Cowardice

Today, at exactly four in the afternoon, as the gods of wind and rain assembled the clouds--in three quarter time no less--I felt brave. Just briefly. By 4:04, perhaps sooner if I’m being honest, all the fear had returned as:

Buddhism

Your (very specific) eyelashes

The likelihood of dying young

Ivory statues

The men

The women

“I think you know who you are.”

Pygmalion (mythology)

The crook of your nose in stone

Sculpture; nonsense.

Patterns

All the heavens, in all the worlds

Cells

 My habit of blaming the moon, Venus, Ovid, and the tides

for not kissing you

(neither you me) twice.

Blue Blinds; Earth, Wind, and Fire.

At eight, I taught myself
how to braid. Three strands of a shag
poncho in the furthest back
seat of the family’s grey mini van, folded
one atop the other, on repeat. I thought
I had invented something. In secret. In the dark.
Unbuckled and free. Probably
much like my parents, and the suburban
home, at once, real
nuclear. Complete: one dog, a fish
and oddly, two chameleons adored by my little sister.

“Look how beautiful,” the strangers would say.
Touching the curls matted to my face,
Whispering about the baby’s blue eyes,
curiously unlike anyone else’s.

“Let’s dance,” mom would sing, and louder
the funk would sound. Yellow kitchen walls,
arms swinging back and forth, knees
high, eyes rolled back. “Remember,” I would later ask,
“when I wrote that song, for the dead mouse on the sticky trap
in the basement. Sitting at the top of the steps. Crying,
on my plastic guitar?”

“Of course,” Katie said, “once, you were stuck
too.”

On Repeat

Sometimes, I paint my lips red, and wait by the door
A grey cat sort of longing
The dark chord strumming musician
of Picasso’s bluest phase

A curved spine woman, once modestly
assured in her fleshy self
now
bony, curled
around knees and dissonance.

I just want to know you better now.
Wrap your scarf about my neck
and show you my holiness.
My childhood.
A wintered and withered
Kansas stream.

Lace up your skates. Let’s marry
ourselves to the creek, shallow and icy,
until our ankles, lungs, lips
ache.

"I think it's strange that you think
I'm funny."

Gravel

My earliest memory is the sting of iodine.
Settling into the flaps of skin
that remained with, when
the rest, deposited
among the rocks.

So, it should not surprise me
now, a few decades later,
running- wild, reckless
as back road flowers- I find the same
knee meeting stone.

Gravel and gravity share
a root word, after all.

You will not know her

i.
I will not mention you by name
will not describe the curl, cult of dark hair
Wrapped between thumb and teeth


You will not hear the poet's
story in this
You will not see her
conflicted, green, dancing.

ii.
And by now
I am werewolf, tidal

And in daylight
Hackles. Fangs.
Sit beneath bruises and neatly lined lips.

The Animals Come, Take.

Prepare yourself, young poets,
soon, you will be without shield
loved, worthy, enough
but aching.

And the
cats dance into the forest
taking with them your letters.
Pinning words against trees, making stanzas
in the nests. Shaking free the fruits
to
sour and rot, a dozen or so.
Prepare yourself, young poets,
soon, you will scavenge for verse.
Pain your husbands.
Shame your mothers.

Still, you have not known hunger
until weightless, dizzied
you watch animals flooded from
the bush, make way to your
homes. And without shield,
you are loved, worthy, enough.

"I Survived" (one of the 40 things to say before you die)

And she bruises, just like
Anyone else would do

And the conversations turn to kissing
in doorways and the merits
of vulnerability.

The prettier ones ask
the others what they want,

and they draw together
on mountain bound trains, burning
their life works on whim.
unashamed,
that their stories are told, freed
by the glitter-faced pop stars.

And she bruises, just like
Anyone else would do

And the conversations turn to kissing
in doorways and the merits
of vulnerability.

The Vapors

Few write of the opossum
double-wombed and nomadic
there is little romance in telling its story.

The women, with their Victorian desires
do not swoon, fall victim to the vapors
at first glance of the bare tail dragged about
the rocks and garbage, babies dangling from the
white beast’s fur. Their fainting rooms
have all but crumbled, painted over
at very least.

But, once the books have fallen from atop heads;
graces excused,
the corsets cut loose, and the bourbon nursed,
the opossums don’t write much about the women
either.

Come. Stay. Lose.

After all, is the world
not so beautiful?

Like that week I got a hotel room right above the pool.
And my room smelled like chlorine
and your skin smelled like chlorine
and we didn't care.
You spilled orange juice on my
computer, and for years, the space bar stuck
and after every word
I thought of [space] you. And that night

we tried to sneak into the park across the street
to watch the moon, and maybe kiss

but the gates were locked
so we settled for the field behind my house, and
laughed when the neighbors walked past,
because we knew they thought
we were [space] fucking.

Like that time the stars bent ‘round the mountains
crashed about the desert
and crept to your face

watched me dance
up the stairs, let it be known that
I would think of you;

but I would
not [space] wait, or count on them to
settle back into the caves
above.

Or that time
so many years later
that a man I did not know
smiled at something I could not see
asked me a question, and after every word
I thought of [space] you.

This I Believe: A Delta Manifesto

I believe
your suffering
is as real as mine,
and mine as yours.

Please be clear
in this distinction:
the suffering of which I speak
is not
the romantics'
tuberculosis, not the
absinthe laden or demon
stricken, syphilitic Paris
of the 1930's.
(Although, it should be noted
that if you had
either
or both
tuberculosis or syphilis
in the 1930's
I do not intend
to minimize your suffering.)
I mean simply to say
the suffering that quiets the
wild abandonment
of
your
true
essence.

I believe your suffering
is as real as mine, and
like love as an action verb
or struggle
wound
or pause-
in pursuit of dignity-
connectedness-
your suffering is
the most humane thing
you can do for me
and I, you.

Will they write of my home? (part 1)

When I am dead?
Will they even come?
Will they write of my home?
The same way one spoke of Frida Kahlo?
Of her home in Mexico City
and the gathering of her image

I; no heroine, salvation
undecided
rocks, not even,
pebble, sand or silt, cleansed.
Would they come?
Any of them? These four women
Would they write of my home?
If I were dead?

The whore with
Chagall; upright, mostly
“Freedom” and at long last
“Constraints”
The nerve
This night
Courage, at long last
the place we ventured
The room where
your hand rested;
Cells?

On the small of my back
as we scoffed at (ghost)
vases and such
“too ornate”
the pieces women kept
in their homes
centuries
ago. And now, it all
rests with me.

Would they come? Write of my home?
The women (you) and the pieces
stories, myself
buried in the backyard
Plastered and painted over?
The affairs
Picasso as bull (me)
romanticized. "Surrealists
played lots of games" There
are but twenty-six
questions.

Exclaim! Tucked in the
back of their pockets
in their back pockets
Beautiful
but not precious.
Be clear in that distinction.

Ache

On the rare day I forget you exist,
I breathe. I
can breathe.
Like that time I
shared with you the origin of the word
nightmare. The woman, beautiful,
and naïve in her own precious way,
drifts quietly to sleep
unaware, of the stallion
the beast on its way to her bedside.
Upon arrival, the Incubus, passenger
of said horse, dismounts, and
following the undressing of the beautiful
woman, begins at once to consume her
skin
tissue
heart
lungs
spleen
brain
bone
Rape, cerebral.
Dreams interrupted, battered
by the gremlin on her chest,
crushing innards,
breaking ribs
and suckling.
Yet and still, she readies herself
night after night
with blush colored rouge
and bright pink lips.

Transitions

First,

Sometimes at night, I sneak a cigarette
in the backyard, curse
the motion sensor
the God damn its between
bright-light; wake-the-neighbor’s-dog
and finding the switch in the dark.
It’s always in the same place, shoulder high
right inside the door
but my skinny bone fingers never
get it fast enough, with
the kitchen clocks counting
and the dumb mutt stirring
1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi

Next,

There are the nights, I chain smoke
lighting the second, third, fourth,
with the red ember remains of the
one before it. Breathing in
and breathing out I know I am
until
the train passes, as it seems to do
from time to time
when,
I do the math in my head:

speed of train?

speed of barefooted,
cloud-headed country girl,
a half-lit American Spirit
and at least one smoke filled lung?

Yes, obviously.

Then,

On the train, fellow dreamers
tell me I am quite beautiful, I believe them
offer what’s left of my matches,
and as my hair grows long, collect
lavender from roadsides.

Finally.

Fault Lines in the Land of Oz

The attachment I once had to the things decorating our home
is quite suddenly, gone.

Today, I realized if flames found
the lovely juicer your parents gave us one year for Christmas,
that we used just twice, I definitely wouldn't weep.
I would probably forget we even owned a juicer
by the time I finished mourning the books
and the photographs. Quick, even that recovery:
I could do without the constant dusting of frames.

If we lost the clocks,
the ones you snuck onto the wedding registry
and we received instead of the wine glasses we needed,
I’d most certainly feel ambivalence.
Relief, perhaps, that for once,
your belongings were not constant reminders of my mortality.

Tomorrow, if the silverware, unassuming as it is,
or my great grandmother’s china,
even the nothingness of our cotton bed skirt
disappeared,
the burden of keeping a home would seem to me
ancient and forgotten.

I’m certain, someday; the ground in this sinking city will open
and the many things we’ve used to mark the passing of days,
will travel straight into the ocean. And,
I know, in the panic, those brief moments—
the shaking of a home turning quickly to rubble, I’ll reach.
Try to rescue the stuff that has so long defined us. And then,
I’ll remember that I don’t even like juice.

Found Poem

What if
I told you the opposite of happiness
is not sadness, but fear?
Lean into it.
I’ll rest.

Wait for you

on the sofa
tattered, creased with dog hair
and the weight
of at least one small child
in dust.

Wait for you

on the porch,
blue paint chips
decorating the bottoms of my feet.
and
mosquitoes bored by
little ‘ol me
again.

Tell me

Tell me.
What is that you’re holding
between spleen and sternum—
in the place your secrets used
to rest, parallel
to mine?
In the darkness,
what unraveling have you
hidden?
Tell me, shameful little one.

Gratitude.

Fall Back

“I think everyone deserves to have someone
be completely obsessed with them. You know?”

No

“Like psychopath obsessed,” she continues, “I totally get it.
I just want to wear his skin.”

Laugh

I don’t think she’s joking.

And I see myself unzipped—
sand, fingernails,
a backlit shoulder,
and the tailored seam
of my spine

I warned you

in a room far from a restaurant
that uses mason jars for water glasses
and makes its own ketchup.

"This Ain't No Fucking Sing Along"

Wander in, just
before the creak of the door.
I see you, little moon.
Stretched
across the floors I walk,
the home I live in,
I see you.
And you’re aware, certainly
of the places I’ve carved as my own,
and still
damn it, I see you.

And the trouble with that is,
despite the many hours,
days and days
climbing, sleepless
from nightfall;
despite the tan my skin has taken
a comfortable affection
for the sun –warm, constant-
when darkness plays
the right song,
I see you, little moon.

And what kind of poet would I be
if I didn’t at least once
liken myself to the tides?

Six Letter Word for Dirty, Immoral

My therapist thinks I’ve romanticized you.
(Newsflash: I have.)

Blames an active childlike imagination,
my need for fun, and a past
of repressed spontaneity.
Tells me there is safety in the fantasy
and you’re a sexy-lunatic.

My personal opinion is
that he has trivialized this whole situation.

Also, that he is an asshole.

Although the sound of your laughter
is really quite unnerving.

Brief

Drowning itself is quick and silent.
If I had to, I’d liken it
to a prayer.
Sweet Ophelia knows.
The brevity of her own
tempered
inhalations
keeping pace with the slowing of her
cells, the cooling of her blood.

Hardly epic.
Factual.
“Dear God, I’m drowning.”
punctuated by
celebrated by
gasps.

Tragic as
the absence of her name
once buried.

Code Switching

Automaton*
I do not need you to take care of me.
That is what my organs are for.
My heart beats, unprompted
sometimes, even, flipping upon itself.
How fortunate,

how

marvelous
I am to have such acrobatic innards.


Automaton(s)
Alive.
Like that time you took me to dinner
and laughed at my unease, at my
greenness. I’m certain
later
at the eagerness with which I threw it
all on the fire.

My, “Can I have one?”
the filling of two
quite
virgin lungs (I still
can’t catch my breath).