Goodbye

It's been so much fun reading and writing with all of you this May! I look forward to next year.
Does anyone know of publications that will accept still submissions that have appeared online here?  Angeline

It appears I've survived turning 50. And though I haven't been as present here as I had hoped to be, I thank you for allowing me this needed catharsis, letting me purge my pieces while I prepare this collage of mine, a farewell to the past. I've come to expect this lovely group of artists as a soft place to land and you haven't failed me yet. merci, merci! 

may is gone

and so is winter: overnight the trees are green dandelions implode like deathstars warbling springly birds unseen -- soccer balls on verdant pitches ice cap cups on boulevards; bicycle bells ring metallic scatter pedestrian house of cards -- chainsaws drone while mowers moan mosquitoes drift vampiric whine; flowers flow and grasses grow and ants mince crookedly their lines -- june is here and so is summer: cafes rooftops paddling pools; winter's long: this heat is brief: we shed our clothes like honeymoon fools

Farewell to May

Once again it's been good to get together with all you poets for the month of May. Thank you for all your poems and your comments. I love the conversation that happens here every year. And I vow to get in gear earlier next year and bring in some new recruits (do send your suggestions my way).

Till next time...

Orientation

It's just like home, but with palm trees.

It's just like home, but with more history.

It's like home, but with shutters to close
against heat and hurricanes.

It's like home, but I can't name the flowers
that trumpet their colors from every front garden
don't know the birdsongs fluting from the wires
don't know north from south
or if it's safe to cross this street

It's not like home
It's like
It's like-

Perspective

Thank you!

Joy

As I walk through rustling prairie grass,

Crickets concealed, chirping  tête-à-tête;

As I try to reach the bottom,

Leaving sundogs on the surface where I dove;

And to the tangerine moon

That almost sneaked past me into golden fields;

At the first sign of Siberian Squill

Announcing the arrival of spring in my 'hood;

And for Annie,

Who always says yes when I need a partner in play;

I am grateful,

And to appreciation I owe my joy.

*to my collage i add prairie wheat & sun, tangerine orange, gold, & blue, and a dog biscuit.

mermaid

Mais on veut apprendre à nager et pourtant garder un pied à terre.

People wish to learn to swim and at the same time to keep one foot on the ground -- Marcel Proust

o
o
o
we saw
her, halfbreed,
in the water, scaly
skin and
seaweed hair:
rustling catkins
on the wateredge
-- not a beaver
-- not a bear. silver
spangling, bubbles
pluming she slipped
down into murked
depths, knife-flash
glinting there was
no surprise when
we hauled up
tatter-torn
ripped up
nets.
Not bit,
nor torn:
severed neat.
Could have been
a diver, said uncle,
except most don't have
fins, they've flippered feet
o
o
o

loose connections

I did some writing today and tried
not to think of you, or of the knot
in a pink plastic skipping-rope
that made it break when I was six.

I tried to think, instead, of lemons
and hula hoops, of being surprised
by joy and what it was like to be

just

to be

and I thought about trips to confectionaries
with nickels in sweaty palms and I thought about
knitted afghans (not
Afghanistan -- unravelled skeins and cold beds)

or the subtle difference between
humming and hummingbirds.

Between (less subtle)
Hummers and hummus.

Alabastron

At the Art Institute of Chicago

Beauty is only to be expected here.
Arranged, proportioned, more
than a day can hold. We plan
to see this painting and this.
We pursue medieval icons through rooms
linked to rooms, arrows on signs
and the guard's "it's right there"
leading eventually to nothing.
The Americas gallery startles us
 with a row of clay faces,
portraits of powerful Incas.
So real we want to ask them their names.
But in the Greek antiquities a slender flask,
thick blue glass veined with white,
no longer than a hand, arrests us
with its beauty first, but most
with possibility: what woman bought this,
what scented oil filled it, whose feet she chose
to grace with drops poured from its lip.

Bathtime

Once the nightly site of a soapy struggle, I only
have to wait for one of the teenagers to turn
off the shower so I can get into the tub
myself. Rinse off soccer sweat, grass
stains, and mosquito spray. Tonight
a man dived and rolled three times
when I took the ball away. This
was poetry: a kick aimed right,
shoulder out, a clean tackle
that won the ball. I swear
it even rhymed. And now
I keep my right knee
out of the water.
Slightly bloody
but well-worth
the scar.

Artist Statement

STEP ONE

Verbs crawl, leak, bleed, simmmer in a viscous broth, adjectives and adverbs weakly blend in a luminescent flagon.
There are nouns in numbered containers, filigreed cabinets, marked test-tubes, ziploc baggies.
Sometimes prepared packages of clauses and phrases.
Cliches powdered and used as cheap filler.

STEP TWO

I am. (a poet)

I do. (this because I have to)

Sometimes words. (follow me home)

Sometimes I. (chase them over:
a desert, a savannah, a rainforest, a parched and cracked-crust
mud camoflauging bogs, oceans, quicksand.)

I always. (sink. Sometimes
something

----------------------------floats)

STEP THREE

An unwatched pot boils dry.

Ocean an unbridled horse.

We held a wake for
the moon, and despite being lassoed by
a cliche, she floated out of her unhinged coffin.


STEP FOUR

Backspace. Type. Type. Type. Backspace.

Cut and paste. Paste and backspace. Type.

Cut. Cut. Cut. I am a director with a stutter. Cut.

STEP FIVE

Echo chamber.



STEP SIX
Repeat. Do not rinse. Re.
Peat.

Clone

Someday the nature-nurture people will clone you. They will place new you in the perfect home. They will prepare your new mother for everything. She will not twist your arm when you don’t respond to your name. She will have the best behaviour therapists on speed dial. She will have no need to escape into blogs or happier shorelines in her mind. She will never be surprised. She will know when to ask you sweetly to use your fork and when to join you on the chair in praise to Bob the Tomato. She'll never mistake your anxious laughs for defiance, your tipping chairs for hate. She will not bite her arms into Os for remorse or bang her head on door frames. She will never weep beside your bed or beg for mercy. Each night she’ll be debriefed while her team rubs out her feet, her back, her ready smile. She will know this is only an experiment.  

Apollo 13 (a successful failure)

We are in the simulator.  

My daughter asks, Where’s the guy who wanted to land on the moon? The other three people on the bed say, shh.

We are in Jim Lovell’s house. She asks, Which one’s the guy? We say, shh.

We are in mission control. She asks, Where’s the guy? We say, shh.

We are in the lunar module. She asks, Is that the guy? We say, shh.

We are passing the moon. She asks, Where’s the guy? We pause the movie. We say:

The commander’s the guy on the left. Yes, pushing the buttons. Jim. Yes, one whose wife was crying because she couldn’t see his face.

We are on the bed cuddling.

We are back on earth.

Expected

Someone is coming soon. She's pressing

toward arrival and I'm heavy with waiting,

my body slowed, thinking of her. All I have 

is an echo of her form, small impacts of limbs

that kick me awake these nights. 

I lie restless, toss out curled-up names,

wonder if there's any she will catch and keep

when she unfolds into the world. 

I'm losing the need for words, 

the power to find them. Soon all I will know 

is her intelligence of flesh and bone

and wailing, sucking mouth. We'll speak 

through skin touching skin: lips, hands,

my full, aching breasts.

re-volt

Sodden skies paste themselves above
us, papier-mache away the sun, and squeeze
themselves wetter against our dampened cheeks.
A rogue wind blows branches, and the power
is out for an hour. Lighting candles
we read slow stories and watch rain
drip melancholy a weaker coffee than the pavement
wishes for, puddling weakly water-white.
Lights return, electricity hums, and clocks
flash digital red and electric blue a midnight number. So urban
so wild, one thin black line away from
chaos, powered / disempowered by the electricity
bolt that untames us: at night
one round bulb in the sky
glowing neon steady
cyclops moon

hiraeth

Green it was, emerald ebbing to chartreuse
or lime: sheep on roads, and everything
-- a stone's trow away, to be sure --
even clichés lilted sideways sweet.

Everything was covered
in moss, and maybe
sleeping, like the giant's
causeway slabbing the water.
Ruined castles -- fairytales
gone unread. Fields
that were not like home.

Belfast on a Sunday, us
under a table as marchers
went by, angry faces framed
through blackout curtains
in plateglass windows. Secret
and furtive eating in the time
of hunger strikes. (Nothing
tasted right -- except potatoes,
or a heel of bread.)

Often there was rain. We
couldn't find the records
that would give us place
or name. Spelling

not the same. And a churchyard
where we found your grave and
gathered sombre for a prayer
then left the rosary dangling there, medal
tintinnabulating against the stone: a bell
without a tongue, without a song.

[untitled so far; this is an addition to an existing series]

Catherine, walking at night, is thinking
of what lies outside the reach of streetlamps.
What it is that the light makes invisible.
Whose breath she almost hears
at the mouth of an alley. If she turns
her back she might perceive a movement
in her direction, a gaze fixed on her outline.
She is tempted to defy all warnings and leave
the lighted sidewalk for the dark passage.
In a safer place, far from here, she once walked
alone on a moonless night, testing her footing
with small steps. Her eyes hard-pressed
to judge depth or nearness.
Here, in the lane behind the drugstore,
she might be lucky, or not.
Catherine gives herself a shake. She knows
the foolishness of this. Yet it frightens her less
than it ought. Less than sinking below the surface
of her thought, fingering the tangled weeds
of her own mind.

untrue north strong, freed

unspin the needle on my compass sew me shut my eyes can blind the sundogs barking off in all directions madly the mad trapper's cabin find me there panning words for gold in streams of sadness spark metallic glint of pyrite truth shingled dreams of gladness lichen grows the northern side of trees rooting on the roof unsing the song of south winds sawan sadness green the gloom that blues the western skies east me to the sunrise softly sweep the pine trees carpet hollowed thumpthick ground with pin-sharp lies

Aspergers is characterized by at least two of the following

leaning over her net she casts

her eye on a floating fish, a weed, and gasps,

rocks on her toes beneath bobbing flies  

minnow! minnow! minnow!

her suit sags low between her thighs,

the bottom tan from dragging in the sand

that falls like sequins from her fluttering hands,

the girl swoops again and reaches in to stroke

a shiny shell! with somebody inside!

                                                                                                                                               

her pigtails whirl, off she lopes   

to where two stray adults hold

glinting beers up to the sun

                                                                                                                                               

Look! I’m a marine biologist.

Do you know what a marine biologist is?

the couple frown and squint

at the horizon,

they swig, can’t look exultation

in the eye

A marine biologist collects life like fish before it gets away.

as they step back, unswayed,

she hefts her find

up to the strangers’ shades –

too close

(Sean liked the cadence; Don thinks it's become enslaved to form and it should be rewritten as prose poetry; I feel stuck)

mousetrap

to write it is overstated: an owl floating
downwind
eyes sharper than razored talons

synapse-snapping descent to prey
(I have seized ideas this way
shook them to stun then thrown them
away) for full effect say the moon

is full and round, no, three-quarters
for modesty, and say you can't see

the mouse, must imagine severed

spine, glazed eyes, smorgasboard
innards, grey fur riffling in
a midnight

breeze. there are owlets
to feed and you,
me -- we are ambivalently
carnivorous.

50 cups o' coffee

you say truth is relative

just pick one.

       which one, I mumble

and

we go round and round

spoons melting shapeless

should I say about the abuse

and divorcing my family? or

mention the decade-long marriage

that haunts me? the cult & the cubicle

I escaped? the assaults I've survived? 

you've had a few good years,

you say smiling -

and I smile with you,

grateful for their being;

mindful of the road that led me here,

fearing the one I can't see.

pick one true thing, you say

as I reach my bottom.

I think of what I know, what

has always been...
       the moon, I reply. it
never lies. I'll write 
about the moon.

*the 3rd piece for my collage: la lune

Do I love you yet?

I thought it would be

love at first sight;

this mother-child thing

the stuff of legend.

But you looked nothing like me,

my father, your dad, or what I see when

I close my eyes.

I pull off your diaper and marvel

at the detail in miniature,

at the mess in a million wrinkles.

I pull you to my breast and

feel the letdown

of milk and warmth

from heart to nipple

pour into your rising navel.

I stroke the ear that’s

closest, the wax, the down.

I will your hair to grow.

A second pregnancy,

a new fluttering inside

beneath my heart, but

I’m too caught up in you

to notice.

Then she emerges head first,

and love is a flash –

she looks just like you.

Sunday Morning, St. Pete's

birkenstocks on waxed tile
a muffled leaving in dusty air
oatmeal sugared with plot points

and back to the cloistered silence
broken by bells, or the shower singing
next door. last night coyotes lullabied

the moon, and you. this is the place
of new beginnings, old revisions, carved
time in weathered stone word by word by pater noster

Literary Astrographer

the big little bang theory: wondering what sound stars make
when they shoot, and is a shooting star
an act of constellatory aggression? who are they
shooting at, and with what? maybe they only get one word and it's BANG


or maybe the stars look
down on us at night and whisper
did you know those tiny flickering lights
burned out long ago?

it's just that we don't speak the same language
you, me, and the stars, and there are
no translators or mediators to tell a rock
what a raindrop is crying about, let alone a pulsing distant sun

and the air I push out shaped in words
has been distorted from synapse to sound
there is no purity in language
and one never equals one

every metaphor
a loaded / unloaded
gun:
unbang.

contradistinction

Being soft for you

is hard for me

yet you say

giving in

is not the levee cracking

but a chance to build

my body

braced to fight,

shudders,

threatens to crumble

under your lightest touch

if you break me,

you promise,

it will be 

like a wild horse

not a fragile vase

and what feels like 

pitiful weakness

is my greatest strength

Theme and Variations

(After Beethoven's Piano Sonata no. 30 in E major)

It's dark, late evening.
Light wind through the elms.
The air smells like rain.

1.
That windy evening in the park.
Why don't we climb? you said.
We sat on a branch, low in the massive pine
and lost count of the times we kissed.

2.
Talk to me, I said
after one of those long, hot days.
Evenings on the balcony we'd wait
for any small movement of air.

3.
Two a.m. and you weren't there
beside me in the dark bed.
You were somewhere on the roadside
waiting out the blinding rain.
I lay awake, imagining calamities.

4.
It was almost dark when we walked
home in the rain. I said because
I love you, but couldn't explain
how that answered the question.

5.
We brought home takeout chicken,
drank a toast and talked till late.
Lit candles and turned out the lights.

6.
Late evening. It's dark.
You at your desk. I pass
behind you, stop
to touch your hair.
There's a light wind in the elms.
The air smells like rain.

Appearances

Through the car window, a coyote
standing still in an empty field.

Once, a glimpse of a slender brown animal
slipping into the undergrowth

and once, the banner of a skunk's tail
in the tall grass.

In the bushes, a rustle of something fleeing
as footsteps pass too near.

So rare, that permission to look long,
to take in the blunt shape of a head,

the way wet hairs spike together
on a furred back. The tail's propulsion.

If you could fade, escape notice.
Become a tree, a shadow.


A brief sighting you try to interpret.
You look and look after it's gone.

Gardening

The woman fears she

will no longer be able

to do what she loves.

An apartment for adults with autism is being built

next door. The camera

zooms in on her white

knuckles as she pulls

one last weed

from her backyard.