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. 

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

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.

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. 

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

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