The Question

 

What are your imperfections? I begin

to answer, I am a half-pecked book,

a moment in the hell of a yellow-lit

office. I am an orchestral heart

pedaled hard and water-toughened.

Pull until smoke curls from the cracks

in your pink pantsuit, swirling the partly-

lit nave. I am barely sentient.

I am a hundred feet of water stirred

by a branch. I am a songbird serenading

the snow, unmoving, a body cleaning

itself. Let's not forget what I am---

the shift in the air. I am imperfect.

You know me. I am back and thirsty.

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10.15.22 Caesura

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Losing It

 

By nature, I am poison, a bone-white perch

in bark-skinned branches, no wrists,

no ankles, only pursed lips, strawberry-

strange like a landscape of caution, bare skin

of my throat waiting. This darkened room,

the dark hollow of kitchen in the cleaver

of my skull, the crash of the sea,

the dangerous love we learn while dying,

just an hour or two before we know

it's all right. We are the same. Or we were,

once, poets agonizing over a clean page,

writing a seating about a hummingbird,

wanting.

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10.15.22.   Caesura

American Library

 

Like a coat left in snow, 

like bad housekeeping,

your face, a vacuum bag

undone, disfigured, twisting 

in torment, the sins of your exes 

chained together like spun daisies, 

human just for a moment—

then the axe brought down

to drink its fill of stars 

from the roof of the sky.

Given a choice between 

love and life, suburban hearts 

stay behind, woeful-waisted 

mothers grasping to woo 

and to be cooed to.

 

9/21/22.  Fergie's Pub 

Roses Galore

 

See, in shock, the function is sifting

rather than crumbling, is facing

our own formless shit, we muddy gods

who know only enough about walking

on silt to vanish into smoky spotlights,

our old-fashioned barstools empty. Tell me

about the weather. Are you blue, too?

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9/21/22.  Fergie's Pub 

Through the Windshield

 

and gone, rain-lapsed into dream-blur, an exile

from everything, this love that steals us, makes 

us slink away into an idling cab--

gone, not the name it preferred to go by

as a child, but its given name, the name

the doctor repeated, his hand humming

down to kiss your underside. This moment,

we mourn the immensity of this love, 

its loss, deep and old-fashioned, barging head-

first outside to find us, a screen door wedged

by a branch, a wayward rhododendron

flowering in blue.

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5/11/22 via zoom

 Rain, Silver, Tongue              cento#2 from same lines

 

An idling steals you, slinks into rain-blur, 

gone the dream-lapsed love.

Everything else an exile. Name it. 

Children? Marshmallow? Not clear. 

 

Heels side-by-side, hum a constellation 

of kisses—star, moon, star—a kind of eerie 

vulgarity, the underside of love. 

Mourn the immensity, the deep 

 

vastness of old-fashioned blue found 

wedged inside the flowering rhododendron. 

Come out the screen door, own that moment

when her deep voice cheered you on.        

​

5/11/22 via zoom

 

The Worm is Implied

Who knew we would start with blueberries at the opera?
No one could have fished it out, the modest monster
searching, a clever beast fumbling in the harsh air,
listening, wheezing, crashing through the darkened
rectilinear gravity. Buoyant, the creature's arms
carrying us home like a goat, a calf watching itself
slide into straw. One door closes, and the other
stays closed, mixing the impossible weight of the Nile
with the stone at the bottom, marblequiet. We pass through
the water's edge stricken, worrying, pain softened
by the morning after. It carries our face where it will,
a whole life spent walking down some dazzled lane
no more than a wisp, no more above or below than air.
Who knew we would end in a field in Kansas?

​

                                                           Lit Life Conference 4/23/22

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It Might, At Last

Be sufficient, a balanced love --
he, ex, me, ex, an equation
one falls prey to in half-sleep,
a dream we can't recall. Do not risk
a breath, its thread like stripping
hair, like nicked secrets, the surety
of death we cannot grasp. Pay attention --
here is beauty, sweet, green corn; here 
is pain, a failed crop, bursting. Mornings
spent lifting our voices in green-lit 
supplications, hosanna, hosanna, light
in darkness -- a muddy light, but imagine 
if we just let our guard down, if we reached 
for it, glinting in the give and take 
of the tide. We may find something there --
a home we may not always see, but one
we can return to when our travels are done.

 

 

4/13/22 via zoom

Love Might      (cento #2 from same lines)

 

Love might, at last, be a balanced equation, 

sufficient, half-standing alongside 

 

the dream of stripping death, the knick 

of last breath, the waiting grasp 

 

of beauty and the pain it remakes 

like fields of green corn bursting 

 

sweet hosanna to the green-lit morning. 

Expect light when darkness falls. 

 

Hope, though we may not see it. 

Guard down, completely home, 

 

we return when our travels are done—

briny, ruined, new, and soft as spiral

 

corridors of conch shells spreading silver—

the way the tide gives and takes.

​

4/13/22 via zoom

Not What You Thought You'd Be Reading

In eighth grade already, no longer fourth
grade girls at a lunch table, outcasts in yellow-white
dresses and daisy bouquets, the best
of every color. The elevator in my dream sprouts
like seeds scattered before a closed door, a sign
of emerging green and easy, a sign of growing
like we wish we could, marking the spots where breasts
will be, in the pits between arms and legs,
the bare animal of our bones working
in the sun, tiny scraps stripped from the spinal column,
letters in tiny script on squares of blackened paper
leaked from the pen, fingers on skin, a puzzle 
of blotted scribbles, we scavenge this beauty 
from the garden of our bodies, in desperate daylight,
a letter, written from a distance -- I love you.

​

3/9/22.  via zoon

Already, This Is                  (variation on same lines)

​

Not what you thought you’d be reading: two outcasts

& a lunch table of fourth grade girls, yellow dresses,

 

yellow daisy bouquets, & the best parts of 

your yellow-white mamma. Like the elevator 

 

in dream, mushrooms sprouted from moist carpet 

like these marigold seeds scattered and already

 

green— we could wish them away, beat their breasts 

in the backyard, mark the spot our pit bull died 

 

in my husband’s arms. Bury bones in the sun, strip 

down any animal to squares of blackened letters, 

 

tiny scraps of tiny script the pen leaked. 

A puzzle of love letters from jail, scribbles 

 

with a gloved finger you scavenged overnight. 

Chaos and trespass. Beauty in a desperate garden.

​

3/9/22 via zoom

An Afternoon Flirting with Lapping Tide

 

I believe it is love, and let the ocean have me,
now that I'm done with the boy with dangerous curls

from white-hot America, a honeyed exit door
pulled outwards, a symphony too beautiful to leave.

 

Moonlight, a paper-necked boat down a long river,
carried on the smoke-soft current of the sky,

 

sifts the buttermesh, the silt, the silk, all three
worlds in one glance -- resuscitates me, rushes in

​

through my cottage door, the keys left hung 
on the rack in the corner, keeping quiet there

 

in the summer dark, the purple of each other's bodies,
adoring the same moon -- be this. Let go. Let it in.

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2/9/2022 via zoom

Silt and Shadow                    (variation on the same lines)

 

After flirting with the white-hot sun 

and the boy with dangerous curls, I want 

to stop moving and let the ocean have me. 

 

America, now that I’m done with you, 

all exit doors pull outwards, the world not 

too beautiful to leave— the symphony, 

 

the imperfect dancing, paper boats down a river 

beneath moonlight, milksilver, smoke, ocean, 

buttermilk sky—water is the finest mesh. 

 

Silt, mud, silk, all three worlds in one glance

reveal with clarity the crime scene: keys left,

hung on the rack by the umbrella stand 

 

quiet in the summerdark, same moon, 

same earth, same purple shadow. Light tries 

to reach you. Be this thrum of letting in.

​

 

2/9/2022 via zoom

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