THE JUly, 2024 30/30 PROJECT PAGE

Welcome to the 30/30 Project, an extraordinary challenge and fundraiser for Tupelo Press, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) literary press. Each month, volunteer poets run the equivalent of a “poetry marathon,” writing 30 poems in 30 days, while the rest of us “sponsor” and encourage them every step of the way.

The volunteer poets for July are: Shuchi Agrawal, Moriah Cohen, Rj Ingram, Jessica Rigney, Erin Robertson, Thomas Thomas, Heather White, And Kelly Wilbanks.

Day 31 / Poem 31

composed of lines from selected by Shuchi Agrawal, Moriah Cohen, Rj Ingram, Jessica Rigney, Erin Robertson, Thomas Thomas, Heather White, And Kelly Wilbanks.

Cento-Cut-PasteRJ-Cento-Lines-Part-2.shuchiCento-InterlinkedRJ-Cento-Lines-Part-4.corrected

Day 30 / Poem 30

concealed in wilderness, weaving a flower’s
stem with fingers stolen from a cave 
behind a hill fort in jagner
your voice between the clouds
calls out, in thunder and rain:

        you may not know who i am
        but, at this moment, my nose
        is sitting on your face

at last, it happens:
the snake’s tail finds its mouth,
the phoenix draws dragon’s breath.
i return to a more decolonized home than i left.
it isn’t stasis, the finality of death, a siren 
to rocks but elsewhere;
this urge to

pour out these cups so you
can teach me who i am, resist holding 
this beauty, mirrored lakes, shared histories 
need no place 
in a pair of hands 
to be received

now that illusion wears thin, i know
intimately: going nowhere, spent
by currents, watching the same shrubs 
unmoor in a river full of faces, 
of vectors canceling each other.

leaving all otherness behind,
the surface river vanishes: a starved sun 
has swallowed it: silt and fishes whole, and yet 
beyond this long drought, past these parched estevelles, 
underneath it is branching wild, slaking the earth 
we can almost see it 
cropping through the terra rossa.

gripping the rocks. It recites currents, glints
moonlight as if it knows you

from another life. That night at the marina,
we leaned our hips into the dim smuggle of lights.

This refrain of departure is the rivers’; I want it
as the breath that punctures clefts in the marble,

as the fountain we splashed into, drunk on youth
and fruitful plate, white lace darkening wet to the calf.

If we knuckle under fear, our nation aflame,
the bellies of silver fish will keep swimming

moving as notes move up and down a forgotten song.

We walk around the edge of a frozen
Margarita & ask ourselves big questions:
Would you rather die alone or surrounded
By everyone who was out to get you?
You tell me you’re afraid he’s involved
In something dangerous: himself
You tell me stories of wild horses running
Through the icy streams of Colorado
Would you rather always say everything
Or never speak again? You mindlessly ash
Onto your mother’s linoleum & I grab a towel
You can’t keep chasing him forever I say
I say he asked me if he could stay over
When you come to your senses & leave 

Some say the soul goes poof
out of the body with last breath or

slips out an eye at last blink
neurons a-fizzle. Once edges of light

designed to overthrow. Under
a rug with grit and dust is where

doubtless, everything goes. I don’t know
how to make anything without

making it beautiful. However holy
reconciliation does not arrive

without want. Desire is always
messy. You wonder how

it happens. Of course you know
what’s looked at long enough goes.

for Shuchi

Надбородник безлистный – ghost orchid – Epipogium aphyllum
rarest of orchids
thought extinct more than once
found in England, Russia, the Himalayas
unpredictable, astonishing
they feed on mycorrhizae
defy cultivation, reliant on relationship
disperse long distances by wind
endangered, entrancing
they sleep underground, ready to transcend

for Moriah

hammer orchid – Drakaea sp.
wiry stem holds aloft female thynnid wasp decoy
flower sends pheremones to males
who will come even through car windows to them
the female wasps are flightless
so the males grasp them
fly them to a food source
copulate in flight
feed them through their abdomens
orchids know this
call the males in
and the motion delivers packets of pollinia
to satisfy stigmas
allows ovaries to ripen
their precision is exquisite
their articulation ingenious

for Rj

bachelor’s button – Centaurea cyanus
sign of a young man in love (if faded, unrequited)
symbol of Corning Glass Works, casseroles
anti-inflammatory properties
adds color to foods, sometimes included in Lady Grey tea
thrives with adequate spacing
ornamental cultivars include “Blue Boy”, a double

companion plant that protects cabbage from predation
self-incompatible (requires a pollinator)
high sugar production
beloved by goldfinches
strong roots, challenging to control
endangered in its native habitat
flourishing elsewhere

for Jessica

धतूरा – sacred datura – Datura wrightii
native to southwestern desert
deliriant, dangerous, potent
used in divination
used to bring rain
can cause temporary blindness, panic
Georgia O’Keeffe painted their hypnotic spirals
used in Ayurvedic medicine
it emerged from Shiva’s chest
offer it to Shiva to purge oneself of bitterness
offer 21 leaves to Ganesh as well
imagine the erect stems 
pushing through desert stones
bearing lavender-white blooms
unfolding like parasols
in the night

for Thomas

star magnolia – Magnolia stellata
prefers moist streamsides, bogs
flowers before leaves emerge
fragrant, petal color changes year to year
established escapee
commonly grown by cuttings
susceptible to spring frost damage
likes deep, acidic soil
intolerant of urban pollutants
fruits burst revealing orange seeds
compact
deciduous
unforgettable

for Heather

snake plant – Dracaena trifasciata ‘Metallica’
presumably likes Chasing Light and Purify
uncommon
beautiful foliage
mixes well with hydrangeas
sword-shaped leaves have hardened edges
Latin name comes from “female dragon”
clears the air / removes toxins
shares oxygen night and day
variegated, variable
in the asparagus family
evergreen
resilient

for Kelly

mayapple – Podophyllum peltatum
under the broad green sugar-making leaf
one finds the showy flower
intriguing fruit – toxic until ripe
also known as wild mandrake
found in colonies sharing a single root
contains chemicals that remove warts
use protective gloves when handling
makes good medicine
prefers shady places
wildflower

The sky is a white light from above
and the wind is blowing hard.

Dad wonders, is it a high white fog
or a low, luminous cloud cover?

Colors are strangely vibrant, diffuse
light coming from all directions,
and there are no shadows as we drive
to the end of Long Island, Montauk Point,
and the lighthouse standing sentinel.

My father, who left when I was two, to
dance ballet, and whom I’d not heard from
for forty two years, is dancing his last
pas de deux with cancer, taking inventory
of his years on the earth.

As we pass Shinnecock land he tells
of powwows attended for many summers,
how at his first one, he was chosen
from the crowd to dance, and was
moved, and was moving to watch,
was invited back year after year.

And he says, besides that Cherokee
on my Mom’s side, I have some Indigenous
blood on his side, from the land that
became Texas: Pueblo, Yaqui?  He says
something like “Tayshan” but doesn’t know.

We pick along a path above the rocky beach,
waves crash in from the east, a gull calls
somewhere above, a crow croaks unseen
in brown pine barren brush.

The sky is dazzling white
and the wind is blowing, hard.

Time and again,
I stop to breathe.

Remembering that I have forgotten
even that small rush of air.

Diving to my lungs, a full balloon.

An alarm for my senses, 
lifting the tired dual bags – 

Ever in
Ever out

Peaceful until the next breath…

 
 

My daughter often tells me,
she doesn’t want me to die
We can be driving home
from the store, licking ice cream,
finishing gymnastics, hunting for bugs
the thought slips from her tongue,
hung on the words I say next
Sometimes, a flippant, well, 
I have no current plans,
and sometimes more real, 
like it’s the natural order 
of things, and should I have to lay
her down before my time, 
I would break.

The latest time was more appropriate as
we left my father’s graveside. 
We found so many ladybugs
—seven, eight—they flew onto hands and flowers 
as though visiting with us. I thought
of the words I chose for his eulogy, 
the guns firing in salute, the folded flag,
and Annie, her loud weeping, 
in the way she feels it all at once 
in her soul. 

I don’t have a sophisticated enough palette 
to give these internal sensations justice—
this black hole whirring —not ice or heat, 
but a stirring. I feel my body brace inside
and out, like I’m in metamorphosis with no 
time for a chrysalis because, Mom, you 
HAVE to see this baby ladybug. I wipe 
the moment away, knowing someday, 
my babies will break like this
…if I do my job right. 

Day 29 / Poem 29

on good nights, i disappear into myself — it doesn’t hurt,
stepping out of this silhouette cloak slowly. there are edges left: 
the celluloid snipped, where we were dancing; the others still dancing 
in the lamplight. 

our bodies portal elsewhere, we have taken the music 
with us: beat living in the front of your foot. i do this alone — 
little moments, swirled away to private nooks, untethered to words 
swimming between us. meanwhile, an Impressionist 
painting comes to life, peeking from beneath 
our cutouts; haybales glowing in this golden sun,
catching fire.

the locals don’t know what to make of this: us in sync 
with some distant tune in this renoir summer evening. flowers bloom 
in our absence, ushered in by a gale in the midst 
of that old marsh. like emigrés, the hole we leave 
behind keeps burning within us: even if the others around it
move on, patch up.

summer dew drops wipe little daisy mouths — obliterating 
faces, slim white petals umbrella towards the earth, 
under coalesced water. rare, sweet togetherness: a weighted 
blanket, encroaching on the vastness: the air spread thin. i turn back 
into tears.

even if these aren’t the times, or we aren’t those people, let me tell you:
if someone was secretly in love, you would 
find out eventually, or they would die. love never
wants to announce itself, it seems. in my dreams, it is always me
leaving for the war; even on days that are way too beautiful 
to think of endings.

I set a fifth plate, fold a napkin,
            learn to sketch windows by tracing space

between chestnut leaves, squint
            proportions of bark splitting sunscald in winter.  

a pencil translates angles
            if the elbow holds level—my son’s does not

flayed open like cursive
            after plummeting from the jungle gym.

my father in a makeshift darkroom
            washes a wife, dogs, mountains into

I will not call them his
            inversions of themselves.

he smells of french fries
            after a shift. I ask my mother how we know

this is not the dream world,
            and she cries thinking I want another

mother, but she coaches me to focus
            my dreams, counting backward before sleep.

85 percent of matter is unaccounted
            for. once I tried to drag a boy

out of a recurring dream by placing my hand
            on his shoulder as I jerked my lids open.

I never met him, but I’m not positive
            it didn’t work.             

Candyman-poem-attempt-1

How it was
Being born
Swallowing
A bottle of pills
A stomach pumped
First whipping
Loss of virginity
Abortion
Marriage
Miscarriage
Third pregnancy
Birth of a son
Loss of self
Loss of one parent
Loss of the other
How it was
To feel
The whole body
What it meant
To kiss with
The whole mouth
How it felt
To walk through
A cornfield
At its most tall
Just before it turned
To drying
How it felt
To sit in what was left
After cutting & harvest &
Drying all autumn
What it meant
To know separation
What it meant
To let everything go
What it was
To not know
What it meant
To leave
What it meant
To come back.

not someway you’re born but become
slowly over time your refinements eroded
because you listen to wind, respond to wave
by shedding

you step out of high heels into amphibious sandals
that let you race sunsets and wade into surf

you leave the closed-minded church for the wide open sky
where your prayers turn to weather
paradise already found

you forget how to fill out a timesheet
your time is your own
binoculars your concession to tech

it rains
no matter, you walk out into
the rich smell of wet earth

instead of animals
you speak of and to other animals
no illusion you’re better

all around you other beings turn sun 
into what could be you
and you palm currants and chew sassafras stems
and suck paintbrush corollas 
to sweeten your wandering

it’s not what they wanted for you –
the media moguls the bankers 
the academy the warmongers
the powerful the firm partners 
the country club board
the dominant paradigm-keepers
with your best interests at heart I’m sure

but you still let things go one by one
until here you are
with your unshaved legs and undyed hair
idling in a hammock
talking with a squirrel
unencumbered by regret

Oh yeah, I’ve got plenty of the usual ones,
from ice hockey skates, broken glass on
sandlot football fields, bicycle crashes in
ditches and blackberry thickets, even one
that exposed my kneecap with a clean slice
from a red brick at a corner of the volleyball
field, site of my game-saving dive…
But there are also scars unseen, gut wounds

from the sound of paper ripped, letters torn
in rage to illegible bits, the damned screams
into the wall telephone, the slamming and
cursing and tears, all forbidding my father
from reaching me until they dwindled, ceased
when a judge’s voice took his name from mine.

Should it be such a bitter pill?
Space and time aside,
To let one’s mind release the will.

A blackbird perched upon the sill,
Its beak then opened wide,
Should it be such a bitter pill?

Breath in and out and feel the chill,
Exist, sustain, and abide.
To let one’s mind release the will.

The mind not blank, not even still,
The expansive plain lies just outside.
Should it be such a bitter pill?

Cold wind, clear air, the sky so wide,
What warmth does this vast void fill.
To let one’s mind release the will.

Finding calm, to climb that hill,
Stillness and beauty do not hide.
Should it be such a bitter pill?
To let one’s mind release the will.

Day 28 / Poem 28

like butterflies, cellulite thighs spread. in-grown hair pricks through 

uneven skin just as a lone stamen pierces a bud, wounding it 

with its desire to emerge.  our sleepy gazes rise

as sunflowers do at dawn, from our pale wooden boat    

to meet the horizon and the sea,

shimmering. watching you whittle your name

into its palimpsest bark, lately 

i am always weeping except 

you are yet          to unclasp 

this glittering      chest full 

of dreams   i want to lay my head

seeing you writhing, i no 

longer whisper            even to myself

in dreaming, rams take form-

ulaic routes through a hillside, carving paths

like miniature, horned white clouds, their fingertip-sized hooves 

tiptoe out of dreams, down shoulders, 

lengthwise, tracing the arm, 
sternums hexed, perturbing slightly 

with their chaotic dance

we rise like somnambulists            

crashing lightly; breaking the freshwater 

surface. silence pours in between 

bodies rippling with water’s pungent touch. 

the exit hooks glance from behind us,

fishes stringing round, wagging 

their exoskeletoned tails, texture of scales 

kissing your neck. as distance swells,

breath escapes lips like smoke signals.

tracing           a fluctuating evolution

with you, i watch It bloom     orchid 

underneath flushed skin, beneath our ribs our unexposed 

light: the smile you flash across the room one-

sided   tug revealing teeth,             structural integrity of cheek, 

see your eye head spinning on that fish hook, split            in the absence

of your gaze          i fade from present into past, hoping        

you are lost in this chandeliered laughter too.

traffic on route one bumps up against itself

speeds and slows

corn and lettuce stitch these fields

another hour to a grocery

what I mean to say 

is we could pull over alongside tassels 

suck sheath and husk

peel silk through our teeth

Peacock-Lane

And it lie there
Belly up. All its white
Down fluffed
Black spots
Scattered like stars.
And she lay out
Its wings wide
To get hold of
The peach under
Feathers. To see flight
Broken. And its claws
Curl inside themselves
Still a clutch for
The reflected branch.
And its eyes
Shiny and dark and
Unmoving pull her
Down.

 
 

After the friendly fir is cut and limbed
its branches lie where they fell
like a chalk outline,
our latest little violence.

I touch the stump as penance,
wonder what the other trees think –
how could they know how close
is too close to the cabin
for a conifer to come?

Some winter its heartwood will
turn to light and heat in our stove,
warming our murderous bodies,
another form of sacrifice
we’ll call on it to make.

But the forest is full and it’s just one
and it came down quick and crashing
with the seeming indifference
of a lightning strike.

Tell that to its aspen neighbor, though,
who grew up next door,
who now eyes me
with cold suspicion.

I missed the call, driving home with Do Not Disturb
automatically on my cellphone by default: the
homecare worker could not get my wife off the floor,
after another fall, and the Fire Department aid car
has been called again to our address, as I learn
coming around the last turn before the house
comes into view. The EMT (ambulance) vehicle
is parked at the side of our driveway, lights off.

The petite Guatemalan woman is all wide-eyed
and apologetic, opening the kitchen door
saying Shaun is okay, just another slow motion
fall on the carpeted floor, not hurt. And the nice
men in the midnight-blue uniforms are kind,
attentive as they perform the now familiar routine:
check pulse, BP, pupil dilation, check for signs
of broken bones, before lifting her up, carefully
returning her unhelpful body to the stand-up recliner.

Three EMTs gather their equipment and disposables
as one says into the shoulder microphone, we’re clear
here, no transport needed. In a week or two, there will
come another post card from the Fire Department, saying
they are happy to be of service and don’t hesitate to call
again, and I will add this card to our others, accumulating
on the kitchen counter by the coffee maker with still
another dose of gratitude for this compassion and care. 

Self- help is self- improvement.
Renovations to a woman’s
physical plant.

Hair and wardrobe will give curb appeal.
Downsizing
is all the rage. 

#tinyhousenation

The plumbing must be cleansed,
the attic aligned and attuned.
All shrubs around entryways, cleared. 

Smooth rock leading up to the door.
The back patio, too,must be immaculate,
though used for more intimate parties.

Add plants!

Facility renovations aside, additional work is required.
The mental ventilation system must be adjusted  
to produce only the best quality of air.

#cleaninghacks

Wash the hair, or don’t,
depending on which book is read.
Meditate, sometimes.

Ask: does this habit spark joy?
Toxic positivity, be gone!
Thought-prep and recharge.

Exfoliate the soul.

When I was little
I used to think
giraffes and monkeys
managed traffic lights
and that ducks were 
the best animals because
they could walk 
                   and fly
                                  and swim

I used to think my 
grown-up self would
be a morphed version
of Cindy Crawford
And my hair would
someday reach my knees

I was told flowers
cried when you touched them,
but maybe it was that 
flowers died when they
were touched, but either
way I finally stopped 
pulling off their petals.


thought 
North 
was 
up 
and 
South
was 
down 

I knew I could sing and
proved it to my brother by 
singing “My Country Tis of Thee”
in Kindergarten class at the 
TOP of my range. I did not 
understand snickering yet.

I watched the big lights from
my bedroom window and thought
they were angels, not spotlights
for movie premiers for the Starlit
of Southern California or car lots.

I’d fill my bed with all my toys
because I didn’t want anyone to 
feel left out. I’d stay in my bed 
worried that the alligators, my mom
said lurked beneath would snap my toes.

I told my class at “Show and Tell”
that a policeman hurt my Daddy
because he cried when he got a ticket
and I remember thinking my teacher
didn’t love me because she 
forgot me outside when 
recess was over.

I used to think these things
and if I’m honest…sometimes
still envision the long necks 
of giraffes inside light poles
as I drive.

 
 

Day 27 / Poem 27

Медлительность

Жена О.Мандельштама.

Замечаю, что жизнь не прочна
и прервется. Но как не заметить,
что не надо, пора не пришла
торопиться, есть время помедлить.
Прежде было – страшусь и спешу:
есмь сегодня, а буду ли снова?
И на казнь посылала свечу
ради тщетного смысла ночного.
Как умна – так никто не умен,
полагала. А снег осыпался.
И остался от этих времен
горб – натруженность среднего пальца.
Прочитаю добытое им –
лишь скучая, но не сострадая,
и прощу: тот, кто молод, – любим.
А тогда я была молодая.
Отбыла, отспешила. К душе
льнет прилив незатейливых истин.
Способ совести избран уже
и теперь от меня не зависит.
Сам придет этот миг или год:
смысл нечаянный, нега, вершинность…
Только старости недостает.
Остальное уже совершилось.

On slowing down

After Nadezhda Mandelshtam*

I can see that life doesn’t endure: how easily
it is cut short. But I can’t help noticing
that there is no need to rush now,
there is time to pause, to take your own time.
This is how it used to be – fearful, frenetic:
I am the present, but will I go on?
And so, a candle was dispatched to its death
for the sake of an unavailing night.
How bright it had been – I believe no one
shares such brightness. Then, the snow fell.
And from those times, a strain remains,
weighing down the middle finger.
I will read what was obtained from this strain –
without compassion, only boredom,
and forgive: the young one is loved.
Back then, I too had been young.
Fleeing, in a hurry. A tide of simple truths
imprints upon the soul.
My conscience has already chosen its path
and now it does not depend on me.
Each moment or year arrives on its own: full of
hidden meaning, bliss, with its own peaks…
Only old age is nowhere to be found.
The rest has all been accomplished.

This poem may have been written in 1972, after Nadezhda’s first memoir Hope Against Hope was published (first published in English, in the West; translated by Max Hayward). It is possible that both of Nadezhda’s memoirs may have circulated as samizdat in the Soviet Union in the 60s, and that Akhmadulina may have gotten hold of both of them. The first of Nadezhda’s memoirs was about the persecution Osip Mandelstam and Nadezhda faced under the Stalinist regime, in the time leading up to Osip’s murder while he was in transit to a gulag, in 1938. The second, Hope Abandoned, covers the
next twenty years, until Mandelstam’s reputation was finally “rehabilitated” under the Khruschev Thaw, during which Nadezhda had to rush/flee through small towns across Russia, and keep a low profile to avoid political persecution.     

Nadezhda is iconic and her actions were pivotal for the survival of her husband’s work – since he was constantly at risk of political persecution through his life, she would stitch sheets of his work in obscure locations, such as underneath the soles of his shoes, lest authorities find and destroy all of them. She memorized his poetry, and her memoirs played a huge part in restoring her husband’s legacy.

to understand a hypercube we give it coordinates,
project it into segments we can handle, dissect cross-
sections we tangle in our fingers. in the pictures
my father snapped for photography class,
my mother gap-tooth-smiles in the driver’s seat of a mint green
Chevy pick-up. Angel, their giant white dog,
swimming in the truck’s bed. in my mom’s hair, spotlight
glimmers. it is the most relaxed I’ve ever seen my mother
in the driver’s seat of a mint green pick-up with daytona
super stag tires skidded into a mound of snow.
the blue mountain of her life is about to start.
in later pictures, her hair will be permed then chopped.
the mountain firs will relinquish their needles then turn
into the fugitive maples and oaks of the east coast.
my parents will trade in the pick-up for a boxy colt.
they do not know these things, as they do not yet know
I am a burr in my mother’s womb.
my parents are young and trekked across the country;
they think that any moment set down can be returned to.

for Rowan who asked me to write about Nature

Horns in her hands she holds them aloft
toenails unclipped legs spread o’er a star
stained only by blood of indifference
despite every contrary report.
Her wheel spins without a cool bet
of which coast fault lines flood crack open
her belly breast bowels spilt across all.
’Tis nothing to her this defilement
makes quick work of realms to renovate.
This house is not yours but hers. You see
you are merely garden apartment
renter made to pay fee upon fee.
But you still love her you say? Yeah that’s
definitely                                codependency.

stone is not earth
will not yield
is not fertile

stone knows resistance
making do
waiting for rain

here, two main stones:
sandstone
pressed firm by time and pressure
ocean’s memory 
orderly sheets / construction cog
granite
rough, irregular
birthed from fire
studded with quartz crystal

to make a world
sandstone’s red glow and granite’s cool sparkle
each bring their own beauty, their own rough edges

Louise at the infant group used to say
he doesn’t need two of you

sandstone doesn’t need to recruit granite
granite doesn’t need to persuade sandstone

at Contact Corner on Flagstaff Mountain
they touch
quietly
without drama

Above us only clear sky
full of breath, blue opening
into outer space,
framed by dune grasses.

Below us only sand,
mountains ground down
small and fine.

Upon us only time,
this moment where
atoms of our skin
seem to touch, and
galaxies collide.

the new wilmington nc harris teeter grocery store has a bar inside / right by the large beer and wine section / on thursdays  / susan the cashier tells us / you can get a prime rib dinner with / beans / even / and listen to a musician / a local guy with an ipad get-up that makes him sound like an entire band / a collapsible sign with his black and white glamor shot / serious hat / bent over his guitar / venmo qr code / he glances around the makeshift restaurant / between the cheeses / blue goat gouda and the crackers / saltines club triscuits / noting that he sees some / young / folks in the crowd / i think he means me / but when he dedicates a song by ed sheerhan / i know he does not mean / me / susan the cheerful / gray-blue haired cashier asks my husband and me if we are seniors / today / you can get 5% off / I ask her how old do you have to be / she says 60 / geez / how old does she think i am / i’m only 44 i tell her / well i’m 70 she grins / having beaten me by many years / your qualifications were never in question i think / mr. glamor guitar is jamming to michael macdonald / play some metallica / i say / enough yacht rock already / these are truly end times / i mutter to my husband / susan the cashier nods 

One day, when I was little
I buckled my new Christmas toys
into the passenger side of Karen,
our Dodge Caravan. I plunged
the keys into the hole like my mother
always did and heard the familiar
sound of the engine revving. 
Could my dangling feet reach 
the pedals? I remember my body 
stretching to reach them because I 
couldn’t shift the gears unless they did.
I pictured driving myself to preschool
because I missed “Show and Tell” and I didn’t know
why Mom said I couldn’t go. I had everything
in place, and I honked the horn to say 
goodbye… or maybe I was nervous 
because I knew I was pushing against the line 
of what I could do, but either way
my mom came out in a rush and stopped
all my forward motion and said angrily
“I’ve been looking for those keys.”

Day 26 / Poem 26

Foreshadowing-tupelo-day26

              After Marianne Moore

My grandfather used to say everyone should own a ham
radio, be able to scan invisible troughs
                        and ridges for storms. An anvil of air cupped in the palm.
            Dew mossing fissures in the whiskey tango of the left wrist
that I fractured tripping over my own cacophonous feet.
                                    The second time over a boy.
                        From the ship, my grandfather mailed postcards
            penned in shorthand, all caps. HOW R U DANCING TOES? WEATHR
HERE GD. LOVE SLTWATER. Sent my brother and I circuit boards,
                                    mowed fields plotted with copper, and questions
                        ciphered in phonetics, morse code. Said little
            about San Francisco, Alexandria, Cape Town.
I didn’t know then that he saw sky-
lines through a porthole or that forecasting is magic
                        on the ocean or the varieties of static that find a person at night
wiring a conduit, turning a dial. 

The-Scarlet-Pimpernels-Hail-Mary

For Virginia who describes her age as less than eons,
and wanted me to write about the juice the way the now
the web the thread the circle. For Marion who is in her
thirties, and wanted me to write about the contagion
of fear, the collective psyche, hope and positivity.
And for Jacki, also in her thirties, who wanted me
to write about advice for a thirty-something single
gal who isn’t sure about anything in life.

Point to the place where things started.
What you think to be the beginning—
birth yes or
first memory perhaps or when you could speak

         your own name.

If others had not named you could you
have given yourself over to truth—as in
one with stars draped all across her brow.

How the bone of your thigh fits into your hip
is a spiral of sorts—a motion for memory of

         woman moving
         melody of her making
         taking in
         another

to make yet another who moves
out into memory
which includes those you thought you’d kept as your own.

Reverse these thoughts.
You’ll find yourself
back where you believe
it all started. So if you ask

your mother—if you could really ask your mother
she’d tell you it’s true
how stars turn up here on the ground
get picked up placed into strands of hair
which are soon lost and taken back.

Back when you were a child thinking
you were thinking a thought while also
noticing thought. It was slow

how the cut on your finger healed—and you
shaped the motion of your thought as though
a circle had been drawn

                   from

         finger tobrain and

                    back

Point to the place where things started. Or
point to a place in your future
where you are not.
                                   When you are there
you’ll be here.
                   Just like you are now
when back in your twenties you could not fathom yourself
                                                       out there
which is where you are now. So
what are you pointing at?

           Could be
           it was jealousy
           which conceived a future
           which birthed a fear
                               and set your house on fire. Take any road out

and trust
that you’ll arrive.

[to be read with This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) by The Talking Heads as soundtrack, with many thanks to the 30/30 Project July 2024 Hivemind]

first the black and white seed
pushed into ready earth
then green unfolds to sun-
flower’s bright array
which calls in gold-
finches whose warm chatter
soothes everyone

what small act
would put more gold
above ground today?

first a new morning ritual
a quick brisk walk
then my son asks to come
then my husband then
my friend then our dog
then the whole day starts
better / connected / alive

who might we
invite to join
the path tomorrow?

first our friend fosters two pups
they adopt one
we take the other
my husband’s sister takes their sister
then they all romp together for ages 
and our children know the joy 
and calm of chase and play and
scritching behind ears
stroking a soft warm flank
burying nose in welcoming fur

what service might
serve all around
love and solace?

when we ask
answers arrive
offering their belly
and the paths become lined
with sunny flowers and striped bees

and sweet honeycomb and lemony birds
and warbling song and 
neighbors getting out to see the day
their work trouble thought bubbles
going pop behind them as they laugh
at the antics of the dogs play-
bowing and rolling on their backs
legs kicking into air
eyes up to sky where the finches
seek their next brilliant feast

repeat repeat repeat
the ostinato makes the melody
we make it up as we go along
listening for that next beat 
carries us curious up
out of limbo moonward
toward a paradise we don’t find
but plant / uproot each day
I guess we’re already there

We were between wars,
after WWII, before Korea,
I’m told by my father.

He was drinking a lot, even
by Navy sailors’ standards,
and passing out or falling
asleep at funny times.

The Navy shrink they
sent him to had seen it all
in the Pacific.  He had
a few months to go,
before he could retire
and go into private practice
in a small town, somewhere
quiet, hang his shingle above
the door, just wait for local
folks to drop by.

The guy just wanted out of the
killing business, and he figured
that’s what this sailor wanted, too.
Dad looked the doctor in the eye
and said yes, I guess that is.

The shrink said you’re not
passing out from drink, my friend,
you’ve got syncope.  Random fainting
of unknown etiology is just plain
not safe for you or your shipmates.
Look me up sometime, on the outside.

My father does just that one day;
takes the train out of Chicago
to the suburbs, finds the doc’s
shingle on Main Street, but the
door’s locked, lights are off.

Yep, says the insurance guy
next door down.  The Navy called
him up for Korea, and he hung himself
right there in his office.  Crying shame.

A Google image search enacted
on “Hodge Podge,”portrayed a plethora of
savory sides and stews, portions a plenty.

Merry trinity colors greet the eye, a feast of 
culinary tributaries of taste. Carrot, asparagus, 
clean white potato, served in a striped blue bowl.

Sustenance of the hoi polloi?
Well plated is well met.  
Search, if you will, on hoi polloi. 

Results reveal…

That hoi polloi returns a restaurant bearing this common name.  
Yet again, returning to the basest instincts of human kind.

Find the way to heart through belly.

I don’t know what my world
is anymore or if it matters.
I was part of his world,
and now that he’s 
 
gone
 
All I feel is loneliness and
emptiness and hopelessness
lines my heart with despair
and I fear saying the word
depression
 
but is that what this is: my 
future is concave, and my
mile markers are far behind
and I cannot see what comes 
 
ahead 
 
because birthdays come 
and go, and I feel the echo 
of when they mattered like
a sharp reminder of when I
 
mattered
 
and the life I was building with 
my love made sense; before six 
heart attacks, 32 stents and surgeries, 
and so many wounds 
 
binding
 
I’m trying to find my 
road

Day 25 / Poem 25

  • put your inner child in a tiny moon horse that rests on your back, while
    you lie face down in a field of sweet grass. this way, you will learn to
    take care of your posture and breathe evenly, so the horse isn’t wobbling
    off your back; and to listen closely, because his larynx is small

if you can’t access a meadow, or a tiny moon horse, meditating upon this
photoshopped reel will suffice.

  • curate your [aspirational] aesthetic. put favorite consumer items, such as
    cowshed skin care, olive oil ice cream, or Aesop, into an edgy starter
    pack meme. as you watch the likes pour in, your dopamine will rise, and
    you’ll affirmed this identity to yourself many times, reading it over. for
    bonus points, release shame through obscure references to trauma, or to
    dependence on substances, like flavored vapes or orange wine.

  • watch people’s funny cats when you’re too tired for more serious
    intervention.

  • hear stories of people’s suffering. this way, you will remember that
    darkness lurks beneath airbrushed realities. in this world and in this
    country, worse things than that stained pit buried inside you. you have
    the power to speak to tragedy, even if lawmakers seldom listen.

  • nurture your creative practice. offset passively consuming media all day
    with being active in constructive ways.

  • if you’re having a rough time, or pushing away all your friends and
    family, it’s probably just a spiritual awakening.

  • if living “here” sucks, romanticize elsewhere 🙂

  • consider budget versions of therapy, like BetterHelp, or therapist
    influencers, if you don’t have time, money, or energy for actual therapy.

  • at the end of a failed date, scroll through a dozen stories by your crush to
    remind yourself you feel desire, even when you’re too lazy to act on it.

  • you have friends. you may not talk for stretches, decades even, but they
    exist in your followers/following.

in dreams my childhood is a reverse symmetry,
a pinwheel that summons fold, pulp, hemlock.
without an innermost nut, baby whittled in the doll’s
womb, connecting stairs at the heart,
family spirals the prairie like a snail’s shell.
my brother and I dredge up gravel we call the yard,
paper crowns and the wily necks of owls.
we rattle keys before flicking on lights, praying
roaches scatter so we don’t see them.
doesn’t matter they hiss cradlesong in the walls;
the house is larger inside than out.
it sprouts from the ground.

The grandkids went crazy after a couple hours
Itching to take off their dress shirts & loafers
Their aunts swept them into burgundy vans
And took them out for dinner at a hotdog hut
Disappointment palpable condensation froze 
Into beads & shattered as they fell onto trays 
We played plinko on an uncle’s old iPhone
He gave it to us when we had bees in the walls
Take this upstairs w/ your sister & keep quiet
Guessing the prices of electric toothbrushes
Was an impossible task for an eight year old
We did it somehow & won ourselves coupons
For the grease trap the next town over the one
Across the street from a funeral home that one

for Imagine

If I made you
without your consent
then perhaps you asked
for it.

Perhaps we were playing
together by a creek with sticks
and the one you threw hit
my eye. Or maybe

I was a dung beetle
rolling my ball of dung
and you raced ahead of me with yours
knocking me antennae over ass back down
a long slope. Lifetimes

upon lifetimes we became
timelines enmeshed. This
I think you told me once.

Today the mountains
have vanished. Shrieks of cicadas
orchestrate culmination. And you are
not a boy with a bug cage in your small hands
safely guarding your nymph before
its back cracks open. You are instead
a man across a sea from me.

If I made you
without your permission
then perhaps I merely
missed you.

It could be you were the beech tree
that raced above my tender branches
crowding out the heat of the sun.

Or maybe you were the long ache
that stretched out across
fields of me, my rough soil cracked
open to a crying sky. I don’t know

how to ask questions of the infinite. Everything
has already happened. This I remember

you told me from the backseat as I drove
one side of the island to the other as though
we were passing through
one life into the next.

When I perish
please forgive me the lifetimes
I will make you again
without your consent.

It will only be
because at no time
will one life in one world
with you ever
ever
be enough.

Today the mountains are missing, replaced by smoke.
White blankets suffocating, close, drifting sky smoke.

The height of summer, and we hesitate to breathe
knowing our fragile lungs will be blackened by smoke.

Today I heard a strange new word:  crepitation.
Grasshoppers snap their hindwings, warning us Fly – smoke!

It also means the sound of ill lungs crackling.
Crepitus may creep in as our bodies try smoke.

Imagine the hawk’s talons hunting, ground obscured,
keen eye stings, throat burns, but light mirrors high smoke.

My dream of blue skies and calm white clouds – extinguished
by silent rolling waves of somber wry smoke.

Indian Peaks all gone, Longs Peak a dim shadow,
I left our closed home and now my children sigh smoke.

We crest the mesa, valley muted, alarming.
Our dystopian future, I lament.  Sly smoke.

My mother clucks, Future?  She knows its grey pall now.
I gaze into airy space.  All I see buys smoke.

The days of Colorado’s clear bluebird skies, gone.
We bring guests up the mountain, earning bird’s-eye smoke.

Sharp crystalline peaks transformed to vague Blue Ridge waves,
Irish eyes red-rimmed, pricked by rallying cry smoke.

Forty-plus years now, I have walked along McLane Creek
and circumnavigated the beaver ponds, in every season, with or
without camera, or company, with or without binoculars, even with
sometimes both, within this southernmost source of fresh water
entering the Puget Sound, the scent of which calls chum salmon
to a winter run, followed by bald eagles, seals and sea lions,
osprey, seagulls, humans and their trucks and fishing poles…

Upstream, not far off the gravel beds of the spawning creek,
a series of beaver dams slows the shedding of water from
the forested hills above, slowing the cold currents to almost still,
where plants become abundant, and encourage both insects and birds
and in turn attract humans who wish to observe succession after
old growth logging is long done, and the railroads turned to trails,
and humans who only wish it might all just stop, and stay, and stay.

I waited in line, rubbing a scuffed black boot against 
the thin carpet of the independent bookstore.
It was too warm in the shop; winter was waning but spring
didn’t quite want to make an appearance. The heat was smothering;
my sweater scratched against my neck.

Itching absentmindedly, I saw the table getting closer.
I clutched the book I had brought for the renowned poet to sign, 
worn enough to boast that I was a moderate fan. 
Besides, those who bring their own books are a notch above, right?

My leggings stuck to my clammy skin and I wished I hadn’t worn the heavy wool socks.
Fool’s spring was teasing Vermont, yet by dawn, a white crunch would cover the ground. 
The man two people ahead of me laughed, guffawed really, piercing the cheerful din of the store. The poet laughed too, a more gentile, gentleman farmer’s chuckle.

Soon, it would be my turn. Adjusting my Peruvian satchel, carefully curated from the classy consignment corner shop near the college, I made sure I had my book ready.
And then, it was my turn. I was standing in front of the tweeded poet, 
wool vest and bland smile. I could not speak at first, then, thrusting his book at him,

I asked, “Mr. Garvish, how can I become a better poet?”
He glanced down at my book, then back up at me, asking my name. I offered it up, and watched him dash it on the first page. He shut the book, looked back up at me, 
a firm pass back, no chance of interception. 

“Read more poetry,” he said.
Then, nodding to the spinster behind me,
“Next!”

She jiggles, then giggles
as she palms my breast in her hand
At seven, maybe too old for showering
But she begs and wears rainbow goggles
I have a hard time saying no to these
moments because they will fly away with age.
She laughs at my breasts that once were
larger than her infant head as she suckled.
Now deflated from pudding cups to jello
Like when my body miscarried—so proud
all the baby-carrying parts became,
how sad when they lost their purpose. Now,
three children later, my whole body feels
deflated, what is its purpose, what is hiding
beneath my skin, and muscles, and bones?
My children, with their proud flesh ready
to take on the world. Strong muscles, you can
feel when they flex. I have weak hips and 
knees, healing—from birthing these life forces. 
I have scars or tiger stripes or proof
that life overtook my body’s readiness for it.
The apron I wear is not for the kitchen,
My thighs are bigger than my bone.
My breasts were for sharing a meal, 
not to show a society who 
does not giggle when I jiggle. 

Day 24 / Poem 24

the pain is a sign that you’re awake.
when you cry, we can taste the sharpness of it.

you swap the bloodied arms 
swaddling you for silk blankets,
side to side. in these dreams, 
a silver tongue unfolding.

the spoils of this world,
rows of women 
leaping out like swans
our class
meaning your class
your legacies

all the honey in the world makes you sick
kissing your lips
you think to yourself i never deserved it —
Dev, is this your sickness?

i have wandered the alleyways
within my soul; the ones you haunt
along Calcutta on this 
project of death, of endless pining, stooping 
into the ghat of this bottle. i dare not enter

that place where you live 
this poisoned mirror of her:
a mouth full of full moon,
i cannot lay my eyes on 
your tawaif, shadow of desire,
a woman i can not forgive

myself, sometimes:
when we are all 
that is left, and yet, we let you 
exile yourself, never trying to pull 
the handle of this blade 
far enough — by your own designs
this suffering — and i can see
still see the blood — your blood — 

pale, mixed in,
it washes everything around us.


1. Devdas’s mother considers her younger son during sannyās

they say lightning doesn’t strike twice
            we meet halfway in electric arcs
                        texts that tunnel though an invisible

webwork of honeycomb then wake
 in our pockets

how are you feeling today you ask
            then damn
                        
when I say I am not coming home yet

                                    I am ill-equipped to explain the subtlety
                        of your hands rendered as 1s and 0s

the vacancy after a month without carbs
            self-loathing of a baguette shoveled
                        heel over heel in my mouth

today I feel like a slinky ingesting itself
a beacon at the north pole

projecting an X onto a plane
            you can find me here
                        for you I leave a trail of crumbs

Fathers who give practical gifts elude me the way my shelves of assorted beautiful trinkets wear a bell jar like a death shroud / When my own father gave me his name I asked And what am I supposed to do with that? / Since then I have collected lye for my blankets & pillows / A collection of socks that darn themselves after too much wear / Chests stuffed with dictionaries & encyclopedias & a third of a narrow lagoon that sneaks around my hometown’s ankle / He means well & honestly I can buy my own garbage so I accept his useful bricabrac & think of him when my cat burrows into my tartan Snuggie / I am a sentimental man like my father & I don’t know if he gave that to me or if I took it but either way I better make the best out of having it / So when you catch me forgetting to think about the man who paid for me to not practice the piano / And he sends me a bench to live beneath my faux ivory throne / Please remind me that I tried it out at his house over the summer & mistakenly told him I found it enjoyable / Cementing for certain my next birthday present / After all / Is it not our parents who invest the most in our solitude? / Lest we pass immeasurable thoughts on our own. 

24-Flow-Chart-of-My-Father

the first dark falls
on their separate beds

tonight my mother’s neighbor’s husband
spends his first night alone
in hospice

Suzy & Kurt
I’ve never even met them
they stay inside with shades drawn

but my mother has run into them enough 
to know they are runners
who have stayed put 43 years
together in that house

Suzy told Mom 
when Kurt went in
to have his cataracts out
the eye doctor squinted hard enough
to find a tumor in Kurt’s brain

they cut it out
and six days later it returned
what kind of a determined death wish
comes knocking twice in one week?

all agreed it seemed cruel
to carve away any more of Kurt
he stayed home at first
but that didn’t last

today Suzy told Mom they had come for him
I needed some rest she explained, 
eyes and tone level
and so they’ve reached another step
in the leavetaking

how is it for him
in the next town over
in a single bed
with only his body to fill it?
I shudder for them both

any decision I make 
this day this week this month this year
will be light as dried moss
compared to the weight of 
Suzy making that call

My angular eyebrows are third generation, from Grandpa
Milton Thomas via my mother, who added deep vertical
furrows at the inside ends, and the horizontal one

that crosses the frontier between her eyes, and my father’s
nose, the cupid’s bow of his upper lips above the mouth
from which comes my own voice, heard for the first time

on my answering machine tape, after 42 lost years, the
twin of my own voice, inviting an end to our souls’ work:
forgiveness of the unforgiven, love for the unlovable.

A typical shire day…

Gandalf! Do I have to go? 
Really?
It’s too much, I tell you!

This cadre of dwarves, 
and what will the neighbors think?
Bad enough those Tooks had a wandering eye.

I am reluctant, but if we must leave, 
breakfast first. 
And, second breakfast, too! 

Packed plenty of food for the road. 
You never know when you’ll need it.
Enough to share? Umm, doubtful. 

Some time later…

A small broadsword? 
What would I do with that!
Oh–dragons and trolls?! 

And, that strange creature with his “Precious.”
Who would have thought it was just a ring.
A very pretty ring, though.

Return trip…

Pretty… I might want to bring it home,
back to the Shire.
Another journey? 

Don’t mind if I do!

I remember the first time 
she cleaned my eyes
green against tabby white

My heart purred, loud, strong
She was my person, mine
for nearly fifteen years

I nap, and I know things, 
I knew he wasn’t good for her
I saw him when he was alone

When he was not with her
When he was with the yellow-haired,
yellow-bellied, yelling one

I hid: under sofas, under beds
I watched until she saw it for herself
Until she died to all those dreams

Broken pictures hammered flat
We moved and moved and moved
And began new lives together

I became her guardian,
My intuition kept us safe
She learned to trust my judgment

I chaperoned her walks, hiding
beneath, behind, beyond
cars in 81st Street, round and round

I became the redheaded stepchild
when someone worthy was found,
and I could lay this mantle down.

And just nap and hunt
flick my tail, and know
much better things.

Day 23 / Poem 23

slot machines outside my window:
the past, present, and future
of everyone swimming in this city 

you wander through this pensieve
searching for a winning strategy, 

body slamming that graffiti artist’s muse
you turn into, at the edge of forty-five in her failing
dorian gray scrawled across

east village. you met at a party: 
there’s a decent chance… her or someone else, 
less slapped around by men.

long-fingered trees break their nails
dis-entangling possibilities, 
chewing up shredded cuticle remains;
feeling animal with suspense. 

the male pollen fills your chest
taking the shape of you,
your highways wallpapered illucid yellow.

“they will have to bury me in [the name of the island]”,
phantoms whisper; strangers to stillness.
nobody else is even speaking of death

but now, everyone wants to die in the club.
kissing the earth you dance on; 
paperclipping to this place as if clinging to its promise.

most beautiful, sleeping: when no one can see it, 
both rivers lilting beneath the eyelid. speedboats line
all summer days. you can see the stench
wafting, wildfires in subway elevators.
the windows slowly extinguish

with each passing hour, fewer metal scarabs scatter 
along the queensboro bridge; worn for wear.

whatever you came in with, 
you parked at this table,
knowing the house always wins. 

whipsaw in the shoal tiptoes up on the kid who turns her back
barrels her a wave riding a wave the bloom

of months parades in yellow Crocs those sandy
ridges where I learned to attend on what was approaching

to smash a bottle on a bow departure and departure
and departure flags the dock the lighthouse’s beacon

revolves but the tide only roils in jellyfishes’ milky bells
sucks a welt on my calf throbbing like sun needles

what will I say I should have known when the prow
is resurrected in its gauzy unwrap we were ninety-five percent

water brainless boneless transparent
I braid myself in silky ribbons for each cord of driftwood

that arrives first another word for optimism is managing
can you see me breaking the ocean’s

surface elbow first the trajectory of arm slicing water
then again I pull my hair out in clumps of seaweed

Tray no: One / Date[s]: 13 July 2024 / Subject: Kokomo

Diane enters from right side of the cabana with her hair dripping down the side of a towel the color of bellinis & coral before drying out behind the surf shack next to foraged seagrass & driftwood / Diane’s legs are sandy which suggests she was swimming in the shallows & not the resort pool like planned & she holds her sandals in her right hand while in her left she carries a dark blue softcover book that appears soggy as if hit by an unexpected wave / Diane appears to be laughing & the peach towel highlights the pink in her cheeks & lips & behind her silhouette a cream colored parasol frames a man roasting out of focus closer to the water.

In a panoramic shot from the resort balcony you can see a stretch of almost seven miles of beach from the shiny yellow ferris wheel on the Kokomo boardwalk all the way to the marina stuffed with ships nearly sinking out of frame on the other side / Clear blue skies cascade down to the horizon like a sheet being pulled from the clothesline while a few dinghies meet where they fall / Lined out on the balcony are Diane’s wet belongings hanging out to dry on the fencing: a summer wrap dress fades from a dark forest green to a pale matcha beside the peachy towel which hangs diagonally to catch as much of the midday sun as possible beside a linen beach bag Diane brought with her down to the shoreline while her little blue book whose pages flip in the breeze lies open-faced on the balcony fence post. 

Diane stands next to a man painted silver at the intersection of Broadway & Main with her hands held together high above her head while her light leg bows like a resting flamingo as her shoulder bag slips to the ground / Unperturbed by the bag her face remains calm yet motivated & her chin lines up with the storefront windows behind the pair practicing yoga together on the sidewalk / The man is the opposite of Diane’s halcyon composure from color to ridged stillness his eyes pop at the audience & within them there are steel drums playing music not of this island not even of this world perhaps a fleck of silver polish streaked into his eye & that’s the cause of his flex beside Diane’s living breathing tree. 

Diane sits next to a bonfire on the beach reading from her mostly recovered book / The last of the sun left moments before but the light from the fire gives just enough fuel to show her the way to the next page. 

For the countless
times you try to count
kisses

to keep them
save up
what you might need
when you need. Oh
how you will

try hold what is held
by a body only
for a wink
winked out. You say
this doesn’t make any sense. Does this
make
         any
                 sense?
Count them up one
                 two
         three
four
five six thousand upon hundreds of
thousands of kisses.You know

         you 
         are in
         the kisses.

Yes you
are there given over

in this little bit of corner of
your mouth. In the whole of
of your heart
the whole
of what your heart does
when you fit it press it place it
in the countless countless count
less
times you count
and kiss.

before pulling oxeye daisies from earth
I cut their optimistic white flowers
heap them into the silver bowl

I’m not immune to their casual good looks
but I’ve lived in the mountains before
know how they come in on disturbed soil

then take over
like the stickseed burrs
that matted our dog’s legs, muzzle

they’ll make you miserable
if you leave them alone
like that man

no, that’s too generous,
like that conman I thought we’d 
disentangled from our future

whose hooked barbs
have gotten into everything
rub me the wrong way

to the point where I’m looking for lodging
in my swing state hometown
my one idea for how to make a difference today

besides writing our son at camp
telling 24 lines of what’s happened 
including our dog’s visit to the groomer

who somehow culled all those thousands of nasty 
burrs from our sweet dog’s face and legs
left him silky, better

did it seem futile to her at first?
but somehow she started anyway
I stand in the clearing

searching the sky for sun
trusting a beam will reach my way
the way eclipse resolved

between wisps of cloud
but the grey doesn’t break
no beam tracks me

                                        still, there is the silence
of our dog
not chewing his legs at last

I am
trying
not to
let my
childhood
memories
shatter me
still

even
knowing
I am
alone
I reach
to pull
you
close

Deep regret dims mornings, clouds cover, night to day.
Pale gauze to eyes, limbs ache, stretching futile, rue day.

Green trees, with sunlight dappled, cool blades of grass wave.
Children stretch like angels in the plush grass, today.

We used to race the sun from dawn to dusk, no rest.
Ants on pale legs, hills ripe, like small tattoos, blue day.

Driving further from the city lights, ink black sky.
Reminder of how far from home you’ve come, new day.

The in between is pitch black and thicker than tar.
Return home, the street lights turning on, eschew day

Chasing kitties across the road,
clothing optional. a neighbor shouted,
“Kelly, I think you forgot something…”

But I had my prize clutched to my chest,
bringing her home to the running water,
filling my awaiting bathtub like a playful pond.

I’d envisioned tea time,
but no one told me of the disdain,
the distrust cats have for water.

She disappeared, running down the hallway,
past the stairs, through the door,
off the patio, leaping down our steeped driveway,
like a furry acrobat,

to the road, across the street,
back to the vast expanse of lawn
from where I’d snatched her.

So much work, ending with
three scratches on my arm,
a mom wondering why I wasn’t done

bathing because hadn’t it already
taken me enough time. “Really,
Kelly, what is wrong with you?

Day 22 / Poem 22

even endless nights come to an end,
faster than you can imagine. 

when day breaks, it does not stop — 
rays of change swiftly build the sky before us.

here, in this darkness,
having no clear view of things

you hear whispers by the river.
it is beautiful, nonetheless. 

how far a glimmer of full moon travels; 
meeting a watery surface, a sliver of mirror or glass.

when you’re too full of stars, rapidly dividing, 
the end of the night sounds like
the end of you.

you are used to the logic of the night:
of the fireflies buzzing about their business,
as if their signals have anything to do with the setting or the rising sun.

at the horizon, you search for the setting sun to reverse its path. 
you have watched the birds retreat a thousand times,
forever recalling them leaving in droves.

the logic of daylight feels lost on you.
you only half-believe the sun ever arrives.

when trauma recedes from the shore, for a while
joy is nowhere to be found: washed out.

how long will the night in you 
pretend there is no daylight within?

everyday you greet your demons privately. 
slowly, you transform them with love.

tiny air bubbles along wet sand after each wave
I cup hands      locking fingers like barriers      wait
for a wave to pull back its tongue     sand crabs
do this preposterous thing where they keep digging
tail first     feathered antennae beckoning the tide
my fingers the bottom of a solo cup     even as I slide
the hook’s barb through one’s carapace (legs flailing    
neon orange eggs a well) arc back and sling line
into surf      I must look the way the hunted look
catching a whiff of salt a shadow downstream     the men
in their mucks claim the rip inhales fear     will pull
a man under       the time a man broke into my room    
I was staying at a hostel     and at the shadow
of his body      I froze       though he was only drunk    
had kept banging because no one answered     it was
a mistake     the wrong horse     a moon slivered     
I was not who he thought I was     I was not who I thought
I was      I wondered if I would have lain there
unflinching had he come for something else

Earring-Magic-Ken-Ties-The-Knot-copy

Lines and line fragments pulled from
numerous Instagram and Facebook posts

Looks like
president of the US
is a black job boom but

many women don’t like women.
How fix this? For a REASON
girl magic turns on hope

and a young person’s job
is no time for petty bickering.
Call and tell them
roe the vote mic drop is the most
pivotal.

Feels like everything
the media made.

I was undecided
liking my own comment
pretty sure I don’t know why.

Thank you for all you have done
sadly I have people asking
about dark money
for the win.

You said you wanted to finish
for all your life
kindness and wisdom
serving the people
you understand
it doesn’t matter, does it
matter they will appeal all the way?

Any guess it’s not about a person
from the river to the sea
an uphill battle but
they play in our democracy.

I put my trust in I’m sorry.
We are so ungrateful thank you.
Mark my words.

in this waking dream
costumed children flank the gate
as we approach count 1-2-3
toss their hats into air
shout as one
welcome to camp!
cheer our arrival

I choke back tears at anyone 
being so kind to my child
like the rugby team
after the ambulance
doing everything at once
to let him know
nothing had changed

nothing undoes me like other kids
building my children up –
each of these other
young souls in small bodies
(though taller than me now)
with their own battles to fight
setting aside their swords for a moment
to clap for my son
as he drives through the gate
of his first sleepaway camp
to make his entrance/departure
all about joy

he sees my overwhelm
rolls his eyes, laughs
no room for tears
in this cheerful place

it’s just like my husband
running through the chute yesterday
strangers calling him in
shouting whistling good job you got this
how glad they are
he’s made it full circle

all these benevolent beings
sending their own love
to my outside-my-chest hearts
I want to prostrate myself 
before each of you
my body laid out on the ground
              heart to earth
              head to earth
              hands pressed together to you
I take refuge in your compassion

1 Divine Equation

One
plus
one
is
one

2) Gaza Equation

One
dead
child
plus
6,000
dead
children
equals
6,001
dead
children
plus
mothers
fathers
siblings
to
infinity

3) Earth Equation

One
plus
8
billion
plus
trillions
more
beyond
humans
equals
one

Heather-DQ

Are we just artifice?
A mask by any other name
A billion cells and more
A hive-mind in constant creation
Life-sustaining, bill-paying
More energy and emotion
In motion, driven by desires,
stoking a fire, higher and higher
Knowing thyself, pushing past
exhaustion: we can only
go as deep as the layers we see
Summertime skin-deep, skinned
knees, we feel the need to read and
tend seeds, and breathe
Five senses tell me I am alive
and real and not artifice,
I am art. 

Day 21 / Poem 21

she is around your disintegrating arm, Elmer.
until now she has taken good care of herself — 

maybe too much care, she starts to wonder, at risk
of vastly outlasting you. watching speed date one more time. 

night after night, the possibility. they have asked please don’t 
come back to the office. this tin of cookies, of no interest, 

wears her footprints in the dustpan. Now, Elmer,
she couldn’t get that mark off — you were 

slobbering, all over that shirt of yours. forever, 
till the maggots take it. she may be spending 

the rest of her nights eating popcorn by your side, 
potpourri growing around you two: a cover up 

for that stench, so can you please keep those liquids, 
those beetles, to yourself? there is a woman! 

at the door, it is ringing, oh no! Iris is almost 
asleep, a deep pill sleep; leaving no cake behind. She is screaming 

— the woman — not Iris. for so long, she had wanted visitors
or, rather, to visit away from here. for so long,

no voice but her own, festered, in that space 
between your ears; between you and her; in the gullies 

of her own soul. how the sickness has spread,
like endless night, grotesque beyond the light of day. 

the valley is an amphitheater where my son crouches in the outfield                                                         

                     later bolts up in his hotel blanket yoked to the pig iron of his dream

as an infant he nested in my arms or cried

                     his father swung him like a barbell

his father floated in the tub gripping the baby to his chest

                     what it is to be tethered by a slip knot

with a mosquito’s compound eyes I watch his teenaging body unclasp

                     mountains loom

headlights from interstate 78 ascending ascending

                     the numen of the field lights flicker with moths

great-powerful-patter-song

Pack it all
And don’t listen

To what anybody’s
Told you about

Traveling light.
Take what you can

Take everything
Leave nothing

Behind—
For the loss

Of what you have
Now and don’t

Have then
Is a loss you will

Never overcome
It all stays lost

And never
Hardly ever

Comes
Back.

Yes, you need to attend to their physical needs:
              carefully bring a steaming cup of broth
              retape their thumbs when poles chafe
              fetch whatever foods still look remotely edible to them
              rub Vaseline into wounds.
But the main thing is to exude your total confidence
              in their ability to overcome obstacles
              and to help them believe that, too.
Also, ask what they need.
Also, offload their garbage.
And put their favorite chair in a nice shady spot
              so they can fully rest
                                                  relax
                                                                 let tension fall away.
Arrive early and prepared at each aid station
              so your calm can be contagious.
Cheer them on loudly, by name,
              so others know who they are
                                notice their effort
                               and join in with you
                              calling their name over and over
                                      with love, encouragement,
                                      and appreciation for their badassness.
It’s their race to run –
              let them go through the chute on their own
              all accolades theirs.
Ring that cowbell loud and proud.
Eagerly ask them
              What’s next?

North facing window1
winter morning, blue light2 on
your love’s rose flushed skin3


1 winter blue sky
2 cold reflections contrast rose
3 warm satiations

A taupe twig juts neatly into a muted teal sky,
hazy with gray clouds.
A single leaf adorns its body.

Mid twig, 
impertinent, 
the nestling poses.

This baby has more fluff than most.
It might be older, 
a fledgling, ready to fly.

Defiant, it stares past the frame, 
puffing out its small chest,
daring anyone to challenge its prowess.

Maybe Father is just out of sight, while
Mother is finding food, a wiggly worm or crawling creature.
But likely, this little is all alone.

A vulnerable baby on a branch, waiting for its mother.

She lives steeped in anxiety, yet
with no forethought or concern
for the disarray of death. 
It tracks.
Inaction and the chaos 
of a disordered mind
left me with a set of 
skills designed to 
manage the fallout.
I know it will happen
at the most inconvenient
time and the lack of
planning will mean the costs
will be higher than if my 
mother made her choices now.
Am I the callus one? 
Wanting to know if she has 
a will, a savings account, 
a power of attorney,
a friend who’ll come to 
her funeral. 
I remember the last years
I lived with her when the
mania moved us four times 
in four years. When she’d 
stay paused when we needed
her in action. My sister and I,
at her mercy, but not now. At
least not me. 
She cannot wade through the 
dark stygian waters while I 
check the price of my own 
coffin at Costco and wonder
how to keep any costs for
my someday end from touching
the wallets or the futures of 
those I love. 
I cannot ask because we do not
talk beyond Facebook likes and
there is only so much you can
say that way.
I am not the child she wants anyway,
Her golden child will swoop in
to save the day. I am not 
needed in any real capacity.
I am not wanted in any real
capacity. My planning is unheeded
not unneeded, but superseded
by the drama my mama can’t
help orchestrate. 

Day 20 / Poem 20

an old friend of mine sat across the table and told me, “people [certainly] aren’t interested in
what your people have to say right now.”1

this was soon after he shared with me, triumphantly, “our time has come.”2 i am

unfortunately used to thinking my history isn’t interesting without anyone else’s help.6

after all, things swim inside me that are not of your world.7

do you see my problem? it is hard to be interested in myself while ruminating on the matter
of what interests you.8

in the beginning, i took your warm welcomes literally.

after all, i had left all warmth behind and it gets cold here.9

you are good, you have been so good. you are kind, you are not like the others.10

or you are exactly like the others,11 and this is a good thing.

i already know that my history doesn’t belong to you. and yet, i didn’t expect that you would
roll your eyes, or descend into twitter on your phone.12

sometimes i hate myself for trying to be part of your world. at other times, i remember that
people do it somehow, they are doing it all the time, everyday — merging opposite worlds.

it is the thing you painted over. the painting over is what belonged to you. when i/we strip
the paint off me, the story remains unchanged.


1. although he wasn’t living in new york city at the time, this was around the same time  speculations circulated about two racial groups being pitted against each other, i.e. 2022.  2. this exchange isn’t even what killed our friendship; what keeps me from picking up the  phone.3 after all, i get his suffering. and we both think of you as the other we are trying  to reach.4 

3. we have both grown up in the age of the curly cord telephone, and expensive rates the  further out you try to call.  

4. we have both grown up in countries that have taught us to think this way5, even if those  countries have changed in our absence. our memories of home are frozen in the  moments we left — it is one of many things i learned from him; to see the value in  returning.  

5. when i try to love you, for instance, i turn [instead] into a circus girl, freewheeling on a  tight rope, balancing an outlandish ball on my head somehow, like a seal. i have to keep 

you entertained somehow. reflect your world back to you, deeply — like a shadow, the  other side to your story.  

6. they are hard enough to make sense of in the world i left behind.  

7. lately, i’ve wondered if this is the same part of me that decided to spend my teenage  years dating or trying to date people who were (in)famous and known to not seek  commitment.  

8. i let it [the coldness] in my heart; i can no longer feel it.  

9. for a while, i thought “the others” were “racist” or “fascist” or whatever — the ideological  losers of the civil war, the world wars, all the wars.  

10. the “allies”, on the right (left) side of polarization.  

11. i have often been the only brown friend, and yet quite daft about taking notice of it — to  notice, i am half of all the other immigrants. it seems that whenever the veil lifts,  friendships end swiftly.  12. in my less charitable moments, i see you feel toxic in relation to the subject, or  fundamentally incurious. it is up to us to tell our stories, and up to you to be moved to  speak, or moved to listen. i wanted so much to love you that i never looked hard enough  to see which of the two i was holding on to.

earwig

someone
must
have peeked
through the trough
of her fingers
red eye
of the iphone lifting
the shade
the bated blade
bullet trigger striking
hammer hard
penis carving
into flesh

mosquito

instead of numbers my son recounts
a compendium of insects
while I crouch between the shoulder pads
of my mother’s old blouses
I know he’s a child to spy
the direction I’ve run in through feigned drowsy lids
just as he’s a child to pretend to fall
asleep before we arrive home
so I will carry him to his bed

cricket

my aunt rocks in her chair next to a picture she can’t see
of her parents’ wedding even at the distance between a glinty
bowl of Ferrier Roche chocolates and her mouth I ask her
what she wants to do and she says we don’t have a lot of time
and what do I want to do but really she just wants to talk
about dying without saying we’re talking about dying
for an hour she stares out the window where her daughters
erected a bird feeder she can’t see woodpeckers wrapping
hastily on the knotty bark of her spine we play a game
where we profess to talk about birds

blowfly¹

the caption                                        is                                      primed
            for                          the camera                                                by ordinance
all photographs                                           wait to be                                    falsified
             what matters                  is the moment                               of death
stretched               bent               naked and bloodied from the waist
                      butcher                                               your eyes to the fleeing
multitudes                      of impassive ghosts                      beaten by apocalypse

darning needle
every time I forget my work badge and my keys
jingle in the front door unexpected I am gutted
by another woman strip teasing a trail from the living
room to the bedroom of our home what condom
wrapper I wonder and how will I look when Marc smiles
at me from sleep like we are tethered by a secret

¹Erasure from Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others

We dressed doorknobs in tinsel pinched taffy

From our teeth w/ long nails painted a mercury

Thermometer chrome & stayed up late sharing

Ghost stories about the neighbors who moved

After their son ran away from whatever slinked

In the suburban backseat patio attached ennui

Syrupy sodas poured over champagne flutes 

The kids pull poems out of their back pockets

To read a school recitals in dusty auditoriums

Packed w/ stepparents rolling their programs

To swat at gnats sleepy from beatnik poetry 

About expansions of supermarket parking lots

Before bed we stand back to back & figure out

Exactly who gets each other to happy faster

20-Jessie-Bends-But-Never-Breaks

Weather fine, we began when
pinyon gave way to aspen.
Quaking leaves and water meant
we’d bent to views more verdant.

How perfectly cool we were,
strolling by Greens Creek’s thunder,
till we felt the sting of hail,
white nails like buzzing broadtails.

Rain poured, matted our dog’s fur.
We thanked a tree for shelter.
Huddled, chilly, senses dulled,
we mulled going home, humbled.

Hail, aspen, sky – all were white,
day gone grey as pale moonlight.
We loped downslope all a blur,
unsure in wild weather.3

1Greens Creek seems awkward – you want to subtract the s, or add an apostrophe, right? But it is what it is, and to
change its identity to make you or me more comfortable seems insincere.
2Deibhidhe (pronounced jay-vee) is an Irish poetic form with several rules: 7 syllable quatrains with rhyme scheme aAbB where the capital letters represent words of an additional syllable and the unstressed syllable completes the rhyme. The first half of Line 4 of each quatrain also must contain a word that rhymes with the end word in line 3, and the last stressed syllable before the last word in each quatrain must be alliterative with the final word of the stanza. And the first and last words of the poem should be the same. Later I also read that alliteration should appear in every line, ideally in the final two stressed words of each line – this doesn’t manage to do that (yet).
3I balk at forms. I feel like I’m hammering square words into round ideas, ending up with splinters. I wish they resolved themselves for me the way the New York Times Spelling Bee often just swims into view. Instead I end up making long lists of potential rhyming words and counting syllables on my fingers and wondering if any feeling or sense will be left once I’ve abided by all the drudgery. Whether I’ve written a passable poem about weather feels secondary. But they do make me go far down my list of words to reach for, which sometimes makes for interesting choices. On balance, though, I’d rather bring you to the creek with me and let us visit it together without guardrails..

I am told that the house of your mind
has been swept clean. The walls are washed white,
and the rooms emptied of furniture … nor are there
paintings anywhere or plants on the stone floor or in
the open courtyard at your center.

If your soul still attends to the words of my poems,
or the bells I ring to the four directions for you, or if
it shines that bright light through the window frames,
there is no positive sign. Meanwhile outside
the world of your bed, life and death continue.

It seems to me a blessing you have not suffered
the suicide of your brother Jimmy, whom you tried
so many years to protect from those who prey
upon such as him, another blessing that your mind
emptied before the blood was drained from your son.

Still another blessing to never have known the
grandchildren lost in the three shipwrecks of your son’s
fatal descent, and the fourth, your daughter’s loss
of the father of her sons, to similar demons. I speak
these stories to the light I imagine remains beyond

the shell of you, here on earth. I ask your body to release
your spirit, because the years of dying have been so
many now, and the years of my watch, and oh how
I hope there is love on the other side of death, and
the others who called you beloved on earth wait there.

The times she can’t process,
when the world appears to be on fire
and there’s nothing she can do.

In these moments she stares out into the sun
which seems too bright,
and notices the lump in her chest as if she swallowed a large, smooth rock, 
which is not good for my nourishment.

I am lonely as I churn away,
An organ with its own heart and mind, 
my own feelings.
Of course a stomach can feel lonely!

But all the food in the world never makes it past the rock, 
stuck in her chest.
And the chest has its own feelings, 
being always so uptight, 
it won’t share with me.

Even the rock would be something.
All of this in a microworld that seems enormous and vast,
inside the topography of my over extended cavity.

Then, her eyes, afraid to look out, see the stars, 
and her ears hear the quiet of night.
Aching feet whisper a sigh, 
and they all observe the night from my cushion.

There is nothing left to do,
and we all fall into the night,
so relieved that we don’t have to think anymore.
Until tomorrow.

 
 

Hold space for an open heart.
Remember to breathe deep,
Open up the back of your heart,
Stay rooted through your feet.

Soften the shoulders
Be present.
Be in your body.
Be in this moment. 

Hands at heart,
Let the body reset.
Find your midline; 
Keep your posture. 

Let your heart shine forward,
Find your place, come home.

Reach to the sun,
Wobble and shake, 
and find your balance.
Stand rooted 

Feel your breath,
Soften, lengthen.
Let the light in me
honor the light in you. 

You are where you belong,
You are where you should be.
Stay connected to your breath, 
Listen to the wisdom of your body.

Day 19 / Poem 19

even the blind man witnesses 
his corner of the elephant
with care. 

we left the same womb.
you say      every place you enter is
where i once used to be      still holds 
a sense of my staying      not leaving. 

sometimes you disappear 
to make something invisible. 

when you return, we learn of your anger.
“so it was her rage she was trying to erase”

we wonder how much of it there was.
how much of grief     when we hear
of the resentment.

1)     rice kernel flooded in grasslands

2)     fruit fly generation brooding in the sink’s unfinished glass of Aglianico

3)     daily I drink a thimbleful of disgust

4)     I sift beach glass with my sons through the eyelet of a sieve

5)     my boyfriend’s fingernail digging into the unreachable mosquito bite abutting my spine

6)     notch on the wall of my childhood bedroom where I measured teetering sons

7)     the pinky’s leverage spinning a swinging bag

8)     flashing pixel in an iris

9)     half-lives of uncertainty

10) peephole through which I watch my boyfriend stroke himself

11) threadbare shirt with the whales that separates our bodies and reminds me of Cape Cod

12) penny of rain kissing the windshield

13) phoneme before the song I am singing turns to foam

I write this to inform you that we have received 
Complaints & your opinion has been received

With the highest importance we plan to resolve 
Issues swiftly like the swifts who are received

By the thousands by the Chapman Elementary
Chimney who stalkthe steeples that recede 

Along the topmost facades facing eastward
Murmurations scatter a dozen times & receive

Hosts of murderous horrors & are picked apart
By birds of prey who watch perched & relieved 

From a week’s worth of hunger & lavish in laps
Around the knoll at last their meal is received

But more & more the swift messengers come
If even one makes it through relief RJ receives 

You thought you could feel sorry for yourself.

                    Try pay attention—
                    warm wind across bare
                             shoulders
                    arms
                             legs

       summer’s sprawl sultry over
       your lap lazy and laid out

like a squirrel with its body hung over a bough of high noon heat.

With fervor you have forgotten
how to fight

against days which accordion
indifferent. It’s true

living unhinges itself before you ever
have
a handhold. You are not

there layered under that old room. You are
here and here bare
footed bare
shouldered
bare
ly
       clothed as you cast
                                   thought across
thought.
                  And

you are not the thought as you cast it.

still silence / silent stillness
air so motionless
I watch one cloud at rest
all night long
it’s the moon, its double, and me
waving to each other in silver water
holding our breath
hearing nothing but heartbeat and earth buzz
after the chattering house grows tired
and mute
I float a long time soaking up the balm of
Nothing Going On 
& Nowhere To Be
everyone asleep
I’m present and accountable to 
only the moon
and this lone thin cloud
these words are only for me, for you –
the cloud, the moon, and I don’t speak them
don’t think them
simply regard each other respectfully
conscious of one another’s presence
and the fine calm night

I don’t know what dreamed us up or why
but here I am 
in near-constant awe
and this long suspended moment to breathe
before tipping into the second hectic half of summer
is most thoughtful
most heart-opening
most kind

Played dead on the bathtub rim,
was placed behind the toilet
where naked I wouldn’t step.

Next morning, was similarly found
hiding behind my shower towel
and was tapped to fall

into my cupped palm, for
transport through a door
to the larger world outside.

Who cares?

“For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”
-John Greenleaf Whittier 

On the street, a girl rushes, there’s places to be.
A spot on her dress where she spilled morning tea.
She jostles a man selling flowers and shirts, 
Who curses that idiot, then spits in the dirt.

This salesman of street wares, not always he was.
His paintings in college had caused quite a buzz.
Now he panhandles and sells chintzy jewels.
Why did this happen? He’d followed the rules!

A rose he presents to a woman in black, 
As she stops at his stand to rest her old back.
Her tired hands shake, and he offers his seat.
She sighs as she watches the rush on the street.

Her sigh is not weary, her eyes are not sad.
Her countenance, wrinkled, is placid and glad.
He can’t help but ask her, as she admires the rose,
What makes her so happy, why is it she glows?

She nods and then smiles, proceeding to say,
“I am so very grateful for this beautiful day.”
“It is easy,” she said, “to be bitter and mad.
I have had many times when I could have been sad.

I lost my first baby, when a child was I, 
And in the first World War my true love did die.
And dreams came and went, like mountains and snow,
I could have been acting in an old Broadway show.

I realized that all of it means not a thing,
What I have is this day, and for that gift, I sing.
I have a new chance, every morning and night
To write a new chapter, to put up a fight.

Remarried at sixty, produced my own show,
Adopted a daughter, and watched the girl grow.”
The street merchant smiled, a tear in his eye,
as he realized just how much he’d let pass him by.

And he thought them finite, and never to be,
But it was always before him, he just had to see.
“Thank you, kind madam,” he turned ‘round to say,
But the woman was gone, she’d now moved away.

He looked both directions, she’d just saved his life!
He wanted to thank her for removing his strife.
Yet she was gone, the crowds swelled and moved on.
Now he had a new mission, something to act upon.

At dusk he arrived home, a new fire in his heart.
He was not ready to give up on the dream of his art.
Slowly it took shape, his painting, new hope.
Things weren’t all easy, but now he could cope.

And he looked at each day as the gift that it was,
he never looked back on the past now, because
regret would not break him, or cause him to stop.
His new peace of mind, for perfection, not swap.

His savior in black, he was hoping to meet.
He looked everywhere, she was not on the street.
So he could share his new vision, success.
But she was nowhere, and it caused him distress.

And then he remembered her last words to him.
He would put up a fight! Now, his fear, growing dim.
The legacy shared by his angel in black,
was for all the whole world, not for him to hold back.

So he shares grace, every day, every night,
and for this he finds that his soul is quite right.
“Regret not, share often, much love do impart,
for this is the key to keep joy in your heart!”

 
Midori-Poem-30_30-Poems

Day 18 / Poem 18

flung into neglect by a “half-wit king”, 
the day after the uprising, they gather in
the spotlight of people-sized guns.

what do the guns carry? folded across their backs. 
largest i’ve seen. swords co-occur, 
the lengths of their legs.

same stature: black turbans standing stacked 
like GI Joes, the day after the chaos
mysteriously homogenous, as if 
the same person or image 
echoes for rows and rows. 
they look like shadows.

it is so dark here now, where do shadows even
fall? the long shadow of yesterday,
the only light in that cube 
at their feet, and in that man 
before the bullseye: 
focal point of the trigger. 

in clean yellow and white, he is
the brightest site, scrubbed clean as if
someone loves him, even himself;
arms splayed like a starfish, forced 
into vulnerability, no arms in sight
but rumors of improvised knives and needles.

others half fold themselves into fetuses,
waiting in line, obscured targets 
burnt brown by an absent sun.
 
one of them uncovers repoussoir eyes, 
surveying the scene, behind brethren; the rest 
of this account of their story still missing.

memory grazes the damp horse hive mind:

muzzle-first she stonewalls the tender
ellipse of her neck
sucks salt from peppermint

if she restricts her breath, crouches—
head between knees until she hears him singing
let’s do some living after we die—
he can push her chest
unzip her from her body

they take turns:
he unwinds her peg by peg
she pries him post from bridge
tugs the slack of his tail

later she locks six hairs she’s stolen into bridge pins
stretches them up to the tuners
two at a time like peopling an ark

Our therapist was promoted & so my evil twin
Threw us all one hell of a celebratory tantrum
We shook pill bottles like dried gourds passed
Down from our ancestors’ anxieties to our own
I’ve got to get out of this town was an anthema 
For which we were prescribed cheap whiskey
At the dive bar where we were known to paint
Our nails the color of Dorothy’s iconic slippers
An officer wearing a year’s worth of aftershave 
Stepped inside to roundup a local bank robber
Who had been haunting Mt Diablo all year long
Tipped off that a black bearded man at large
Was suspiciously drinking alone before noon
He caught me drying my topcoat red handed 

Lost-Lily-Erasure-with-Polaroid-Emulsion-Lift-Collage-and-Ink

To spare my sister and me
the inconvenience of her disorderly death,
my mother is planning ahead.
It sounds responsible, mundane,
but she has entered a circus hall of mirrors
where each scenario begets another contingency plan
contemplating circumstances more tragic than the last.
My household has become a pod
in this new lingo she speaks,
and she now has a plan
for the situation in which 
both my sister’s pod and mine
predecease her.
That’s six deaths right there.
What if my husband and I divorce, 
or my children die before me,
or they are estranged from me?
She has a plan.
She has waded into dark stygian waters,
has spelled out how she wants
her last hours to be (fairy lights and Vivaldi),
has decided where her body will go
and how it will get there,
who would take her power away
if she became incompetent,
what would happen to her dog.
These are places my own mind
shuts and locks the door to.
As always, she’s trying to make things
easier on us,
but I have to wonder
if all this time down in the catacombs
isn’t coming at the cost
of some of her life force.
She runs the latest changes by me
and finally I say out loud:
Mom, you need to sign that damn thing
and be done.
Then shake off all these morbid tableaux
and put those papers in a bottom drawer
and come out in the sunlight with us.
She and I both live on borrowed time anyway –
my car accident,
her fall down the flight of stairs –
every day qualifies as bonus for us,
so why waste so many 
descending down that dark hole
where nothing aches or breathes?

Wind pushes me up a wide shortgrass valley, squeezes
through this rocky pass, collides with granite standing
almost vertical at canyon’s end, from which I have been
ascending all morning, climbing up and out, turning at
last, to gaze back, seeing an eagle, wings wide-trimmed
against the invisible standing wave of wind, so nearly at
my eye’s level, almost motionless, he who scans the dry
landscape, last winter’s white elk bones beside the little
waterfall at the buffalo jump where that 2,000 years old
black obsidian scraper still lies, found & left again after
my feet had chilled in snowmelt flow, as my eyes closed
tight against so much dazzling, so much light, and time

structure
 

skeletal, spindly

sinuous veins. ancestry
roots and stones, buried.
 
 
bones

 
beneath the surface
there are bones
 
brittle
hard
 
wound with tendons
thin and stretching
 
these are my bones
they hold up my body
 
bones of my mother
bones of my father
bones of the land
 
strained under years
frost heaves
heat waves
salt
tears
 
i will not forget
the bones of this land

Two birds in a cage
My sister inherited
their care when we
began house-sitting.
Abandoning our home
to care for another, while
they RV’d around America
with their intact family and
retired father at 40. Micro-
soft money made it possible.
So, there we were the summer
I turned fifteen, and I chose
the bedroom with the four post bed
and left Katie the boy’s room
and his birds. I didn’t want
their care, but I didn’t know
they’d die. I didn’t know when
Katie said she wouldn’t care
for them… she really wouldn’t
care about them, that they’d
perish, languish, and be
found by the spying Grandma
in the bottom of their cage.
I felt such shame, as though
I’d been the one to kill
because I realized that
the moment I’d choosing
my comfort and that
four-poster bed still cost
me in the end. I still think
about those birds, lying
at the bottom of the cage
and wish I’d let the natural
order of things play out.
Getting my way was atypical
and I should have known
something would have
to be sacrificed.

Day 17 / Poem 17

another saturday night spent 
watching this business of healing:
suited liars take the stand, wearing 
faces i have seldom seen, conscience waving
from a corner, as they meet the public eye.

sickly smell of liquid black ink 
rises off prescription pads. 
blue beaches, sea moss, crisp 
dollar bills, wash out the sounds 
of doubt; ear drum fills 
with heart beat.

but what I see now isn’t this:
not poisoned river, shrunk to nought
nor analyzers followed by body bags
nor white lab coats forever parading
as false custodians of health,
blaming pill mills on the ailing.

instead, a river
self-heals when we let it
aid life’s efforts to sustain itself.
let scaled, luminous fish bob back up.

like every setback littering 
the path of your first steps, 
this too you will triumph
one step at a time, 
for you are vast, insurmountable, 
in ways you couldn’t begin to imagine, but
today, I dare you to try.

            For Sallie Gardner

99 degrees is too hot to write a poem,
so I drive with Marc from the suburbs into the hills to buy a wine keg.
all day I am thinking about horses, their hard spotted bodies under a bridle, the mad
beating of legs in a copper field, that first bit of cinema.
Marc and I drive from under leafy canopies
through miles of corn and curtsying orchards.
manicured vinyl gives way to gabled roofs and chest high white
corrals and empty pastures stand
mute over a stone bridge where I stop for a car to pass
in the other direction.
it is too hot for the man walking along the shoulder,
and for horses I imagine gnashing their teeth in a hose’s stream
or laying in hay in cherry stables like the one my aunt owned
before my uncle died and she started forgetting who she was.
when we get to Marc’s friend’s house, each step
takes longer than we think—
syphoning Syrah into keg for top-up and adding sulfites,
also hooking up CO2 to regulate the keg.
I am worried about not yet writing my poem
which takes so long in my head to wrangle, then then the language
and also how do horses sleep in the heat
standing and do they ever roam through the stream
under the one lane bridge?
going home we sit in the car on highways
filled with commuters tired of taking calls about mortgages
and stocking windshield wipers in the Advance Auto Parts
and dictating idiocy from their bosses.
there are so many terms for the gait of horse hoofs
beating and fewer for the sluggish crawl of cars at an exit ramp
near the house where we have been sitting for twenty minutes
when Marc sees them first:
four Clydesdales grazing under the powerlines in jackets and blue
blinders. we can’t imagine where they came from, but that doesn’t matter
just yet because there they are lined up beside the road
stomping their white boots.

The-Dixi-Witches-of-Eastwicks-Single

for Joshua who asked me to write about “things you’re glad
you did even though they terrify you”

While you wanted—
all you wanted was
to sit out not
go through doors
which swung to hit

from behind is where
you came from where
in a corner you faced
flocked wallpaper
promising not to—

to do what you do
is to do what must
be done—is what is—
how you must orient

your body
its patient limits told
when it had to be
now—just now—no matter
sorrows hurts vomitions

while you terrored
pierced center of a sun
surrounded either side
by salivating dragons ready
at your neck still somehow—

somehow grace held you
up and kissed your dear
dear face—made you—

made you grateful
for doors flocked corners
your body oh yes your
capable commendable
body and every single
goddamned dragon spitting thick
upon reverberant chords
of your throatful thoughtful
beautiful beautiful
neck.

alone inside the MRI
I steer my mind carefully away from panic
but barely
now and then the nerve-jangling 
sonic hammering pauses
and I hear relaxing solo piano
over the headphones again –
ironically only audible when the mind-bending staccato 
releases its grip on my nervous system –
and the calm voice says
the next scan will take
about three minutes
and I brace myself for whatever eerily emergent-sounding
tone and cadence will ring through my head next

at its worst all I manage in defense
is to think the metta practice:
may I be safe
may I be peaceful
may I be healthy
may I be at ease
when the pulses are a little less overwhelming
two calming images help me breathe:
the spring and my dog

over and over I watch the water burble out of the ground
stroke the soft whorled horsetails lining its banks
let aspen leaf rustle mute magnetic dissonance
gaze up at the blue sky
where the spring has pried the canopy open
and ask the trees to keep me calm

when the noise in my skull interferes again
I switch to my dog:
I stroke his head
the bright white shock like Einstein’s
lean my forehead against his
rest in his gently questioning eyes
breathe in his warm stuffed-animal-fur scent
scratch his chest until he gently puts 
his left paw on my right arm
then I zigzag my nails down his back
to the round black spot before his tail starts

and moment by moment
I manage to stay immobile
sit with my irrational fears,
my dislike of these sensations
try to ignore the welt unscrewing my wedding ring left
and keep my mind from whether it’ll go back on
later I think,
maybe this is what it’s like
to be trapped in an anxious mind
but for now I remind myself
I’ve never heard of anything going wrong
inside an MRI
I send golden light to my leg
picture myself wrapped in a protective white cocoon
that holds the sound apart from me

I also remember myself at 14,
the only other time I’ve suffered through this,
the terror much worse then –
waiting to learn what was happening in my head:
tumor or epilepsy or (please, god) migraine (yes)
inside the tunnel I concocted so many ways
metal might be lodged in my body without my knowing,
waited to see if my body would be pulled apart

and, like today, I came out more or less the same

but now safely home I read an MRI generates
fields as much as 60,000 times the strength 
of the earth’s magnetic field
and it makes sense to be not quite right 
while held inside forces so wrong

Here, I’ll tell it to you straight:
No, it will not be alright. Each
story will be what it is, and
then it will end.

It may never be good enough
if it is good at all, and if
it is bad it shall be terrible,
though somehow not unbearable,

quite incredibly, for the living,
seeming impossible as your next
breath, your next tear drop, another
breaking after being broken

in pain, yet also deeply opened,
and your lungs will take that
breath, until body and worry
ends actually and finally. This is

how it has been, is, and will be:
sacred breaking, holy opening,
light and darkness both, breathing,
toward our unknowable end.

The abandoned house on the corner of the road 
that led to the playground, was haunted.
No one believed us, but we knew.
Why else would a perfectly normal house stay empty? 

In truth, it wasn’t normal. 
It was a portal to another dimension.

Or worse.

My friend Abby lived two houses down, and
to get anywhere, we had to walk by the portal house.

Black, gaping windows, broken glass.
There was always an eerie silence when we walked by, and life 
picked up after we passed the property. 

One Halloween, we walked by the house and – no joke – there was a black
shadow in the southern upstairs window.
We stood and stared for a good minute
before it moved.

We ran, shrieking to Abby’s house where her mother
had some cookies waiting.

Abby and I walked by the haunted portal house
daily, never again turning to look at the southern upstairs window.

Thus, we never saw The Shadow peeking around the curtain…

The hills are burning,
Watch Duty alerts
Is that another fire?
Is the smoke black?
or white? Or heading
our way? 
Do we evacuate?
Level 3, 2, 1…
Grab the dog, the cats
The powers out, hang
the clothes—no, wait
it’s back, but ash is 
flying through the air
landing on my 
clothesline…back
in the house, close 
the windows, shut
the door, no girls
the fire will not get us.
It cannot jump the river,
the canal and set ablaze
1000 structures before 
it reaches us. But, they 
are afraid, anyways
Helicopters buzz overhead
Planes fly low, firetrucks
wail, sometimes water falls
in the distance. Sometimes
the fire is out right away, but 
sometimes, the fight 
goes long into the night 
and then the next.
The fire line, 
burning along 
the ridge turning
our sandy hills, black
our skies gray and sunsets 
burning red hot. 

Day 16 / Poem 16

i jump from bluff’s end into the chilly royal pool of my body, clench my throat.

i’m last of my friends to begin the run, shout my arms in triumph, a drunken crowd
dispersing, the faint afternoon peeling beneath the sun.

i sink and the great wet stone of my stomach tosses against some dark window.

hunger is the hour making way.

the hour and cattails softened by longing open to seed as spines unfurl, and spores
fluff over my hands, pouring and pouring more beginnings than should fit in long, tender stalks.

i don’t know where i’m going but it keeps drifting further away

The-Scarecrow-Stuffs-His-Stomach-Too

You typed the words
of another poet

manual typewriter
turquoise
each black key
hard pressed succumbed
to your small fingers.

You were ten
when Emily
spoke from the page—
make yourself the poetry
here, use the narrows
of mine.

You typed and saw
craft of the poem
then saw her
living inside.

You folded the page
twice against itself
packaged it firm
in young hands
gifted it to your mother

who opened it pinned it
upon her wall
kept it decades and after
gave it back to you

told you how it was
not the world but you
that you were writing for.

U look good u feel good,u feel good u play good,u play good they pay good…
-Coach Prime / Deion Sanders on Twitter, January 29, 2012

Today from the bike path I glimpsed
the men in blue and black suits
getting things done,
striding toward the justice center
ready to mete.

It’s an odd, uncomfortable uniform
made ludicrous in this ninety degree heat:
no one needs a jacket today
or leg coverings
or arm fabric
or a decorative noose,
but there they go,
paying their respects to cultural norms.

Why this shape?  
So many places to hide
things up one’s sleeves,
secret interior pockets to stash
who knows what,
the jacket to mask sweaty pits,
tie like a Croc jibbitz:
a little acceptable splash of individuality.

My father and his father were men like these –
spent decades donning a suit five days a week
headed to court or meetings with clients.
My father had his own U-shaped closet,
rods of somber costumes lining all three sides.
His mother gave them both two new suits a year –
birthdays and Christmases they tried to act enthused
as she produced a swatch
or the final outfit in its garment bag.

Their suits were such a part of their presence
I knew who clothed them:
Jim Cox, with his country club-feeling
distinguished men’s clothing store
in our rundown manufacturing town.
Eventually, he moved to a smaller shop on the west side,
and then the store disappeared entirely.
After that he made house calls,
showing samples, taking measurements,
pinning up hems at home).

At their funerals,
other men in black, charcoal, navy filed past them 
in their caskets, wearing Jim Cox suits
to the grave.
I wonder where all that material went.

I didn’t want to be the next lawyer in line,
instead worked for a guy who most often wore 
a yellow ultimate frisbee t-shirt,
ended up in court anyway
arguing for lynx, cacti, cutthroat trout.

At first I winged it with symphony attire –
long skirts and tops with high necklines,
got by until our actual attorney commented
you look like a schoolgirl,
which seemed unhelpful to our case,
so I told my corporate sister I needed to suit up,
and she passed me one she no longer loved.
Mass-produced by Banana Republic,
I put it on
and felt serious
-er.

Finally a judge would look at me
in my standard-issue suit
and think
now she’s got something original to say.

I push quietly open the door from the hall to her tiny grey room,
step softly over the burnt-umber faux wood floor to where the
windchimes are hung, and I touch the swinging stone to spinning,
to set copper chimes to ringing to the four directions, before I
turn and bend to kiss the dome of my wife’s forehead.

Sometimes, the eyes show blue at the sound, sometimes not.
But my light kiss, or movement of her pillow will do it, and I watch for
a smile I may only imagine, a smile that I have tried to capture in photos
the camera just can’t seem to catch, what I want to see, to believe.

Here, let me get you higher up I say as I move to the head of her bed
and pull her body toward me with the transfer sheet slowly upward
until her pillow reaches the very top … so when I raise the head
of the bed it folds her as it should, at the hips, not sliding her down,
rub and press straighter her permanently contracted toes.

And I adjust the pillow under her calves, so her heels don’t rub on the
mattress, and turn to the tray table, and open the tapioca cup, dip
the tip of her teaspoon for a thimble of vanilla tapioca to let slip
on her tongue, then stand spoon in pudding as I place a fingertip
on the straw standing in her cup of electrolyte, move it to her mouth

let the strawberry or grape or cherry drops drizzle on her tongue,
watching for swallow or choke or cough. Read a stanza or two of our
wedding poem, The Truelove, by David Whyte. Repeat pudding,
repeat electrolyte, repeat kiss, repeat straw drops, repeat, repeat,
rub feet, ring the chimes to call the angels, say goodbye My Love,
until the next time. Repeat, repeat days, love, repeat months, love,
repeat years…  

beneath the surface
there are bones
 
brittle
hard
 
wound with tendons
thin and stretching
 
these are my bones
they hold up my body
 
bones of my mother
bones of my father
bones of the land
 
strained under years
frost heaves
heat waves
salt
tears
 
i will not forget
the bones of this land
 
 

Where have all
the adults gone?
We have given
so much liberty
to children, as if
they are the guides
As if this will turn the tide
As if they will know
right and wrong
Without us saying so
When no one tries
because influencers
don’t need degrees
And this lack of clarity
is in its own way
a kind of cruelty
Are we giving them
just enough rope
to hang themselves?
Is it worse than dunce caps,
wooden spoons and belts?
Will this pendulum ever
stop swinging?

Day 15 / Poem 15

what is desire, if not the feeling when 
all the ripples in me try to carry 
the light of your moon face. stealing 
from the mundane sun, you transform
the scorching light of day into something bearable,
leaving room in the sapphire night sky
so constellations can weave their stories

within water bodies. you kneel in,
illuminating folds and crevices, 
gliding over a surface pecked
by gulls searching for krill.

every 28 days, anticipation 
is a porous castle in warm, 
soft hands, open 
to renewal. 

i tide, 
watching you climb 
over distant sycamores, peeking 
between treetops circling a plain you 
deluge with your light. the wind shivers down
long sleeping grasses. each lilac’s shadow
-y underside glints. rabbits scurry, 
flesh quicksilver, across a field.

like driftwood in pale blue fires, 
when you are spent i don’t mind 
quiet footsteps in the sand; clouds streaming over me 
slowly loose their glow as you 
disappear down the bend, traces lingering 
on cold cheeks, finding your way back 
among the stars. even the air 
stands still       clinging
to the shape of you.

the beach dissolves 
each trespass. your scent
dissipates across the plane.
a lone swan spreads herself in the water.
how i want to give this song to you, 
wondering how to reach across to your world.

They found me, reaching for tusks of asparagus.
Employees with elephant tattoos noosing their necks.
They found me at café tables and inside the dark bars of friends’ parties.
Volunteers at soup kitchens, drivers of motorcycles into barroom brawls.
I was snowed in. I was hugged and witness.
At the museum of conjoined twins severed along their spine,
They found me reaching for the highways of their arms.
Sometimes they disappeared for days.
Sometimes I found them again in the long sleeves of self-loathing,
or heard they resurrected at a trash motel on Route 9.  
Immigrants who remembered the knock at some long-ago door.

Lines and line fragments pulled from
numerous Instagram and Facebook posts

Unfortunate events
today’s rally
for a moment I entertained
a screenshot sorry
for any children.

Not political perhaps
post only opinions
really what am I doing?

Who in the hell would miss
a set up
deemed disgusting
I’m sad for
the receiving end
just won
it doesn’t matter what side.

Handed a world
we witnessed
a South Park episode
God was watching
hate him or not.

Tiny little fist
from the hot and angry
a key part of condemning
such an act
ripping through the skin
I knew immediately
we’re America.

some options for losing one’s self:

  • focus on a single point (mandala, icon, drishti, etc.) until that’s all that remains and you disappear

  • perform an activity (exercise, climbing, labyrinth, hobby resulting in flow state) until your conscious mind is consumed with continuing and your self-consciousness abates

  • follow someone else’s instructions (military, yoga, religion, cult, cruise director) and relinquish free will for a spell

  • put your own needs last (serve, parent, teach, practice asceticism, partner) until they vanish

  • consume (substances) until ego is eradicated

  • meditate until your mind goes blank, the chatter quiets

  • have a near death experience so you can return to that feeling of all-one

  • lie in corpse pose until it feels natural to be so inaccessible

  • merge with the field (chi, qi, ki, the unnameable animating force)

  • love

Greedy for the flesh and breathlessness
of each other.                 but a little wiser
and able      to pause      to sustain
knowing we   might        be able  to count
how many times we can do this   still
and again             so let us do
everything   with a          deep       rush
of blood and electricity   but just
a little    less haste         more savor
where ever  &    when ever giving in.
Let us be teenagers again     kiss, lick,
suck  surrender    possess   crave
every cell    urgently again as if we
could never forget,   yet    knowing
we just        might so yes dearest
give me your every thing as I give my
every thing  as I    really   do
as we really know     how to     explode
and sustain and burn       cry out
and moan   &  laugh   together
with the     crazed joy         of all these
impossible   unsustainable      yet so
      so sweet           late  embers  of the
          great   fire  of oh yes yes
yes               lover           oh
          yes              love

Do you ever put the radio on scan, just
to see what you get? I,
having the attention span of a bored toddler, 

scan often, letting the fates 
decide the next minutes of my life, 
15 seconds at a time.

The voices crackle in and out, snippets 
of ball games and altar calls, 
a thumping bass and some rapid Spanish.

Then, the clanging opening of Tom Petty’s“Free Falling” 
cuts into my browsing reverie.
Immediately, I am 15, 25 and ageless in the same second.

Transcending everything with the power of a chorus.
Hope, despair and revelry in the same chord,

It’s only an elixir for the soul.
A balm for aching bones.
A band aid for a broken heart.

Jagger said, “it’s only rock and roll, but I like it.”

Flights, baggage fees
Delays, delays, delays
Missed flights, missed sleep
Lost luggage, lost tempers
Lost lunches and naps
Little babies cutting teeth
Bursting ears and tiny tears
But, please not near
my seat I think, at first
and maybe second, but
my babies cried too and
I am a villager not a
seat-warmer, so I dig
I find a distraction, a smile
a word of compassion for a
woman I know is a
more weary traveler
than myself.

Day 14 / Poem 14

after 9 years together, this comes:

everything that brought me here slowly reverses,

freedoms of various names swiftly aborted.

mulling over yesterday’s bullet,

others fear for their own freedoms.

my friends are in the air like dandelion wisps.

i, too, am in the air, in my own fashion.

it is as if by habit that i speak of returning.

only when the shock lifts can i acknowledge my grief:

it looks like constant movement, and unfinished houses.

which animal spends its life moving through shells?

“you have to learn which soil allows you to grow.”

severed bonds deliver me out with the tide

like a lantern in the waves, foundation burning within me.

i’m not sure what losses this place is willing to name.

at least we have witnessed each other on the brink of change.

I knew it was late for the sky’s midnight to be loosening to wine,

to be walking my fingers up empty keys,

sliding purpling toes into boots.

late to be scraping frost from a windshield, late to be retreating

to a school I had recently quit but whose students could muse for days on the distinction

between mortality and the hobbling piano’s reflexive bluff,

on the skein of electrons that only ever lets us close enough to repel us,

a hazy model I had modeled my life after, every philosophy

one defect away from dispersing, every boyfriend one kiss

closer to the umbrella next to the door.

I was late to be wanting another baby in the half-wanting

manner of a shrug, late to be warming to the idea I might make a living

writing, late to be calling out of work, to be jogging another mile,

late to be feeling for the strike of life’s tiny hammers on the strings

of my thighs, to be feeling for the moment when, though I know we are not

touching, I turn to M in the dark, and I open my eyes.  

Let it be

Just love. Let

It be you

Who becomes

Love. Instead

Of trying

So hard

To do

Love.

my friend calls me
where are you?
have you heard?
and I assume
we are not safe –
yesterday’s new fire
may have blown up
or another crispy forest
between the two of us
now might be ablaze –
there’s been that sickly salmon
smoky light all this blistering day

Trump’s been shot she says
and all I see is red:
blood, flames, party, future, fury
a martyr is the last thing we need
just this week I’ve been thinking
about Reagan,
remembering John Paul II –
now there’ll be another reason
to recall his infamous name

the countdown to our fire sale future
comes another tick closer
and this week’s heat wave
will seem tame someday soon
probably sooner
after today
we might not be safe
we should have run for the emergency exit
years ago
now we’re trapped
in our comfortable life
assessing how much risk we can ignore
while listening to the 
click click click of the igniter
just before the spark
when the gas goes whoosh

All the doors of my house burst open at once!
Kabir twirls in beating a hand drum.
Walt is shouting lines so long he’s turning blue & about to faint.
Sylvia waits until she’s sure I’m watching
then sighs & sighs & starts a fire
on the corner
of my bed.

& there’s a whole parade now: Blake, Coleridge, the Beats,
Surrealists, Imagists, & the Modernists; Langston Hughes & I make
a break for it as Homer fills & shatters the door frame, with his gigantic head
& shoulders &

A huge wind sweeps everyone & the furniture tumbling and rolling
out on the lawn, & the windows are sparkles in the grass
& I’m stumbling & running for the tree-line three states away & 10,000 feet
up & the horse hooves are pounding the baked drum of the earth
& gaining on me from behind when suddenly I’m in silence,
in a dark yellow cloud of dust, alone.

Does it take
more than
two minutes
to create a line
of verse?

In fact it does,
Dear Reader.
Years of leaves 
and tears, 
and rotting roses
in the sun.

Poetry, so simple
is not, in fact.
It is death and life.
And throwing
caution to 
the wind. 

But no, that poem
isn’t about the high
school boy who broke
your heart.

It’s about the heart
that could 
not
be
broken.

I could see she wanted
a closer look
as we stood
in line during
the Pandemic
at Panda Express.
All masked up,
waiting for orange chicken
and chow mien —missing
staples, a treat for three
good girls who stood
in line with me.
The woman reached
for your cornflower blue eyes,
not to harm—to admire,
but when we
could not touch
our grandmas,
our grandpas,
this felt like an intimate attack
I spoke to deflect,
Being gentle and assertive
as one can behind a mask
and then turned,
just in time to keep
my four-year-old from
swinging a chair
at her.

Day 13 / Poem 13

i take the long route, crossing the river by boat first, and then a tram from roosevelt island. sardines in a glass box, we move eerily close to buildings where lifesized people are scurrying. one of them, splayed across his window, corneas so white, looks into me like an angry god. at work, i move data around Girl Drive folders and spreadsheets, rearranging diagrams when floaters start to blot them out. i spray prescription eye drops, try to blink them away but now little people are carrying blocks of text, thumbnails, design diagrams, around the screen. the girls are moving very fast; girls spilling out of files and folders when i move or delete them. the Journal of Social Science and Medicine says evictions take years off their lives. there are no flats left in this Apple. i am cautious of the little cursor arrows they collect in backpacks when they take my files. still, when my colleague walks through a program, i take a deep breath, and dive the split second he double clicks into their pixellated world. the girls and i lift digital assets together, moving along the network, tracing breaches of firewall and VPN. the girls love their freedom, they do not want to stay still. the gaze that once pierced my back like the sun is fading. every night, our world dissolves to bits when machines turn. every morning, a waking screen floods our world with light. day after day, we clean the hands stained with other people’s baggage. day after day, we fill our fleeting songs with love.

Remember bitterness as flared nostril,
puckered jowl, as dandelion’s rugged vein
and purple petal broiled with garlic, your mother’s campaigns
of pith and rind. She brewed her coffee to kill.

An affair with poison instilled
before you could mouthfeel acrimony’s name
on the back of your tongue or learn that when pain
plants its flag in you, you claim its bountiful swill,

calibrate reflux in handcuffs and nicotine.
raised to be a poison maiden, you roiled
like aftertaste. The men you loved slung jackets

over shoulders, told you, you ruined them.
But your mom imagined Rasputin,
that over time each briny kiss garnered less of a threat.

The-President-of-the-ACME-Anvil-Company-Eulogizes-His-Best-Customer

for Mikayla who asked me to write
about a meadow (real or representative)

Where a curtain
of pink hills part, where

a phosphate sky divides itself
between a half moon
which blinks one eye, where

two planted spears point
heavenward, their spikes
an adoration of lotus flowers
in full bloom, where

you lay your body
like a long saber
upon damp soil and

let yourself

be loosed

crown of stars
behind your eyes

sigh of you
a ruckus of moonflowers
unfolding fast a melody

you carry
as a meadow
as a hum
hummed with one eye
made to open
inside.

 
 

My friends’ son arrives
and I keep finding them in him:
the way he exhales just like his father,
speaks in that same lilt of his;
settles in with the easygoing way his mother has;
he says my grandparents
and they’re there before me, 
names, faces, voices, quirks, and all;
I know his mother as their daughter,
have slept in their house, too.

It’s a wonder
the way we’re woven from others,
their mannerisms embedded in us
at least as much as their ideals.

The first time I met my roommate’s sister
I felt the same –
fascinated to see this new person
perform the same gestures
I’d assumed uniquely hers.

We pass down / pass across /
twine our beings into recursive strands,
still able to mutate / innovate / recombine
in new ways, exciting yet familiar.

It makes me wonder
who has watched me this way –
what friend of my mother’s
cousin of my father’s
colleague of my sister’s
has felt their echo in me?
And, did they feel
this body of mine
did my source justice?

Raven soars slow,
almost invisible, along
the rim of this
sandstone canyon,
desert-varnished cliff.

While his big shadow races urgently
up and down
vertical red and purple walls
above the snow-swollen river,
where seven silent poets paddle canoes through time.

                   ***

Where seven poets paddle canoes through silent time,
on a snow swollen river,
below vertical purple and red walls
down and up
his big shadow races urgently while

along desert-varnished cliff,
sandstone canyon,
the rim almost invisible,
Raven soars slow.

Row houses set in brick and chipped wood 
stand,stark against hard frosts
 
in New England factory towns with gray winters 
and dazzling summer seasons. 
 
Steel,bony men stand with permanent gazes,
wrinkled in place with tradition and rote.
 
They do not bend nor break but 
strain sculpts their stoic existence.

Grass-fed air filled the fair 
The gloom of June 
 fit like a country quilt 
Rides swooped and swirled 
Bbq roasted, corn toasted 
We watched a man sell us 
“Incredible car washing towels” 
And then you held your hand 
Against a mechanical fortune teller 
And your fortune read one word: 
Honest 
But you were holding secrets in your palm 
You joked that the machine must be broken 
And, I argued with you 

Argued 
With 
You 
Because I thought I knew you 
And then we went on rides 
But your heart wasn’t in it 
And I felt you pacifying me 
Placating me, playing me 
Because you were right in the end 
That machine was broken

Day 12 / Poem 12

                              strands
of satin stained islands
mirrored tor

                            the ice
                greets us with caprice
a consistent sort of color:

the confident ease
of brazen masts: blasé

as horizons are lost 
              the host

awakens, a star of anise
the fishermen from         chastise

for good measure
 trove obscure

the quickest path between two points is paved with inadequacy

I shave the legs of my inadequacy with a handsaw

strike glitter and ignite the altar of my inadequacy

inadequacy is best chased with whiskey

inadequacy teases off my panties with its teeth

my love is a cell in the honeycomb of inadequacy

three grapefruits and inadequacy molders the third

inadequacy is free with the cost of admission

if soiled rinse inadequacy in milk

inadequacy may cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea

you skip stones on the broth of my inadequacy

the displacement of inadequacy makes the difference between a man being killed by an avalanche a year later or escaping

inadequacy may impair one’s ability to drive

The-Shark-from-Jaws-is-a-Dandy-With-His-Own-Theme-Song

for Steve who asked me to write about
“How terribly strange to be 70.”—Paul Simon

Twenty sides to ten coins and you
you draw the coin with the flower
all abloom at the center yet remember

it was another year and other coins
when the spiral of the sun expanded
and its rays tickled the face of the one

you could see with only love that summer
when butterflies like kaleidoscopes divided
and multiplied before your eyes.

How astonished you were and are still
by a face and either side of the mouth—
those parenthesis that make whatever

is said a kind of aside to what is really
being said. Can we be serious now?
Or perhaps the better question is

can we be silly now? Finally
at the other end of the shelf where there
existed no bookend before you arrived

to place it. Or perhaps you have simply
circled round to the beginning
of the empty shelf and are ready to place

that first bookend down to begin what is
to be the long reading of your life across
great gatherings of your heart in the hands

of each one you will be fortunate to greet
with your heart’s kindness and a smile. The rays
of the sun still tickle the face of the one before you.

And the fields are all abloom with terribly
strange flowers which were blooming
when you first looked upon it all those years ago.

Year by year
I still learn
there is nothing
I know I’ll get to keep.

My child –
unresponsive on the floor
lips in a grimace
hands like claws –
mercy of mercies,
he was returned to me.

My child –
unseeing eyes blank
fumbling his way 
through the word ok
in the ambulance’s sterile terror –
glory of glories,
he was returned to me.

My child –
lost from the campground
wandering in the junipers
on the edge of wilderness
found two hours later 
and three miles distant –
miracle of miracles,
he was returned to me.

My husband –
spared by polar bears and lightning,
avalanche and rockslide –
wonder of wonders,
he has always returned to me.

Each of these restorations
so stunningly benevolent
there’s nothing I might ever do
to merit the shuddering relief
of getting to keep
these breathing bodies beside me 
for yet another day.

Sometime our luck must end
and one of us will go.
Oh, magnanimous universe,
let me be the first.
I fear I’m too weak to bear the stillness
any of these blood-filled hearts 
I call mine might leave.

This is hard I thought, because I’m one of those
try-anything-once kind of guys, although yes
I think it’s safe to say I won’t be climbing Everest
this time around, or getting to the bottom of the
Marianas Trench, or skiing avalanche chutes
in the Andes or taking a stroll on the moon.

Not to say I haven’t pulled some crazy stunts
and done things that really could’ve got me killed,
that’ll make great stories to tell in the nursing home
or lavish upon friends gathered ‘round my deathbed.

So I just started writing to start writing and it came out

Once upon a long time ago, when our dreams piled upon
more dreams and projects and goals stretched out
beyond all the old horizons, my beloved and I would
imagine our fire turning to embers in the fireplace
while we sat close on the couch and took turns reading
poems to one another, each until our eyes tired in the
evening’s dying light…

But that was in the years when our brothers, and parents,
were alive and her son was not murdered, and her body
and mind not stolen by disease, and the whereabouts of
all the grandchildren were known and the unalterable
fact is, we will not in this life be reading poems by the fire
before walking together back to our bed.

A Wednesday summer night,the heat hanging, 
a hazy veil over the concrete of the sidewalk.
It tries not to slide into the cool cracks of the sturdy stone, 
but it is drawn in, in spite of itself.
 
The weekly band concert is in session.
Parents and children lounge
on blankets or recline in lawn chairs. 
Dusk settles as the gazebo illuminates the tiny park.
 
The director, a serious, self-important maestro, 
eyes an angry shade of brown, presides 
over the execution of Souza and Gershwin.  
 
Two streets over, by the convenience store, a truck engine revs
as thumping bass lines carry through the humid air. Raucous
laughter drowns the swelling of the band. 
The maestro’s face burns like a hot jalapeno.
 
In the waning summer breeze, two worlds collide.

Treading water 
Sink or swim 
Hold my breath 
Don’t give in 
 
One more stroke 
One more kick
Close your eyes 
Another inch 
 
Can I pause? 
Can I flip 
the script 
 
and 
 
just 
 
float
 
 
bit?

Day 11 / Poem 11

at the edge of a cliff jutting 
out of the earth, dawn seeps in her air-
brushed eyes, golden, locks shorn

unlike her husband’s; tail between his
legs, unable to get it up, passed out drunk 
while she surveys her kingdom. 

lifts her head in search of wickedness, spying 
on the cursed and the cruel crawling
in her dominion. “i know just

how i am going to use finish you”, she whispers,
steeling her own nerves, her grip, 
roaring to keep the others at bay, especially wounded.

she is the maker of her world, and the ruler of it.
like a bible, the laws of nature are hers to interpret,
turning god’s gift, this savannah, into her own hell pit.

ON MY FRIEND TELLING ME SHE NO LONGER FEELS LIKE THE MAIN CHARACTER IN HER STORY / Moriah Cohen

We measure ourselves in lowballs of Jameson,
Reds squashed into ashtrays like half-heeded
Sunday School prayers, in sunflowers we pick
from the neighbor’s field, then peacock on straw hats.

The race is quicker in furlongs.
We hot glue enough ribbon to cocoon the heavy,
spring air, so what brawls its way out is flinty, unforgiving.

We wear our bodies like extra-large Walmart
tee-shirts, like storm clouds threatening the party.
We bring paper plates, raffle the purse.

We’ve gone leek the day we wake at forty, waterlogged
in sleeping bags beside the lake, and your daughter calls you
from her boyfriend’s house 300 miles away to say she knows
you’ll never leave her.

It’s not supposed to, but it feels insulting
how imperceptibly the world stopped churning
in our cheap, milky wombs, how the body
betrays once then again and again, how the girls
we still see in the mirror wear hats as large as the sun.

Where-does-the-soul-go-with-its-little-blue-suitcase_


Without Want of Fruit or Love Story of a Young Woman in the 1500’s  / Jessica Rigney

After Pieter Bruegel’s The Hay Harvest

’Tis the Prussian sky, the gold
fields heaping, how her fist clenches
tight ‘round her rake, tender feet
inmost toes in shoes dusty hot

on a red road out. Her body
damp-drowsed next to mine early
so early before sun reached the curl
her neck escaped, sleeping bonnet

loosed ‘neath our loving afore.
She is everything to me and I
can bear all. Can bear my hard hands
stiff back, a hole worn through my sole

of leather. Hardship is not
a thing I can see nor feel with her
sweet breath at my cheek. Her sighs
take each heavy thrust of my rake

out into the hay as though they were
loft and ache—both lifted by
all heaven’s promises skyward for
the bounty. What we harvest keeps me

sated without want of fruit—save for
her bright mouth and its upturn aside me
at start of our walk out. I look to her
my sweet lady strong and sullen. Still

a wettish lust between our thighs
rises in the heat. ’Tis her quiet ivory
profile framed azure blue which makes me
lose myself! Each morning she is

gaining ground, gaining me—me and my
blissful-hidden, gold-tipped sound!

carmine:
color of kings, nobles, clergy
the stuff that made redcoats red
hue of cardinals
            feathered and rosaried
70,000 exoskeletons sacrificed
for a single pound of dye
a fugitive color unfit for paint
            but binding well to wool
& the New World’s fate
until crushed insect bodies
            traded like silver

today
green cactus pads
studded with white webs she didn’t yet know
stained her mind exactly carmine red
the way John the Baptist’s blood
bruise-purple
still marks where St. John’s Wort petals
            crossed her open palm

she jumps one golden hurdle then the next
binding the people around her like cordage strands:
may the fierce joy of these small suns
drive all evil from the day

reading love poems wherein he answers
questions asked by his wife about the length
and breadth and depth of his love for her
who could I think of but my own beloved?

There was that moment that distant blue
that shone through centuries and more,
blue even older in your eyes blue reflected
millennia ago off the Euphrates the
Blue Nile the whole blue Pacific Ocean

when I knew I had loved you before there were
Octobers and Augusts, before monuments
made to the moon and the stars, which were
ours even before calendars were marked on
stones or bones those thousands of years

before anyone had left Africa for Asia before
anyone knew the blue of the Aegean Sea
and its blueness and stars were etched
on stone and painted on walls. I loved you
sacred before temple, synagogue, or church

when love was blue water in a green cathedral
under a new blue sky and the water fell from
cliff stone into sun-sparkled air became the
dazzled light of water falling as I am still so
dazzled as earth draws me falling incandescent

for you now as through all those centuries
now as then as always I love you as the blue
water bends to touch the shore as we touched
our shores under moons and stars as we loved
again and again all this time since touch began. 

Digital life runs
in a spastic news cycle.
Pieces of platforms
splinter into the
souls of the tech connoisseurs
and digitize life.
 
You hear a buzzing,
even walking the forest,
but bees are silent.
Programs never quit,
background processing is done
when we humans sleep.
 
To unplug, turn off
the humming busy-making machines 
of working.
Pry them from the wall,
these serpentine sinews of
binary enslavement!
Bind whispering widgets of content.
Delete!
 
Choke this chaos cacophony. 
All hexadecimals, be gone!
 
 

White and gold flowers
by a pond, a mirror of
a man lost in his reflection. 
So, overcome by his beauty, 
he fell under a spell
of his own making. 
A self-obsession ending 
in tragedy, blooming eternally.

But how does this explain
the word as it is known now?
As we feel it, brace
for it and are crushed by its
frozen force. 

A person, a mother,
a friend, a pastor, an ex-husband,
lost, not bound by their beauty, 
but by another form of self-obsession.
Of fear, 
of being found out,
of being seen as they are.

Day 10 / Poem 10

enter straight into the living room

upside down table
newly assembled
of finest swedish design
suitcase open-face sandwiched in a corner 
on the floor; 
quilt used by one guest that one time
cosmetics overflowing from every possible container.
air conditioning unit, howling like a cat.
candles flickering across the apartment, at various points in time

the living room is also the bedroom

damaged curtain: permanent peepshow
view of the bridge, teeming with cars like ants
two 10-feet tall ivory masks gazing in 
from an exhibition space across the quay
aloe vera products interspersed between the orchids 
on the window sill, 
defying death each day
unused vibrator gathering dust 
on the right side of a queen-sized bed
digital camera from 2012 that will surely die 
of old age on the next trip
stray whole foods bags where your cat can live

“walk-in” closet

hangers pitched at various heights, featuring
various clothing traditions, fabrics, prints —
if you drop enough acid, a lovely pattern starts to emerge.
standing room for a toddler or a cat,
or a modest plant

the bedroom doubles as a home office

a swivel chair rescued from a sidewalk, damaged on its way:

once, purest Macintosh white
deconstructed armchair, leaning against the wall
glass containers packed with books, postcards, and bills
unmounted whiteboard with tiny colored notes scribbled upon it
a modem using the router as headrest

return to the “foyer”

shopping bags, overturned, with matching gift paper.
a pair of the most uncomfortable heels known 
to man, but at least they look posh.
stray piece that was never attached to the vacuum cleaner.
categorized and uncategorized refuse, waiting to be escorted out.

into the pantry

an oven tray guarding the stovetop from prying eyes
loose notes and cards drying on the counter
the faint whiff of chicken soup
lush cherries inundated with leaded water, 
in crystal bowls, for feasting.
produce that goes months without 
revealing signs of neglect the way you do.
little heaps of pits scattered in bowls, the sink, 
like headstones made of piles of stone.

the restroom, at last

bath bombs, and water filters on every faucet; 
lush accessories, scrubs, luxe products no longer made.
all the cleaning supplies even a germaphobe could hope for.
numerous weighing scales beneath the sink,
so you never have to fiddle with batteries again.
porcelain tub that can hold 
the length of your body:
final resting place.

If my first memory is a black seed opening in an amber iris,
then in the second, a doctor sponges a gash in my eyebrow,
removes the embedded fang, stitching the dog’s need
inside the wound, while my mother rocks me.

The dog is half-wolf, which means after I am half wolf,
knocking down garbage cans, ravaging the neighbor’s chickens.

Years later, you find feathers in the tomato garden;
I scratch at your doorstep.

Teens skateboard past boutiques gilded in linen, chiffon,
and as you guide me to the surf, laughter breaks
out of me as a white light, my body more breath and seam
than flesh, more pool, chokecherry, moss, indigo. 

Good-Charlottes-Web

Describe it to me he says
                          the way it seems to be that you are

falling
         away
                  from yourself when you speak. Yes

she says  this little loss
                                  of
                                  breath is a problem—

The quiver within is a signal of sorts and I

I won’t                make sense of it this lifetime
I don’t think                but you

You
      are 
               there
                          genuine as a vast sea—

container of
                  all                 rough waters—

                  Undisturbed.
                  Substantial.
                  Constant.

Bless me, Father, 
for I have sinned
It’s been more than thirty years since 
I’ve been inside one.
But you should know, 
I still confess
to everyone every day.
St. Jude raised me –
Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes –
anyone might be redeemed,
any day might yield a miracle.
A modern, angular church
without the distraction of aesthetics,
we had two boxes to choose between,
both inside the chapel,
set apart from the nave:
face-to-face, or screened.
A fundamental split –
do you wish to look your confessor in the eye,
human to human?
Or remain hidden
while you reveal your vices,
seek counsel from a disembodied voice?
I was a face-to-face Catholic,
always more interested in the animal/anima
than the divine.
Seventeen at my last visit,
what was there to confess?
Mostly invoking G_d,
calling on him/her/it
as if we were friends,
saying that one syllable
in all kinds of tones.
I’d be sprung soon enough,
my transgressions too tame for much discussion,
then sent to kneel
and appeal separately to Our Father
and His Mother,
to apologize
and begin again.
That was the best part –
the slate wiped clean,
the unburdened breast.
Now I wonder whether I’ll ever say
those words again:
Bless me, Father,
(my own dead five years this week)
for I have sinned
(true always).
No, I don’t think
I’ll lock myself in that room again.
I’d rather whisper to sky.

Things were dark and gray and it rained often,
          snowed once in the dead looking trees.
                   The children moved further away.

Then the sun came out more often, clouds grew sparse
          and things got bright green for some days.
                   Some of those days, my wife seemed less sick.

When the grass went from green to gold to brown
          some of the trees bore fruit, and some bore fire
                   and the fire bore smoke.

Then the earth was burning even as the days shortened
          and some of the people wept, some shouted.
                   In the darkness some of us prayed, some sang.

The palm tree is squat and rather angry looking, sitting out on my lawn. 
Next to it, a smaller upstart cranes its small neck.
“Me too, me too!” it cries.
The taller palm, begrudging its moxie, leans to the south.

The small shrubs below the palms dislike both green, waving idiots.
Browning fronds brush the top of their small canopies.
“Talk about no space!” they grumble, bristling. 
“Someone should really cut them back.”

The mulch is not a fan of the shrubbery, dripping its leaves like sap,
sticking to the in-betweens of the mulch pellets.
Finally, the dear dirt, below it all, quiet and firm.
It does not know what goes on above, or below.

It is holy firmament and fine.
This peace of dirt, meaning is nothing.

We placed flowers
and rocks and words
over your life 
I watched you mark
your sister’s births
with flowers and give
a large rock to piano
you gave flowers and rocks
to Covid and hybrid classes 
and to your fifth-grade year
when your teacher got sick
your first rock was for
Max’s funeral. Many 
flowers, only a few
singular rocks. This makes 
me proud, though it is 
not about me, it is about you
and how you view your 
world and your life
and how your anxiety
has brought you here,
something I couldn’t 
help or fix for you
But, I can bring you
here and give you space
to draw your own 
conclusions about the
good the bad, and
what it means to you. 

Day 9 / Poem 9

through a screen our voices
shrunk          white light of winter

behind them          a closing door: 
our past selves languish          piecemeal

parts out there          while in here           strapped in
swivel chairs          portals narrowing

tiny flats watched us shrink          easier
to resent your disappearance          to

bitch and moan          at the window to your soul
obfuscated          failed to notice          my own

the voices sang          in unison          once          upon 
a time          greyed out          i didn’t light          these corners

all the loneliness in these rooms          neglect brewing
more of it          outside, waiting          in the aftermath

  Later, when M and I see a man with a sweat band
strapped to his forehead on our way to my parents’,
              the man’s socks rolled up to his knees, hips
striding out of their sockets akimbo, we joke about the imitation
              of human behavior by saying to each other, “Hello
I’m wearing my human skin.” Which is also what I say
              of my baby nephew, his head bobbing on his wrinkled
toothpick neck as he tries to mouth sounds I enunciate at him.
              He pokes his tongue out, sucking his cheeks,
his chest shaking, because the soul is very old and wanders
              a long corridor finding the body as he wakes.
And if I’m honest, today, I feel less human and more like ivy
              swallowing electrical wire, the last brick before the city’s
closet piles scrap iron, broken concrete, all of the graffitied
              shipping containers lined in their pretty row. 

Dorian-Gray-Wraps-His-Famous-Portrait-in-Funny-Papers

Would we? He would never ask, would we still?
Be who we are if we were not us? This he would never.

For it is her domain to stare off across a landscape and wonder. It is
Her mind which moves and is moved by the subtleties of a world

He inhabits and makes go ‘round for her pleasure. Yes she says
Without tempting a question. Yes we would have found our way

To one another’s side somehow in the scheme of an utterly
Unfathomable world. And it calms him she sees how he relaxes

A little and this is what he does too for her in his way of holding
Her steady and squeezing her frame back into itself so she knows

She is still here no matter the strangeness of time and her unsteady
Heart. Oh the love—the love she thinks has been a gift

To both of them though pained as they have been from time
To time. And what of the future? This they do not venture

To say—cannot make one another look too far ahead now.
It is not ours to know she says and he wishes he could

Agree. Wishes he could let go and somehow trust as she does
But it is not his manner. She is his to find and follow and send and

Wait to receive. He will be here she knows he will continue
Looking to her to know what is next and how and with what force.

My sons ask
whose side I’m on:
Drake or Kendrick Lamar?

How do you even know about this?
I ask.
It’s in the culture
they say
It’s everywhere
and I see again
the parallel lives we lead,
my algorithms distinct from theirs.

They try to explain
the soup they’re swimming in,
try to put it in terms I’d understand:
How did you learn that Elvis was alive?
Elvis is dead!
I sing Living Colour to them.
Ok, how did you learn Elvis had died?
they probe.
Elvis was always dead to me!
They fact-check that 
and are infuriatingly correct –
I was four, have no memory of it.

They think my generation is older than it is,
try other tests:
Nixon resigning?
I was one.
Kennedy getting shot?
Come on.
A man walking on the moon?
Sigh.  Now they’re just pushing my buttons.

I help them out:
the Challenger explosion,
Reagan getting shot,
the Pope getting shot –
these things I know firsthand
(well, secondhand from the media).

I try to explain How Things Used to Be:
We had three radio stations 
and four TV channels
and two daily newspapers
and everyone knew the same thing
at the same time.
Now my feed serves up
totally different scraps than theirs.

We circle back:
I must choose a side.
I at least know the hook
to Started from the Bottom, so Drake.

Do you think they could be in on it together
I ask
to build both brands?
Maybe I still know something
they haven’t yet learned.

But then they quote me some of the barbs
too damaging for good business,
and they are right as usual –
I have so much more to learn.

Now is a nebulous time,
sliding between yesterday and tomorrow.

I borrow this moment, stealing from
Peter to pay Paul, not knowing

I could pay them both, many times over,
with one breath in, then out.

Sharply, it comes into relief – the past.
Lava bubbling up from the earth,

or pins in the fabric, stabbing your ankle
when Mother was hemming your pants,

because you were always too short.

Locales in sepia, or fluorescent hue
make up the highway of my memories.

A car in the night, traveling to unknown destinations. 

God’s first words on record,
“Let there be light,” and
with these first words 
He also created sight. 

Did he want a lamp
to see his handiwork
creating oceans, fauna, 
jungles and deserts. 

Then, man in his image
Love and Lover
incarnate, whole
Eyes, for each other

And for assessing,
surveying, deciding, 
weighing, conveying
and vital aligning 

Every thought, expression
worn like a canvas
of the soul, Spirit
alive, bold innocence 

Before they grew hard
with knowledge and fear
Eyes, a perfect reflection,
A revelation, a mirror

So, many ways of seeing 
in this world of lambs and lions
Of deep-sea dwellers and flyers,
prey, and predators, and Shepherds

How did they see the world?
From light to frightening darkness 
From heights to ocean depths
Varied vantages transgress

How would my viewpoint change
If I had the poor vision of a kiwi
or the glowing eyes of a squid?
To know all this and yet see me? 

How does seeing all illuminate, 
inform and inspire an Intelligence
A spinning spider, a salmon upstream
A butterfly wing, elephants

Yet, He sees the motivations of my heart.
The upsets of governments and kingdoms
He sees me as this tapestry
Each step, as valued as His own 

When hopelessness leaves me blind
And silences my joy, and I forget
to look for anchor points displayed
A Douglas Fir, a frog, loves formed objects

God created a world reflecting, revealing
His heart, His hope, and the healing
He built into His earth—all—this 
—light, to share all—this—beauty. 

 
 

Day 8 / Poem 8

the cigarette burns through, i don’t 
put out the red light.

like a car from a bridge, the ash falls. i can hear it
stain the surface. steep drop. making waves 

in the tub, i watch the bruise move, 
the ripples, undisturbed. half asleep, fading.

hold my hair, my eyes
don’t let me sink

i once loved
a boy who loved
if love is a word
people love to kiss wounds open

he loved 
the only way he knew:
as if my body is his body,

the body was 
a canvas for pain.
between pinched fingers and molting,

he showed me how he’d close the loop.
he made my body into his body.

fishes paint my lips with their tongues.
chars and nicks must hide from view.

how dare you disrespect me and walk away, i fumed.
you never looked back.

                                                    flashlights bounce along a ridge
                                                                                                               an orchard of light combs the body’s cubicles

                                                                                       time wavers
                                                                                                               every episode is the same mystery to unbox

        sure the answer to her question is dirt beneath her nails
                                                                                                               sure the square-jawed man she follows into a bar can  tease
                                                                                                               a moth from his mouth

           she gauges rational explanations by rings in old growth
                                                                                                               she measures fragments of shard and swarm

                                                  so much of this world is above us
                                                                                                               so much of this world is inside us
the lacuna between life and death rests in the chest’s stiffness
an indigo hue engulfing the abdomen
                                                                                                               the lacuna between life and death trembles like honey locust

                        at night she folds her past in books and old pots
                                                                                                               at night she sprouts a beak and talons

she swallows an hour, her gullet distended on clumps of grass
                                                                                                               a sapling for every truth she wants to believe

The-Witch-of-the-Wastes-Warning

for Jonathan who asked me to write about LEGO

Through mirrored goggles
the mother and the son scan the reef.
Surf crashes against breakers and bubbles
hit their skin and evanesce. Below their bellies
a humuhumunukunukuapua’a with his fat lips
and tiny pectoral fins helicopters around
makes the mother and the son laugh and release
huge bubbles while their bodies bob and sink—
waves and their aftermath.

The lagoon is manmade.
The ancient caldera where their house lies
is not.

She wonders what it takes to read
lay of the land
and make a lagoon out of shoreline

what it takes to build a man
out of a boy.

Over their backyard trampoline
the mother and the son drape sun-soaked
bodies with their heads tilted back.
The moon is upside down
and all the LEGO is scattered on the ceiling.
The boy had been building a toad
a fish or the reef or toad robot.

The boy’s face is sweaty
his tan cheeks pinked.
The mother runs her hand
through his upside-down curls
her fingers touch shoreline
all stuck to the boys sandy scalp.
His mouth is open his eyes stare past
the sky past the moon past
the LEGO past her eyes past a future
that doesn’t stare back.

Yesterday the pond was still.
Today silver flashes among inert rock.

We are both more awake, alive
for having taken this chance at life.

Every day we make a litany of choices,
some affecting another’s fate.

We blunder our way through
trying to trace an arc closer to love than want.

It is possible to do so many things wrong,
some in ways that can’t be righted

(perhaps the chemistry is off
or the chlorine will kill

or the algae will prove inedible
or the crayfish will attack 

or the fish will eat each other
or the pump will suck them in

or drought will make the pond run dry –
all good reasons to freeze into inaction).

I cannot be perfectly confident
about the rightness of anything I attempt,

and if they do not thrive,
their suffering will be added to my sins.

But we brought them from a small, dark pool
on its way to shrinking smaller,

where death already waited, patient,

under the seemingly sheltering rocks –

hard to say whether they’ll see us as saviors
or demons who’ve condemned them to their fate.

Nothing we do is without risk
(even running from uncertainty)

and sometimes our movements turn gears
that bring more vitality, more joy on scene.

Fish, forgive me, if I have trespassed by playing god.
God, forgive me, if I’ve transgressed by moving your fish.

And now we must wait a good long while
to learn, what was skillful action here?

Is this stone pond meant to harbor souls?
Or will it prove their end?

Once I thought I’d always know
what was best to do.

But as I age, I begin to see
yes morph into no and back.

Less certainty, more observation.
Less calculation, more experimentation.

Less righteousness, 
more surrender.

Big fire, says the highway patrolman.
And smoke has closed the freeway,
so you can’t get on here. Just watch
for signs heading east, wait to be
shown where to turn again; follow
the traffic into the horizonless gray.

Smoke, and painted road, and once in
awhile shape of a tree, a grain silo,
but no horizon in any direction. I try
turning south again and again but
am turned back by orange cones,
striped barriers flashing yellow lights

and the traffic thins as the dark
afternoon wears on without a sign
except the orange sun appearing
and disappearing in smoke curtains
and the road going up and down hills,
bending into turns, and finally the last

car to follow turns back the way we came,
but I keep on, looking for left turns south
riding them until there’s only another
right turn back to the east and more smoke
and less to see, and I think the world may
have ended without my knowing, or any

of us knowing. So this is it I think, no ice
no fire, just blinding smoke and everyone
lost but driving or walking or flying
maybe until the fuel runs out and I think
there’s a certain freedom here at the end
because no matter what we do now,

whether we were righteous or humble,
cruel or kind, whether we loved the earth
and every being on it, or we consumed
and destroyed and burned and poisoned,
the consequences are the same, smoke
suffocating the just, and the unjust, all.

On the high street, the
sidewalk was only laid 

on the north side.
Mothers told them
to be careful walking home, 
as cars pummeled by

the uneven
slabs of concrete, 
heaved after
years of spring thaws 
and winter frosts.

Chalk outlines of hopscotch
in front of
a white house where 
the toys cluttered 
the door yard. 

Shrill voices sang,
“Step on a crack, break your mother’s back!”
So many cracks,
it was a miracle
any mothers in the town 
had straight spines.

Every child, in anger, had jumped 
and hoped that
it would work.

As if avoiding the imperfection 
on the sidewalk,
they were responsible for mother’s 
well being.

The woman who 
gave them life.

How much did they
owe her?

So much they could never 
pay it back. 

Infinite payday loan. 

And still owed
when she is laid to rest.
There is never enough
to make it up to her. 
The least they can do:
miss the cracks in the sidewalk.

 

My father’s graveside sits
among blueberry fields, his
tombstone, a prescription pad
A final diagnosis for man,
no, a doctor, neurologically bent
on deducing, determining, 
delivering prognosis after prognosis. 

He valued medicine and memory,
his mind working like a Google
search bar. A human-computer
with life experience. His early years 
learning Spanish and medicine 
in Guadalajara. Running free clinics 
VW breakdowns in desolate
spaces. Double residencies and 
a private practice all fed
this personal database. 

He could not stop—even
as he took his last breath
he repeated, “If I just, if I just…”
But he’d lived on borrowed time, 
like a vehicle with high miles
despite its age. He was ready
to go, but he’d never be done 
figuring out why. 

He said he could remember 
every day of his life, 
but I often felt forgotten.
I suppose it is fitting 
he’s buried amongst blueberries, 
a star fruit, a superfood 
improving memory,
my memories of him.

Day 7 / Poem 7

InRegentsPark-Tupelo

I have been a storm
and he a dark wing within
the wings of the storm

Mary-Poppins-Swipes-Right-for-Pennywise

At five I imagined a flyway like a runway
monarchs could see from the clouds

their flight path lit up with pink umbels
atop thousands of milkweeds laddered up to sky.

They were everywhere I looked field after field
fluttering past the window of my mother’s Buick.

Country roads and cornfields framed
with roadside gardens of the stuff

tangled in wild carrot chicory dandelion burdock.
The wings of mama monarchs were a slow mesmerize

open                    close                     open                     close

in noonday sun as they flopped egg-heavy from air
onto leaves thick, ovate, run through rugged midveins I thought

would weather anything and had seen them do so when bent
after thunderous rain of an Illinois storm they’d risen

once more, stretched broadly back and lifted stems thick
plump with wet, and harboring hundreds

of eggs nestled snug against undersides slack.
I imagined the monarch’s wings were a rust-stained map

for the countryside I tromped across, ditches and fields drawn
over either shoulder lined up in its black veins and white spots.

Found folded at my feet like envelopes tucked full
of secrets, the monarchs who’d lived out their season

I imagined could be opened and rubbed
for their wing backs’ hidden maps. Like my mother

rubbed a hot iron across waxy transfers
to patch and mend my torn pants.

Water destroys fire.
            I splash it on my cheeks – meltwater vs. blush.  Snow snuffs blazes.
Fire destroys metal.
            Rings melt to puddles.  Only twisted chassis remain.
Metal destroys wood.
            Rip/roar of chainsaw.  Thick thwack of axe.
Wood destroys earth.
            Houses appear like fungi.  Roots fault sidewalk.
Earth destroys water.
            The West – thirstier than the Colorado can serve.  Greedy ground absorbs all.
Water produces wood.
            Riparian galleries trace earth’s arteries.  Water almost anything, and it will grow.
Wood produces fire.
            Cells convert to energy.  Dull solid brown becomes wavy blue yellow red.
Fire produces earth.
            Sea floor buckles and spreads.  Islands hover over hot spots.
Earth produces metal.
            Silver, gold sleep below us here.  Tungsten draws men into the mines.
Metal produces water.
            Pickaxe probes for well.  Pipes shunt water where it’s wanted.
Water controls fire.
            Hydrants stud most corners.  Helitankers scoop buckets to stifle blazes.
Fire controls metal.
            Glowing blades are hammered sharp.   Hot silver and gold snake into molds.
Metal controls wood.
            Rasps and chisels shape bough into bowl.  Spikes save massive trees.
Wood controls earth.
            Digging stick makes space for seed.  Walnuts deter other roots.
Earth controls water.
            Banks dictate flow.  Grade locates rapids.
Water dissolves metal.
            Sheen succumbs to rust.  Pipes corrode.
Metal dissolves earth.
            Lead poisons land.  Traps clamp on carnivores, leaving land haunted.
Earth dissolves fire.
            Sometimes.  Or it smolders for decades.  Fire breaks sever what could be from what will.
Fire dissolves wood.
            Leaves crumble to ash.  Forest becomes knoll.
Wood dissolves water.
            Trees breathe water into air.  Moisture enters rootlets, becomes arboreal.

All of us are cycling,
becoming in sometimes unbecoming ways,
alternately welcoming and rejecting
the opposites within,
trying to stay grounded
but also transcend.

Text in italics from The Oriental Elements in Bardic Companion by Susan Henssler.

When dawn is a door opening in the sky,
and cool air enters through the window
outside which sings the nesting thrush,
I turn to your warmth, press my need
to your want, and we become a door too,
opening in our own sweet, urgent eternity.

Your love, like molten lava, lies in rest.
You smolder, simmer, bubble in your core.
Volcano, leave the innermost, that’s best.
 
Inside, your feelings – anything but blessed.
You cry to him, one man you could adore,
Your love, like molten lava, lies in rest.
 
But love to him comes difficult, if pressed.
You turn to liquid pleasure, this your shore.
Volcano, leave the innermost that’s best.
 
But who am I to judge you in your breast?
There is a man who wishes for much more.
Your love, like molten lava, lies in rest.
 
I know you, this a burden you will test.
Strength lives inside you, fighting not a chore.
Volcano, leave the innermost, that’s best.
 
Give life your love, pray much and live well, lest
you fall on knees, on stones in path of war.
Your love like molten lava lies in rest,
Volcano, leave the innermost that’s best. 

We married on luck
with triple sevens
in the air. Independence
flags still waving. 
Nearly Forty thousand 
shared our day. 
Seven- a perfect number,
biblical.
I wanted, no I needed 
luck and fate and 
Jesus on our side.
I’d walked this aisle
once before. I’d loved 
and been left broken-
hearted. Lives bled 
together, uncoupled, 
untethered, dissolved.
I knew risk, 
each step ushered 
and yet taking 
my father’s hand, walked
 toward this new  promise,
 a life we’d knit
together, with jobs and job loss, 
fixer-uppers and babies, 
baptisms, backyard BBQs,
burials and birthdays…
no luck, just one foot
and then the other.

Day 6 / Poem 6

in dreams: a goldfish, 
tv ads flicker in mirrored 
tank, bounce off my eyes

Left on the counter to spoil.
Tote bag in the Jeep’s trunk vanished behind umbrellas.
How many days untended to sulfur?

I round the knife longways,
halve, then twist alligator skin.
What is inside is threaded with carob, wizened.

Where your palm parts my sternum,
four toothpicks,
single seed without remorse.

It’s maniacal the way we tie a quick catchy rhythm to the fast talking elbow padded thrift store junky sleaze ball handing out loans on steep interest to anyone foolishly tempted by the only song in the show worth a damn / Sure villains aren’t the only ones who sing patter songs but you can’t tell me Mary Poppins was completely angelic as she descended from the heavens riding a green tropical bird she goddamn skillfully transfigured into an umbrella sprinkling her sharply supercalifragilisticexpialidocious onto the Banks who were the unexpected model example of a dysfunctional family / But usually it’s the bad guy who’s really three queer coded thembos stacked in a trench coat who gets the slippery song to spit often directly to the audience by way of too many asides / Heroes who are on a redemption journey can rattle about in the form as well like Harold Hill or the lot that got lost Into The Woods but they have to be the salt of the earth type or untrustworthy or one bad decision away from smithereens / Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to the villains & their sad monologues bc in a way I’ve always been told I’m a deviant on a mission to harm children & the precious status quo / 

Now that you’ve grown steel barbs all across your skin
sent electrical shocks out from their tips and your father
can no longer push you up against a wall
or grab fistfuls of hair at the nape of your neck

Now that your throat is broken open
your head tipped back like a Pez dispenser
and clamshells have erupted from the cutaway of your neck
to land all around your feet and chitter chatter away at your sister
all the truths you held back

Now that your saddle shoes kick gently
into your mother’s thighs as she carries you away
from the home of the man who waited to molest you

Now that you’ve disappeared the wood-slatted crib
and the frightening clown with the pointy red-tipped nose
and are held against your mother’s body in her arms
on the front stoop where you breathe
into the damp of her neck and hear her

voice say
once

                                                       and for all
It’s okay. Mama’s here. You’re going to be
alright. Now how
will you live

                                                       your life?

My torn muscle
wrenches thoughts toward healing.

What is it they say
knits things anew?

Time ice heat
rest elevation compression

herbs medicine stretching
massage needles tape…

But she shakes her head slowly.
It’s all not enough.

              Love.
She says to tell my leg

how fond of it I am,
what a faithful companion it’s been,

to remind it all the heartache we’ve walked off,
all the places I still want to go together.

So I take you in my arms like a baby.
Massage sweet nothings into your long fibers.

Try to take away your ache
so you can lead the way deep into leaf glow.

Oh, little leg,
I’m gonna sing you a lullaby and put you to bed,

and hopefully everything will feel
a little more whole tomorrow.

You did a fine job today
of bringing me from A to B,

(including 36 holes of mini golf).
Now just lie back

and dream light-filled dreams
while one damaged cell after another

chooses to embrace its neighbor’s edges
so we might dance again.

The Caribbean water was clear even at the shallow shore
where I was snorkeling in 1966, on Saint Thomas Island, where
the sand was white below the Bacardi Distillery and the sea floor
was dotted with rocks completely covered in corals and varieties
of algae and tunicate worms, so every millimeter of every surface
was alive with things this Illinois boy had never seen or imagined,
and I became so absorbed in deep exploration, astonishment,
profound pleasure, that joy dissolved my boundaries from fish,
anemones, so many things I had no name for, but thought beautiful.

And then between two small coral rocks in about a foot of
water an odd stone appeared no more than six inches in front of my
facemask, its edges strangely smooth despite their rough appearance
against white sand. And as I reached to gently touch it with my
index finger, the rock seemed to swirl, became tentacles in motion,
and an eye opened!

          In that moment I understood it was sizing me up, whether
I was a threat or predator, whether it should jet off to safety. But it
was fairly cornered and comfortable, and it knew that though I
had touched, I hadn’t poked or grabbed. I was floating and bobbing
the tiniest bit in the water above. And what is there to say? I knew
I was being seen by this creature from another world, and she was
being seen by me, a creature of the airy spaces, sharing the same
world. And we just looked at one another in a moment of vast peace
and quiet… and another moment… and another…

When the mundane world burst in with a “you okay kid? whatcha
doing” from above, and as a human shadow moved over the octopus
she was gone in a puff and swirl of white sand. And I was changed.

In summertime, a damp, cool refuge.
In wintertime, a frigid dirt box.
 
Here, with spiders larger than any that should live in this climate,
and dusty jars of something left by the woman who died
in the house before my Grandma bought it, 
I ventured down there only out of necessity.
 
Even if it was broad daylight in July, and the rusted 
hatch that opened to the back yard, flaked 
with forest green paint, was flung wide…
even then, I was careful.
 
October nights were the worst, and the best.
The veil so thin, that every spirit and entity 
that had ever crept close to our home,
was just around the corner.
 
January, frost-bound snow caking the cobwebbed
windows was death on earth.
Fetching something for Grandma, I ran so fast back up those stairs,
I almost tripped and broke my nose.
 
Yet…those first fertile days of summer break, when it was so
hot that we sat on the porch drinking 
powdered lemonade and wishing for a breeze,
the deep, dark, dank cellar called. 

My anger feels like steel,
a stone, an agate, layered,
a biliary calcification 
hardening in my ductwork. 

Flow is stopped up,
ease and grace, 
and second chances 
taste like rancid milk
and ruined cereal.

I look anywhere but
in your eyes. I refuse
to acknowledge your
humanity, not yet.
Not ready for repair.

This fire is hot. 

Why
so 
hot? 

Where has all
this fuel, this kindling,
this white, hot, seething,
been breathing all this time?

Peripheral hearing—is
that a thing? I am taking
in the danger, and my body

remembers. 

Screaming matches, 
mockery, sarcasm, creating 
or perhaps revealing the chasm, 
growing wider between 
parents who saw no way 
across the divide. 
Runaway tempers, reducing 
my childhood,
my home to rubble.

My body learned to fight
in a war zone. Sulfur-like
struck matches tickle 
my nose. I know
I can rise to match 
the ire, but can

I step back? 

The catharsis, this release
I seek has boiled to the surface, unrepressed
needing to be expressed
as rage, intense, enflamed.

Can passion co-exist 
with temperance? 

I’ve seen chasms grow
and I’ve known 
the bitter taste 
of a home 
burnt to ash.

Forbearance feels foreign
when I am fighting to
survive. 

But am I?

Is this survival—or bruised
part of me I’m reckless
to defend? 

Will I burn, or will we mend?

Day 5 / Poem 5

Не уделяй мне много времени…

Не уделяй мне много времени,
Вопросов мне не задавай.
Глазами добрыми и верными
Руки моей не задевай.
Не проходи весной по лужицам,
По следу следа моего.
Я знаю — снова не получится
Из этой встречи ничего.
Ты думаешь, что я из гордости
Хожу, с тобою не дружу?
Я не из гордости — из горести
Так прямо голову держу.
1957 г.

Don’t spend all this time on me…

Don’t spend all this time on me,
stop asking me these questions.
Don’t reach for my hand
with kind conviction in your eyes.
Stop stepping through puddles in the spring,
just to trace my footsteps.
I know nothing will come of us
meeting like this again.
You think it is with pride
that I’m walking out of our friendship?
I hold my head high, unwavering,
not out of pride but out of sorrow.

This is the last poem you’ll ever need,
but you can’t ride it into the apocalypse, pumpkin.

No parking after midnight.
No passing on the right.

Reader, I want what you have, your
illusions, the wind to taste

the song in me.
More often than not, I’m confident

I’m being lulled into an ambitious
sleep: commas rules pace the classroom;

later, I allan wrench bedpost to frame,
a rabbit fat rendering its own tallow.

My boyfriend and I fuck behind the shed,
my legs pinned back.

I’m quick to tussle, quick to beg
for what I want but don’t want to work for.

The empty well churns my stomach. I’m better
than even the fox cares to admit.

When I used to carry change, I’d plunk
quarters into expired meters of rust-eaten cars.

I’d never felt so honorable
cheating, the meter swallowing everything

I presented—even origamied frogs
if I’m honest.

Dead ass, some days, I loitered hours,
clucking down to red flashing, for a hairs-

breadth more time.
Before my grandfather died,

my grandma wouldn’t let me see him,
unless I admitted she was right about every decision

she made in her life. I wanted to ask him
about being a radio operator on a Hess tanker during Vietnam,

what it was like to be inspected by enemy soldiers,
a bomb sleeping just below deck.

And about spoons he tried to curl
with his mind every morning.

After drowning eggs, potatoes in ketchup,
he placed a three-minute injunction against

talking, while he stared at the distorted
reflection in the spoon’s bowl.

It never worked. Once though, my aunt
kidnapped my grandfather, took him to a diner to see me.

It was like watching a man sail through the mist
of his past, apprehensive, anxious,

like he recognized me from the other side
of a keeling boat.

Say what you feel, my boyfriend would have said
had he been there.

But he wasn’t, and I didn’t.
I paid the bill, tried not to stare at the man

in loose suspenders, the way he stirred his soup,
forgetting to hope the spoon would bend.

RJ-5-Dessert-at-the-Church-Barbecue-Abecedarian

THIS-WANT

After the town fireworks,
on the yellow school bus shuttle
back to the Ace Hardware parking lot,
we are packed in tight,
standing swaying holding on to the 
incongruous luggage racks
students should have no need of,
and a beautiful Black woman two rows ahead,
notable for her beauty
and her Blackness in our white bread town
says to her companion, 
              As of today, anyone in Louisiana over age 18
              can carry a gun anywhere.
She lets that sink in then says,
I’m so glad I’m not home.

It’s not our first talk of guns today.
Earlier this afternoon, 
our son’s new friend’s mom texted me their address
and finished
no guns in the house etc.
– important Mom shorthand meaning
your son should not be slain here.

Now our dog hides in the bathroom downstairs
as illegal fireworks explode all around our home
despite the Stage 1 fire ban
brought on by the less than an inch of rain
the last two months have brought.

We bought fireworks once,
toward the end of Covid isolation; 
a little tank and a frog
to light on the dirt driveway where we’d sought refuge
up in the mountains at the end of the road.
But they soon got out of hand –
the tank driving itself haphazardly 
straight toward pine needle duff,
then shooting flames from its little turret,
the frog leaping unpredictably,
fire streaming from its head.
We were all a little horrified
and a whole lot relieved
when they both went out
leaving our forest intact.
We should have known what
playing with fire brings.

At bedtime our son asks
Do you think we use fireworks
to reenact war,
to celebrate winning?
And as he asks, we both feel under fire,
as the neighborhood’s rockets burst in all directions.
I explain the Chinese made fireworks before bullets
and he likes this idea –
being captivated and entertained
by beauty and surprise,
the percussive explosion felt in the chest
a mere byproduct,
not the goal.

At our house we are ambivalent patriots.
We’ve seen other places doing many things better.
What keeps us here is not pride or fear or opportunity,
but family.
If we could put them all in a suitcase tomorrow,
would we leave for somewhere less likely to ignite?
As hard as we’ve worked to wed ourselves
to the stones and waters and sky here,
I don’t feel it twined into my bones.
The rational mind has its way
and says
we don’t need to live like this.

I could say it is
something of an astonishment
that I exist

And it is also so, that
I can take myself paddling
a kayak out on the

new surface of saltwater,
tides permitting, on
any day I am given.

It is also so amazing
how many things
await me on the surface

that I first thought were
flukes, oddities, little miracles
of chance and physics

where moon, sun, water, wind
or no wind, and a lifting tide
conspire to make boats

and bowls and lanterns
from sticks, shells, leaves,
feathers, seeds, fir cones,

not to mention today’s bright
orange spiders above me,
riding gossamer, like meteors

trailing tails of blue
as evening darkens sky
above the blue I glide upon.

Though it may, ostensibly, be right,
reading between the lines, the mere
utterance of the word “truth”
tries the very patience of 
humankind. Truth-seekers cannot believe

lessons other than their own
illicit a reaction of certitude.
Even questioning these beliefs makes one
susceptible to scrutiny and derision.

Mocking the truth, are you? 
Utterances of conspiracies and autocrats,
delusions and denials.

Caring for truth, there is passion,
leaning on structures, questionably sound.
Ever changing is the landscape.
And what is true today, may not be tomorrow.
Revisiting yesterday’s reality.

Going forward, there must be a higher way,
ostensibly. Something beyond time and space.
Don’t you agree?

Loki, Dog of Mis—
Chief, doe-eyed, empath, lamb-like
paw’s up, ready, sit

Day 4 / Poem 4

in running free, 
eyes closed through empty stretches, 
let the ambient sun hone in. feel this path 
you’ve been down a million times, recalling now
only with feet. this is sight 
in the absence of sight. from 
the soft marrow of the earth, instinct whispers: 

i know the shape of these woods, 
where the river curves and bends.

every part of you comes alive
lifting weight off the eyes, 
listening to brooks smoothe over stones,
arms carving space by your sides
as the sun shoots a sweaty arrow down your face.

reaffirmed 
with this feeling of armor,
your mind is clear: there is such a long stretch of going, just going.

midday lull
tremors against rail
the slow down and throttle
friction dug in along the shrug
of a curve

travelled but not yet
lingered in

I brace my knees
lines pumping
like capillaries

in the breath
that releases—

parking garage, gas station, dead mall

thank god
for hinge and bolt
the inexhaustible
thorax
for the destination
between stops
the delayed approach

The-Chamberlains-Lover


You may choose
to close your eyes

here in the breaking
waves of what hits. Yes

you don’t have to
watch

what is happening as it happens
for yes it is

too much don’t you think
it is too much has always

been too much. So then
what does it matter

if instead you choose to watch
the doe and her fawn

far off along the river
noses in water soon lifted

to scent of you
upwind is what’s coming

and you may choose
to turn and close your eyes or be

witness for what winds bud
and build upon a horizon

however horrific
however human.

I am learning
how to break life
into bite-sized lines
that show you
how to breathe with me

to snap them soundly enough
to provoke a                  inhale
                      surprised
             ooh

to outline
my life’s breaking points
when everything was on the line
or where my linear path
               took a major
                                           t
                                            w
                                           i
                                            s
                                           t

in case this helps you find your way:
conception –birth–sister–stuck in the railing–move to suburbs–change in friend
group–divorce–move back to city–high school–change in friend group–grandfather
dies–college–boyfriend–Ireland–move to Colorado–working–move into our own place–grad
school–dog–marriage–honeymoon–second dog–biologist job–mom moves to town–car
accident–son–part-time work–bff-grandmother dies–dog dies–second son–staying
home–grandfather dies–sister moves to town–Dad dies–travel–pandemic–bird-third
dog–cabin–now

but now I see I haven’t broken them at all
but rather strung them out,
             beads on my life’s mala
                          clacking them between thumb and forefinger
                                       counting blessings as I go.

but how much of me
do you really need here in this poem?
you can do it yourself:
             how would you
                      carve yourself into chunks?
             what’s your
                      30-second elevator speech explaining you?
                      your one paragraph bio?
                      your full-page spiel?

but now I’ve slipped back into
breaking parsed lines = meh
because seeing you arrive in the poem here
surprised me so thoroughly
I inhaled
            ooh
forgot I was trying
to split sentences like wood
to bring the axe down true
to make clean cuts
            leaving some logs dainty, for kindling
            others hefty, to burn steady all night
                      to keep my fingers warm enough to write

to use your time judiciously
so at the full-stop end of this last line
you ask yourself
            where are my own fault lines
            and what weaves me back whole?

Yesterday at lunch, the
Septuagenarian Sisters
were talking loudly and
laughingly about rafting
in Hell’s Canyon and how
the one’s son is a guide
now, but it was his first
time on a raft instead
of a kayak, and how tall
the rapids were and how
on the very first rapid
they flipped squealing
into the cold white water

and I thought of you and
our canoe and Green River
out of Moab and the ravens
dancing Labyrinth Canyon
air, and the egg of our tent
and the stars above that
and the desert candles and
the surprise whirlpools and
the underwater dragon
twisting deep in the flood. 

Apathy, a black wave, flows over me.
My brain fizzles, flashes. 
 
A processor dumped in water.
Sparks fly and I 
 
collapse, my will to compute
squashed,
 
sliding around inside my 
shell.
 
Error, can not read file, 
I say as I order the values
 
Of war and peace. On. Off.
Binary collides and corrodes. 
 
Big data, big money, small minds, 
and I am but a 
 
widget filled with code.  
Processing what I know,
 
unable to execute new commands.
000100010001000.

Ruby red lipstick-lined Pall Malls,
she stood tall and lean.
Starched and pressed, at attention
he stood hard and mean.
Yet, somehow gaining 
the attention of this 
starlit Scarlet O’Hara.
Her eyes, full of field hands, 
and romance and miles
of her someday plantation.
A bride of war swept,
off her feet long enough 
to be anchored down,
to a daughter, a son
and an inescapable marriage. 
Cows mourned in the distance,
milk spilled, trucks backfired,
and her failed escape only
reminds that liberty is not 
the same as freedom. 

Day 3 / Poem 3

after all these years, nothing has changed, you’d say.
as if time marched on, and i stayed right here
caught around a lacuna where you used to be.

all the unsaid words are howling within me

but there is no audience —
what became of the audience?

time doesn’t march like an arrow, you say. 
it bends its tail, revisiting its folds, like an auroborous.

if i lose your idealism, i lose you forever.
they’ve always told me i don’t have much time.

your favorite elm overlooks
a sunset. on a hill, you tell me
how disease speeds through the pack.

yours is an isolated illness.
you consider gently how you might leave things.
you deep sea dive for pearls in the pacific.

outside a blue vintage store, you are swimming 
beneath the surface of reality. a stranger
is mooring your body here with his words. 

i envy anyone who falls into your eyes. 

without you, i feel like a lost witness
waiting for the past to re-arrive.

Four deaths this year, but even at ninety, my aunt
loves a wedding, boasted four in long
ornamented dresses at Nantucket altars.
One man she married twice, and the first husband
she groomed horses with thirty years
after she kicked him out and he sobered up.
The crow squawking on the gable should have been a sign.
Life is recursive, she’d say, waiting tables,
snipping hair in her living room.
The first husband was one of four
deaths this year.
She’s stopped asking her daughters where their father
learned to quiet the horse of himself
or how he sobered up.
Instead, she calls for the daughters her daughters
were thirty years ago, doesn’t recognize
the olive skin, the hook nose.
My aunt drops quarters and mints in the washing machine,
calls for daughters who are afraid
if they clutch the straw of her wrists
they’ll fracture bone.
I should have been a crow,
my aunt confesses.
She is sometimes adrift, her speech pattern
slowed as she tries to find words
she’s hidden beneath stone.

Harry-The-Hat-Walks-In-Uninvited

Minuscule legs of a honeybee walked soft from a sidewalk
to his small forefinger, and so he carried and placed it gentle
at a zinnia’s center to collect what it collects and he thought I am
keeping the honey-making going flowing forevermore.

He lay his little head upon the soil and set plumbago leaves
before a very fat slug, stilling his breath listening listening for
the maceration of a leaf amongst tiny teeth and he thought I am
ensuring a path of slime to cover this earth turning turning forevermore.

He stood upright in waves, his feet sunk in soaked sand of the ocean floor
his hand resting upon a sea turtle’s slick shell back sending it
towards tender seaweed in the wider ocean of larger creatures and he thought
I am providing a meal for a meal in a circle widening widening forevermore.

He lifted broken cottonwood limbs heavy with snow
his arms longer now stronger and his broad back recorded water weight
and surrender and he thought I would like to be there where it all
comes around to an end which I cannot yet see ending forevermore.

For forever he’d thought his body pushed outward and outward
erasing what would be erased in hand on wing over land
throughout the sea and he now thought how pleasing so pleasing
to begin at the beginning of the ending of things ending forevermore.

immunity (n.)
               Today at the zoo
late 14c., 
               my son asks:
“exemption from service or obligation,” 
                                         Is it true
from Old French immunité 
                                         that now he can kill people
“privilege;
                                         if he wants?
immunity from attack, 
                                         That there are no laws
inviolability” 
                                         that apply to him?
(14c.) 
               but I spent yesterday
and directly from Latin immunitatem (nominative immunitas) 
               unplugged at our cabin
“exemption from performing public service or charge, 
               wasn’t home long enough to see the paper today
privilege,” 
               listened to my audiobook driving down the canyon
from immunis 
               hadn’t had need of news (I thought)
“exempt,
               so I don’t know what he means.
free, 
               Once again
not paying a share” 
               he educates me
(see immune (adj.))
               then I corroborate
mid-15c., 
               and we sit there incredulous
“free, 
               between the reptile house and the tigers
exempt”
               while busy machines working
(from taxes, 
               on the new seal habitat
tithes, 
               fill in the silence made by our unspoken helplessness.
sin, 
                                         Well, there’ll be an appeal
etc.), 
               I start to say then stop,
from Latin immunis 
               realizing we’re beyond all appeals now
“exempt from public service, 
               and there’s no way to explain
untaxed; 
               a public servant exempt from serving the public,
unburdened, 
               exempt from taxes and sin, etc.,
not tributary,” 
               the inviolability and privilege
literally “not paying a share,” 
               some souls wrest from others.
from assimilated form of in- 
               And the most damning part is
“not, opposite of” (see in- (1)) 
               millions of hands will sign
+ munis 
               our democracy’s forthcoming divorce decree
“performing services” 
               one small black oval at a time.
(compare municipal)

Italicized text from https://www.etymonline.com/word/immunity.

and that’s okay for now, this
monochrome memory

at the top of the stairs inside
a hot summer night

smell of bird cages not cleaned,
salt sweat and tears

sounds of a young man’s hurt
screaming at his mother

some say he’s got a cruel streak
speaking truth so loudly, but

what if it were a song? What
instrument could accompany?

Or maybe it’s the sound cicadas
and katydids shout in the dark,

the rattle & roar of rain heavy
and beating on oak leaves & maple

noise outside choking out the
wailing inside, inchoate feeling

that there is no tomorrow only
hard harsh agonizing now

and its late enough the only house
lights are in this only house

on the far side of a triangle
of overgrown lawn encroached

upon by black oaks, pin oaks,
shagbark hickory dripping dark

wetness, and the station wagon
is still cooling and the cicadas

are still screaming and air pumps
are boiling water in the aquariums

and the 12 year old boy yells how
she’s always late and he always cooks

for his little brother and all she does
is bring home the loveless money

and suddenly it’s silent inside while
the awful night roars on outside

and inside his tears he tastes
something; he thinks, a far off ocean.  

Being from a small town, I know
how quickly the game of telephone
goes awry.

My grandmother sits in her chair by the window,
plastic cord of the phone swaying from the table. 
She says to Mabel, 

“I swear I saw
the man across the street leave
his home at 1 a.m.”

And I say,
“Grandma, what were you doing up
at that unGodly hour?”

“UnGodly,” she scoffs,” that’s right.  That
man being up so late!

And the next week, I read in her church bulletin
now used as a coaster on the battered 
dining room table, 

that Pauline is asking for 
prayers for a man that Mabel knows who is
suffering from terrible insomnia.

Pray, the bulletin warns, for those
awake at 1 a.m.

I see you, 
my smallest one, 
yet taller than all 
the tumblers encircling you.
You stretch and show
how you can do the splits
so ready to be off 
to the vault, 
to the bars to swing, 
and balance on beams 
to feel the strength 
of your body match
your thrumming heart.
Your freckles and 
new toothy smile flipping
as you attempt backbends
and cartwheels and 
summersaults. 
And I see you,
pause in your play 
to help others reach
the bar and I pray 
you always offer 
such kindness, 
even as you’re told
not to lift her 
off the ground
even as you’re told 
your help isn’t welcome,
even as you’re told, 
you are too little.
I am proud of my girl, who sees 
the playground of her dreams,
yet stops to make sure
everybody gets to play.
Those are my “Olympic-size”
dreams for her. 

Day 2 / Poem 2

try to uncage the mouth,
return to the voice without the accent

when did you acquire this tongue?
it flails wildly
like an untamed wave
not knowing how to operate 
in this syllabic space

try to sound raw.
what comes easy sounds like a past life:
not a language you
or anyone knows, some sort of hybrid —

in the early years
you are rewired
you cannot unwire into something they can work with.

it is in this moment, you realize it is true what they have always said:
born in the wrong time and place
flung into a present, our present (meaning their — 
how you long to be part of an our or a we)

What did I know before the first pulp
              slithered down my esophagus?

I could spell the ouroboros
              of my name eating its tail,

and slice twenty-two varieties of tomato,
              back cold against marble.

Beetled in small clusters or swollen
              purple, their insides betrayed

a dendritic teeming, cores splayed
              like a salamander lodged in a womb.

A woman whose name means “before”
              deserves an after

party, bass thumping the line snaking the alley.
              Leaning in, I smelled tomorrow’s

hangover burning off almond coffee,
              cherry blossoms in full leaf.

Did understanding blare it’s horn outside
              my parent’s house, ashamed to greet

my father at the door?
              Did it return in waves’ heaving

call and response, come hither, come
              hither? I did at night follow the plunk

of vowels soft against the bedroom window.
              Barefoot, dislodged burrs from my ankles.

Jade leaf, hunter leaf, winged seed.
              A woman whose name means “before”

deserves an after.  What I thought
              I wanted was too much to hold inside me.

And then it wasn’t, and I woke vomiting
              facts into a garbage beside the bed.

Shelly-Duvalls-Wendy-Torrance-Refusing-to-Ash

Knit amongst roots of ricegrass
are conversations—

whispers of how be you in this
our sandy dry crumble of

waterless ground. Just as you
at three uttered quiet under

your breath a murmuring
to the smooth stone in your hand. Hushed

circle of a child’s breath born
from the shortest distance between

your heart home and the air—
inflorescence of a wish.

Each unwed branch of the ricegrass
ends itself in a solitary fruit and

sole seed suspended. Above
a body hovers the thirst. No matter

the age nor heedlessness of how
roots will reach for what is required.

You thought nothing of
what it meant to wish for water

from a stone. Damp of your upper lip
you breathed all you could

into the weight of it in your hand—gave
the whole of your life which was still

singularly yours
to give.

after fire
so many small acts of resignation

I face the welcome mat
peppered with cinders

hold my thoughts away
from what those once were

keep my mind carefully still
the way I walk a ropes course

disallowing the thought
that might unbalance me

I take up the mat by corners
till it becomes a bowl

cradling the remains
of a normal December day

but what place is fitting
to inter this damage?

not knowing what these ashes
are really made of

who they belonged to
or what they might yet do

the alley trash seems the safest option
disrespectful yet contained

afterward I tuck the mat in the washer
to spin in there alone

and for a little time
our door stands naked, unwelcome

nothing to greet the weary
but also turning no visitors away

each neighbor engrossed in their own
acts of getting by

After so much smoke
for so long, I marvel
at a patch of blue sky,
a cloud made of water.

Waking under canvas,
taste smoke on tongue.
Nostrils tell me not
to sleep with fire near.

3am out in the wind,
patch of black sky, a
sprinkle of stars, smoky
orange Jupiter, sky ember.

There is a ravine
just inside the border 
of a small, northeastern American town, 
which is not far from anywhere, 
but close to 
nowhere.  

Each season brings life and death to this minimal chasm.  

A ravine 
unremarkable in size, 
barely able 
to be classified as such.
Trees shed their brown paper leaves, regrowing the next season.

A ravine,
where the soil is rich, 
and a large rivulet of water 
trickles 
through after a hard rain.

Follow the rivulet 
deeper 
into the trees, 
and in the swell of the ground, 
a black, gaping hole 
opens

in the mound of rocks and earth.  

Apricots falling,
Ripe, unripe, overripe,
bruised, squished, squashed
A meal for a worm,
an ant, a potato bug,
a nursery for an earwig,
a treat for a sneaky skunk
slinking out of his den
before sunset for a taste.
A nibble from a robin
nimble enough to escape
our twin tomcats. 
Small hands tearing 
the two halves apart,
juice trickling down
sticky and stickier cheeks.
Apricots, warmed from the sun,
soft to the touch, 
the scent of sunshine, 
and summer and a
hundred windfalls.

Day 1 / Poem 1

plants peel paint in the sun, revealing
plaster. cheeks fill out with too much
filler — some of it gone, while tiny pieces
find a home in there forever <3

Your cosmetics don’t layer well, you cry. 
I too know how to cake, unporous and shiny,
to lose beauty and grace, feeling the absence 
of friction: slipping all over.

We aren’t building cities above
older cities out here. In this Empire State,
there is nowhere to go except
contend with your neighbor. Digging deeper 
and deeper, can we turn back time? 
(She asmrs in your ear. Detox;
exhale only.)

I miss the 90s:
the age of self-help. No one can tell me
what to do now, except a magazine,
a New Age healer, or someone who speaks
with confidence and authority. & yet 
there are prescriptions 
for everything. 

I could never catch
your lies. That’s what I loved most about you —
even though we were floating, far apart
in our own unrealities, like the Czar’s wife
exiled to her own bedroom 
or monastery, we’d share our love
of evading love with each other.

EVE-stumbles-upon-the-tree-of-knowledgePiranha-Plants-Patter-Song

Make the high noon hot
and trail overlong

the work bone hard
and strides broad.

Make grit of my steps
a sun-seared dust

saliva thick in my throat
wild grasses bent.

Make crops curl
blackbirds stake-stunned

clouds iron out
into starched nothingness.

Make shade flecks sparse
and my voice a choke

for the phrase as it burns
beneath scorched sweat.

Make thistledown explode 
over split raw earth.

Make the long dead bleed
into hot wind song.

flying into the heat of night
after the focus of following a single throughline
I restring my heart to sound all its chords:

               mother         wife              daughter
                           chef           maid                    chauffeur
               artist           teacher           student
                            friend       neighbor             sister
               activist          citizen           businesswoman
                           body         mind                      spirit

the notes stack up
               some harmonious triads
               others jangling, discordant
               each saying something true

every day I arrive
changed and change-less
after the latest vision
has pried my heart open a little more

today the doe who brought her newborn twins
exactly at breakfast
then circumambulated the house
so we might appreciate every angle

just another gift
I’d never think to ask for

And what’s at stake there?
Nothing more or less than
what drove the doe
or Hank’s offer of planter boxes
or the mysterious soul who put me on this plane
or the hands who picked rock into whale
or those who carried fisher cats deep into the quietest grove
or Charlie who offered rest
or his chosen who accepted it?

What’s always at stake is
missing the magic
sparkling around the edges
of even dark days.
What’s at stake is
not being worthy 
of all the universe has set in motion
(it’s watching to see 
how much of it I’ll catch).
What’s at stake is
not being equal to the challenge
of doing anything (or -one) justice,
of wasting even a moment
of this privilege of presence.

                                      after David Whyte

As the fourteenth year of her disability and 22nd
year of our marriage come to their ends, there
are some words I say to my bedridden wife each
visit, though I cannot say she knows their meaning:

Perhaps what we call death is actually more
an abrupt waking, I whisper, for which we must all
prepare, near comatose or not. I hope that even
eyes-closed and mouth speechless, you are doing this.

After all the years, and all the struggle, I want
to know that when you are finally tired enough
of dying, you will discover that you want to live
on the other side of death, that you may find

love on the other side of death, and you shall
willingly walk across death’s dark territory, no
matter how fluid and dangerous it may seem,
to at last find that one light that belongs to you.

Atlas. What I used
to find my way in the world.
Paper and ink, 
tracing dotted state lines.

Now, digital maps with 
zoom features allow
me to find a house,a box on the street.
Scroll in,switch to street view.

Study the yellow 
hydrangeas at 450 Pine.
A peak into a moment in time
before pavement, rocks trickle

up the driveway and end
at a red shed not visible from the street, 
where an old Ford hunches, 
an atlas in its trunk.

So many firsts go 
unnoticed, unseen, 
misremembered, 
pseudo-ordinary
Embodied in time
A spark, cells divide
Squirrels forget
and Oak trees climb
What makes a moment
a milestone, a first?
A first breath, a first step, 
a first word, a wave
to a kindergartner,
a graduate, to a bride.
I tell my daughters 
I want to be there 
for all their firsts 
and some
of their lasts. 
I want to see what
the forgotten seeds, 
scattered onto the 
landscape of their lives
become when all
is said and done.