Crumbs falling from the donut
you’re not supposed to eat
A health regimen for your children
and their children
It was so beautiful,
gleaming huge and iridescent
gold and green and blue and black.
With wings that should have been clear,
filled with shining rainbows
In case I forget, he said, I love you.
I love you, she said, as if there was no one else in the world to love.
That’s how it should be, he said, and he kissed her pink mouth with his thick, brown lips.
Because the worst thing you call a man is a girl.
Because in seventh grade I asked my mom why girls shave their legs and
she said it makes us feel clean.
Because I felt clean until she said that.
Because I shaved my legs for the first time that night.
We might have been Taoists
those early summer months
in the house, the loving energy
of chi guiding us room by room
as we unpackedand arranged
our new life.
Here I sit alone in my thoughts
A roomful of people and I'm still alone
What brought me here I don't really remember
Maybe it was a cool Autumn's night in late September
Blistering, seething pain
Relationships past.
Lurid misery feigns
A love that would not last.
Words I cull are threaded with bits of him
So savory and crude
Pieces of fat and muscle dripping off roast
And I told him the migraines are not aches
But dismantlers.
I had never been to the seaside.
I knew what to expect, though.
I had a book about it.
There were lots of pictures
Grandma had wisdom to impart,
but not everyone made time to listen.
She lived downstairs in her daughter’s home.
As she lay in her bed at night,
she listened for the beating of her heart.
Melodies stole their way to her
and rhythms beat a path.
Little black specs
Curled hairs in a pile between her feet
A tear might have fallen down her cheek
But there was no moisture left in her body
Instead, a drop of blood fell upon the hairs [pulled from her skin]
As if in an effort to mask the results of
Her humiliation
Gloria sat beside the kitchen window
watching snow fall over sycamores
What could she hope for,
some good news brought by mail?
An unexpected call?
After punching in, she opens her
register, counts bills and splits
up rolls of coins. Her arms ache
from yesterday. From pulling together
store items, piling them in bags.
Sally thought everything was
up to luck and she had zero.
Her chances got swept
away with yesterday's trash.
Margie often thought words
just spilled through her fingers.
It was all learned so long ago
by touch typing in school.
And I was listening to country fusion
Driving a little faster than I ought from the Souplantation to home
Allowing my mind to suspend above lived experience to fantasy
Funny how these isolated moments puncture my misery just enough to inspire this
It started when we stood hopefully,
with our thumbs outstretched
by an English roadside.
We were heading towards Italy and Yugoslavia
without maps or money,
or sense of direction.
I peed on a stick
…and a cross appeared.
A child to come.
A child when I was told I could never have one.
I talk about the soul a lot
The soul being tarnished and how it can never return to its once innocent state
To her it felt like a Category 5 tornado blasting through her psyche without warning
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This can't be all there is for life. But our lives get greedy.
Hill folk understand. The very wealthy understand.
You told me that you know it's too late now.
I don't know what late is anymore.