Emily as There is a Prison
Summer is full of us
& the weeds, gravel
& insect shells
are as much intimacy
as our intimacy. Want
& time, paths through
heat take sanity first
& Emily won’t get out
of bed, won’t invite
me into bed. When
nothing arches, everything
becomes arch, even
metaphors need action
or all they can do is strain
for a slight collapse.
The Shoes That Bore Us
It is a dream of kind slippers that coddle bunions appeased
by hands mittened as the same kind slippers
holding warmth as forgiveness for all the combat boots
sogged by brackish muck of wars
when not hoisted in the occasional stilettos of never regrets
a conundrum of cognitive dissonance stabs the dreams
of where ever we had been, we escape to now over racked rails
rocked goat paths and deer runs you think it’s a man’s world until
it is not
a sidearm presses to a right hip as cupped palms to iliac crests
walking boundaries and borders skirting domains of possibilities
that astrological forecasts stagger out on slow printed pages
like stammering promises spoken by the dead selling real estate,
“Check Mate”
no choice is a lie when the inevitable is an illusion, no freeze to suffice
that fighting, although futile,
is still taking a stand
Unhinged Again
a stone leaves the hand that flung it-air escapes
constricted vocal cords – a vomiting wild – enraged urgency and angst
kinetic makes contact – leaves bruises the color of bludgeoned
fists pounding flesh is quiet. I can’t remember if I was screaming
my face and shielding hands turned overripe plum purple
sweet with sticky juice that dribbles down chins
attracts sugar bees you swat in autumn sun
that smells of maple leaves red with change
this hammer drives the firing pin into a child’s memory, my memory, of cap guns
explode a thousand times greater than a simple pop & puff
a chunk of lead propelled, is unhinged
from the mansplaining – the antagonistic prod of condescending joust
I was stuck in a ring of double fisted doubts: leave don’t leave
I didn’t know that I was a prisoner of white picket conditions
like my mother. Was she also a prisoner? A side bar of recollection
a nursery rhyme my mother sang to me:
“Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater, had a wife and couldn’t keep her
He put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well.”
I know my Mother knew when I was being beaten
there – my face laying with one ear pressed to cold linoleum
the other, an upward funnel catching my Mother’s vengeful whisper
“get up…get up…fight”
to be marginalized – a side note or comment, placed in the periphery, only seen
when the reader desires or deems worthy of notice
only one of us walked from that house that day
to be silenced – a voice, a room, a home, a door closed upon it
a mind made up, barred entrance, not worth the time to view, hear, acknowledge
I’m writing this and telling you words are a privilege
voice is a human right thrown as stones – they fall from the wind
Crying Over Continents
windfarms
white wake of ferries
channel crossing
a nonstop jack hammer knee
Morse code through time zones
pounding out instructions, the next destination
I’m not letting go like I used to. I feel heavier
in my gathering of nuances, intimacies –
You watch someone for hours, days
you learn what time they take their dog for a shit
turn on the garage light – the one just right of the workbench
and always with their left hand
You learn to recognize the screams of a woman
in an upstairs back bedroom being struck
or the subtle moans of make up sex easing across the back yard
from windows never locked and left half open
Or maybe,
it’s the man in the downstairs apartment under yours
that you watch shaving his son’s head before forcing
the kid to wear a chain and crucifix bigger than the kid’s malnourished chest with ribs that break at 0200 hrs
when Dad comes home drunk, no sex, and vile. The mother
died mysteriously, they say, in a different town, a different country
Intimacy is being there as a ghost
being fed the compromise of “I’ll never do it again”
Intimacy is being there at the end
and being held in the mantle of a dying eye