Thank you for being here!
My favorites this month are 03, candy trees, and 12, Big feelings. Some of the pieces in here may cause you to ask: what is this girl going through? Don't worry about that. This is my medium-secret public safe space, it's fine, they let you have those, it's fine.
The numbers are numbers, not dates.
If you have something constructive to say about any of the pieces here:
17 — Memorize. Burn.
So to stop
my voice from shaking,
I do not speak at all.
Fear encrypts what buzzes
with blue heat. As I swim for you,
the green shore laughs
and shrinks from me.
16 — For Seneca
Today I watched columns of steam
find and cling to cirrus bellies.
You know, I've nearly perfected my ability
to cut fruit right into my hand.
The little things go splat on the clean glass.
I think I heard you right. No riches
but these. Microfiber under my hands.
Another day here, with which to consider
the behavior of industrial steam. To ask
a good friend what she needs. To answer
the silence with wedges of dark plum.
To know that wasn't it. But was for me.
15 — Savasana
Body: many hinges
and springs.
Body, bring me
to the river. The
apple to my mouth.
Please and
thank you, body.
Real or imagined,
when I sew myself heavy
to the floor, it lifts like a lung.
14 — The black water -
which greets me as dust, plotting
the shallows with some last
scrapes of milky ice -
keeps an effortless confidence.
For hours, I study the
maddening tiger stripes, needles
of fallen sun like static in a closed eye.
When the plywood hills finally lift,
I swear I can almost see
the rows of little shoes.
13 — Cartoon Stars
Clearing room for my elbows,
I run out of places
for the cuttings in water,
these many small and bright worlds.
Displaced to sills and shelves,
brave shoots lift and fall on currents
so gentle I might have missed them.
The wax melt shaped like a cave
bleeds down the wall. The oven, which
always gets too hot, is running cold.
Flocks and flocks of scavenger birds,
everywhere I look.
Gumballs in my eyes.
Bombing my head like cartoon stars.
12 — Big feelings
The herons blink strangely,
corkscrew graphite marking
pitch pale sky bluntly
gushing happy flakes of snow.
I forgive you as you
have forgiven me.
Endlessly in time.
With everything
I have.
I turn out my hands
in dumb prayer. May the depths
of my wide open heart
find 500 miles of prairie
and the cold of real steel.
11 — Isn't that funny
New morning, new marble sky.
The wind shredding the barrel tiles,
dimensions
of ritual beyond ritual.
These known miles a close
embrace,
hills a billowing
300 thread-count organic percale.
Saw this weird truck, isn't
that funny. How do you find
your heart this new morning under this
new marble sky?
10 — The long way
Strained voice, branding tool -
to my surprise, mine.
A mystery how the pavement,
whipping behind me, resting
like a top sheet, calls
to my marrow.
The body and soul immortalized
in checker marbles
sloping the long way. Fitting,
fitting. Lightly, lightly.
09 — rock cress static
spray paint street curb
customer copy stop sign skittering
at my heels gathering
ash shedding
rock cress static
bathwater
blood in my mouth
heavy concessions stack
a blunt instrument
08 — Prayer for chest pains, more chest pains, a good friend, the screen door propped open, the dust on the blinds, the paint darkened with fry oil, and Olympic pair skating; for my fractured trust in this disgusting world and the conviction, when I cannot find the love (the gentleness, the patience, the grace) in any wretched corner as hard as I try, to become it, to live one more day.
Give me the strength.
07 — as glass
Gray wood sanded
to steep curve has no interest
in the bird names.
More gold mylar,
still-closed
lilies, pepitas, grated carrot.
In the mirror I study
the hinge in my chest,
the impact of breath metabolized
as glass.
Beauty, muse, children, service -
wear thin under the sun.
Any road, any.
You walk alone.
06 — The world's flowers
The pastel smears under my thumb.
The meadows, teeming under winter's
silver scales,
shaken by ankles over
a white duvet - eggshell,
actually, no cover.
When grief is wide and raw,
only the fool lowers his eyes.
The world's flowers scatter like keys
for its soldiering people.
05 — Time on my hands, I calculate
the fraction of reservoir just boiled with 10 ounces of dried hibiscus. In the big red pot, my favorite.
A YouTube video about David Lynch asserts the importance of distance to The Work. The banality of classical suffering.
Hours before it happened, I saw a road-killed goose closer than ever, and it made me sick. I suspend
a blind trust in black oil and watch it sink. Hands clasped in the living room, a hot meal offered like
a bundle of sticks, a palmful of nickels and dimes, one penny. Sleeping and crying: you're odds, I'm evens.
Distance is one thing. Now, now, I am helpless as the animal bleeding glacially on the asphalt, still, in death.
04 — Marble Arches
The root splits as branch.
The poppies form wax paper
bodies around big cat eyes.
Velocity, axis. Lamplight,
usher of self to self,
sinks first and wakes
to life after life.
A spine, crooked from work,
is god like the marble arches.
03 — candy trees
a vortex of silk and
feathers tightens
as it forms the west laid
bare in the negatives
studded with teeth
heavy rain slow
stasis in turquoise
the candy trees
breaking with fruit
vital as you are
your eyes flooded with
aerosol moss your hands
chapped raw leaden
as anchors
something true withers
in a few clumsy words
snapping turtles far
from home mash
mash the straw and mud
02 — Boring Story
One toe on the dock ledge
made of matchsticks,
and not many.
A woman gets
the benefit of doubt
for one reason only.
01 — Pixels
When finally there
is nothing
left to say, the lilies
open at once. The second
-hand sorting and sorting,
left right left left right left.
Clicking, clicking, binned by
paper and divine will.
Pixels in stitches
fired for the sun.
We laugh together,
we weep together.
You say no fair
and it isn't.