You were just crazy enough to be sane
and optimistic enough to think the world of me.
But in the 1 month and 15 days you’ve been gone
you’ve been reduced to scraps of handwriting in birthday cards
Arby’s milkshakes
Ashes floating in a blue urn, buried six-feet deep.
A box of programs under the bed
Bits of celebrity gossip
A Simon and Garfunkel Greatest Hits vinyl
whisper white hair
your brown Acura
a shared love of microwave popcorn
The Blue Bloods season finale you never got to watch
and a heart held together with duct tape and promises to stay tough.
There was a garden in my dream
midnight stretched like a drum
a crow in profile sings his sable song
A door of the forest
opened the world
of possible universes
waiting for me
the stars: little threads
whispering their sweet and sorrow
a map of wanting
heavy as a continent
the blue vault above us
held up by the ribs of trees
What I want to believe is that
across the great valley of grief
the space between us
is a muscle
of regret
a secret world of meadow & heart
music floating by in waves
you can almost touch
The days are full like a tick
Feeling for truth swallows me whole
I wonder what it would be like
to tilt our faces like wide white moonflowers
if the air sang through our hair
like a wave of yellow memory
the seeds sprout as you sleep
pulling out the stitches
~ A cento of lines/phrases from LEXPOMO poets in the following order: Gregory Friedman, Taunja, Taunja, Jim Lally, Gwyneth Stewart, Laura Foley, Laura Foley, Shaun Turner, Sylvia Ahrens, Shaun Turner, Linda Bryant, Gwyneth Stewart, Gwyneth Stewart, Nancy Jentsch, Ellen Austin-Li, Shaun Turner, Sylvia Ahrens, Jim Lally, Coleman Davis, Taunja, Leah Tenney, Linda Bryant, Carrie Carlson, Manny Grimaldi, Megan Wethington, Sophie Watson, Roberta Schultz, Liz Prather, Gwyneth Stewart, Kevin Nance
American sentence for Nancy
Farewell dear friend, if only I could change your ending, sweet sorrowful.
Death feels like a broken promise, holding a beating heart in my hand.
Death feels like a letting go of all the pain, handfuls of pills tossed away.
The morphine took it all, took you from me, finally closing the shades.
Sleep under sweet dreamless waves of morphine until the moon’s high tide rises.
Goodnight, Goodnight my dear friend, this time your dreams will all be in color.
funny, we’ve heard some fantastic phrases
turns of words with vast meaning, and yet
here we are counting down the hours and
nothing comes to mind
watching Oppenheimer we discussed
so much from labor to Prometheus to
latent political theory of the last century
now we’re listening to the rain and rumbles
see lightning flash moments into stark relief
open our mouths to speak sudden truth and
nothing comes to mind
For my Grandma, Lillian Harvey Lewis
Drat that quarry!
Every time they blast,
they shake the dust right
out of the air, rain it down
on my tables, my china
figurines, my cut-glass bowls
that shine so pretty
in my bay window,or would
if they weren’t constantly
covered in quarry dust.
That quarry pays my husband’s
salary, our mortgage, buys
our groceries. But each time
the blast rattles our windows
the dust falls like dirty snow.
Out comes the rags and Pledge
and Windex, and once again
I gather up the dust, shoo
it out the back door.
Sometimes I wonder why I bother
dusting, dusting, dusting.
Sometimes I think I should pack
away my treasures, my pretties.
But oh, we worked so hard
to get out of Scranton, where
dust was black with coal, out
of my father’s house, narrow
and dark, full of uncles and cousins
who slept on our sofas, ate our food
when they couldn’t find find work.
This little house is ours alone,
where we can give our grandchildren
what our daughters never had.
Grass beneath their feet,
windows that let in light.
