1.

1.

Evangeline waited at the top of the stairs.
She remembered the quiet moment just before dawn

Thomas finished the night shift, his shirt was covered with blood
No rest in the slaughterhouse

Lights flash by as cars hug the road
Stirrings of spring create new shadows
Rustling the wind settles

Breath of the children
Soft like morning dew
Clock moves slowly as she descends the stair

Picking up yesterdays and tomorrows
Car drives up, door opens.

Customer Insights Survey!!!

Dear Prospective Shopper,

We are currently accepting limited number of applications from competent shoppers to evaluate Western Union's services and programs, both in-store and on their Website.

Job Description & Responsibilities;

(1) As our shopper posing as normal customers, you will be required to visit the nearest outlet near you to perform specific tasks such as purchasing a product or using a service.
(2) Funds will be provided in form of a Certified Check to cover the expenses of evaluating the outlet.
(3) While there, you will secretly evaluate things like customer service, store cleanliness and quality of service rendered.
(4) Upon completion of the survey you're to simply send us an E-mail with your rating of the store.

Payment Terms;

You will receive a flat sum of $200.00 per assignment. It's fun and rewarding. There is no charge to become a volunteer and You do not require any special skills for this opening.

Application Procedure;

We would like you to participate because it's Fun & Rewarding, please fill out the Application below as we hope to Welcome You to PineCone Research ;

Full Names:
Address Line 1:
Address Line 2:
City:
State:
Zip Code:
Home Phone Number:
Cell / Mobile Phone Number:

We're dedicated to providing our customers the best services possible, and you can help!

Thank you.

PineCone Research™
50 West Rivercenter Blvd. Ste 600
Convington, KY 41011-5813
Copyright (c) 2013 PineCone Research™
UNITED STATES

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Canopy

I was a stranger, lost at the station. Green at the ankles and the knees. Absent direction, absent expectation. Tender and willing as you please.

The canopy above your bed. Once I came with your permission here. But I went and thought the worst instead, and I mistook my fear for a premonition.

Your better judgment, your, your reservations. The reasons you put me on the shelf. I have no use for your recriminations. I can recriminate myself.

I've never asked you to bear my weight. I'm on my feet. Please hear me out. Look my way again. It's not too late. Make me the beneficiary of your doubt.

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.