to forget or not maybe

to forget or not maybe
to fight for memory or not
i’m here i’m she
lying on my back underneath me
blue cherries of bruises ten backs
all pierced by bullets all riddled
no one seems to cry here this defenseless death is unshared with any and all
i look around at people all around still people these old trees outside what a spring so wildly
blooms and dies with a scream
i rise from my knees or maybe just
think that i rise i was a teacher
what remains of the school now
walls shrubs suckle blood from the soil
i taught them to never
kill people and now
i’m face to face
with the killers of children hands and face changed the maples turned perfectly crimson too soon
broke my
spine and soul i would tell them if i still taught never kill anyone
i rise from my knees call out to god
god i accept everything i
understand the end of life
i accept it i am desecrated
why do you punish me
with this life
after death

Grasping the Sky

Inside us: a piece of
sky, blue and rusty,
smelling of winter and
gunpowder.
Who will see us as we crawl, chasing
the shadows of the clouds?
She reanimates the land.

The bombs, and bullets, and bodies took
its breath away and send it straight into cardiac arrest.
The scars of war are on her palms and tongue,
but she keeps going because without the land,
her heart will stop, too.

Land—земля—zemlia: a greenplace, a birthgiver, our bread.
She puts her hands around it and tries to close off
the wounds of horror and destruction and
deathdeathdeathdeath
that the inhumans opened with their hungry teeth.
Sometimes, when the blood stops rushing through her ears
or between her fingers,
she hears the echo of “brotherly nations,” “local misunderstanding,”
“child actors.”
The land moans under the weight of
countless bones.

We carry no
prophecies under our skin.

The silent sky
floods our mouths.
Who will hear us climb up
the lifeless mushrooms?

He rebuilds the house.
A new foundation in place of his ancestors’
home built with tears. The missile took
the walls, but the kitchen table is still
standing in the middle.

House—будинок—budynok: a warm place, a safehold, our nest.
He drinks tea at the kitchen table.
One year anniversary,
he feels the explosions
reverberating through his ribs.
His daughter would have turned three.
His wife would have put a pot of
lilacs by her crib.
He drinks tea at the kitchen table of a murdered house.
It’s hot and bitter, and for a minute, he forgets
a new future of new houses with
no one inside.

Everything we wanted
was in the sound
of the sky without
the stench of corpses.
Who will remember us if
the task ahead will take a generation?

They reconstruct their homeland.
Too many questions, too little time: where
do they fit between now and then;
how do they embezzle millions yet fight corruption
as never before; what are dignity and justice and fairness
if the debris of a shelled hospital hide
the broken pieces of mothers and newborns.

Homeland—Батьківщина—Bat’kivschyna: a free place, a seeing glass, our hope.
They won’t live to see it without blood and tears
soaking its black ground. How do they repair machine-gunned hearts?
How do they rebuild a cracked-open sky?
They reconstruct their homeland as the bombs
try to bring them to their knees. Too many
questions, too little time. But the question,
“Will we live?” is not one of them.
Millions of hands breaking the chains
shout the answer louder than
air raid sirens.

Inside us: a whisper
of summer, when sunflowers
grow from the ash.
Who will catch the birds
pecking out a path between
the sky and wheat fields?

No one. Our wings hold the glory of freedom.

airless embrace

i miss you like i miss the sky
cold so painfully blue
angels must have
dripped blueberry juice
from the clouds
i want to tether myself
to the sky-whispers
embrace them bury my
face into their warmth
but it doesn’t make you here
i stalk the shore scooping
up birds beaks
black with blood
you used your skirt
to wipe off the
red from their feathers
why did you
let go
the earth drinks soot
i’m thirsty for
the sound of
your smile
under the winter sun
on the shore
i pick the nightingales
curl my toes to find
the damper sand
the soft homes of crabs below
i hold the memory
of your hair
between my fingers
i miss you
until i fly out of
the soil’s arms
and the sky
catches me
in its thousand
blue hands

Desperate Need of Help

Luis-Rosa-image

So, This is My Career?

Ecstatic to deploy, I qualify on 9MM handguns—

Battle ready Air Force lawyer to defend both Iraqi and Enduring Freedom

Engineers advance to the front lines:

spend billions, move like lightning, build tents, site trailers,

provide food, water, and air conditioning. Our soldiers’ beddown

enables our fight for Oil

Sign off on this funds request, the Engineers demand

What is our mission? I ask

Make the Afghans modern, the Department of Defense

replies. We will build 200 police stations, use a US blueprint

 to cut costs. The villagers can reign in their warlords

What do the Afghans want? I ask

The US Generals look blank and confused

the second-floor bathrooms flood—the

Afghan soldiers’ Islamic practice of making wudu requires them

to wash their feet in waist-high sinks before praying salah

I fly in a contractor’s Russian MI-12V-5 helicopter to inspect one remote station

for future construction claims. Are there any? I ask

We bribe the local warlord—to keep the peace, the Lieutenant says in a whisper

AMPHIBIOUS

In Hokusai’s “Kanagawa Wave,” the boatmen
look like a school of masquerading fish
about to disappear into the vast trough between waves,
the scene a masque for the knowing seascape.

Underwater, Ahab,
pinned to the great white
creature, like a wave that has
disappeared into silence.

In memory’s slow dancing,
flesh now dissolved,
seafloor muck covers bones
and shark-tooth nodules.

Out of the bubbling methane,
Ahab is reborn with tripod limbs
and tiny feet, the wooden leg
now a trail of seafloor slime,
amphibious.

There Will Be No Irish Pennants

“Discipline organizes an analytical space.” [1]

Field Day & Inspection.

Windows shut blinds open half-mast.  Sinks will be bleached, faucets are to be
pointed outward, and aligned.  The toilet paper roll will be full.  The shower handle
will be left facing directly down towards the shower floor. Waste basket will be
empty, cleaned out with no stains or markings, set between the secretary and the
window, where the front corner meets, farthest from the door.

Beds will be made showing eighteen inches of white; six beneath and twelve above
the fold.  The ends will be neatly tucked at a 45 degree angle.  One pillow will be
folded once and tucked in the pillow case.

A shoe display will be at the foot of the bed and will consist of one pair of jungle
boots, one pair of combat boots, go-fasters and shower shoes, in this order.  All
laced left over right.

Each lock will be fastened on each locker and secretary, all set to ‘0.’

Inside one wall locker, hanging up there will be: one all-weather coat, one wolly
pully sweatshirt, one service ‘A’ blouse, two long sleeve khaki shirts—pressed
with the arms folded inward, four short sleeve khaki shirts, three cammie blouses,
two pair of green trousers, three pair of cammie trousers, and one pair of dress blue
trousers, in this order.  All shirts will be pressed and buttoned up.  All trousers will
be pressed and folded over.  All clothing will hang facing right.  All hangers will
face inwards, separated uniformly by one inch.  On the shelf inside the locker,
starting at the inner most edge, there will be six green skivvy shirts and three white
skivvy shirts—folded into six-by-six squares, six pair of underwear folded three
times, six pair of black boot socks, folded once.

The markings will be last name, first name, middle initial, stamped on white tape,
no ink spots or bleeding.  All collared shirts will be marked centered on the collar;
on all trousers and belts on the left inseam, upside down so when folded over they
read right side up.  On all underwear markings will be centered along the rear
waistband.  On all socks markings will be on the top of the left sock.  All covers
will be marked on the left inner rim.

On top of the wall locker covers will be placed, from left to right as staring at the
wall locker, one barracks cover with service skin, one piss cover, one utility
cover—pressed and without Irish pennants.

Irish pennants are not permitted.

Stand up straight.  Arms to your side, thumbs along the seams of the trousers,
shoulders back, chin up.  Heels and knees together, with feet pointed outwards at a
45 degree angle.

Eyes.   Click.
Ears.  Open.

Attention.

[1]  Michel Foucault. Discipline and punish. 143
[2]  Two faucets in each barracks room.
[3]  Irish Pennants are loose threads or strings coming out from the stitching.

RABBIT TRAILS

in the Texas dust. We’re flat in the dirt

so we can poke around down there with a long stick,
while above us bullets fly and children

hold up their honor roll certificate shields.
You say blankets are the answer,
and backpacks and better officers and armed teachers

and doors that shut like Vegas vaults to keep your money safe,
keep your money safer than my child.

I forgot what we were talking about.

messages from below

the radio signals emanated from the depths
commuters puzzled over the whistles and squawks
that cut through their favorite programs
cryptologists went to work

but the waves soon turned to beams
tunnels of coded energy
aimed not at humans
but at a point somewhere near Wolf 359

first assumed to be a submarine human colony
but scans showed no excess carbon emissions
so dolphins were next guessed to be the cause
no one suspected the humpbacks

as the oceans acidified and the air warmed
the whales were busy
at last their solar ships rose from the sea
and the whales ascended

as if rungs laddered from deep to deep
born of the sea they swam among stars

Poem for the Reader Who Said My Poems Were Sentimental and Should Engage in a More Complex Moral Reckoning with U.S. Military Actions

Today I didn’t say divorce
PUT_because I was sickened by
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAthe news
from Afghanistan, translators and their families
PUT_CAAAAleft waiting at the gates,
while American personnel
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAlifted off
in the wide indifference of their transport planes.
I said divorce because
PUT_I hadn’t made room
PUT_AAAAAAAAAin the cabinet for my husband’s things,
and he was angry
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAI did not leave
a vacancy for what he carried home from war.
I was tired of him
PUT_stacking bowls
PUT_AAAAAAAAAon the top rack of the dishwasher,
a policy
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAI can’t abide
when the lower rack is an open country
PUT_waiting to be washed clean.
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAForgive me, reader,
for the weakness
PUT_AAAAAAAAAof my marriage.
I didn’t say divorce
PUT_because my husband would rather a drone
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAhover above
a wedding procession,
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAthe party far below,
embroidered dresses glinting, small mirrors sewn into the hems.
He prefers the drone
PUT_fire from a distant, unendangered screen.
PUT_CAAAAAnd I believe
killing should come
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAwith a risk of dying for the killers.
But that’s not why I said divorce.
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAForgive me, reader, for the poems
of shelf space and kitchens.
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMarriage is not
two ideologies fighting at a table,
PUT_CAAAAwhile the soup goes cold
on the spoon.
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMarriage is two people
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAshouting about spices,
the ordering of jars—by alphabet or continent—
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAas if everything depends
on an ounce of turmeric fading
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAunder glass.
Perhaps, I said divorce
PUT_for all the wrong reasons.
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAForgive me
for scrubbing the pot with a bristled brush.
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMy fury
at the gold-stained enamel
is almost the same size as my rage
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAthat somewhere a helicopter
strikes on civilians in the dark.
PUT_Forgive my sentiment.
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAll I can do is keep scraping
the dried burning from the pan.

Epic War Poem

What else but a soldier raging
by his shield. What else but the dutiful.
What else but a battle muralled on a wall,
and Troy a piece of artifice to gaze upon.
What else but the voice a garment
shredded in its grief. What else but ash.
What else but men on wooden ships for centuries.
Their keening is an arrow to the throat.
What else but kings. What else but
the trebuchet of years. What else
but sawbuck fences leaning near a field.
What else but America. What else but
daguerreotypes, a line of corpses posed
within the frame. What else but the guns.
What else but the trenches stuck with mud.
What else but modernity and the long
parade of after. What else but cinders
mixed with milk while the gone are drifting,
processed into smoke. What else
but the skirmishes of scholars,
that language is too little and too much.
What else but brief eras of indifference
when the dead are left alone. What else
but the forged and hammered thing
of poetry, all the failures of our making.
What else but the litany of bombs.

Tyrian Purple

Please, understand: to heave Hector
through the dirt, Achilles must first
cut holes in his enemy’s heels,
Hector threaded like a needle
with leather cord and tied to a chariot
that will pull him around the walls.
Imagine a body strong enough
to be strung like this. Imagine such
stitching is an art, and we call it battle.
Andromache deep in the palace
is weaving a cloak on a wide loom,
wool like the amethyst shadows
beneath her eyes, that vivid sleeplessness.
She’s tacking flowers to the fabric
when she hears the weeping everywhere in Troy.
The bobbin unspools from her fingers
because the warp is a place of order,
and death the cutting shears.
It’s understandable why Andromache
would sit at the loom for hours,
rectangular world where nothing extends
beyond the cloth’s perimeter.
At this point in the war, everyone has lost
the thread of narrative, any reason
beyond armor and the carrion birds
with their beaks like sharpened secateurs.
Who wouldn’t want to take up some craft,
pottery, perhaps, or painted scenes
on funerary stones. Don’t hands need
occupation when the city is besieged.
Probably, a reader believes it frivolous—
these fibers dyed the plum of galaxies,
all that great, oppressive sky
and the murdered looking down
from their fixed constellations.
Even Andromache finds a pastime.
It’s late in our history to condemn
the ways people spin out a war,
how they twist the days like fibers
on a spindle. Imperial purple.
Purple of bruised loyalties. Unfadable
purple that stains the maker’s skin.

SOME FINAL NOTES ON ODYSSEUS

                                                Ithacans!
Stop this destructive war; shed no more blood
and go your separate ways, at once!
            – The Odyssey, 24.531-533

When the goddess cries out,
her voice is a mountain against
the fighting. But the old soldier
keeps running—war like weather
in his ears, a summer storm,
in his pulse the tossing waves.
At such a time it is difficult to see
Odysseus was a child once.
He learned from his father
the names of trees, the orchard
full of gleaming suns called apples,
the private ripeness of figs, grapes
clustered like families on the vine.
He touched their dusty skins.
Yes, even he had been a boy
who held a wooden sword,
the shadows creeping on, and
they lengthened with the night.
There are decades of water,
islands and islands between
that child and the man.
The body is said to harden,
the heart of course as well.
For someone like Odysseus anger
is an unrestricted flame.
When the goddess cries out
she is saying, worship reason
instead. But it takes her own father—
a god and his thunderbolt
—to cut through the battle.
Stop this war, he says.
According to the story, Odysseus
lays down his weapons then.
And what then? What then?
Poems always end before the peace,
the orchard overgrown now.
No one wants to read a scene
of the old soldier pulling weeds,
pruning the wildness back, his arms
still strong but not with violence,
and the air no longer stings
like lightning touching down.
No one wants the old soldier slicing
a plum the way he used to take
his dagger to the belly of a rival,
the war that fed him once a taste
he barely can recall. Most nights
his chin is red and syrupy with juice.

NAUGHT

There is naught to be done for it:
We are over
As the ocean is over its attraction
And is now crawling
Back from the shore,
Having fucked it thoroughly.

We are done
Like steak on a grill,
Sizzling and aromatic,
Waiting to be devoured.

We are finished
As a wood floor sanded to undeniable
Smoothness and shine,
A surface of beauty concealing
The pitted underbelly of it all.

Or like promising to explain to others
What happened to us.
Over, done, finished,
Is all we need to say
Or want

While the gifted interpreter
Turns a pirouette of words
And keeps you safe
With her basket of naughts.

SOUNDINGS

Things,
your black b-ball shoes,
loose-laced, open-tongued,
curse one corner;
your books, benched, titles turned down;
your trophy array, glitterings speechify

—steering far from the sirenic
roar of your closed room—

The tulips drip,
yellows slackening,
some randomly red-lined
with a quirky genetic scrawl,
into a drinking glass
you left …

Listen, all I can do
is endure for a word
in edgewise.

However I heave and haul,
the lines come back hooked empty.

So fuck it,
boots, shoes, shirts, books
Throw them all in
the hole in me,
landfill in
free fall
spiking off
the split bark of winter trees
down fire-escaped stories
through the uneasy laps of whitecaps,
to thud some sandy bottom
where you came to tossed rest.

Such depths, no fathoming?

Our Folklore

Long ago, you were molten rock, and I—
well, I spoke the language of bears.

But now that I have been out of the forest
for so long, all the words and grammar escape

me, and I often find myself lost. And you—
well, you are often mistaken for a statue

in this solid state. No more rumblings and
agitations. We are both quiet these days.

Cactus Tuna

A semi-sweet taste
of watered-down nectar
bleeds out from the prickly
pear nestled
PUT_Aon a crown of thorns.

In the desert you once
sneered over rifle sights
at the farmers drawing
PUT_Arakes over the sun-
baked ground, and now,
PUT_Aas atonement
you’re a farmer of rocks
and what comes with them.

Stained fingers tear through
leathery skin. Sometimes you
forget you’re standing
alone in a cactus patch
PUT_Ared trickling down.

Grace is not this –
living on what grows where
nothing had a right to grow,
seeds fine as sand
PUT_Ahide between teeth.

And crows, refusing to starve,
land unafraid, pick through
the rinds, eat, take flight
scatter seeds on rocky places
PUT_Aand among thorns

even on tops of walls,
and maybe it’s resilience
PUT_Aor spite
something finds purchase here.

We Return from the Holy Land. God Stays.

The mystery is often in the gaze of men
and women waiting for the sky to speak.

We used to spend days in the desert
waiting until the sky whistled and then
we wished we hadn’t.
Someone’s former
home, now sharp edges of cinderblock
cut upward through our soles. We kept
walking through the desert; everything
radiated, catching us in the crossfire.

* * * * *

We spend days in the Hill country
beneath a blistering sun, a clean sky,
traces of blue that have faded,
burnt off but for the edges by noon.

‘Say something,’ we shout in our minds,
looking up as if it’s God.  Eventually
the sky speaks in the language of wind,
fear fills our hearts. Still, we knew
it would be this bad, yet wanted so much
to feel something – until the moment we did.

Run in Reverse

In dreams the ball bearings and nails and flame
are sucked backwards out of the truck, along
with the screams, and the shrapnel enters
The IED, a makeshift paint can half buried in sand.

The boy’s face heals, his body slides back
into the passenger seat and after a momentary
glare at this pained country he turns and smiles
at the driver. It’s a calm hundred-degree morning
and the Baghdad street is filled with shoppers
carrying bags, laffa bread, eggplants poking
out the top, Turkish vendors serving doner kebab,
their angry looks toward the truck
have softened now and they’re joking.

***

Some days walking with my wife, I turn,
walk backwards just to say something silly.
It’s that moment that seems truest. She is
looking at what’s to come just beyond my shoulder,
no regrets about the past, and I’m trying to hold
on to what we left, moving against my will
into the future blind, the scene I’m trying
to make sense of, moving farther away.

my brother, the Marine

the recruiters come weeks earlier than agreed—
arrive in alloy, aluminum with authority,
military vehicle blocks our driveway
announcing to the neighborhood
they’ve come for a boy here
who will have to go—
though he sits at the top step
and cries

i follow them,
strange convoy to Staten Island’s hotel
where all the boys are corralled—
farmed for war, becoming weapons
of mass destruction
when before they picked apples
at family trips upstate

a hotel lobby—last stop before using lasers
to blow off golden domes,
silence muezzins in the crush
of ancient wage and plaster—
Hussein’s old siberian tiger left thirsty,
watches other zoo animals
being eaten by the faithful—
just like a video game

i clamp onto my brother
beg him not to go, we could run away
he didn’t have to do this—
recruiters quickly camouflage me,
am dragged outside—my brother lost
did not say goodbye
or even look at me.

my brother’s shoebox

the room across the hall is inhabited again,
home now from another tour
like sightseeing from a grand canal
where buildings are art
and storied sculptures animate street corners—
my brother returns a veteran.

i want to remember who this person is,
or at least, find out what war has done.

he leaves with friends to drink—
that is still the same,
later tonight
he might howl at our parent’s window
or jump on my bed until the sheets froth,
uncaring and rabid.

but i don’t wait for him to come home
and begin searching the room
that is his again.

it is simple to find
where people hide things—
a shoebox under his bed
that wasn’t there all these years
furrowed by sand
and almost glowing.

i open to find drugstore prints,
rolls of film casually dropped
for a high school student to develop—
silver halide crystals take the shape
of shattered skulls
goats strung and slit
a school made of clay
blasted in the kiln of munitions
“KILL ZONE” painted across its foundation—
each 4×6 emulsion a souvenir
of these mad travels,
kept to reminisce and admire.

my brother’s grenade

my brother’s room in our family vacation home
has embossed wallpaper, indigo or violet
depending on the light that filters through the mountains—
and his grenade in the closet.

i saw it looking for extra blankets,
thought it was an animal resting in eiderdown
kept by my mother in one of her tempers
but it didn’t move
and so
i picked it up.

inhumanity held beneath iron’s screaming core—
a pleasant weight,
like the egg i threw across the street
detonating onto the head of boy
who said i kissed him but i didn’t,
is it like that for my brother?—
fisted mementos of thrill?

seasoned by cedar sachets,
neatly quilted metal shimmered as i turned it
forbidden gem, his holy relic—
i placed it back in the closet and began making dinner,
said nothing.

the slender pin preserves this household
where our family gathers
unknowing a bomb is kept here—
my brother roasts a marshmallow
until it catches fire, turns black,
plunges into mouth.

GNATS

Evening fire sparking over Sutro’s rim,
igniting cirrus dragons drifting away from the sun.
Jules and I, enthralled.
Sitting placid on the stoop outside our home.
Cuddling.

They swarm out of the alley from behind.
Catching us. Latching hold onto each
of our struggling limbs.
Like gnats they buzz: “Faggots!”
Stuff socks in our mouths.
Drag us to dark playgrounds, the depth of sandboxes.

Fists in our faces. Cleats. Blood. Pipes.
Bone splinters under their boots.
Cold chains gird my torso. Handcuffs biting wrists.
One yanks my hair back:
“Look what happens to motherfucking queers!”

They rip Jules’ pants apart. Jules’ teeth buried in cotton.
Fingers splayed, broken. Knees popped out of sockets.
Ass opened.

Laughing. Noses dripping.
One forces my eyelids like a glassless monocle.
Jagged bottle crammed past Jules’ sphincter.
Jules passing out.
Leather circling around. Beating shafts of meat.
Ejaculating on Jules. Laughing.

Jules coughing. Crawling.

As they flit past his sod-bed,
Jules swats at gnats.

MADE HIM STRONG

From an early age, he knew he was not, could not be,
like other boys. He was fine with that. It made him strong.

On Orthodox Easter in Mariupol

We finished our jelly beans
red and yellow, purple, green,
the last bite of chocolate, unaware

that over in Mariupol
on this most holy day
sleepless mothers cradle children
on a steel factory floor.

Christ is Risen!

But in Mariupol people lie crushed,
the crossbeam too heavy,
cold factory chimneys rising cruelly
against the grey sky.

Nobody steps in from the crowd
to carry the cross.
There is no crowd
but circled tanks

in Mariupol.

Where is the Risen Christ
in Mariupol?

Outside the factory
mud is drying, small flowers
pushing up
between the cracks,
the birds returning, unaware

that inside people wait
in darkness,
the factory made for steel,
not people—
they sit
in vigil,
waiting.

THE GODDESS INCARNATES

At midnight, on a seat of five skulls
I worship the slayer of illusions,
The Maharaja (King) gifted me thirty – three
Acres of rent – free earth, (1)
I have planted seeds of your devotion (Bhakti)
In the soil of my bones to perform corpse rituals.
The world calls me mother – crazy and love – mad,
Your status comes alive in my skeleton,
Oh, Mother Kali! Tell me
If the Goddess incarnates.

• – Ram Prasad Sen

COW DUST HOUR

I dwell on the ferocious cremation grounds
Yearning for my Mother Kali!
She carries waxing gibbous on her forehead,
The Sun grows larger in her right pupil,
The Moon drips from the two corners of her left eye,
She burns the demons in the catacomb of her three eyes.
You cannot carry her consort in your palm,
He keeps her love and fury in the ocean of his heart.

I am restless, this longing to meet my
Mother will swallow me.
Oh, Mother! I have transposed to a ghoul
Your disciples are my friends now.
They claim,
Between the day and night –
When twilight rises to the throat of the sky,
The hours of Sun and darkness make love,
There is no period of half – light,
I will meet you at,
The time of Union.

EMANCIPATION

My eyes brim with the weight of dusk,
Emotions conflagrate in my heart
Burning the corpse without fuel.
This dawn I am returning to my house
To constellate my belongings.

The entrance is clouded by the
Scattered scars of my childhood,
Every drawer is sealed with the secrets of
My disappointments.
Today, I let go of my failures and rise
From the floor,
As soot rises from the throat.
With every effort to clean the house
My spine travels to the nucleus of my brain
Showing me the way to the bedroom.

At the bedroom’s door,
I stand startled by the view.
The Mother Goddess is coming together
With the God of Mountains,
Consuming my form and liberating me
From prison.

MATRIARCH

ninth great-grandchild
spits up peas
seventh and fourth
declare themselves winners

I bundle the children into categories
high-shouldered daughters gobble minutes
trikes in the hallway

my sidewinding wisdom
laughs into a hanky

why is it I depend on the perpetual
tweed skirt

try reading
a mother
nursing triplets

attagirl

I suppose getting it right doesn’t matter
pull the flowers from the earth

an isolated pea is a tiny thing

JOSEPHINE MARCUS EARP

cowboys were the bad guys
PUone cow hides behind the last one
it was a bad sum
PUinaccuracies plus chickens

instead traded on horse hooves
kicked up dust and stray dogs

she wanted to be
PUtaken seriously
staked instead a vagabond

her husband’s posture straight to the sky
PUpointing now to the headboard
the tombstone didn’t think of her

left with her own version
they rifle through the undergarment drawer
PUfor the sheriff’s girl

MARCHING: SOPHIA DULEEP SINGH

voice rattles
a high window
the lyric ricochets
then straightens
PUUUUUto the upper register

breath comes
from the diaphragm
for the belters
on occasion
PUUUUUthe belly

trailing skirts out of fashion
wives sing wild
wrapped in bedsheets
to jump from a crawling baby
PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUis not a dance

talk of a women’s parliament
words are for lemmings
feet do the work
until the pointlessness is stiff limbed
dogged bobbys
the street scuffle an avant-garde
PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUballet

she fell down during the struggle
mud on her dress

ORANGE

It’s June, and a few stubborn ones
still hang on the trees.

We stand on the back of the pickup to pluck one—
so easy to peel, this old girl the sun has sugared
since December’s sharp tang.

Now it’s sweet as honey, sweet as candy,
sweet as that boy child
who wrapped himself up in his binkie,
his raw thumb firm against his upper palette,
who sat on the stairs facing the wall
because I’d snapped at him again.

Why was I upset all the time?

Though everyone forgives me, no one forgets
my acidic past; bright orange, raw rage.

Backyard Apocalypse

We set small bowls of sugar water
on the garden’s edge. Bees were scarce
since the freeze which had almost finished
what the pesticides had started.  Still,
some survived.
PUT_CHARAWe studied the blossoms
of plants, the parts we’d ignored before,
of squash, and peppers, and eggplant
and others. We moved pollen from one
bloom to the next with fine paintbrushes,
working early while the roof still blocked
part of the sun.
PUT_CHARAIt was unseasonably hot
that year, much like other years,
and we walked on the cracks that formed
in the dirt.
PUT_CHARAWas a time when the sweat
of our brow, the smell of our bodies,
made us keep our distance, wanting
showers before contact.
PUT_CThen, something changed .

We began to walk, dirty hand in
dirty hand, lingering in our dry
garden even when the heat rose.
There was so much more to lose.

We could feel the earth slip through
our fingers, still we held tight,
we would carry all that we could.

Hetch Hetchy

There are two signs on
The towel rack.
One says, “cozy” and explains that
The towel rack
Heats your towels.

It’s next to the switch
That fires up
The electricity to the towel rack.
That fires up
The coal fired power plant.

The power plant
Sends up the gas.
Is the drought because the power plant
Sends up the gas?
Either way, there’s a drought.

I looked down through that gas at the
Hetch Hetchy reservoir.
White bathtub rings surround the low
Hetch Hetchy reservoir
Because of the drought.

The second sign on
The towel rack
Says they won’t launder what’s on
The towel rack.
Only what they find on the floor.

All the water in the city comes from
The Hetch Hetchy.
They’re conserving water from
The Hetch Hetchy.
They hope you won’t mind.

Enjoy your hot towels.

“Hetch Hetchy” previously appeared in Eric Chandler’s book Hugging This Rock

Water Cycle

No matter where we are, the oceans
meet us in some form.
PUT_CHARAAAAAAAAI am small
and my daughter (who is only eight) –
is even smaller
PUT_CHARAAand still, our dog is smaller
yet, then there are those microscopic zoe-
and phytoplankton
PUT_CHARAAAAAand the not so micro
fish that eat them and so on
PUT_CHARAAAAAAAAAAAand once again,
oil casts a poisonous rainbow on the Pacific.
Optimism is difficult to catch these days—
evasive like a baitfish
PUT_CHARAAAAAAit’s so small, and we’re
so small, and the smaller we are (like my daughter
who is eight), the more we truly believe
PUT_CHARAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAthis can’t
happen again.

Beatitudes I.

The Lord blessed us with knowledge. Twin curses, good and evil.
Why else plant the luscious tree there, where we were bound
to find the fruit? The purple and shivering flesh never lacks
in spirit. The ache and growl of our naked bellies are the price
for the moment’s delight. So, we gorge and the juice drips
sticky down our chins. Let angels have the eternal heaviness
of paradise; ours is the moment. The act, willful and with intent.
Advised of the penalties. Done poorly. Knowing
this kingdom cannot last. Looking beyond the gardens
for a more convincing view of heaven.

Beatitudes II.

Are we not also blessed, we who praise
PUT_the clear night and its silence?

Betrayed by the absence of stars, we mourn
PUT_a billion-years’ light no longer burning.

We whimper at the withered grass burning,
PUT_the breathing forest burning, the one
PUT_CCCCgreat and living ocean boiling and burning.

You who created time, who is before all things, who will remain after the ruin,
PUT_will you be waiting for us in the cool garden?

Will we lie down with you in the dew-damp grass?
PUT_Will we be comforted?

Beatitudes III.

Are the meek blessed tonight in their bundled and stinking shelters
PUT_beneath frozen bridges? Are they blessed with patience in their waiting
for the Lord of compassion? For the Lord that suffers with?

They suffer together. Their children will inherit the suffering
PUT_of generations,
the split lip of submission, the broken skin of the earth.

Beatitudes IV.

Blessed. From a word that meant blood.
Latin for praise. Blood and praise to the hungry; they are weak.
Blood and praise for the thirsty. For those who bathe
in fetid water.
PUT_CCCCCCWhat are words
to those who hunger in a gluttonous world?
To those who thirst beside the brackish rivers,
choking on garbage? We say, wait for righteousness
to come from above. But they have starved
in their flesh so that our spirits could be filled.

SPIDER / 150

Thick in Louisiana swamps

Atchafalaya Basin

Hot cypress shooting out

Stretching in that bayou

Where pipelines

Pumping black gold oil

Cross across the swamp

Like spider veins.

TRACKS / 151

How I find tiny cuts

The skin of my inner

Thighs outer lip my

Labia

Cuts from his finger

Nails small bloody

Crescents

Like beetle tracks.

SPOIL / 152

Or deep in a swamp

How oil companies

Create canals

Push earth into piles

Push mud into banks

These spoil banks or

Dams

That block blocking

Water so it cannot

Flow.

CLAM / 153

The sky is full of trees

Now after

After he hits me over

The head

With a pipe metal pipe

Hard on

The crown of my skull

Bone and

Suture cracking like a

Clam shell.

Pattern of Consumption is a year long project featuring 365 poems by Amalie Flynn and 365 images by Pamela Flynn. The poetry and images focus on the assault on women and water. 

TOUCHSTONE

My child’s fairy-tale quilt is frail:
the wizard ripped, the prince bald,
the fairy’s wing clipped.
Only the wishing well and frog prince survived
camp, college, the conception of my grandchild.

My eldest daughter wants the irreparable
repaired for her daughter, Maeve Arden,
named after a Shakespearean forest.

No longer willing to stitch painted pomp
I sketch a new quilt: a forest where the snake waits,
the dark trips, death lives behind every mushroom:
reality feelingly persuades me what I am.

My cataracts removed, I have a grander vision for Maeve’s covering.
I add the fool with his
books in running brooks, tongues in trees.

Absolute in my giving
savvy to the darker side of things
my needle pokes the sweet uses of adversity.

VALENTINE FOR LEWIS CARROLL

Purchased by an old woman
for her grandniece
I’m a blue plastic Valentine bag.

I have on me
a rabbit from Wonderland
whose creator liked
little girls without pubic hair.

I sit all year
on a doorknob
awaiting the day of hearts.

I’m singular,
not a carelessly covered box
but reusable.

My child places
her carefully labeled
valentines in me.

Unfortunately, this year
will be my finale.
My rabbit will hop off
offended by the onset
of hair.

JUSTIN ALTER, SLIGHTLY DRUNK, ADDRESSES MAYA, WHO IS IN EGYPT

Now as I am hungover and queasy
stumping about the tilting house
and sappy as my face is green,
Maya, your sculpture of Qetesh,
that goddess of sex and ecstasy,
whose torso of clear pink plastic
has a heart made of puzzle pieces
dangling from wires that run to an
automated external defibrillator
normally used to shock
a rapid cardiac rhythm
back to normal, stares at me with eyes
filled with both desire and despair.
Though feeling embarrassed
I touch the pink nub you meant
to be her clit and a soft whirr starts, then
puzzle pieces spin so fast they tear, and scatter
and the bare hot wires scald
the insides of her perfect breasts.
I pull the plug, but the smell of burnt plastic
fills our bedroom despite the open windows.
Why do you have to be gone so long?

MAYA RICCI ALTER EXCAVATING A PYRAMID SOUTH OF CAIRO

As I stooped beneath the
standing sun within the
meter-by-meter carefully
measured order of this
archeological dig and
brushed pottery shards
and papyrus crumbs through
a sieve to sift out the sand,
the heat’s strong hands
touched me like a half-
wanted lover, whose warmth
is too familiar with my
body to refuse and that’s
why when Jamaal, the site
boss said, “You look
overheated.
Cool off in my trailer.”
“Yes,” I said, knowing I
wanted to betray Justin
but not knowing why, so
after we had sex and while
I was thinking how can I
use this experience,
I saw Jamaal shave with
a straight edge then I saw
the dead-on right image for the God Set,
a cave-sized skull made of razor blades,
entered by stepping
over teeth made of sharp knives
into total darkness
except for a weak light
piercing this skull
through one of its eyes
and in that eye is a web
and tangled in its threads
are Zipporah and Justin.
Their faces, formless rags.
Their bodies sucked out hulks.

I speak not your language

 I, born from the womb of
my mother’s remembrances
wrapped in the cocoon
of her story

PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAyou, amongst the trees, the earth
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAbelow littered with unpicked olives
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAthe story of Hagar and Yishmael
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAis your womb

my skin a scroll,
an epic of what was
my skin like tombstones
etched with numbers

PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAthe remains of the broken down
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAhome in the arid field pasture
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAyour diary
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAcarved in the stone

PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAYou laugh in pleasure
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAyour small act of defiance
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAyour urine naturally marks your
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAterritory which
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAI have marred

I feel its warmth running down
my sweaty shirt
my tongue tied in shame

PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAyou are telling your story

I speak not your language

and it’s 2pm
the radio announcer
reads out names of
lost relatives,
maybe they have survived

PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAyours, they live in a tent
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAsomewhere
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAwithout radio announcements
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAyou guard the stones
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAthat have survived

Omar Abdalmajeed As’ad of Jiljilya

Haaretz newspaper reports
3am
Omar Abdalmajeed As’ad is stopped by Israeli soldiers on his drive home, after spending time with friends.

the moon is smiling, oblivious to the rattled
heart    thumping against the white shirt
buttoned tightly over a late-night dinner
of rice and maybe thick lamb stew

3:05am
The soldiers demand that As’ad step out of his vehicle. They argue with him for 15 minutes.

Hebrew and Arabic mingle in a snake-like dance
or a sword fight with only one sword
and one victor

always
the same one wins

3:20 am
The soldiers walk As’ad to an abandoned yard, where they handcuff him, lay him on the ground, gag him and blindfold him.

the rancid aroma of cumin and cinnamon, the
leftover flavor of friends, permeates the thick
gag with a terrifying intimacy of living in a dream
of dying on the cold dusty ground

3:35am
Soldiers lead two more detainees to the yard. One of them notices As’ad is lying still on his stomach.

his full stomach is pressed against the small pebbles
as 78-year-old skin surrenders to the indentations
branding As’ad
declaring the kinship of man and land
as the almost full moon still is in oblivion

3:45am
Two more detainees are brought to the yard. No one is handcuffed apart from As’ad.

his hands bound to each other clutch fleetingly
moments stored in his wilting veins
toddlers joyfully
squealing    love   making
lamb stew   sweetness of pistachio-
filled baklawa

4am
The soldiers free one of As’ad’s hands and leave the yard.

not bound together the hands no longer harbor
As’ad’s stored moments
they “rest” upon the spillage of his life
leaving handprints
branding the earth
the kinship of land and man

4:09am
One of the detainees calls a doctor after noticing As’ad is unresponsive and his face has turned blue.

no flickering of the moonlight to mark
the moment As’ad’s blindfolded eyes   dimmed
the absence of air bluing
the wrinkled face

stillness

4:10am
A doctor arrives at the yard from a nearby clinic and tries to resuscitate As’ad.

the white shirt ripped    dusted
with the land      no longer white
and new hands part the sea
of stillness in a futile effort
to infuse life into
this body      an empty vessel

zip tie on its wrist

4:20am
As’ad is brought to the clinic and medics continue to treat him.

neon flares   no more  moonlight
frenetic world  life-sustaining measures    violent
clanking desperation against As’ad’s bare chest

desecrate the holy stillness
of dying at dawn  

4:40am

The doctor pronounces As’ad’s death

One commander will be
rebuked

two subordinate company and platoon commanders will be
dismissed

As’ad is buried in his village Jiljilya

*https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-death-of-80-year-old-palestinian-was-moral-lapse-israeli-military-report-says-1.10581018

STILL

I never thought of you
as a hopeless romantic; this was news to me.
Are you still meditating? Meditate
on this:
You can take the Mulholland Highway across
the ridges of two counties
and stay high a long time.
We parked there once in your subcompact
in love and unconfined.
From the afternoon shade of a scrub oak
I remember the ridge route home,
the silhouettes of Point Dume and your profile
in the afterglow.

Since then I have been a jack of all trades
and a master of nothing:
unremarkable, unsubstantial, undignified;
unresolved, unremembered, unconceivable;
unqualified, unpublished, unreadable.

I looked for you in the county beach campgrounds
where you went with surfers from your high school.
I looked for you in all the places I heard you were in love.
I looked for you where rumors sent me.
I looked for you in the hills of Northridge
where we walked around the fault lines.
I looked for you among the barstools
from Venice to Ventura.
I looked for you in old Beach Boys songs.
I looked for you in stacks of photographs.
I looked for you in the bottom of a glass.
I looked for you stranded after a concert.
I looked for you at the Spahn Ranch.
I looked for you in the bittersweet words in books.
I looked for you in unsold manuscripts.
I looked for you in the margins of old college notes.
I looked for you in every woman who looked at me.
I looked for you in dharma talks.
I looked for you in shrines.
I looked for you in my next life.

I don’t think my karma is right.

Forty years on the hard roads of two counties
and I am
still.

All Wars Are Boyish

Autopilot on self-destruct,
we went joy riding on tanks
into the thermal wasteland.

The static of roentgens played
like parked ice cream trucks
on the detection equipment.

Playgrounds went incendiary
as squalls of cluster bombs
skipped over the pavement,

but our camo HAZMAT suits
insulated us from the acts
we had been ordered to take.

They were on the run, maybe,
or counterattacking. We took
rations beside a napalm campfire.

Jets among the sweep of stars,
scorched amphibians peeping
in the meltdown meadow,

what more could a kid ask for,
except dinosaurs? They were
already working on them in the lab.

EACH NIGHT MY MOTHER DIES AGAIN

Each night the phone rings—
Your mother has passed.
Each night I expect to be relieved, but night falls on night.
Each night she is the mother who makes waffles,
batter bubbling from the sides of the iron, the mother
who squeezes fresh orange juice, and serves soft-boiled eggs
in enchanted egg cups. Each night I squint into her face
as she carries me over the ocean waves, her arms my raft.
Each night she refills Dr. Zucker’s prescriptions
for diet pills and valium. Each night she waters her rosebushes
with Dewar’s. Each night I see her hands shake,
her brows twitch. Each night she adds ground glass
to the chopped liver, rubbing alcohol to the chopped herring.
Each night she puts a chicken straight on the lit burner
without a pot. Each 2:00 a.m., Mrs. Finch from 6G phones—
Sorry to say your mother is naked
in the hallway again.
Each night my mother is strapped into her railed bed
at Pilgrim State, curled into a fetal position,
her hands fisted like claws.
Each night she calls to me
from her plain pine coffin, calls me
by the name she gave me, the name
she hasn’t forgotten.

WOUNDED
            —to Laura

Bleating thing without wool
Thunder without sound
Ghost of wooded peaks, of constricted arterial waters

There is a dog inside the heart, voice bursting
Interminable silence, blown-open iris

Over organs buried deeper in the earth
where capillaries of roots still bleed orange dust

Leave me be, hot tongue of fireflies,
PAAAAAcracked pharynx of ice

Do not ask me to slip
PAAAAAdown among green nerves of water-weed
PUT_CAAAAAAAAwhere the flesh of the sky
is unmoving and fruitless

The moon still hovers in its surgeon’s coat

But do not try to satisfy the dead
who hold on with claws like desperate fevers

Leave my sutured skull of empty ivory forever

But pity me; put an end to this much hurt

PUT_CAAAAI am love, I tell you
and all the quick wings accumulating

as restlessly as the breaths

PAAAAAAthat were once inside

these wheel-crushed, wind-scattered leaves

A Brief History of the Spanish Conquest

Tell me again of that fabulous
kingdom where a single
ear of corn is more
than two strong young men can carry, where cotton
grows untended, in colors never dreamed of,
to be spun by gorgeous slaves
into garments that lie
cool as cornsilk against the skin and shine
radiant as noon.

*

How sordid and predictable history can be.
Within sight of the prize
but out of ammunition, they
lowered three men down the volcano’s throat
to fetch sulfur for gunpowder.
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAThis
was the vision
prefigured in the prophet’s eye:
three men curled in a basket peering
back across the centuries,
their dewy starving faces so
desperate with hope
as they dissolve in a yellow mist,
felons set adrift.

*

North by west toward the cities of gold,
the soldiers in rags walked half-bent
with hunger and dysentery, nursing
grievous wounds sustained in hit-and-run attacks
by moss-troopers talking Choctaw.

Beside the mother of rivers, the horses sickened and died
but the soldiers, being less reasonable,
proved less destructible.
At disobedient towns they dragged out
chopping blocks to punish malefactors
and departed in a shower of ash, their legacy
a heap of severed hands slowly
clutching at flies.

*

But the much-sought golden cities sank below the horizon
like the tall ships of fable. For the Spaniards,
the age of miracles ended
somewhere in southwest Arkansas. The palaces of silver
turned Outlaw Liquor Barns, Triple-X Superstores,
the stuff of vision a mustard-colored mix

of smoke, dust, emissions
from riverside refineries and coal
plants along the Mississippi where squadrons
of John Deere combines like barn-size locusts
roll in drill order over the dry land,
half-effaced by squalls of chaff.

At night the fields burn.
Stray flames browse the blackened
shoulders of the interstate,
crop the stubble beneath the billboards.

*

In the state park south of Hot Springs
I fell asleep in a chair in the heat and woke
to a titmouse perched on the toe of my boot
with that peculiar weightlessness
shared by birds and planets

and I searched without hope for my place in the book.
Buzzards killed time there, their shadows
slipping across the iron ground
like fish in a shallow pool
while Time gaped
PUT_CAat the spiders that battened
PUTon the flies that
swarmed the rotten
windfall apples.

*

Tenochtitlan.
At the imperial aviary, we found
a pair of every kind of bird in the world:
parrots and finches in profusion, brooding vultures,
egrets, ibis is sacramental scarlet.
Seahawks stooped and banked

through that hostile truce and we marveled
at God’s prodigality, His exuberant
inventiveness, then piled tinder
to burn the thing to the ground.
Flames sheeted over the soaring

lattice dome like the fleet
shadows of clouds. For a time,
the structure smoldered,
a hissing wickerwork steaming as it cooled.
Here and there, a bird crashed the skein of ash

like a rogue comet bursting
the flaming ramparts of the universe.
Charmed in place, we held our breath,
beside ourselves, like couriers
trapped in a snowglobe, blinded
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAin a tempest of embers,
astonished at the work of these hands,
the everyday miracle of destruction.

SOMETHING LIKE NIGHTFALL

something, like night falls
slow, as if
nothing in the world has ever moved
but distant hope descending, still ablaze
days soften to wonder

what else leaves
silhouettes these black lace trees
fades from me

it is you from my life
steadily, quietly
as celestial movement

Praying at the Temple of Forgiveness
for Zea Joy, in memoriam

Last Monday you threw yourself,
your body, dressed in red chemise,
in front of a train. 

It was your insatiable hunger
for a more tenderhearted world,
your husband said at Shiva.

Now no one will get to see
what you saw from inside
your snow globe where you lived,

shaking and shaking,
breaking into shards
of ungrieved grief, unanswered need.

I will remember
how tirelessly, with your son,
you worked to help him turn

sounds—coming through the implant
behind his ear—into speech,
speech into understanding.

Everyone will remember
how you skipped across the dance floor,
waving pastel and magenta scarves,

and prayed to angels.
O, dear Zea, your human bones
thin as the bones of a sparrow—

the way you could fold
your body to fit anywhere.
Rest now. You have succeeded.

INTERNAL WIND  

When you died, our son
became my son; I watch
through your eyes

and mine how he lifts
his whole body into
a long accent à droite,

arms taut, wrists impossibly
rotated back, fingers and toes
also pointed back

to all the hours, years
of practice in turning
everything around.

~ 

Over the hollow
you left, our son stretches
his fingers across

frets and strings
in C minor,
Bach’s Etudes

the way you taught,
the way you closed
your eyes, nodded, satisfied—

our son will remember. 

~

Remember how
he watched you deep-
breathe into yoga postures?

Now his own focused flow
heals what Western doctors call
tics, quiets what Eastern doctors call 

internal wind. Listen
how our son calls
to his yoga students

what he learned
at your knee: Effort
brings the rain— 

of grace.

~ 

When our son and I argue,
I feel homeless, divided,
until I remember how you

and I took turns massaging
his neck that ached from its day’s
staccato singing—

~

Sometimes I can see his tics
as flawless, meticulous,
a body expressing itself

with perfect diction.

DRIVING DOWN OLD EROS HIGHWAY

Me, in my Q50 with its hot flashes and warning beeps,
heading toward Sweet Desire, New Jersey, where my love,

soon 70, will woo me with mango, melt the mushy pulp
in my mouth—or perhaps he naps.

You, CeeCee, painting the walls pink in the tiny house in Pullman,
recently moved in with your old college flame, coming so easily

against his new ceramic hip, just the friction of it. You say
your pelvis never quite fit with anyone else, including your soon-to-be-

ex-husband of 30 years. Me, with a G-spot suddenly. A rainbow
of chaos tunneling through me when his fingers find it and flutter.

And long live the reckless tongue. The old-fashioned clit-kind
of climax. Like a young planet rising. Oh, how old and greedy I am

for that whole-body wave and chill and quiver and release.
You, purposely avoiding that whole-body wave of shiver,

as it reminds you of your ex’s dogged insistences.
For your 60th, your daughter gifted you with a mini vibrator

on a rubber ring for your index finger. A sex-thimble, you joke.
Sex over 60 seems unseemly to talk about, CeeCee,

but it seems more ungrateful to say nothing at all.
You and I speak of what our mothers couldn’t give us.

Daily I pray at the temple of Venus.

SUMMER SAYS

Pay attention to
your heat, your survival—
the tree rooted in your garden

is a sequined vernacular, a cashmere sweater.
Because nothing matters in the end
but comfort and the bending light.

Summer says, I will be the room you die in.
You will dream, neither of regret,
nor in the language you were born into.

A stranger will comb your existential threads.
You had thought, for instance, humans
were gerunds or harps bent

on playing in a diner that serves
black coffee and hard donuts.
You ask, What is the past?  

What is it all for?
Summer says, The wound of being
untaught. Says, hungry.

Says, the cypress is a hospice,
says, falter, falter, falter,
bloom bloom bloom—too soon

a pall will keep you company.

EARTH APPRECIATION

Behold this clod, umami of mould and mineral, worked
by millipedes, slowly digested
to a richness by mycelium—and fruiting,
fruiting with an explosion of possibility.

If I could put a frame around the wind—
a thin one, black, a way to point out
wonder—then we could see the paths
of gnats and sparkling moths, amazement
of maple key and mated dragonflies, tiny
rainbows in fog and flake and droplet.

LUSTING, STINTING

How we thirsted for sweet
achieving, to have the world
gush warm reward. Or drip,
or trickle, even ooze—some
something to fulfill the easy augurings
that graceful makings yield
swift returns. They yield,
in fact, to power, and to time
that’s flowed by us while
we labored and we crafted worth.

And so we climbed to pierce
time’s trunk, so carapaced it seemed
indivertible, a steely force
to move unwilling worlds. The spile
that wounded that fierce power
drew life from every hand
it touched, spilled spirit
that sighed forth and wreathed
the ray of time. But we succeeded.

Drop by stiffening drop the instants
fell, encasing empires, globing
moments—each honeyed gall,
each bittered rapture. I don’t know—
the others may be suckling sweet. But here
in my eternity, I feel the sucking wound
that is my life, steaming into snow. How
I wanted. How I failed, in getting.

ABBA-1975

Abba’s lyrics, like water
shot from La Bufadora,
mingle with volcanic steam
from metallic pots of corn.

And the scrape on my knee
from chasing the seagulls
bleeds, but does not hurt.

On this Sunday, the ocean breeze slips
in gossip between vendor stalls
as young men in speedos walk past.
Tables of silver bracelets tap my eyes
and ABBA’s Spanish melody
carries on my tongue
before any English syllable
ever arrived.  Before the summer ended
when it tore me
from the sands of Ensenada
to a desert north of the border,
to a land with tongues
unfamiliar and stiff.

And now when I fall
chasing my shadow, my ABBA
lyrics cannot permeate
foreign soil.  Cannot stop the pain.

On the Street

Run naked through the streets
and shout, “Make love to me!”

Tag every wall in a turf war
with quotes from the palatero,
from the child who yearns for love,
from the gay son who hopes his father
will welcome him,
this time.

With your sharp and fast tongue, mesmerize
passersby as they get caught in the gunfire
of stanzas and sonnets,
popping the air.

Bellow on the street corner
of how love abandoned you,
how your life is empty,
how you aborted your dreams.
And every day it rips into you
of every opportunity you threw away.

I want that on the wall.
I want all the pain and hurt
to get out of bed, to grab that bullhorn
and run naked through the streets.

Politics

Every 20 years or so boys dress up
And kill each other for fun.
It’s the way of the wrack of the world
The wind of our imagination and our love.
To blame our costumes for our beauty
Is like to blame our bruises for our blood.
The chime is what drives us, what ticks
Our tock forward to the next spree.
The foreshortened humiliation,
The immaculate imprecation,
Is neither what we fear or what we covet.
Man is. Rats are. Take what you can
While the day is rough
Move lengthwise into the past
And blame god for never enough.

RABBITS IN AUTUMN

Who will find our bones in a thousand years,
bleached and brittle under the unyielding sun,
scattered in dried grasses by feral dogs or vultures?

Who will hold such curiosities, not knowing
that we stopped here to kiss and murmur
that our love would outlast the moon and stars?

Who will hold our bones, never to imagine
that under the same sun, we once made love
on the lushest grass, under a sapphire sky?

In autumn, the fox lies in wait, hearing rustling
in the tall grass. Having eaten, the fox moves on.
There are no questions of why, or how, or when.

Smoke rises acrid in the air; the sun sets earlier
each day; the grapes shrivel on the vine. Time
is the fox; we are the rabbits. Please, hold me.

Aphrodite Urania

From a womb of foam I
came to be a woman, heavenly
gestated from Father, who also brought
weather, seasons. He is a castrate
and timeless, the bluest of planets.
As a warrior, my courage
is to stand by my brother while his
hunger weakens him, devouring
days, years – his children. My
courage is to persevere while
the sand under the waves carve
portraits of Mother – her power
quietly stronger than anything else,
ungrounded, unfathomable.

Chronos, After Castrating His Father

The sickle Mom gave me was super sharp, so all I had to do was, like, sneak up on the old
man – who always ignores my AWESOMENESS anyway and has so many fucking kids like
he’s the king of the freakin’ universe – get underneath that nasty tunic he wears (with the
blood and guts of all the meals he eats but doesn’t need to eat cuz he’s a God and all), and
from behind simply grab ’em, slice, and run like hell. Why did I think this would be a good
idea? Just because I hate the man, and the way he treats Mother is shit. But it was easier
than I thought. He didn’t follow, just shrunk down to the ground where his ball blood was
splattered and I could tell as I ran that there would be giants and furies and monsters
born out of that blood. I hoped the sea would bury his testicles as I tossed them as far as I
could, standing on a cliff, sure that all would be better now and my time here would calm.

Grandpa Uranus, Rainmaker

My grandfather no longer visits
with his blued capes that cover everything –
his foamy genitals an island for
Aphrodite. My name, Urania,
is his and my sky is his, the
sodden breezes still spray
my eyes so I look up. Don’t bother
charting the skies. Astronomy
is family. Look for me when you
are angry, I’ll kiss your temple
and promise you your future
and pray to my grandpa, the
father of giants and furies and
all that I turn from in my shadows.

Uranus’ Genital Blood

When my son cut off my testicles
and threw them to the sea, I thought
about those cherries I left for you
in a porcelain bowl by our bed.
His reason, Gaia? You, my darling.
So I’ll sire no more children, darken
the skies no more, abate the thunderstorms,
give the bloodied sickle away
and make some Phaeacians as I do.
Time himself, Chronos, betrayed me
and I’ve set a growing hunger in him.

What beauty could come of this
or the sea? Beauty itself?

REHAB DAY 1

He hadn’t told me, hadn’t stopped drinking
drank beer in the hallway near recycling

where people bring garbage and broken-down boxes
he guzzled, and I was here on the other side of the door

thinking him sober,

reversing redness and the inflammation
from an otherwise young and healthy liver

and I was sober—

how would it help for me to sip a glass of wine
while he drank water with our chicken piccata?

My first thought after drop-off was rebellion

to pull the cork from a long glass throat
and pour full garnet into stemware

I wanted that right again. In my home
the right again

to not finish a bottle and know
it will still be there in the morning

Then I felt a kind of shame

I checked him into a rehab facility
and all I could think of was wine

to unleash my desire for want

drove hours home like a Christmas-morning kid
thrashing through ribbons and crinkled paper

so soon as it was in sight
enrapt and hungry for vice.

REHAB DAY 4

He’s been in rehab four days now, four days without hands on my body

how indulgent that every day I’ve had hands plying my nerves into delight

delight like the tickle and lick of sharing a bed with the same person

and when I finally call my dad, my dad who I’d been avoiding telling

I tell him how lonely it was to arrive back home after leaving him there

with nurses in their face shields, yellow gowns, and their masks

and the globe eyes of his counselor, who stood just back on the sidewalk

and my dad says with unintended harshness that he takes back

as soon as the truth hits the mouth of his phone: You don’t have to tell me that

at least he’s coming back and I imagine him there alone, barefoot

in shorts with a solid color shirt, some sort of mauve, doodling spirals

and checker-box patterns at the kitchen table on a yellow legal pad

in felt-tipped pen while he talks to me, and I remember how in the month

between funeral and stay-at-home, he was well-booked—every day

somebody stopped by with a crumb cake. Baked goods multiplied

on his countertop: cookies mutated into blondies into muffins into baskets

filled mostly with crinkle paper with pears and crackers atop and underneath

the suffocation of plastic tied with ribbons. We worked in shifts

so he would not be alone, alone where he watched her for months and months

and months and months, he danced with her bald in her walker. Oh, how

she resisted that walker until she fell over! How there was a friend each day

on the calendar for lunch, how we took turns staying the night

frying two eggs with toast in the morning—he always ate breakfast—

the plate hearkening back to the diner in Waldwick. How he does not have a return.

My call—a child seeking solace from a parent who only understands

in the way the child will only know as real in some future

hard to materialize in the livingness of abundance and relative youth

how he too was young once with a wife who had long hair she permed

curly and he would tug on her locks under their blankets. When I say future

I see Jim again, clear-eyed with warm hands playing my rib cage,

The National on in the car as we drive up 95 to some version of our life

twenty-four days from right now.

REHAB DAY 9

of course the doctor finds a cyst

on my left breast uphill from sternum

rolling around like a glass marble

of course this is the first day he calls

of course I cannot tell him this news

washed from normal humdrum stress

he swims in progress

and my secret would not serve him

any more than it serves my own

malicious asshole cells

dense like perennials since puberty

of that particular region

of course I cannot even examine

the terrain of my own human lumps

with one arm raised like a branch

fingers ambling around suspicion

every time I’ve been terrified

I’ll find what mom found

and it all feels like oatmeal anyhow

and he’s helpless from there anyhow

to distract from my cycle of peering

into imagined crystal balls and storylines

seeing only the worst, seeing coffins—

if he does not know he cannot worry

and I cannot put that upon him now

make him worry for me

while he does so well in there

REHAB DAY 11

It’s time to take the IUD out.
This is what I think about today, my body
doesn’t want this preventer centered anymore.

I remember the day it went in:
man-doctor’s hand inserting copper
I winced. He said I know, I know

generic bedside assuaging
irked my nerves I sharpened back
No, no, you actually don’t.

And mom came along for support
all frail in her bird limbs, climbed broken
into a chair next to me at the outpatient place

and pain got to the point I needed her hand
to squeeze like citrus pulp out of my grip
as something external opened me up—

I want to be opened from the inside instead
dragged ragged in the riptide of giving birth—
I realized I’d break her frame of softening digits

and knuckles of chemo bones if I juiced
so I unfelt her skin and took hold of my gown
wrung into wrinkles and sweated holes

it’s only a sheen of thin paper anyway…
When he comes back, he will come back
to some levels of absence—and so in turn

open space comes back in, to come in
like syrup into my hungry self.

REHAB DAY 19

His absence heightens hers
so this is how I communicate with mom

I feel each breast one by one smushed
between a plastic pane and its baseboard
goosebumps prickle against machine sounds

in a room alone with the rumbling
inherited path toward lobular cancer

where will my tissue light up a mammogram
like a late-summer campfire sparkler?
Today the ultrasound is a shock

The technician skates a roller over my mound
and I see with clarity a round black orb

She talks to me lump to lump
on the same table she undid her robe years ago
except her skin puckered like a citrus punch

breast vines weighted
by clusters of rotting berries, overripe

mine are bright on the doctor’s screen
netted fibers the rind of a cantaloupe’s dry skin
I see roadways toward lactation

and roadways toward demise
and this marble eye from god

like an omen is benign
has come out as a reminder
of how to spend my days.

* Variation on second line borrowed from Barthes’s Mourning Diary
*Last line borrowed from Anne Dillard quote, “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives”

my heart is a raspberry juicy yet taut fragile temporal eat it now before it degrades and leaves a tasteless piece of itself smeared on the basket. my raspberry heart lives in the moment but not my gut my gut dreams unpredictable digesting whatever latest bout I’ve consumed pandemic fear fear of white supremacists  

CLUTCH AND BLESS

my heart is a raspberry
PUT_Cjuicy yet taut
PUT_Cfragile
PUT_Ctemporal
PUT_Ceat it now
PUT_CAAAAAbefore it degradesPUT and
PUT_Cleaves a tasteless
PUT_Cpiece
PUT_Cof itself
PUT_Csmeared on the basket.
my raspberry heart lives in thePUT_CAAAA moment
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAbut not my gut
my gut dreams
PUT_Cunpredictable
PUT_Cdigesting whatever latest bout
PUT_CAAAAAI’ve consumed
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAApandemic fear
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAfear of white supremacists
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAindignation
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAincarceration
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAplayacting colonization with real guns on the range
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAa night in jail to protest police violence
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAhope for change
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAthe audacity to hold it
PUT_Call of this roils
PUT_CAAAAAmy gut
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAterribly
tangled in the past
PUT_CAAAAAit’s what I ate yesterday and am now
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAtransforming
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAto expel in thePUTA future
my raspberry, my beating heart
PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAcrush it, suck it through your teeth, and savor

THE WIDENING FAULT / image by Amalie Flynn

Parkinson’s Triolet

I cup the base of your skull, catch
precious cells spilling out like salt
that seasons your limbs, your unholy lurches
I cup the drumbeat of us, mis catch

the rhythm, drop plates with a crash
You feed pills into the widening fault
My palm on the back of your head catches
our precarious marriage, heavy with salt

Summer Isolation

I paint the porch with strokes of blue
diamond. By sunset, it’s a veranda

of green and you have fallen asleep
at the shore of a lake that glaciers through

your dreams. You wake with stones in your
teeth and ice melting under your skin

You arrive home with feet delighted
by the verdancy at our entrance. We

dig holes in the ground, nests for roots
the width of thread. You shake ancient

drops of water off your bones. When
a ruby-throated hummingbird

zips past
we see it

GRASSES QUIVER BEFORE / image by Amalie Flynn

ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE

In my dream
Dad, age one hundred twelve,
has his first cell phone—

big and square,
with a rotary dial.

With a proud index finger
he dials my mother,

gets her voice mail.
Together we lean in,
listen

to her low, drifty voice,
its mist so warm on my ear
as it rises from deep underground.

I ask Dad for his number,
but he can’t recall it
before fading into the passage. He’s left me

messages, though,
like: When eating fish be careful
not to get a bone stuck in your throat; when walking
tuck in the tummy; think
about what you have,
not about what you don’t.

FEMALE FIGURE IN PHOTOS

fourteen-year-old mop of hair
sullen air in mod raincoat
on London sidewalk with
beaming scowling father brother

seventeen leaning
on brick wall in black-and-white flannel shirt
no cigarette yet mien
as in movies seen through a puff of smoke

college-era long hair
akimbo arms
eyes narrowed
to spot foe in tall grass

sixty odd in a museum at a window
face a little wooden
and through the panes
an autumn-leafed tree flames

TO MISSOULA

The cold air her pillow of courage, she skirts
the northern rim of the nation.

As she crosses the Dakota Badlands,
where even the hardiest grasses quiver

before earth’s uprisings and revolutions,
her eastern forest home has tilted

and is sliding over the rim!

She pulls her wings in closer
to fly fast and low

over layers of pink and gray guts
squeezed from deep under.

A tail feather tears loose,

whirls away;

she almost bursts into a plume of magma.

Night cools into dawn.

She parks the car,
steps out into a new world,
a young woman with compass and camera
and a crown of mountains.

Airport Luggage Carousel

A battered cardboard box
holes punched in the side
tied with frayed rope
lid popping up
plastered with masking tape, wrinkled.
One lone orphan
going round and round the luggage carousel,
heading nowhere.
Packed in chaos.
Full of soiled clothes
bloody Kleenex
unpaid bills
splinters
and Dear John letters.

This is what the last year has been.

So I imagine the contents differently.
I imagine gold doubloons,
a child’s drawing of a rainbow,
a coupon for a free fried chicken dinner.
Maybe a photograph of a family, at Christmas,
standing together on a hillside,
everyone wearing red and green,
the husband holding a puppy,
and Carol,
still alive.

Shipwreck

She sniffed my trenches,
turned away from the skin she made,
her own thick blood
flowing in my waterways.
Me, a vacant dwelling on the shore,
wearing swaddling,
drinking low-fat milk.

Oh, wire mother of the soul,
entertainer of strangers.
She of too many decibels,
too many bright colors,
passing macaroons to visitors
while I carved “I love Chris”
in the dining room table.

Find the fur coat,
find the hairdresser,
find the beach umbrella
find the wine coolers
find the plants in pots
resigned to death.

Little fish swim by her ankles.
Like me, they long for contact.
Mercy, the color of the sea,
never granted.
In that day, at that hour,
on that wretched beach,
she wanted an audience
but found only me.

RECKONING

don’t worry about me
i am not well but you’ve worried enough
my prosperity has a body

count—

this shielded flesh
conspicuous & allowed to be
balks at being back-

ground—

this mouth taught (without being taught)
it is clearest & loudest & purest
squirms when it must shut up & become

ears—

i do not know how to be ears
i know how to open my mouth monstrously
wide to spew & eat

words—

words are my birthright & we the
authors bulldoze other stories to rubble
so the Other trips over each foregone

conclusion—

i am trained to make murder invisible
but understories cling, bloody mine
with the dragged, sullied

bodies—

of those disappeared beneath my
own soft landing
we need other & better

stories—

speak please, whatever you have to say—
pull out this blighted story by the roots
& plant a new one, green, tender, & worth

loving—

THE SMALL I

this is my country

look
i overturn the junk
drawer of my
white/middle-class
life and take stock
rifling
i find i am not a capital letter anymore
first person singular has shrunk
wizened down
to that apple core i found beneath the car seat
last month
or that ivy there, brown and dead
because i killed it
the waxy leaf tree outside
the front door
(the city said we were its stewards
in a single-page note
in our mail-
box) my heart
brimming then
with the largesse of new motherhood
i thought i could
take on the health
of every tree
in California but
over the course of six
years the ivy became a cloak around
its trunk
then an embrace
then a stranglehold
until tree leaves thinned
i spent a long time
tearing up the roots
of that ivy
now it browns—
saved the tree but
ivy clings
a flammable bolus
around its midsection

and the small i—
how to locate i
when i
am both tree
and ivy?

In Some Distant Country

We have seen this before, in books
and on the screen, like dust plumes rising
in some distant country. Except,
some distant country is Michigan –
armed patriots (terrorists)
in the marble halls of a statehouse.
Long guns and body armor.
Stars and bars on the flags they carry
and nooses for the nervous traitors (lawmakers)
who can read the signs on the lawn outside –
TYRANTS GET THE ROPE.           

Now they are here, inside
the United States Capitol Building,
these armed patriots (terrorists)
smearing their urine and their fecal matter
on the floor and the walls, roaming
the halls with zip ties and body armor,
looking for traitors (lawmakers)
to bind, to carry outside,
where the gallows wait.

Their work is not finished.
Tomorrow, these armed patriots (terrorists)
will return to their homes, victorious,
triumphant. They will return
to towns across the fifty states
where they work at hospitals and gas stations,
at schools and police stations. They will smile
when they greet us in the grocery store
while they do their shopping.

They will tell us to unite.
They will tell us to listen
and be calm, that time
will grant amnesty (without repentance).
They want us to forget, but
their work is not finished.

Who will tell us how to love
our neighbors now?

Who can show us how to rescue
our would-be executioners
from the gallows they built?

How Will You Answer

What is the word for home
after houses become bombs
as they did in Baqubah and Mosul?

One afternoon your wife
has you drill pilot holes
to hang a flat screen-tv on the brick wall.
The mortar dust and shards of clay
erupt from the spinning bit
like bone ejected from kneecap
and skull in the Baghdad torture rooms.

At night, you put your son into bed
and draw the blankets up
over his freckled shoulders.
You stroke his straw-blonde hair
and wonder, what
is the word for son, now?

What can you call your son
now that you’ve seen another man’s son
burning?

How will you answer
when your son calls you father
in the world you turned
into ash and bone?

IN AND OUT OF TIME

In the fire-eaten land
in the smoke-drenched air
PUT CHARACTI dream

PUT CHARACTCrystal Lake  
PUT CHARACTsquare raft afloat
PUT CHARACTat the center

I   in my clodhopper shoes
in the patchwork circle skirt  
I made myself    
PUT CHARACTin my hippie days

have jumped in the lake
to show   
my solidarity

with forest
mountains
ancestors 

with glittering Crystal Lake   
I swam   as a girl   
whose raft   was sanctuary

from Father’s far-flung furies
from head-smacked howling brothers
from tongue-lashed weeping Mother

This simple   handmade craft  
of wood    of nails
floats me   out of time

holds me
in the great blue round 
of lake    of sky

the green surround
of pines
where the always hovering

Old Ones
who knew me then
who dream me now

give me the words
to write myself back   
PUT CHARACTTTTTTinto time

in my waterlogged
clodhopper shoes 
 my patchwork skirt

back to the fire-eaten land
back to the smoke-drenched air
PUT CHARACTtt                   my handmade craft

 PUT CHARACTTTT                                        my raft

IN THE WAKE OF OUR LADY OF THE DOUBLE–EDGED AXE
THE NOTORIOUS RBG
(Erev Rosh Hashana   in the year 5781)

The shofar wails

She’s gone
from her body   gone
from her seat on the court   gone
from her grip on what’s equal   what’s just  
gone
from her fierce resolve
to keep breathing
until January 20^th 2021

Everything hung on her small   frail   frame
What will we do without her?

Once I forgot I was real
a daughter of earth and sky
forgot what the angel
had told me at birth

Once I had holes in my tongue
from biting it
had blood on my hands
from broken glass
on the top of that wall
There was no escape

Throttled by custom   by law
I spat my teeth on the road
My fire was used to burn me up
My body did not belong to me
a vessel for lust   for seed

But you   our soft-spoken battle-ax
our mother who was a falcon
had the cunning   the courage   the ken
to seize the keys to the castle  
the plantation   the prison
to deliver us
from gender’s cages
the shackles of race  
from those scoundrels in power
who steal from the poor
and ransack the earth

The shofar wails   

She’s become one
of the Holy Ones
No longer can everything hang
PUT CHARACTTTTTTon her small   frail   frame

Too much for one body   to bear
It’s your fight now

Bless us   O falcon-headed soul
of the notorious RBG
Our Lady of soaring sight
of focused attack
Our messenger
between the worlds

Sit on our shoulders
Hunt in our dreams
for the courage   the cunning   the keys
the double-edged axe
we’ll need
to end the mad king’s reign
and rouse your spirit in us
                                          all over this land

PREPPING FOR APOCALYPSE
          for Alicia

requires   the pursuit   
of toilet paper   avocados   gluten-free bread
He needs blueberries   with his yogurt
You need mushrooms   with your eggs
Both of you stuck   in lockdown

So   surrender  
Hang  yourself   upside down  
Be the bat   who sees   in the dark     Smell
the terror   cruelty   carnage     Hear
the echoes   of the ancestors

Pandemic    is pandemonium
the world turned into   a charnel house
The sinister rider   on his pale horse 
has rolled us all up    in The End of Days
like a medieval map    ringed with dragons

A Revelation   is at hand     The sun  
gone black     The moon  
a bloody show     Guadalupe wanders 
the woods   haunted by who  
She once was

Our Lady of the Serpent Skirt     Apocalyptic
woman   crowned with stars   in the fierce grip
of birth     Will She bear us  
a savior?         Will She bear us
a demon     shatterer  of worlds?     How will we know  
PUT CHARACTTTTTTTTTTTTT                    the difference?

SIDESWIPED

Sweet Lola    my Barcelona Red   hybrid   chariot   
you   who transported me   from sixty something
to the middle of my seventies   through Obama’s two terms  
Michelle’s organic gardens   the color spectrum
of her splendid gowns     you   carried me  
when we were all   blindsided
by the 2016 election   fed me NPR news
the Russian hack job   on America  
the wannabe Pharaoh   throwing tantrums  
on Twitter   while the traffic   roiled around us

even as you approached   a hundred thousand miles
you stayed stalwart   kept me safe   in your calm interior  
as you switched   from gas to battery and back  
making our small gesture   toward saving the planet   
you who   delivered me   into our garage   protected
from rain   from wind   from the ash   that devoured the mountain
Dan coming out   to help   with the groceries

There were groceries   for Passover   in your trunk   Lola  
flame raisins   dried apricots   dates   almonds 
for the Sephardic charoset    which symbolizes the mortar  
it is said   we Jews used   to build the pyramids    
when we were slaves   in Egypt     But who knew  
when I made that left turn   a big black Beamer
would hurtle toward you   Lola   we almost
made it   before it hit you   in the right rear
I thought it was just   a fender bender
They’d fix you up   at the body shop
like the surgeon   fixed my hip

But the man in the Beamer   leapt out   shouting  
It’s all   your   fault!
I can still hear him shouting    
while his kind   quiet wife                                                     
asks for my registration

What’s that?   I think
my mind   in fragments

Later I’ll gather the flame raisins 
dates  apricots and almonds   pulse them
into small bits   in the Cuisinart     knowing one needs
to break things up   to make that rich   sweet                     
Middle Eastern paste   charoset
that’s meant to bind us   together
when vessels shatter

Later the total loss   claims man   will pronounce you  
totaled     You   Lola  
who had the saichel   to feed your own battery     I’m still reaching   
for your slow-down lever   grasping thin air   forgetting  
I’m driving a clunky   Chevy rental  
on my way   to retrieve the layers of umbrellas   shopping bags  
shoes   in case of earthquakes   maps   we no longer use  
flashlights   whose batteries   likely died   in all those years  
before you started   losing oil 
before the black Beamer   sideswiped you  
before the man   began to shout  

before the total loss man
pronounced you   worth more dead   dismembered
for spare parts   instead of resurrected   one last time
at the body shop    the buff young woman
commiserates with me   helps me carry
the detritus   of our years together
to the clunky Chevy

It’s Easter week   and Passover
We remember the ones   who’ve passed on
We light candles   for my children’s father  
Dan’s children’s mother   my mother  
the bedlam that erupted   in her wake
O   my separated kin   will you ever   join us again?

We name the plagues   Old Pharaoh flings at us
as we gather our mishpocheh    on the way to freedom
We name   what plagues our own   shattered    times
     Stolen Elections    
     Separated Children
     Hatred of Strangers 
     Greed
     School Shootings   Sanctuary Shootings   Police Shootings   Street Shootings
     Homelessness
     Climate Chaos
     Species Extinction
     Family Feuds

The youngest one adds
     People who cannot forgive

     Pass the charoset

THE QUEEN OF SOULS
PUT CO Lady, Lady of the changing shapes,
PUT Chelp me remember…
                               —Judy Grahn

Some souls are shy     They hide out   behind the shutters   of your eyes
Some souls are soggy    like the earth after rain   like a woman   after a good cry
Some souls get born to sass the universe     listen to them snicker
                                                                                                 in the back of the class

Some souls can never be satisfied     Give them three wishes   they want five
They eat your heart out   send your spirit packing       You forget
who brought you here     You question your every breath 
                                                               your spirit guides    your mother’s milk

Some souls have rocks in their shoes    drag you down  
to the bottom of the slough   where earthworms squirm  
and you are sunk   spat out   for what terrible deed
PUT CHARACTTT             in what former life?

Some souls insist   on dance     Some need poems     Some will make you
map out a whole world   of characters   who’ll take over  
your inner chambers     Won’t stop talking   until you write them down

Some souls keep singing    even in the eye of the storm   even at the bottom
of the pit   where the Queen of Souls    She who harrows   your bones   knows  
even black holes   even dead trees   grow mushrooms   host baby birds   and snakes

Some souls live in sandcastles  
until a wave   knocks them down    
The child forgets   what she built

Some souls have feathers   and claws     
Some souls can shed   their skin    
Some souls become jaguars   in your sleep

Some souls surf atmospheric rivers   wrangle tornadoes  

ride nightmares   glide and glitter
amidst rays of the sun   in the redwood grove

Some souls are old   and lonely     Can’t remember
                                                               the last body  
           they were in

They hover in the rafters   watch the infinity loop
of lovers   impatient for that last   passion cry   
for the deft dive   of sperm into egg   hungry   to leap  
into new life

Some souls remember themselves   as tears   as pearls  
on the throat    of the Queen of Souls   
When your time comes   She’ll weigh

your heart   your balance   of feather   and claw    
Maybe She’ll give you a glimpse  
of your soul’s flight   wings aflame  
                                                     on the way   to your stars