end the debate as sunburned skin goes pruney
A perfect snapshot
I would turn up
the air conditioning
to ease my crisped skin,
but the cold gives me
goosebumps which hurt
the sunburn all the more.
Here’s my gardening outfit. *photo*
Cuntyyyy.
Supreme cuntiness.
Anyways… We bombed Iran.
Shutup.
Godddd. We are so fucking cooked.
You know I used to have this fear as a child that one day I’d die from a war … bomb dropping on my house and well..
I just started my ice machine. I’m about to crash out.
Me too.
Me too.
Maybe I’ll make some pasta or buy some crack.
Where’s Bernie.
Fuck it I’ll buy a Labubu if we’re going down.
Clip it to your Lamumu.
You know what.. you’re onto something.
I’m not gonna lie I could go for a pack of Pall Mall Menthols.
I leave my first grave and beg it to forget. I leave and I leave and I leave. My first grave is my first death, my first grave is where I always return.
One, two, five, twelve, twenty, thirty, fifty.
My death is not always new and it is not always death. My first grave overflows but still I come back, get down on my knees and clasp my hands together. Like it will change anything. Like it could.
Please forget me, I ask. Please forget me. Please stop thinking of me and pulling me back.
My first grave is not a comfort but I feel unsteady when I’m away. I leave and I leave but I cannot stay gone. I beg it to forget but I still remember. My first grave and all my deaths come back to the same place.
I always return and I cannot quite leave. I leave and leave but how much of me stays behind?
My hands, clasped together in prayer or forgiveness; my eyes, wet and wide and unseeing; my mouth, overflowing but dry of words now that I’ve returned.
What stays? What calls me back? This first grave is the last is the only grave. Don’t I deserve more?
I leave but I never find it. I leave but I can’t find it. I leave. I leave. I always try to leave.
A long time ago, there lived a bungalow
Below the grove, tucked in the undergrowth.
Three sisters lived in a single row—
witches, they said—
but who was to know?
The middle was a bridge between worlds:
Left, or right—which would delight?
A harbinger of words, these woods endure.
The right was a fighter, polite with a bite:
Right wrongs & write songs, all night long.
Bleeding heart of passion, a smile of style.
The left was loyal, never to leave:
Leaf-by-leaf, by autumn’s fall, to haul
Stitches to riches, which turn to kisses.
Sisterhood is woven into the neighborhood.
Trees would fall; paper births a covenant.
Blood promised, mud on us, we were honest:
In nature we trust, to nurture we must.
Bewitched is the daughter who finds her coven.
I learned Mary Kay died while I rushed
to the gate at Charlotte’s airport. “Hush, Hush,
Sweet Charlotte” appears in my thoughts like the ax
flying disembodied in the movie’s pivotal scene, blood
splattering Bette Davis’s dress in the summerhouse.
If you don’t know what I am saying, it’s old. I’m old,
and frankly, tired of losing people I love. Tired
of writing elegies, tired of worrying that readers
think I’m incapable of translating joy on the page.
On the flight, the sun has slipped below the horizon
but above the clouds, there’s a lingering
stripe of silver light. Is that you, Mary Kay?
The last time we were together, we held our sides
from laughing too much, playing our made-up women-
writers’ game, inventing sentences with magnetic tiles.
You pulled me aside the day we left the retreat to tell me
how sorry you were that my brother and sister
were dying of cancer. Now, you’re gone. In under a year.
The same bile duct disease as my brother. This truth
wields a weapon that slices through the thick air.
Another unseen killer, another brutal loss.
