Windy Monday
moon is full,
waiting for a dunk
in a dark sky bowl.
Soon the wind
will eat it up.
The moon is a cookie
in a cloud-crumb cup
ripe-round to be broken
by a nightly chew,
then phoenix-jellyfish-
made anew
Over the brown grass patch strewn with plastic shovels and Barbie cars presides a large taxidermied hawk. The hawk contains the soul of Tía Raquel, whose titties took her. Star whispers to the hawk, prays she will never grow them.
Tea and beer in the same hour are vein-trains that crash me together. When we imagined death naked this time, the laughs came so easy I felt proud of them. And after you left, the dog and I tugged rope to the songs of the neighbor band and I wanted you here to share our big wet grass gallops, but a night folded airplane-sharp flies on itself.
Remember what we used to do
back when old things still felt new
and the gap between want and get
wasn’t so immediate?
Writing you might take all year,
but if you leave your address here,
I’ll send a piece of me to keep
beyond these screens, this busy sleep.
We may not touch each other much,
but sometimes that’s not what you need.
Touching is so complicated.
Lasting longing’s never sated.
If we grow old and never see
each other in the flesh again
or only for a minute’s time —
a trick, a tease, a nursery rhyme —
we still have something all our own.
You are a person I call home.
I’d like to think I’m that to you.
Until I write again, adieu.
Things other people burn, I keep.
The memories they’d spurn lie deep.
The letters they’d return still sleep
in boxes in the dark.
I need them to remember who
I am and what it was they loved,
and what’s so wrong with holding on?
I’m holding to my heart.
I wanted all the scrapes I got,
the scars, the stares. The astronaut’s
umbilical to life could not
mean more than these to me.
Refusing all that history
would be a tiny tragedy,
a burning tree in memory,
and so my letters steep.
We’d float our little gutter boats
until they swirled down the drain.
Ever since those gutter floats,
I’ve always felt at home in rain.
Never been afraid of storms
or mourned a week without the glare
of too much waking undertaking,
too much happening everywhere.
Rain sends me inside myself
and sends myself outside of me.
Out the window in the clouds,
I see just what I want to see.
All the world’s a mystery
when it veils itself from view.
Rain that seeds and rain that feeds
becomes the future me and you.
Each of our lives is worth less than this land. Our squabbles are nothing compared to the threat of destroying the planet. Human striving is not all that matters on Earth. I’ll never stop believing that, no matter how old-fashioned it is.
Do I dare to list my lovers
the way I would list friends,
list what they’ve been to me
and I to them,
harp on deeds and undertakings,
eras in my life, my making?
Do I dare to list my lovers
as a canon of possessions
by their attributes and colors
on a box I’m moving nowhere,
yesterday’s obsessions?
Do I dare to list my lovers
like vain celebrities
who represent my lacks,
who are what I want to be,
into whose presence I dip my goals
until I crumble, full of holes?
Do I dare to list my lovers
as if they listened in,
elucidate for them
how false I’ve been?
Ah, but I feel that I’ve been true
to most — at least, more than a few —
and I’m not that girl —
at least, not now —
and what’s the point of it anyhow?
Saturday ditty
Bug crawling across my book.
In what direction does she look?
She wanders all around the page,
over “lovers,” “hemmorhage,”
“act of God,” and “mystery,”
and shakes her aphid tail at me
and butts her head against my thumb
and doesn’t care from where she’s come.
She pauses under “sound” and “taper”
and begins to eat the paper.
things I found while cleaning my car
PowerBar from ‘07, relatively intact
Sparkly dollar sign ring from ‘08
Coke Museum memorabilia
A hat from The Varsity
Post-it note with Sharpie cartoon featuring multiple penises and a bear
Square of carpet I’ve never seen before with DREAM TOUCH RICH EARTH written in marker on the woven side
Small rock inscribed with a phone number and the words “It’s All Good, Al” that a blind man tossed me in the leasing office when I first rented this apartment, saying “Here’s my card” when I refused to give him my number (I guess I smelled good)
Broken crab claw retrieved from a small lake in Michigan at the poetry workshop I failed to get anything out of in ‘06
Fake(?) velociraptor claw Tim gave me in ‘08 because he broke my crab claw
Vegetable juice that had turned into alcohol
Dried red pepper from Jordan’s garden that was too green to eat when it entered the car
Parking ticket torn up in anger in ‘09 (Why didn’t driver’s ed teach me about fire hydrant laws? Am I supposed to just observe this stuff? I AM ONLY A CHILD)
Will Rice servery cup
MAC Peachykeen blush
Muddy Converse
Money
Headache
Bugs
