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Posts Tagged ‘arguing’

When We Argue 

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 7, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
I do not love it, the tension
between us, dark-viscous and thick,
or red-spined and prickly. I don’t
love the way a fat fist forms
in the softness of my belly,
then fossilizes into righteousness,
or unravels into something fetid
and festering. I don’t like when words
feel like sandpaper on my skin,
or worse, when silence feels
like a moat, like a wall, like a sword.
I don’t like feeling like a tree in November
with not a single leaf, barren, stark.
But maybe I love the way meeting tension
eventually teaches me to loosen
my certainty until I am less cement,
more soil. Maybe I love how it
acts like a neon sign that blares
inside me with scarlet all caps:
WHAT YOU THINK MATTERS TO ME.  
Maybe I love the way wrestling with tension
invites me to ask more questions of myself,
of the world. This gift I don’t want to unwrap.
How alive I am then as the fierceness of it
fades, leaving me opened in ways
I didn’t know to explore, and feeling
again into how deep they are, these roots.

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Derailleur of the Heart

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 16, 2021| 2 Comments »


 
 
Because our conversation
feels like riding a bike uphill,  
I think of gears. I think
of how easy it is to shift
lower, how a simple flick
of the thumb makes the impossible
possible. Where are the gears
for love? There must be better
ways to use our teeth
than biting words. There must
be a series of notched wheels
in the heart that allow us
to move forward with less force,
some mechanism to make
the chain hop from one sprocket
to another, changing the way
we engage. I want to find that gadget,
those gears, the ones that help us
hear each other, the ones
that help us say what must be said,
the simple tools that allow us
to move forward at all.

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What the Striped Blue Bear Said

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 5, 2016| 2 Comments »

 

            –a poem based on a painting

 

 

Because it is stitched on my face,

that is the reason I am still smiling.

Somewhere there are lilies blooming.

Somewhere the sacred chambers of nautilus.

Somewhere there are lullabies.

But here? How did the calendar

get cut into strips? Even Monday

and Tuesday have gotten a divorce.

The writing’s on the wall, but no one

can read it, they’re too busy shouting.

What is it they’re trying to say? All

of them making their mouths bigger,

as if that is the secret to being right.

I am grateful these big floppy ears can’t hear.

If my eyes were not yarn, I would cry.

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So Much For the Honey Badger Approach to Mothering Tanka

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 22, 2012| 3 Comments »

he pushes and he
pushes and he pushes and
he pushes and I
push back and we both topple
tall poppies hacked at the stem

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