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.