Action Verbs of Summer

hang upside down from the neighbor's tree
muster guts enough to swing
ignore the visiting kid who juggles
slam the fridge door, slam the screen door,
eavesdrop at your parents' door
press against the cotton sheets
whisper smuggle/snuggle/struggle
long after midnight, blaze into sleep

Future Poets of Amenika

Her husband found he could not watch the kitten bat at string
All the figs were dry, sweetless
Any gnats descended without warning buzz

Grey laborers dithered by the vines in new hats
Masters crunched by rattling keyrings and lozenges
Eviscerated lizards lined the steps,  trophies of the spartan felines

It was the summer the tea party swallowed climate change
The summer sugared organs went viral
That time we earnestly remember, even conversing with strangers
while sitting at the vet's.

Past LIfe Letters, pt. 4

Dear Girl I Was,

Sadly, your fears never leave, though they multiply.

They never drift. They're burrowed in.

Examining your conscience remains excruciating,

and your secret sureties that you will never really age

or Be Your Mother sag like that satin sash too heavy 

for the organza dress folded still in the dressmaking cupboard.

At fifty, the thought of fleas will unhinge your safety

like nuclear warheads disturb your sleep now

So, when you double your lifetime,  scratch off

 the fantasies of pioneering legislation, or draping

paper chains of peace letters from refugee children

on the giant pencil armaments.

You're merged with that fear, and the ones you shove away

are small, like conservative Supreme Court appointees,

trees dropping branches , and precious children in fast cars.

TRANSPARENT FRIENDS POSE AGAINST THE MONUMENT

I fell asleep planning boots to march in: zippers at the toes. I fell sleep to the shape of the oval alarm clock, tangerine still bright through the black. Throughout the course of the day, sweat changes scent. I’ve read books where fists are pounding down the house walls but in my neighborhood there is a silence as sober as clouds. You rode the subway downtown with the sign in your lap. On the way home, high school kids were folding pamphlets into paper airplanes. 

THE CHILDREN SWING IN ALL DIRECTIONS (COME OUT AND PLAY)

Take any square inch and narrow in to where there are monsters, to where there are reductions, to where there are cartoon reckonings of your love in a house coat, and a self-portrait hovering high up in the canvas corner, making shadows with wingspan. Telescope to a colorful time where dad fell asleep in the sand and all the screaming sounded safe in sunshine. 

The search to end my worries

After years of living from one milestone to the next,

I am now worried.

Spending years from task to task, job to job, degree to degree,

now all I have to think about are worries.

When will I get the job I deserve? 

Should I leave a place I love?

Who to pay this or that bill?

Should I fix my bike?

Travel to see my family?

Take a sick day?

These are my worries but I share them with others.

I thought I had a plan, a goal, I would have the job, the pay, the benefits just because I worked hard.

That is no guarantee,

so now I worry.

EVERYDAY WITCHCRAFT

What I was told:

face of a fox
and do you
curl your hair
wait, no
maybe it's straightened

open me another beer, okay?
I'll spend the whole night folding origami animals.
I'll build you a zoo.

Past Life Letters, pt 3

To: Other Sister, Often Older
From: big surprise

In my slinky pajamas, my mama's forgotten,
Buttons resist, Claudette's fight in my fist
my piping is hot tempered AND even
Bumpy mattress soaks up fevers, dismals, bliss...
who told us full sentences, who held us to them,
moth speech acts in the miniscus of the sputtering candle
ssssszzt!

Pants

The bottom drawer for jeans and things like jeans like aprons
which, why, well, the things I commit to, the jeans, that drawer but
nothing else needs to be, as long as one thing is, the jeans in place
in that one drawer but everything else goes wherever aside
from things I consider to be like jeans like aprons which, why
would I even but here I am, with all the pop hits, a white dog named Magic
and a glass of water.

know each other

the hallway burrow eat

hollow out

cold clap river where 

he diagnosed or whatever

for sale like junky old

sunny check pause

once burst

palm dive

Today I feel

Like my insides are screaming!

They are groaning and moaning.

My head feels hot

my blood feels like lead in my veins.

Today I have a cold and it sucks.

We all have colds on occasion.

The types that rip into you.

It makes you a slave to tea and water.

This is that type of beast,

the animal of microbes and percolating germs.

Beware the cold and it's grasp!

Triple decker

Troubling slapstick on the train

mu-doom-a, salon, saloon, dining car.

Public feast, gravitational feats, the ne' switcheroo.

Whirling trainers,

a glimmer of hip flask,

its latent shower of hope.

BONE BEACH

I am not my hair

nor my home

nor my sofa

all yellow

to match my teeth

I am something much smaller

I ache with generations of pain

there is a battle

somewhere deep

in the middle of

my bones where

good and evil play

out a tired tale of

dichotomy I deny

even as it rips

through my joints

like fire through

a dry forest

everything crackling

to a flame

somewhere else

deeper inside

my bones there’s a whole

beach of eroded

dreams I inherited

from my mother

her tears lap my shore

like a mermaid

yearning for legs

just for a day even

just to feel the earth

under her feet

just once the heat

of our ancestors

between her toes

I need this beach

the way I need bones

to wade into water

on a hot day

the way she needs me

to hold her sand

to carry it with me

to and fro

across the borders

Past Life Letters, pt.2

Dearest Beloved, Smell this paper
i dropped it in the flour canister and it
has a wheat tang. Pencil is cheaper than ink,
so you get pencil. Ink is for church letters
and for grandmothers. There, i waited two
sentences before begging you to come back
soon; come back sooner than soon. I feel old
without you. Your mother fainted in church
last week when they read the names of the service
men (and my cousin Lydia! she's WAC). Mother
reckons your mother hasn't been sleeping well.
She says she almost fainted herself when the Deacon
sang in her direction. She thinks I'm sweet on him.
She thinks I was writing letters and baking cookies
for the Christian Girls' League bake-off
 more than spiritual fervor. I do feel fervor,
but it is all for you, for you, for the best and bravest
machinist in the entire Pacific fleet. I am making
cookies like a mad girl, like i could glue them into
a raft to sail to you, to sail myself to you. Then you
could hold me, and I would smell like flour, too.
Flour and ocean waves, i'd be glue, your glue girl.
Forever True, Cora Susan, your Cora.

TRAVEL JEEP PARKED IN TALL GRASS

You took him on adventures. You paid money for them, but still, they were adventures. Skimming the white water. Gathering round the ranch donut.

I am not her, but I feel akin: girl with the massive gum bubble growing out of boredom. I blow more air into it, sure that it will burst. Pink, purple, sour green. I had dreams about the ship titanic, and a floral scent. A red stamp proved to me my best friend was dead. The grief was mostly frantic.

Girl at her job.

 I had dreams about reservations of parties of six or more. I had dreams about Okanogan. I woke up with a pain in my throat, symptom of running all night for things without a price. I work for free for lemons, ice, napkins, straws. Flash rock on to Paul in his usual seat. Grimace and shriek. Shimmy into a bar stool. Carve my glare into an icicle.

Those clouds were not painting clouds or candy clouds or food fight clouds. In foreign contexts you cannot categorize the clouds the same. I wake up and think I am in the bathtub. I wake up and dream that I am dreaming, somewhere in some backseat, someone taking me somewhere.

Magazines

I look inside the magazine.

I look up and down and read all the little letters.

The women are fit

They smile

They beckon.

I rip out the pages, slather them with glue,

doodles,

layer faces, body parts, places.

These magazines are full of worlds.

With perfection inside.

I want to be inside them.

I want to BE them.

Emulate each outfit

Take the advice

Use the top 10 tips.

But these magazines are just glossy paper.

Full of ink and letters.

Written by people as confused as the rest of us.

Burnish

Shellfish-star friend, name like a flower,
I like seeing you.
Over two slender knuckles
you're wearing a stick of gold.
Pow!
But it's quite clear, in how you touch that shoulder,
tender, without hesitation,
that you've disarmed.
Like a color on a butterfly
or a marking on some other prey
that over time, and circumstance,
(and something else,
something you did,
what was it?)
adapted through disuse
into ornament.
Uniform into costume,
weapon into custom.
When we were half the ages we are now you were so sad!
Now of the habit of hurt,
just elegance remains.
Lovely mysterious inside-out
you-more you.
One day all the scraping stops
and you're glossy.

Past Life Letters, pt 1

Dear Mam,
The cowboys here are ugly as muledeers,
with just as many flies at their snorting nostrils.
I know you were praying otherwise.
It's been hot. There were squirrels fanned out on the branches
regretting their tails and it wasn't even noon.
I poked Cousin You-Know-Which-One in the solar plexus
for calling me fanciful three times before breakfast
and once when i was ironing his shirt.
I know i must stay through the apples and i must learn
everything i can from Aunt Chess
but some mornings i waken balled up like a spy
wishing i could  catch the first slingshot outta here

Ribs

In concave flinching moment pressed,
breast-valley heaviness, bones.

What is it if it's not my heart but hurts,
what is it if it's just the bones.

A bruise is not a thought/
a thought is not a thing when it's dissolved

in welling eyes in sudden rising
throat in catching of the bones.

Oh my dear I'm sorry for my face
its twist is just the bones, the pressure on them

I think it's all, the dread is just a bruise
just bones, a bruise, just bones

The little ticks

We all have little ticks.

Secret habits we hide behind,

with smiles and shrugs.

We all have annoying little things we do.

Things that drive those around us crazy.

Twirling hair

Snapping gum

Saying uh or um.

These little ticks pile up

like a mountain of headaches.

Often

it's how much i think of you

unconsciously
unintentionally
by accident
on purpose

i keep the focus on me

          (i promise you)
i do

it's just how much my thoughts
               (whatever it is i'm thinking)
will turn
to something you said
or the inflection of your voice
or the way it felt to be with you
the last time
the days
after the storm

or a space of silence
or a moment of laughter
or a long ago memory
captured

then fleeting...then something
something that makes me wonder if you're really okay
what you'll say

when i see you

something / something
that turns me around

and it's that thing
that thing that happens
when i think of you

and wonder if you're happy
hope that you are doing what makes you happy
wonder if you know ...
          what it takes

and i say to myself, choose

choose whether you will be happy or sad today

i choose happy

and then it's often...

when and where my mind goes
certain times of the day
or night
or when i'm driving

i think of something you said
in few words

words that i will remember
i listen as i remember

they soothe me
and touch me

and (i promise you)
                                         i am keeping the focus on me

and its just that

honestly

man

i think of you

often

       and

imagine.

WOMEN WAIT IN THE SCHOOLROOM

I could bawl and bawl just thinking of the ankles, the birds, the electric organ soundtrack to the imagined mornings, and the sunshine, it must have been fierce and cubist, teasing through the station wagon’s windows onto their faces..

Did the light gold eye shadow spread easy over the lid, or did you need a special set of tools? How many purses were there to choose from? Who was the easiest to wrangle out of bed? Who finished their toast?

On the beach I am surrounded. A pregnant girl with a face like a pony dips her Roman feet into the lake; her stripes contain her belly – perfect orb –  leader of everything. They are speaking Portuguese, they are distributing snacks, they are waiting for a baby to come.

After you left them in the carpet room, where did you go, how did you occupy your granted hours? Rubber wheels on linoleum. A slew of other women passing by. The micro click of the second hand as the plants kept growing.

I could bawl and bawl. This is one of my favorite songs. But I like rock music. My bare feet are planted on the rainbow fringe and I am forgetting to make a movie out of it in my head.  Turquoise, red and cream. Children and their women. Women and their children. 

MAN ACROSS THE COBBLESTONE

Write the title out, the words as pure as steam. This will be an okay abstract ode. In and out flickers, like in Lake Saranac, some solo feeling of wading through other people’s objects, and now the boy you flash flood loved is in love with a bigger girl, a girl with her own littler girl, named for the Lion King and screaming down a backyard waterslide.

A letter or a poem? An explanation, or a trailing tangent? I left the burner on. Cliché is an ingredient in the psychology I poke and prod. Herbal gloss that makes the pain diluted. Alanna making a U turn and we were talking, talking, until we realized we were driving, driving two hours in the wrong direction. Rise to turn the burner off. Strain the grain out from the coffee, black like a lake isn’t but seems.

I inherited her angle device. I inherited a lot. Man juts his leg cross the cobblestone, man wears tank top, man has a whole life that is a whole mystery to her then to me now and I’ll loop-de-loop more get-off dream equations to any barfly who’ll listen -  no, not any, I’m lying again. The two Rainier Beach girls testing out the rich white bar that has no money in the bank. They are peacocks I am pigeon. They have baroque gothic script up and down their fore arms, I have jam on my knee. They have me take their picture again, again, again. None are right but they thank me anyways.

Cole made a meal at an establishment’s table with foods from another establishment because that is one of his trademarks. Cole is a bag lady and a tramp. Cole is a vixen hermaphrodite. He is a small boy saving chocolates so his mother won’t die. He is a believer in other people. He is a believer, crying into the steering wheel outside of the Laundromat while the city cries rain. We are reckless and hateful on the boring roads looking for a store with a blender. Back home I am just normal.

Did you let yourself get like that, Nonnie? Yes but different I’m guessing. Documenting plant life in the spiral bound. I won’t try and make it romantic. If I had been older, wiser while you were living I would have worn perfume, I would have shown you how funny I can be sometimes. Shaking talons in and out of the pocketbook. Strong nail beds. Broken nails are my motif. 

Tammy's Picnic

14 doses to my 4 and she's throwing a party, in the sunlight, with dairy!
I don't feel competitive, I'll lose at every ribbon, last place at every walk.
I'm not even going to walk. Or bike or hike or do anything to cure
how uncomfortable it is to see sick people, and know that the way they are sick is the way you might become sick too. Are likely to, really.
Though not so soon as me, I wager.
(And loves, I hope. Don't get sick at all, please.)
I want all the sympathy, I want all the cute ones to color on my cast,
and I want all the awe, for being statistically unlikely,
and visibly altered, and walking ahead into the hormonal
empty light we are all walking toward, but I arriving
decades early, not walking, but transported,
sped there in just two dripping hours,
and maybe my womb will come back from the dead,
like a TV reenactment, a voice will say,
"It's not your time yet. Return." and like two eyes
in the head of the comatose, my two ovaries will
blink and smile, see their loved ones, weep
and little tears of estrogen will pool and spread
lift my flesh and keep on crying
they'll flood my pores, they'll wet my thighs,
when I kiss that one, anyone.
Maybe TV time is over and maybe reenactments too.
Tammy's eating ice cream and she's got no uterus now.
On the other side of this, what's love, what's loving?
How many Brooklyn parks have I sat in,
damp from kissing, damp with what comes next.
Womb come back to me. You glow and float
above the earth of parks. I planted this,
I planted that. Here and there, not watered, not weeded,
not wanted? Wanted like an ice cream cone.
No, I wanted the park, but now I want a home.
Womb, come back to me, I won't trot you out
every summer night. There's no summer here
and I know now, parks aren't for planting.
There's fog and vitamins in the sky and
I'm very slow, slow enough to grow
something in a box, in a yard, in a
bound. Come back to this bay with me.
Across the land there's a patient friend
knowing what to celebrate,
knowing how to want to win.

Bare of Foot

a grassy walk, i watch my step without noticing my feet
in fact, my feet could not be there, if a walk on grass
or otherwise
could happen without visualized feet, my feet, which are not needed
when i watch my step
so ridiculous to lose left foot:
 little toe typer, little mary wiper, little millie middle, little billy widdle, & Great Big Thumping Tom! then right foot:
Great Big Thumping Tom! little billy widdle, little millie middle, little mary wiper, & little toe typer and christ knows how many bones
and ligament bundles and a deck of muscle sheaths and nails, the kelp of the toeshore
and impact, how odd to lose impact, too
because when i watch my step, it never arrives
and even in the gravity-after, even in the gravel disaster,
the judder has yet to shank up my shin.

Today is the day

Today is the day that we get up.

Stand up from a long sleep,

stretch

Eat

Comb our hair

Shower

Use the bathroom.

Then today is open.

Defined by us:

Full of adventure

Learning something new

Watching something,

someone.

Meeting new people,

hearing new sounds.

Today is that day

seemingly like other days.

But each is different.

We are different people

Molded for the day ahead.

it is time for a poem

Yesterday's Poem

(for Tommy)

was the color of your eyes

reflecting against the hot clouds

of a sky a thousand miles 

away from me

where I imagined your voice

a short distance

about the width of the circle of our embrace

my fingers tracing your face

breathing you in

remembering

when i thought i'd lost you forever

again

and this,

yesterday's poem

is my way

of dancing

slowly into the tomorrow

when i can hold you

and be held by you

again.

drafty

I lay beside a very cherub,

Kissed on a young blue-eyed brat

sporting a longish hard kick in the pants

that I took down the throat like communion,

come on. 

OLD FRIEND

you know that flower is named love-in-a-mist

you know that’s my one and only party trick,

no, I’m lying, I’ve got  tons

and we were both around

when they were worse,

and I employed them more –

the problem with recovery is

it’s harder than ever

to tell when you’re being

a jerk

I worry about that

After a Walk to Muir Beach

My cold skin holds together a place

where the landscape lights up in patches

of ache, and hard dry grasses scrape 

each time the thing breathes, tries 

to digest, tries to sleep. Numb in the sunshine, let

the tongue go to sand, the knee creek.

Half an hour forgetting then three-quarter's day

face and organs in a fist. Nothing to grip on

but the exhaustion fissuring through.

If I were

Lightning is traveling sidewards
                not staying long enough to say
                and gone before I get to
         
               is a blueberry pie bursting through
               and staining the picnic blanket
               not steady like you

              bites into a plum and sees itself
              would be the cosmos
              won't put down roots

For Don, a Birthday Card

(written on the occasion of learning that appetizers  are called zakuski in Russia, and in Japan, zensai)

Come home = I've forgotten the snip,

 the crumbs on the pillow,

fragrant fellow, my daily zakuski.

Git home + sprawl on the cats,

the pissy yoga mat flat in the dirt-

we okay the grit, damp blanket seduction.

Twittery birds lift in flower formation ```/``

all ours for the taking, our 

hour appetizer, it's zensai,

a Zen sigh, a mouth upside down,

a nose is two funnels,

it's comic, it's toothless, a destined-nation.

I'll bite your lips when you come home.

Git home; I'll bite your lips

and begin.

Little and Large

Life is full of the little and large

Pleasures and pain 

all small and big and massive and minute.

From the stomach ache to heart break

Indigestion to revelation

Tears of breaking

to tears of insane happiness.

Our lives are balls of all of these things.

Strings of memories, regrets, dreams, wrapped again and again tightly.

Building a life from the little things

to the large.

NOT YOU, NOT ME

My tongue heavy,
I am choked
Grasping for salt water
bodies sweet.

the distance grows
thick
like black milk honey,

An omission.
chapped lips, and vertebrae in
all the wrong spots

something clearly lacks.

The River

Elise's reading Jack Gilbert poems

Jet's reading about Frida
I'm reading Marguerite Duras
We are lying around on large warm rocks shaped like us
The river roars right by
As we read in silence
Together
This was one of her favorite spots too

first gift

a wall.
bare,
beige.
catch your heat.
press you cool.
and outside,
rain.