resolution

years ago, outside of love, i
wrote a poem about a broken window
in my young heart, never thinking
that there would ever be
such a welcome doorway.

cider

when you tell him,
he thinks about it,
as if there were anything
for him
to mull over
now. no
now it is already fermenting
: this thing of his spice
and your sweetness.
when you lie down to sleep,
sour apples twist
at the back
of your throat.

sun rising through the screen door, gin dries in her hair as she watches him sleep.

i have been having
the insect dreams
again: skinny
dreams with legs and armor,
little horrors sitting
on my chest, incising.
are you so transfixed?
i am pierced beyond tissue,
to marrow.

published:

on Stirring.

the hopeful contemplative -- suburban remix

in the quiet moments of my day
i try to practice complete presence.
i breathe deeply and think,
this is me breathing in
this is me breathing out,
all the while knowing that these aspirations
are wasted by my inability
to consecrate all time and all thought
to full consciousness.
this knowledge frustrates all that
is inside me, struggling for peace, and i want
to scratch words into my arms to remember:

be grateful.
be mindful.
be wakeful.

in these low twilights i need
sleeves of tattoos, reminding me
that i am me and i am you and i am here.
i need kestrels on my shoulders and
cormorants at my feet and
spirals on both palms telling me
to hold what is mortal
and to open my veins
to whatever comes.

when i set my mind to love

when i set my mind to love,
small new leaves sprout
from the cactus on my windowsill
and the jelly jar of wine
by my bed
is never empty.

sole sleeper

what i like about being
alone in bed
is first the quiet and


the space


and then of course
dozens
of tiny deaths

and the pleasure
of waking up.

how she sleeps with him

she says,
his body, it fits
with mine
differently
and his breathing
is a whole new
rhythm.
the blood in him
runs so hot
it is like sleeping
in a bonfire.
and when he whispers
low words into
the back of my neck,
i learn a slow new
language.

night blossoms

when she lies
with him, she dreams
soft golden dreams
of their children,
with deep brown eyes
and his red hair. he
has never thought
of children,
never imagined her eyes
in any other face.
he dreams of a house
in the desert, quiet,
with cactus growing
from the walls, and
a mountain for him
to climb in the back yard.
their legs tangle all night
in the sheets.
he wakes up
with sand
in his mouth.

hundreds of ways

he said he loved me best
in the summer, and
traced Orion's belt between
three freckles on my
jaw.

Let's scratch this wanderlust itch.

I'll bring the wine--
you bring some picture books and poetry.
We'll leave our shoes at home and
wear hats.

in just a moment.

dogs trembled behind trees and
old men in suspenders dozed
in armchairs. you walked
with her in the weeds and knew
what it meant when she dropped
you swinging hand.
you watched her feet fall
out of step with yours.
fish sank to the bottom
of poor man's creek.
the shamrocks in the window
pressed their faces to the glass.

leaving chicago.

i drove over
eel river and poor man's creek
when i left you and counted
cooper's hawks on fence posts.
nursing cold day-old coffee and
the beginnings of a bluegrass poem,
i passed a hit doe on the side
of the road, and then her fawn,
and could not stop myself braking.
thirty three hawks watched me sputter
home on country roads, and
none of us said anything.

transubstantiation

christ
is not a bottle of cheap
grape juice or holy wine,
christ is not a loud song
with heavy bass, a baptism,
or a bible. today,
if christ is anything,
he is the seaweed on the bottom
of lake michigan sweeping
through my toes, he is
the santa anas, he is a tiny
lake full of thumbnail frogs
freezing to death in an early
march snowstorm.

Richard Brautigan writes longingly of

cybernetic fields, but I
want the real thing, and
lakes full of frogs, and diving
mergansers, and around my fire, a
whiskey-jack waiting for dropped
raisins and spilled coffee grounds.
I want to say, sir, come
sleep in my tent and dream
this hard dream of dirt and moss.
forget about machines of loving grace.
Ask for more trees.
Ask for water of
mercy.

On His 18th Birthday

brother, you should remember that
you were named for two beautiful men,
whose hearts were steady with
peace, though their minds sometimes
wandered, whose hands were strong
with love, though their eyes
could be river-cold. you should know
that your sisters grow fierce for you, that we listen for
your little revolutions with trembling
toes, and your mother wilts
for your words and waits for
your song. the world is

fearful, and has been,
but there are still trees and
there is a place I know where we
can drink water straight
from the ground. it is
time. open your
hands.

in my satchel (revised)

in my satchel:

three books of poetry
for three positions of the sun
a couple of avocados, still warm
and smelling of California, the south,
beaches, hermit crabs, salt
a tent, a purple one, with no front
flap, in case I want to let it all in
a black shirt that belonged to my once-
love, some clippings of his hair, a
letter given a week before he left me saying
“I love you love you love you, love,”
because someday I will probably need
something to burn
there are a few seeds, maybe
an amaryllis, sunflower, cantaloupe
and some coffee beans stolen from
the grinder in William Stafford's last home
there is room for the black forest,
if it is folded up neatly and tied with some twine
also, a jar of salsa to smash on the sidewalk
and scream “murder!” a spoon,
to scoop dirt from the earth
and bury the dead.

dear papa

sometimes i forget your face, the way you held your
body before you were so sick. sometimes i forget the
way you unfolded your frame from the scratchy blue
chair in the living room, under high high ceilings,
propping open the encyclopedia of mountain birds on
the slippery varnished armrest. there are times i can’t
remember the tin of peanuts you kept on the coffee
table, the stale animal crackers you tossed at me as i
pretended to watch baseball with you, so quiet, so
quiet, a silent buzzing hummingbird across the couch.
sometimes all i remember of you is the taste of anis in
the every-summer pizzelles, the smell of insulin that
hung thick in your flannel shirts, the irrational fear
that rose up through my legs when you hid my baby
blanket, and the yellowing of your eyes on your
fiftieth wedding anniversary. i miss your long arms,
always brown, swinging me into the air, and your
hands, strong, tickling me until I screamed. i miss
your gruff instructions to clean my plate at dinner, the
butter knife prodding my elbows off the table, the
threats of no peach ice cream on the deck as the sun
was going down. i miss your garden, huge and
ordered, the scarecrows you built with your hands,
big and scratchy, in your workshop with the hammers
and the freezer full of fish. dear papa, it has been five
years and i think of you every time i smell sawdust,
every time i drink whiskey, every time i eat black
jellybeans. someday i will push seeds into rows in
the earth—corn and onions and green beans and all
kinds of herbs. i will water and sun my little patch
of ordered land, and i will sink my feet into the dirt and
remember.

this summer we will share the brown satchel.

for emily


we will fill it with clementines
pack the spaces between
with rough amethysts and then pour
iced coffee to close the gaps
we will

paste snapshots of our
feet and knees to the side that is
faded by hours in the sun and
paint the pebble beach in nice on
the other side for brightness
we will let sand and salt dry
in the paint, let our fingertips press
in texture, names, kinship

we
will latch the lock and swallow
pieces of the key one at a time
and we will use blood, ours, to write
a note on the handle that says
once, a long way from normal

when we hide it in September
in the back of the closet
will you forget it’s there? will i?
or will we every day wander into the dark
wipe dust with our shirtsleeves
see if it glows?

simplicity

i do love sunshine and tall
grass and craggy mountains, and
i do love soft smelly cheese and books
by old dead russians and tricky
guitar solos howling from warped
records, but sometimes all
i need is a forty of cheap beer
and a dozen cigarettes to see
the rightness of all of it.

haltingly, a hopeful contempletive tries to explain:

all around us, things are dying small
deaths. we run here and there
with eyes closed, barely
breathing for fear. but sometimes
we pause, we open
our hands, and we try to feel
all of it.

we settle clumsily into our bodies and
we sit with them: the comings
and goings, the births
and deaths. we learn to trust
in very small gifts.

we try to make our breaths
say ‘thank you’
until every rise and fall
is a murmur of
gratitude.

safe in open hands, fear
purrs, sheaths its claws, and
curls into sleep.

compromising

In the back seat of the mountain
boy's truck, I opened my eyes
and watched the fog drift over
the water, wished I was nearly anywhere
else, thought of ways to make the moment move
faster. The next night in the woods, we killed
a scrappy white rooster and it took so
long. When my turn came
to stick my hand inside and pull
something out, I just knelt down
and did it.

valentine

c'mon honey, let's make
a few mistakes, let's make
ourselves disappear, let's
forget the too-sweet of the
past few years and get sour,
let's pour on the vinegar,
let's get pickled, baby,
let's have some fun.
let's take advantage of
the crepuscular charm of this
millisecond, dodge the cicadas
and fruit bats, let's throw rocks
at cars and empty gin bottles
from your balcony, let's wrap
ourselves in burlap blankets and get
fucked up.

[untitled]

When I saw you last
night in the street,
naked, I imagined your feet,
bare, blackened by asphalt,
taking root,
pushing through,
cracking through pavement,
long strings, vegetable
veins taking off, branching
from toes, all of them splayed,
baby toes once soft now bark-
like, browning, and the tips
of you, your fingers, your nose,
every eyelash pointing upward,
greening
in waxing moonlight.

upon leaving the cascade-siskiyou national monument and flying into chicago:

There is first, cloud so thick
you begin to feel fear seeping up
through your toes. And then
light, sky orange and violet,
no matter the time.
And your thoughts, tangled
in telephone wires. You realize
that to live in this flat country
you must first redeem it.
So you say, hazy skies,
I redeem you, and flat land,
I redeem you, and old friends, sad
families, I redeem you.
And it doesn't help, not really,
but at least it's something, some
tiny salvation pulsing
at the tip of your tongue.

sap.

fuck you.
i will write a
sentimental poem.

just to spite my mother

i say, i don’t mind it, being cold
and the sitting still, the late night reading and
lame squabbling. just to spite my mother, i say
i like the wind noises at night, the way the trees
whistle, and the blue toes and chipped teeth.
i say, the boys are beautiful here, with big
eyes and strong feet and dirty fingernails,
and the girls, too, long armed and bright
skinned and scarved heads. i tell her i am
finding god behind my ribs and learning
to dance with my spiritself, every morning
talking to pinecones and carp and small black
lizards. i am trusting blood and watching
the moon and shaking the chill from my spine
and the sleep from my knees and reading poems
and jesus prayers and muttering to saint jude.
i love the questions, i remind her, and i am not
a lost cause.

just to spite my mother, part 2

i say, i have always been this way, always
a late night dark time reader, an asker of
dumb questions, talk too slow think too fast.
just to spite my mother, i say, i always love boys
like these, long and beautiful calloused hands and smart
mouths, but sleep with the opposite sort, all smooth palms
and pale feet faded eyes and smelling of pot. i say, here
in the mountains i like to hike up to the beaten sign that
hollers “positively no trespassing” and walk past it, give the finger.
i tell her, at the bar i drink i.p.a. and smoke cigarettes and
i do thank god for each poisoned hoppy breath and at least
i recycle. i am trying to be a brass statue of the buddha, a
very small fish, a quiet hummingbird prickly weed under
the porch stick of incense burning steady steady steady.
i say, i have always been this awkward, always wanted to touch
everything, sleep under the bed read the last page first kiss
too quick too hearty. i hold hands, i tell her, sometimes
the wrong ones, but always yours.

oregon mysticism

Julian of Norwich got sick and saw God
Sixteen times. She discovered the all-love
of the Lord and slept

on the cobble-stoned, mouse-
dropping floor of an English cathedral.
When I am sick, I

vomit mucous and yellow bile. I fall
asleep on dirty pine-needled carpet and dream
of boys who aren’t themselves, boys

with feathers and claws, whose
pretty beaked noses brush
my neck, whose eyes burn with ancient

fire. When I wake up
there are spiders dead in my hand.
None of it means anything.

under over between

so i remember the tiny: lying
on my back on the manicured lawn, listening
to the grass, still teeming with little lives despite
the efforts of weekly pesticide treatments and
constant mowing, staring at the few stars
visible above the orange street lamps and
the haze of exhaust (both automotive and
intuitive), understanding that i was born
to burn like this, born to carry the sun between
my knees and the moon like coffee grounds and the
seeds of green peppers under my fingernails.
it is good to know that beneath the shit and
sweat of this town, there is a dark, life-giving
loam, that under the paved yards and plastic houses,
there are tender, trembling hearts, and hands
holding other hands and toes curled up in wanting,
in waiting.

stupid and kneeling, the supplicant asks for grace

When I was four, I wanted a better life, so
I asked God to live behind my ribs, sing
me to sleep, save me from my sin. I spent
ten years watching the up and down
of God’s thumbs before I cut
myself open, hoping He’d bleed out, pried
through layers of skin, tried to pick out holy pieces.
Now,

I try to give myself to God daily, with gratitude.
I say, clumsily, “thank you,” and try to mean it.
I rub lotion into my arms and remember:
I am holy, I am foolish, I am beautiful.
Don’t

look for God in the sky or in blood. Find
Him underneath fingernails, on the roof of
the mouth, and in the wrinkled ache
of bruised knees.

the indiana hitchhiker

Twenty years old and already transcended
the constructs of age. We are all made

of the earth, he says, and its millions
of years sit muddy in our bodies——
all of that carbon, all the calcified stuff,
and especially the water.
We are full up of the sea, blood
salty and swimming with little things,
always looking to the east or the west, either,
and the wetness inside
us pulling us shoreward. We

are all fucking ancient, he says. The year
I was born means nothing, and ‘87
is just a number. And I think:

this is his pilgrimage, he is
thumbing his way to cathedrals
to peek under floorboards.
And the little things in his blood
draw his bones to the sea
the way mine push me down into the
earth, and his blood teaches him
to leap from coastal cliffs

while all I know
is to dig holes.

on the porch

After Falling Asleep Reading Flannery O’Connor

Each night after supper, she sits heavy
on the porch with the dogs, she gums
her dead husband’s pipe, she drains a jar of
Jack and she flavors it with hot sauce to stay awake.

When her son comes home, he is
hungry and tired, he is too much skin, he
is whittled into kindling twigs, he is scabbing
over, and she will not meet his eyes.

Her kitchen is warm and unruly and his plate waits
in the oven and though she sets him a place at
the head of the table, he sits on the steps with his fingers,
long and elegant, always dusty with something burned.

When she sees him she sees him smaller,
with orange hair and bruised elbows, at the breakfast
table with his father, she sees him young
and solemn, dressed in gingham, sitting on his father’s lap.

And every night after work, he is
hungry and tired, he sits on the porch, he watches
sideways the faults in his mother’s face sinking
deeper into themselves and turning into bark.

She mends his shirts for him at night, stabs a tarnished
needle through plaid flannel and dark linen, fixes buttons
to his work shirts, sews soft patches on the one
she made his father in the month before he died.

When they speak, she is burnished rusty brass and he
is the smooth stone that rubs in the dark spots and
he says he sees her smaller too, he says she is a small woman and
she isn’t really skeptical, she knows it to be true.

The fact is his moustache moves like his
father’s did and when he sings to the
dogs after supper she stops seeing him at all,
the whole thing of him is gone.

And the pipe is smoking between her teeth and
his eyes are grayer than they were before and the dogs
are older than any of them, and they all just sit
on the porch and howl.

exequies

1. god used to come calling
in the summer. we climbed
mountains in checkered skirts
and wore our hair in pigtails.
we used to hold hands.

2. it was a sticky summer
only june but hot to high heaven
and the birds were crying and
the cicadas came early
and it was nighttime when
we left her.
she died on a sunday.

3. now we sit inside and breathe
cool, dry, recycled air all day long to forget
the wetness of the world. our palms are clammy
from dreams of dew on grass and sweat shining
on slumped shoulders and our lungs are stale and
our feet are soft and bored. sometimes we wait
for the neighborhood to sleep and we step out into
the street without our shoes on.
we forget what to do next.

bark

bark

the house on osage had closets like oceans,
a basement that flooded knee-deep to a six-year-old,
and fat slugs floating up through the grates
with the tides.

one spring mom paid us nickels, twenty each,
for two hours with a mason jar and a
basement full of mollusks.
after, with jars full of sliming lengthening bodies,
we sat on the porch with the salt shaker,
melted tiny feelers, wet underbellies,
pretended we could hear them scream.

the neighbors down the street—the blue-house
neighbors, peeling paint neighbors,
shrieking ginny’s family with all its brothers
shirtless in the driveway—
they had a weeping willow in their yard—a magic tree
with dreadlocks, tentacles, teeth.

we climbed it barefoot while the brothers, tanned
and dirty, grass-stained, shot cap guns
at us and stabbed our feet with sticks.
our hands were laced red by the
time we reached
the lowest branch, dotted with blood we wiped on
our shirts, licked off our palms, mixed with saliva we
spat to the ground.

that afternoon we found the robin’s nest, small
and neat, woven tight with green grass, underfeathers,
twigs and leaves, and ginny’s yellow hair.
we didn’t touch the eggs, though their
blue
was whispering past our ponytails, whistling into
our seashell ears. we scrambled to a higher branch to
see more of the speckles, the candyblue, the sky, but
ginny


fell

through the whips and braids, the
squidlimbs of the weeping willow, pulling
tree skin, moss, and spiders down with her.
she lay on her back in the weeds, chest
heaving with near sobs, breathing fire,
and we saw too late the shiny train, the slow slime,
the slippery slug flattened underfoot, already starting
to dry, to become husk, to melt into bark.

after you, there are other boys

some with quiet hands
sweetly upturned mouths
some harder
with rough fingers
eyes always open

there are other boys
to hold my hand under warm sheets
other boys
who trace the curve of me
at night

and after you
I want them all

to my ovaries:

you, my sometimes friends,
my little beans, my
crock pots swimming
with half-babies, you
are dead most of the
time, bored
stiff with the idea of
lunar punctuality, locked
tight with scar tissue
allowing my tiny aging
over-easies out only a few
times a year, twisting my
gut when you do concede
to the bursting, the popping,
the necessary travel
I feed you chemicals, my
stubborn cartons, my mulish
sweeties, to sedate you
convince you to let my
eggs go freely without much
struggle, right on schedule
I know that one day you
will spite me for this
turn acid and consume my
children from the outside in,
melting away shell and yolk
and the best parts of me which
are waiting for the best parts of him
someday, when the temperature is right
you will say No, Sorry, this
is just one of those things
this is just life, this is just
death, these
are our railroads and highways
our canals
you will keep those chubbies inside until
they hard boil and rot
from your pigheadedness
and though my tears and clucking
will be persuasive,
they will never convince you
to compromise.

you can't see the comets in the midwest.

i've heard that occasionally one is
spotted
by the lake
but i haven't seen them even still.
two years ago
i was in oregon
smoking organic cigarettes and
reading brautigan
by this pond filled
with rotting logs.
i saw comets everywhere,
and the sky seemed too big.
i felt the typical smallness
one is obligated to feel
on such occasions,
and even though there was nothing
interesting around for miles
i was spellbound.
here in michigan
i remember what brautigan
says
about the comets
telescoping down our tongues
to burn out
against the air.
i try to taste
the comets behind my teeth
but there's nothing
and the sky seems much smaller.

i wish that we were in a cave

lying next to each other holding
hands while bats fly overhead
it would be dark, the air
would be cool and damp, the ground
would be warm, moss-covered, soft
enough to sleep for years
my hair
would grow long and white
your beard
would finally come in dark
and coarse, reminding me of
everything above:
cat claws cardigans pine needles open pillow
cases full of turkey feathers coffee mouths
cancer sticks sand and sleet and twigs of
cinnamon old bob dylan and stale weed
persimmons and cracked picture frames
wine grapes straight from the vines outside
the black forest and records left sitting awhile
in the sun

we should not forget
these down here
though it is dark and we cannot stop
ourselves touching
the bats will be here with cloves on their breath
to remind us
our children will grow up pale as you, and blind too
with curled hair to their knees
dressed in chips of stone and clean moss
which i will knit together with cobwebs
at their birth and you
will sing to them of home

Libby Lobby Lou

I left her in the sandbox at a preschool
in Denver when I was four and

went home to eat crustless sandwiches
knees still caked in sand

My doll was lost in Colorado
probably stolen by some other
missionary kid in a green dress

I have been crying in my sleep again
after eighteen years of dry eyes
I wake up bloodshot and crusty
with half moon imprints
on my palms
I cut
my hair
I listen only to quiet banjos
sweet mandolins
I try not to smoke cigarettes
before bed or to read more than
seven pages of Dostoevsky
even still, there isn’t anything
but the dark

I went back to the sandbox after lunch
and a spanking from my mom
and dug holes but

she was gone
with her yellow dress and brown braids
just like mine.

studying stones

my love is in a cave,
mining coconut and lemongrass along
with chunks of gypsum the size
of his hands (which are bigger, by inches,
than my small ones) and whole heads of
cabbage, and strings of turquoise beads.
he is studying foucault and girard down there
and thinking about resurrection
not christ and his saints,
but of digging through
earth
dirty, decayed
and coming up gold, shining,
unconcerned with the mess of living.

meanwhile, i
am sitting in the bed of a river in the rain
eating seeds from my pockets, learning
how the water feels against my skin,
how a boulder in the river divides
the currents around her,
leaning into the rush and flow,
letting it infuse me, watching the day
pass, and studying all
of the stones.

the art of breaking open / the buddhist was right.

1. okay, go make yourself happy. go into yourself, find something there to hold, hold tight. be happy by yourself; see if you remember how.

talk to yourself every night. go over your day in detail, if it makes you happy to do it. say to yourself, dear one, i love you.

listen to the same songs you have heard every day for the past four years. do the chords still say what they used to?

hold your own hand and see if it feels the same. touch yourself here
and here, taste your own tongue in your mouth, give yourself chills, and be happy.

put away the pictures and hide the box of letters. do it.
try to learn how to sleep by yourself.


2. i saw the big dipper tonight and thought of nights in your back yard, floating. steam from the hot tub rose off our skin, our bodies asking

small permissions from one another
small pleases, small thank-yous, small gifts.

those nights, we believed that we would never move past these small moments, this dark, open sky of happiness. we listened to neil young sing

love is a rose, quiet, in the bedroom, after, and tried to see the stars through the poster-covered ceiling, holding one another as if some corner

of our minds knew this week would come and that there would be an end.
you’ve been moving on for months, your thoughts on other things,

and i can’t see a piece of gravel without thinking of you.
the big dipper seems so stupid and messy and the sky is always hazy.


3. a Buddhist scholar wrote that the heart that breaks open can contain
the entire universe but i don’t know if i believe that. every fucking morning
i beg myself not to break open any farther and say happyhappyhappy happy happy
you can be happy this can be happy all happy
i can be happy
really.



The Buddhist Was Right.

The heart that breaks open
can contain the whole
universe.
--Joanna Macy, Buddhist scholar

when i ride my bicycle to the water, i am stretched and bent over low hills, heart burst open to swallow lake and sand, ears wide to the sound of the wind, every nerve burning for the touch of pebbles between my fingers, rich dark earth under my toes, skin soft against me. i have knit together all wounds but remain cracked to the glory and the pain of breathing in and out against the push of air around me. i am broken still, but i wouldn’t say you broke me.

sometimes all i want is the superficiality of happiness. i want outside things—fireworks and cream soda, hyacinths under my pillow. but there is no deep happy; happy is not what pinches and catches under my ribs; happy is pantomime. i have learned to want the cleaving, insensible joy of early peach fuzz morning, sitting on the front porch with a cigarette and a mug of strong black coffee, watching trains whistle by.

this is for you, a notice:

this morning
stretching
in my bed
bending to the blast
of my alarm clock
i finally understood that i
have been standing
in the wrong line
for so long that it
feels right
so i dug through drawers and
boxes and thick brown envelopes
and reopened the
paper trail that
strung out two hundred miles between us
it is in my bed now
letters on top of each other making
broken shorthand
love under cheap
red sheets, reeking
of vanilla and pot and gin
i will lie with them tonight
and imagine what five
anniversaries would have
felt like, and twenty
with children and jobs and too
many nights eating
dinner by myself, waiting
for the house
to burn.

it was never enough

to sip you just once a month--
i wanted to drink you daily
i could never fill up on you
during the good times
and expect your taste to stay
with me
you dribbled out all over
there are puddles of you
all the way to michigan.

you will always be the same.

last night you dreamt of my wedding
called me up to say
it was in the trees,
you were barefoot.

lesser betrayals

i never told you
there were times when
your bored, smoky
breath on my neck
inched me closer
to the edge
of the bed.

allspice

in the car on the road
to Atlanta, halfway
between Louisville and Nashville,
listening to Neil Young, you said
I was a cinnamon girl
the kind Neil claimed would make you happy
for the rest of your life
this is me telling you that I am cinnamon, yes
but I am also saffron
cumin rosehip cardamom
and fresh basil
this is me saying that I am
ginger
and I am sweet garlic
nutmeg coriander sage crushed
red pepper clove paprika
salt and
thyme.

four years on phoenix street

once i loved a boy because of darkness
because of the color of his eyes, so bright
and blue i could see night-time sneaking behind them
he was darkness the way the moon is dark, for a time
every month, the way that i am not, ever, dark. there was
anger shimmering beneath his skin, stars tied painstakingly
to curls of his hair, and from the tip of his pointed
nose, he dripped darkness. i loved him for it, for daring
to venture into sunshine with me so often, for sleeping
next to me, for watching roman holiday with ice cream the month
i was so sick. he wore darkness like a flannel shirt, softer
than you'd ever remember, and not scary, the way some nights
are, at least, not until the end, when his pull toward anger
and solitude overwhelmed any longing to know and be
known. once i loved a boy because of darkness, but
never learned to live in it.

in my satchel:

three books of poetry

for three positions of the sun

a couple of avocados, still warm

and smelling of California,

the south, beaches, hermit crabs,

salt

a tent, a purple one, with no front

flap, in case I want to let it all

in

a grey shirt that belonged to my ex

boyfriend, some clippings of hair, a

letter given a week before our break

up saying "megan, i love you love you love you

love," because someday i will probably need

something to burn

there are a few seeds, maybe

an amaryllis, sunflower, a couple of

cantaloupe

and some coffee beans stolen from

the grinder in the kitchen of Dante's

last home

there is room for the black forest,

if it is folded up neatly and tied

with some twine

also, a jar of salsa to smash on the sidewalk

and scream "murder!"

a spoon, to scoop dirt from the earth

to bury the dead.

the dancing:

when i see my parents, i try
to insinuate that there is a chance,
that some day i will be
conservative as them, with their
rush limbaugh in the car and
their bill o'reilly before dinner.
i pretend that church
is in my future, that one day,
at the alter, i will agree to obey,
submit, lay down for husband and god,
that i will change my name like a
good girl, and perhaps work part time
until the babies come.
once, my mother said
that if i was no longer a christian, we
no longer had anything in common,
forgetting, i guess, the blood
we shared, and food, the
parasitic months and their
mucousy, sinewy end, the way
our bodies were fused together,
the scars
she wears to remind her, the time
i spent at her breast, and now,
the color of my eyes and hair,
the shape of my nose, the way i walk,
and the harmony that matches hers in church
beside her.

corporate coffee

a heated discussion on the “indie scene”
doesn't keep you from bitching all the way home
about those bastard, those tools, those posers
and their tight pants, their eyeliner,
their badly tuned unplugged electric guitars,
hanging out at starbucks while they
sip their corporate coffee and look
disgruntled. electronica and a scone?

you want to be them, you want him
with his safety pins, his nose ring, you like
the bulge in his tight faux leather pants.
it rains on us walking home and you sing
in between heavy breaths:

sugar plum fairy came and hit the streets
lookin for soul food...your voice
could set off car alarms in the dark
and cats screaming and the silent sirens
that only dogs can hear. my street
is too quiet for this shit.

there is a story

in here
but i cannot tell it
i can tell around it
around the experienced lover and
her new virgin husband, around
their arrival at the hotel
the two of them alone, at last
around his downcast eyes and her
sideways smile as she unbuttons every tiny button
around the pink imprints of the bodice on her ribs
the flicker of his eyes
his reddening neck
around the clumsiness of his first step across the room
and the second one
I can tell around it
but even then
it is just negative space.

in a spirit of appeal, i have said my prayers

i say my prayers at night
on my knees, hands
folded on the bed
even when i do not believe that they
will do any good
i say them in the morning, before breakfast
dog nosing at my knees, blinking
wet-eyed in the early kitchen sunlight
my prayers are unconscious in the fog of my
breath in the yard,
they walk in the grass under the heels
of my father, the toes of my brother's boots

when i am too stubborn to pray
i miss:
the lightness behind my eyes
the sharpness under my ribs
the way my prayers feed me
with one hand while
pinching my nose with
the other
in the left hand
the twitchy hand pocket hand
is everything wholesome:
cheese, spinach, wilderness manna, peas
in the right
the rod casting hand
the hand nearest
the son, the saints
are their brass knuckles

my prayers sing to god quietly
they say:
lordy, father, mamma
they are small prayers that say thank
you that say i need that
say why
i learn them by heart
the way i memorized
verses of the Bible when i was younger
i recited them
flush-faced to my teacher
sometimes whole books
small ones:
the peters, the johns
i want to breathe prayers the
way my mother does
i see her arms deep in the sink,
her mouth moving slowly, silently,
and then later, in the car, by herself,
she will breathe hard and sincere with
weight of supplication
she'll turn off the radio, make sure both hands
are on the wheel
she'll stick to country roads and even in the rain
ask for god's light.

open similes (in imitation)

like saying the wrong name, in bed, the
next morning
like bird shit in your coffee the day after
a night you can't remember
like waking up to the chicken pox
like just letting the fire alarm go off for awhile
like a kid with two carrots stuck up
his nose, and peas in his ears
like eating dinner outside on the driveway on
the fourth of July in the rain, with potato salad stuck
between your toes and coke
staining your shirt
like sleeping for twenty one hours and waking up in
the dark
like watching a mosquito suck from your
lover's cheek
like trying to list the colors of your sister's eyes,
like an oil spill on water
like your wedding night
like the pleats in Carrie's pants, two days after returning
from the hospital, after giving birth to nothing
like your baby brother in the garden
under the corn
like thunder.

bedtime prayer

peace behind me
peace before me
peace beneath my peaceful feet

peace above me
peace below me
peace to everyone I meet

peace in my ears
peace on both sides
peace be with the friends I keep

peace in my heart
peace on my tongue
peace be with me as I sleep

after one week in the strawberry mountain wilderness

we are swirling whirling drunk
turning circles around the fire
as though the cowboy coffee we
grind between our teeth were

pure bathtub gin
straight up oregon moonshine
and the uncommon cold of the lake
sends us directly into hallucinatory states
as it rushes in and out of our naked

crevices creases and dark corners

in the afternoon
we sit on gritty sleeping bags with our toes
squished in the mud

you play the penny whistle we bought
in town at the cripple creek
fiddle shop and tell me
what our president said about
humans and fish being able to coexist
peacefully
one day
27

trout later
we are not so sure
around the fire in the dark we yank
off our boots and scorch
wool socks too near the coals
we make black beans out of powder
and fry the fish in squeeze-tube butter
tripping on the stories
we trade every night
true and truer as the sky gets lighter

we sleep little
curled up against each other in tiny tents
and wake up with frost on our lips
and when it is time to hike out
our backpacks are full of rocks.

on being younger

This morning I popped open
six-year-old eyes
and couldn't wait to get out of bed.
I am still bigger than Emily,
I thought, and decided it
didn't matter. I raised
my legs up and pushed hard
against the mattress of the top
bunk. I felt her move. I looked
at my knees in the air, brown,
knobby, dusted
with soft hair, and the flannel
of my nightgown bunched
at my waist around polka-dotted underwear.
Legs down, I smoothed my flannel to my knees
with hands that would one day type furiously, drive
and draw lovers, hands that would cover
all manner of scars. Today

I have done nothing
but swing in the backyard—rising
in the air, pumping legs back
and forth, feeling every molecule of
cool blue air against my skin,
the fuzz on my legs and arms, the space
between my hair and my shoulders, the corners
of my closed eyes, my feet.
I lick my lips and taste cherry popsicle,
sweet and metallic,
like pennies on my tongue or
the taste of my blood, licked off a
cut on my finger.
Before, I wanted every other flavor,
but clearly I had never known the way
Red had of sidling close for a kiss, a bite
cold and melting, dripping.
I wonder
did they taste this way to me before
I woke up here, and did my
sister ever sleep next to me
on the bottom bunk?
Did we lay together in the grass,
in the shade of the big old sugar maple,
singing songs or tearing off the
edges of our sandwiches, hiding
them for squirrels? Did we wake up
together in our nightgowns, crinkly-
eyed, but smiling?
And did she like to swing, too—
feeling sun and air dry up summer
sweat on her arms, eyes closed like
me?

Libby Lobby Lou

I left her in the sandbox at a preschool
in Denver when I was four and

went home to eat crustless sandwiches
knees still caked in sand and
imprinted

My doll was lost in Colorado
probably stolen by some other
missionary kid in a green dress

I have been crying in my sleep again
after six years of dry eyes
I wake up bloodshot and crusty
with half moon imprints
on my palms
I cut
my hair
I listen only to quiet banjos
sweet mandolins
I try not to smoke cigarettes
before bed or to read more than
seven pages of Dostoevsky
but when I close my eyes I don’t see
anything but the dark

I went back after lunch and a
spanking from my mom
and dug holes but

she was gone
with her yellow dress and brown braids
just like mine

meditation

come in, come in,
there is room for you here.
my room is dim and
purple, and here is some
wine for you, and a
chair, a blanket.
ease yourself down,
breathe out, exhale, all
your wind, your tears.
let it go, be still, close
your eyes and let yourself
travel…


green
green, think of green,
be green, be a tree,
rooted deep, arms wide.
or blue, think of blue
be blue, fill up
on the deep blue. you are
the sea, the sky, gentle
lapping waves on the shore,
you are rumi’s fish.


stay as long as you want,
as long as you need.
rest in the quiet light
of my room, in the purple,
the gray. share my bed,
if you find yourself unable to leave.

you will be fine.

in oregon, i lived

underneath the only sugar
pine left on the property.
pinecones the size of rabbits fell
on the roof of my little
lean-to bedroom
and in the dark, all night,
my face a foot from the ceiling,
I would startle, willing
myself not to flinch.
when the cows came,
(because of course there were cows)
they set up house under the sugar
pine, leaving us steaming, stinking
messes at the foot of the porch
as we left our cabin for class
in the morning.
we collected the pinecones and
set them next to our woodstove
for many months until they became a fire
hazard, and then we burned ‘em,
listening to the popping while we huddled on
salvation army couches, reading
wendell berry and thinking
about god.

all light

one month ago and still
two hundred miles apart
we agreed to let it go.
that night, rain fell out
of the sky, the leaves
began crawling down tree trunks
in masses, stems low, veins open,
and I, on the floor, without breathing,
said goodbye.
I drove to the beach,
sat on a swing made near
to the ground by weeks of blowing, drifting
sand, the water too dark to see—
beach becoming lake becoming sky—
all black.
my vision was muddy
from specks of earth more attracted to salt
water than this fresh, dark lake.

this morning I took off my glasses on the sidewalk
and without my negative nine lenses, did my best
to keep a straight line.
I lost everything—
the lines, the shapes, the colors, the shadows—
I lost them.
I kept my eyes open, wide and clear, open
to everything, all the light and air, all the wind.
it was all light, all light,
and my eyes are still open.

studying stones

my love is in a
cave, mining coconut
and lemongrass along
with chunks of gypsum
the size of his hands
(which are bigger, by inches,
than my small ones)
and whole heads of
cabbage, and strings
of turquoise beads.
he is studying foucault and
girard down there
and thinking about
resurrection
not christ and his saints,
but of digging through
earth
dirty, decayed
and coming up gold
shining, unconcerned with
the mess of living.

meanwhile, i
am sitting in the bed of
a river in the rain
eating seeds from my
pockets, learning again
how the water feels against
my skin, how a boulder
in the river divides
the currents around her, fresh
water spray soaking my
face. i am leaning into the
rush and flow, letting it
infuse me, watching the day
pass, and studying all
of the stones.

worms make tiny popping sounds

if you listen hard
when you can feel the thunder if
you lean your head close enough
to the ground
i am just like them
laying in the dirt
waiting for the rain
(it sometimes gets so dry)
i like the way grass feels under
me and when i get up from it there is a
picture of me like a chalk outline in a
crime scene on tv
proving that i
was there
when i was five
my sister and i camped in the back
yard near the swingset
and ran around
in polka-dot nightshirts
with no shoes on
when we woke up our parents
were gone
and the neighbor lady
and her girlfriend were in our kitchen
telling us we had a brother
so we went back out to lay in the grass
like worms in the rain
i told emily about this wall in germany
that i saw on the news
how it had fallen down
seven days ago (and mom cried)
now my father has a piece of the wall
on his desk in the office
from our first trip to the country
the year that everything was green
and he says it reminds him of creation and
new birth but
all i think about is laying in the grass in the middle
of the night with my sister
listening to the worms pop
pushing our fingers into the dirt.

the wind blows high

so, i think this will be just for my poems and writing and shit.
like in high school.
how totally emo.