and if I dare dream
let it include the facts—
the bite, the open hand
Posts Tagged ‘reality’
One Feeding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cliche, dream, reality on May 30, 2021| Leave a Comment »
A Letter to the Woman in My Calendar
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged calendar, Corona Virus, fiction, reality, self, writing on April 1, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Dear Other Version of Myself,
In my calendar, it’s April second
and you are going to an event tonight
at a bookstore in another town
where the people will gather
and hug each other and taste
each other’s wine. You live in a world
that no longer exists, and every day
I try to reconcile it—how you
had plans to go camping next weekend,
how you were going to go to the theater
with no mask, no gloves,
no sense of your body as a weapon.
Every day, your life, which once was my life,
seems increasingly impossible.
Every day, these two worlds are farther apart—
the one in which you were getting on a plane
to visit your mother
and the one in which I put on rubber gloves
to go to the post office box.
I remember how seldom you washed
your hands for fear that someone you love
would die. I remember what it was like
to hug my friends with no worry
of harming them, to go to a restaurant,
to plan for a day past tomorrow.
Dear Moment That Wasn’t What I Thought It Was,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belief, psychology, reality, truth on February 4, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Thank you for blessing me with reality,
for showing me when I’m guilty
of what my friend calls cognitive slippage.
It’s like stuffing a big scoop of wasabi into my mouth,
thinking it’s guacamole. The mind believes
what it wants to believe until it’s shown otherwise.
Thank you for demonstrating how sometimes
I disconnect from the facts—especially when
emotions are involved. Like when I think
I’m a pool of warm soothing water
another could enter, but really, I’m a woman
made of bone and corpuscles. Little can I hold.
I always thought imagination was a gift,
but not, perhaps, when it puts me at odds with what’s true.
Dear moment, I want to be attentive. When you pull out the rug
from beneath my thoughts, I want to be the rug.
And when you poke my theories full of holes, I want
to be the hand that pokes, the fresh air that rushes in.
While Stopped at the Intersection, I Consider
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ars poetica, escape, poem, poetry, reality on December 4, 2018| Leave a Comment »
and we will go
to the haiku cottage
in the mountains
where there are no roads
and there are no pens
and there we let ourselves
be written, the seasons
will shape our syllables,
the moon shall be
our cutting word,
and every time we think
we know what line comes next
we will thrill at how new
the world can be, sliding,
escaping, unswirling,
and calling follow me,
bring only wonder,
follow me
One Blood Test
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blood test, escape, medicine, poem, poetry, reality on September 13, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Transportation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daydream, poem, poetry, reality on December 18, 2017| Leave a Comment »
While sautéing onions
in the warm kitchen
I find myself on a tire swing
arcing through fields
of night—
is it the sound of crickets
or the pungent scent
that makes me cry?
What She Said to the Belly of the Whale
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, Geppetto, love, Pinocchio, poem, poetry, reality on September 2, 2015| 3 Comments »
Oh Geppetto, I could have told
those real boys always break your heart.
It always starts as a dream come true.
They cannot help it that they are real.
Oh the real girls, they’re no better,
all of us with our built in yearnings,
our essential fragilities.
I would not have tried to dissuade you.
A real love is better than one with strings,
regardless how strange and scary it gets.
Still, I would have loved to have warned you.
Not that it helps. Just because
sometimes it’s better to face
what is real together.
My Shoulders, My Lungs, My Sense of Safety
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, intimidation, poem, reality, security on May 17, 2015| 2 Comments »
In the dream, it was a man.
He pretended it was an embrace,
squeezing me as he did.
Getting dressed this morning,
still feeling the places he crushed
Black Friday
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged black friday, darkness, poem, poetry, reality on November 28, 2014| 2 Comments »
Oh America, get out of the mall.
Get out of the box stores, the boutiques
and fast food drive thrus. I don’t know
where else you might go … a forest,
perhaps, or over to your friend’s kitchen
where there is a cup of tea and an empty chair
near the window where, if you look
out into the snow-filled yard you might just see
how lovely that light is as it escapes
one more time, one more time.
Changing Perspective
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged illusion, perspective, poem, poetry, reality, villanelle on January 25, 2014| 2 Comments »
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
—Albert Einstein
Am I a woman dreaming she’s a bear?
Or bear who’s dreaming she’s a woman, lost?
I cannot find the answer anywhere.
One thing’s for sure, the bear is not aware
she might be dreaming. She is hungry, cross.
Am I a woman dreaming she’s a bear?
The woman, on the other hand, she cares
if it’s dream. Are these her teeth? Her paws?
She cannot find the answer anywhere.
The she-bear lifts her nostrils to the air
and sniffs. She feels the edge of coming frost.
Am I a woman dreaming she’s a bear?
The woman falls down to her knees and stares,
confused by her wide footprints in the moss.
She cannot find the answer anywhere.
It’s time to sleep? It’s time to wake? I swear
I cannot say. Are these my hands? Or claws?
Am I a woman dreaming she’s a bear?
I cannot find the answer anywhere.