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Archive for September, 2016

One Inner Desert

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 20, 2016| Leave a Comment »

 

 

thick with rain

this afternoon and still

the thirstiest parts of me

shriveled

longing to be drenched

 

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Crossing the Line

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 19, 2016| 1 Comment »

 

 

 

Mi casa es su casa.

My arms are your arms.

My lips are your lips.

My ripeness, yours. My triceps,

yours. My hunger, my nipples,

my skin, my swollen pinks

are yours, yours. And why stop there?

My dry elbows, your elbows.

My bunions, your bunions.

My cyst, your cyst. What part

of me would you rather not love?

Could you miss it? Tell me you will also take

my thinning skin, my widening hips,

my wrinkled cheek, my cracked heel.

If my fear is your fear; my ugly,

your ugly; my broken, your broken;

my shame, your shame, then kiss me

there. Again. Please? Kiss me there.

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Invitation While Staring at Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 18, 2016| 1 Comment »

 

 

When trouble comes like a black monkey

sitting on your shoulder, picking at things

you can’t see; when trouble comes

 

like a necklace made of thorns that twists

around your neck; when trouble comes

with its hummingbirds dead and dangling,

 

with its indifference to blue, do not try

to escape into the upper left corner,

though the dragonfly there could distract you.

 

Dare to meet it with a gaze unyielding,

meet it exactly where you are. Ask it

with your eyes, What do you have to teach me?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Portrait_with_Thorn_Necklace_and_Hummingbird

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One Taboo

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 17, 2016| 1 Comment »

 

 

 

the book burning

turning the pages of char—

a blaze of orange butterflies

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Meeting Yeats

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 17, 2016| 2 Comments »

 

 

 

Meeting William Butler Yeats on the road

is like passing by a beggar on the street.

 

Surely, he says, surely the second coming

is at hand. People clear him, looking the other way.

 

He holds out his empty hat to you. He does

not want your spare change. Surely,
he says, looking into your eyes with a certainty

pitiless as the sun, surely the second coming

 

is at hand. What is it in his eyes?

Your own reflection, slouching.

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Quantum

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 17, 2016| 1 Comment »

 

on a line from Ocean Vuong

 

 

The most beautiful part of your body

is the place your lover has just kissed,

 

how his lips remind you that you are also

orchid and apple and arch.

 

How easy it is to forget our own holiness.

How sweet when another reminds us of the ocean

 

still in our blood, the sand in our hair.

Call it communion, the way he touches you

 

and the way your own tongue leaves

a wet trail on his skin not so different

 

from those first attempts to crawl onto shore.

The most beautiful part of your body

 

is your longing to open more, everywhere

he touches, you become door.

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Three Inadequacies

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 14, 2016| 1 Comment »

 

 

 

slumped on my chest

the body of the girl

not quite so limp

as the weight of her pet

still almost warm

 

*

 

no less permanent

this death of a body

so small

 

*

 

the dull weight of sorrow,

wishing it would come soon

to replace this burn

 

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Into the Poem I Tuck

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on September 13, 2016| 1 Comment »

 

 

 

a left turn,

a river stone,

straw,

the moon,

an empty frame,

the scent of books,

a wide-brimmed hat,

a question mark,

ripe peach juice, maps

to nowhere,

unfinished songs,

a trunk, blue mornings,

fields of gold,

uncertainty

of what comes next,

the promise

I will try

again.

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Nocturne

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 12, 2016| 1 Comment »

 

 

 

Even after everything is said

there is so much left unsaid.

I have measured the nights in stars

and lost track. I struggle to say

something true. When I stop

trying, I notice the how night

comes in and fills my throat.

Though no one can hear it,

it says everything I wish to say.

 

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Lesson

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 11, 2016| 3 Comments »

 

 

 

Not that anyone caught us,

but that was the day

when Marnie and I

 

cut school during sixth hour

and drove my old VW bug

to the undeveloped hills

 

just past the edge of town.

Nothing grew there but grass

and wide open emptiness.

 

She’d bought some No Doz,

and though we were already

wildly alive and awake,

 

taking them seemed a good idea.

I don’t remember what class

I ditched—perhaps French IV,

 

which could explain why to this day

I cannot remember the plusque

parfait—but I recall

 

how barren the hills were,

their syntax of winter dry grass,

still brown, and how we ran

 

as fast as we could chasing

nothing we could see

as the wind grabbed the laughter

 

from our mouths and flung it

past the barbed wire fences,

past the highway that circled our town

 

until we lay at last down

and stared at the sky

conjugating the clouds

 

until the sun was spent

and we were cold.

No one ever asked

 

where we’d gone. No one

noticed the grass still

stuck in our hair,

 

the sky still clinging

to our clothes, the absence

of bells in our blood.

 

 

 

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