Poetry

  • Lists

    Cat. 
    Donkey.
    Cigarettes and dust.
    Smoke from the trash heap.
    Allergens.  Triggers.  Potential poison.

    Dolphin.
    Beach.
    Hammock.
    Not quite cold enough Corona.
    The light in your eye.
    Comforts.  Pleasures.  Aphrodisiacs.

    The sweet grace
    of the back of your hand
    on my cheek.
    Warm calves accepting
    of my cold feet.
    A shared bowl of yogurt and nuts,
    frittata on your plate and then in my belly.
    Home.

    Two years ago she started to tell me
    the story of the day she didn’t
    drown her children in the bathtub, didn’t
    starve them in the closet, didn’t
    beat them until they couldn’t scream any more, didn’t
    burn them with cigarettes, or the iron, or stove,
    scald them with water or freeze them
    with scorn.
    Two years since she didn’t
    leave them on their own to die
    on the top floor of the old house
    converted to apartments
    dried by the western plains wind into
    kindling, tinder, fuel.
    Two years and counting . . .

    Salt licks at my feet and I
    remember the smell
    of the sea, blown across the tidal pool.
    And sweat.
    Airplane sweat – tired, confined, medicinal,
    metallic.
    Just arrived in the tropics sweat – too heavy
    clothes, socks, long sleeve shirt thick with the
    smell of city and work.
    Sun sweat – open to the air, coconut
    with the scent of summers past
    lingering youth
    new beginnings.
    And the sweat of lust, salt rising
    sweet from your skin or
    is it mine.
    I sweat back the sweet salt of the sea –
    as you, too, lick your way up my feet.

    A crushed Coke can.
    Beach glass.
    High tide mark of broken shells.
    A streamer of plastic bread wrapper.
    Bottle tops.
    Sand.  Endless sand.

  • At The Office Of My Son’s Psychiatrist

    it begins with family history
    a gentle inquiry into the lives
    of my parents grandparents brothers and sister
    my ex-husband has come and gone already
    telling the story of his side

    any thyroid disease drug abuse alcoholism
    suicide successful or failed
    I wonder which is which

    eating disorders depression trouble with anger
    unstable moods
    I shake out the genetic map like a long unused tablecloth
    spilling deserted desiccated crumbs
    I share them with this young man, this bearded stranger
    I tell my father’s rage
    my mother’s silence
    my own profound depression beginning at thirteen
    a history of migraines ·
    suicide contemplated but never completed
    the most recent episode still raw like a rusty hacksaw blade
    chosen bits of the stories of my life

    you were a moody child?
    Sarah Bernhardt my mother called me
    with a penchant for high drama at dinner
    loud tears and slammed doors

    genetic history is a useful predictor of risk factors
    he smiles and says
    I think you are
    bipolar

    the word thumps to the carpet between us
    rolls gently in my mouth a metallic musical word a poet’s word
    bipolar
    he is naming me this pretty word
    his fingers steepled below his chin
    I think you should be evaluated
    he is naming but not knowing me

    you have a classic history all the indicators
    he leans back
    I think but do not say
    of course I am depressed because
    I know this analytical young man
    with his well polished loafers
    my son’s-not my-psychiatrist
    he’s thinking drugs to stabilize my mood, my life
    to close off the San Andreas fault of feelings
    to level like a condemned building a thing of no use
    he means to help with this lie of better
    better living through chemistry
    better not the lows so deep and dark
    better not the highs so bright so frightening to those
    who don’t know them who won’t or can’t embrace them
    better to be calm and dull and stupid
    he means well but his means would kill me

    let me ask you
    I listen carefully balance my need to be safe
    against my son’s need for me to be known
    genetic history may be a useful predictor of risk factors
    I listen carefully and I do not lie

    do your eyes ever play tricks on you
    I ask what does he mean
    do you ever see things that aren’t there
    as I think how to answer this, he goes on
    things out of the corner of your eye and you turn
    and nothing is there
    I resist the temptation to say Are you nuts? for this is
    what he does think, that I am nuts
    of course I see things
    I see poetry everywhere-even here-in this office
    and the auras I see are where I see them
    no I say and this is true

    do you ever hear things – things that aren’t really there
    in a crowd do you ever think someone is calling you but they aren’t
    or you hear the phone or the doorbell when they don’t ring
    of course I hear Mommie in a crowd
    and think the voice is calling me
    that’s not what he means
    he means the voices
    I consider-for nearly a heartbeat-telling him
    about the characters
    who live and breathe and walk with me
    the ones who tell me their stories when I am quiet enough
    to hear them over the chaos of my exterior life
    I almost tell him of course I hear voices voices
    of people more real to me than him
    but he is asking am I delusional
    I answer the only way I can
    I hear only things that are real

    I am not your patient
    sensitive to the universe not moody
    awake not bipolar
    human not nuts
    but because I am first a mother
    because telling these truths will not be useful and
    to help this earnest young man in tweed help my son
    I quiet the voices

    for now
    I listen carefully and do not lie
    but neither do I tell

  • Bing

    I hear the grind of grasshoppers,
    rusty-hinge call of the redwing blackbird,
    my own breath, ragged and too quick.
    It’s been too long since I’ve taken this walk,
    forever since we took this walk together.

  • Thinking About Craft and Process

    CRAFT

    /kraft/

    • An activity involving skill in making things, often by hand
    • A skill used in deceiving others
    • Any vehicle designed for travel across or through water bodies, air &/or space
    • Tools used by poets & other writers

    Used in a paragraph

    What’s in your toolbox? Scene, sentence, scansion? Rhythm, repetition, & slant or straight rhyme? The line, the list, & the lament? Are you equally careful of white space, image, & text, of font, format, & form? Do you play with brackets, braces, ellipses, & semicolons?

    PROCESS

    /ˈpräˌses/

    • A series of steps or actions taken to achieve a particular end
    • A summons or writ requiring a person to appear in court
    • Verb: To perform a series of mechanical or chemical operations on something to change or preserve it

    Used in four paragraphs

    1. Where do you sit when you open your toolbox? Home or coffee shop? Do silence & solitude feed you or stifle you? Pen or laptop or desktop with dual monitors? Scrivener or Word? Are you a lark or an owl? Coffee or tea?
    2. Where do you start? Image or prompt or experience, or language itself? Does a character arrive, speaking in your head? Does a line arrive whole, waiting for what comes before & then after? Does the form announce itself or do you impose it yourself? What have I forgotten to mention? What has never occurred to me?
    3. Drafts: How do you distinguish one from the next? Is it enough to move (or remove) a comma? Eliminate an entire stanza or chapter or character? How do you organize your drafts—on paper &/or electronically? Have you ever lost one forever? Do you revise as you write? & if you do, how many drafts dance on the head of your pen?
    4. Interruptions: What causes them, how do you deal with them . . .

      ~ ~ ~

      ~ ~ ~

      ~ ~ ~

    . . . wait, where was I?

    Ah, yes. I remember.

    Are you a poet, a painter, a writer of prose? Yes is a complete & acceptable answer.

    When & what do you think about genre—or do you? Is that question about craft or about process? Here, too, you may want to say yes.

    Is this post built of hermit crab essays or hermit crab poems? (Yes is my answer.)

    HERMIT CRAB

    /ˈhərmət/ /krab/

    • An anomuran (that is, irregular in the character of the tail or abdomen) decapod crustacean of the superfamily Paguroidea that has adapted to occupy empty scavenged mollusk shells to protect its fragile exoskeleton
    • A genre-bending tool
    • The result of a writer adopting an existing form to contain new writing

  • Spaghetti Soup

    I sling spaghetti soup at the diner,
    south of the highway,
    where the intergalactic cowboys come
    to let down their hair and tentacles.

    The cake had broken out of more jails
    than the number of men’s beds I’ve warmed,
    had broken out into a brighter rash than any
    of the women I’ve ever loved,
    and still had time to break in a pair
    of bright red, hand tooled, ostrich skin
    cockroach crushers.

    The squash began
    to rail, rail against the unfairness of it all.
    It was hard enough to be an adolescent
    without knowing you were going to end
    up in someone’s stir-fry.

  • Blood Line

    Enshrouded in black velvet despair
    she drew silver-sharp paring knife
    from dark kitchen drawer.

    Inside her wrist
    pressed blade to blue line
    crowbarred the sharp leading edge of pain
    away from her heart
    filled with ground glass of broken dreams.

    Bright blood laced
    with diamond bits of glass
    her life (and the color in her face)
    drip
    drip
    dripped
    to the floor.

    When ebbing pain brought
    ebbing despair
    she reached down
    dipped her finger in blood
    and wrote me this poem.

  • Witch’s broom

    in the rat-rustling night
    snakes shimmied down
    scorched      charred      and scathed
    tumbling from a blood-red moon
    older than anything but the stones

              in the trampled mud      littered with chips of the trees
              cypress      yellow poplar      elm      and palmetto

    falling away under the migration of stars
    the snakes sharpen themselves on iron and rock
    moving at the speed of heartbreak and loneliness
    avoiding the soupy grass
    crossing the unreliable earth
    past the marsh and the trough

              branches thick or thin      gnarled or straight
              rooted in the source of all rivers

    the dogs and dogwoods could not stop quivering
    the doves weren’t there
    the salamanders gone
    we must all be resistant to disease and evil
    take ginger      wear garlic      remember the subjunctive
    don’t forget to shift the mood

              short-leaf pine and hemlock
              apple      palm      eucalyptus      cedar

    take a far dive away
    maps are allowed
    maps that will tell you where to board the dreamline
    how to live with ambiguity and nuance
    but never how to live without trees

    hear the wild melancholy wail
    cleaving the wind from the sky
    you will be swept clean
    along the growling early dawn

              chinaberry      prickly pear      walnut pecan
              burdock and nettle      the single-leaf ash

    think of the life you might have lived
    had you allowed yourself to live on tree time

              the peach      the apricot      the cherry and plum