I was born among the granite, where ghosts hunt you from mirrors and the sea drops storms and babies on your doorstep. I want to go sledding on the accumulated sludge of my forgotten dreams. Oh to be a barbarian in this prim place of propriety! In my hair, a halo with thorns waiting for the right thought to bubble up. When it sees the trembling pink thought, the thorns will strike.
A Woman is a Swift and Terrible Thing
Serendipitous clouds zipper the sky together, giving me celestial visions of a river, clear and lifeless, rowing its way to the bay I never returned from. The corset on my tongue is too tight. I must tell this story only with sentient and acceptable words. What if I told you there was a curse as old as the sea, and only a woman with a backbone of pearl can see the black shroud of the curse over other women’s heads? A woman is a swift and terrible thing. I am all dressed up in this blue sequin gown, and have nowhere to go. I need to be careful here. My corset is tightening. What I mean to say is the inglorious sunset and all the aquariums beneath was the real thing, and my best shot at something as furry as happiness.
Toasted Apocalypse
Unacceptable thorns line my private, licentious rose. My rose is a carnal red and her cardinal virtue is that she contains a world. Stars everywhere but in my eyes as I bring the toasted apocalypse into fruition. I used to live in a jar. Now I live in a cottage on the shores of Lake Forgetfulness. Roses are a language unto themselves. I cultivate roses because I cannot hold back the sea. The sea, for his part, clutches my windpipe.
Dark Matter
Silky stars lay languidly over liquid space time. The waves are gigantic, but the stars bob along nonplussed. In one star, a cartographic adventure for the minute minutes that compose our lives like a symphony of laughter. In another, hell in all its fury. My fear is a feral, focused thing. It escapes fire only to be crushed by brimstone. I wish that I was a star beaming out over a thirsty universe. Instead, I am dark matter. I sever and shiver.
The Marigolds
Gladly the marigolds smile into the first gentle breezes of Autumn. Angels watch me cavort in a field of four leaf clovers. Nature as vast tundra of self reflection. Nature as guilt and verdict. Nature as a mother possum, hissing at me as she brings her babies across the distant fence. Ignore the deer here. They badmouth me – gossips all of them. Autumn will find me older, aged like a hope and as lined as paper.
Timeless Chanting
Under the fireworks I kiss him with my sensitivity and he sticks his longing down my tongue. All day the sky has been weeping, dreading the maniacal stabbing of fireworks that would pierce it. I wept with the sky, but he wiped away my tears with a newspaper article from 1988. The fact of his warm, strong body being here is some kind of miracle. His presence is wrapped up in dollar store wrapping paper, and I slice it open deftly with my eyes. I will give him the timeless chanting of my heart, echoing as it does in my spacious body.
New England
I was born among the granite, where ghosts hunt you from mirrors and the sea drops storms and babies on your doorstep. I want to go sledding on the accumulated sludge of my forgotten dreams. Oh to be a barbarian in this prim place of propriety! In my hair, a halo with thorns waiting for the right thought to bubble up. When it sees it, the thorns will strike.
Beams of Light Burst
Beams of light burst into my core, bubbly and not too self aware. The electron amusement park is quaint and charming. The magnetic field of my metallic sight is baby pink and shifting constantly. My secrets are eating me one bite at a time. I am the bottom of the rainbow being devoured by neon glowing fungi. But in this radical light brimming up to the top of my head, I feel a hope larger than Pike’s Peak.
Math I Can Smell
Roaring orange fantasies float like a triangle song (waltz) until they blend with the dawn. Crunchy consciences brace with brittleness for the coming judgment. “Today is the day the Lord has made. Rejoice and be glad in it.” My rejoicing shaves off growths of fear bubbling out of my tired skin. He has to do that over and over, the dermatologist keeping me held above the flames. My mistakes cling to me like bacteria, multiplying. Math I can smell.
Juicy Like a 1990s Waterbed
My body is a soft petting zoo. My husband cleans his feral wife with kisses day after day. Wandering across the house, sailing over waves of pain, I search for my glowing glory. My body is a plush country of purpose. My breasts conceal secrets. Under his hands I feel my blood pulse to a spicy rhythm. My body is juicy like a 1990s waterbed, squeezing, bouncing, and always a little wet and tacky. He loves me when I bloom like a rose in the hothouse of seismic love he built for me with his gentle hands.
Miniature Moon 