Author: Lisa Marie

Pharmacological Fog

Recapturing yourself will be easy.

White still in the bedroom,

structure from private, necessary snow.

dreaming of silence.

Your mind is a playground of artillery.

 

Capturing the sense of yourself will be hard,

Lost 2 feet tall in a field of chaff.

The women have needles and no yarn.

A man sits toward the curdling sun,

his face a mouth.

 

Sound your siren song

A gentle offering of wisteria wishes

and sulking letters.

Give her a sonorous rope to tie round her wrist

a little balloon bobbing desperately toward mass.

 

Bag of Humiliation

Some things are just a humbling experience. Having a bag attached to you in which you pass gass and excrete with no control about when or how loud or where is simply mortifying. My stomach finally started working with the bag last night while the nurse was in the room with me and it was terrifying because it was so embarrassing.

I can’t believe I’m going to have to live like this for three to six months. Or that other people do it their whole lives. How will I bear being close to people and how will others bear me? How can I go to public places?

I am literally going to have to change my very conception of self and surroundings. I am going to require more mercy and compassion from my husband and other people. I have to hope and pray they give it to me, or this will be a lonely time in my life.

I don’t feel sexy. I feel disgusting and gross.  This is messing with my identity, but then I remember  that I should have my identity in Christ. To put it crassly, God loves me but everyone else thinks I am nasty.  I am still a poet and creator. I am still a wife and mother.  I still have a place in the body of Christ.

But I feel so repulsive and isolated.

The Scent Radius of a Rose as a Unit of Measurement

The scent radius of a rose as a unit of measurement.

My smile weighs too much,

crumbles off my face.

I’m sick of fried hair and unstoppable worry.

My secrets hate me and my eyes betray me.

On the beaches are boxes of life

watching the great red shipping containers float on the  horizon.

Simply put

I have no allies I have not bought

And I drink old snow.

Housewife

Grateful skirts swirl in a breeze maybe meant for them.

Design is Holy,

is enamored of its Designer,

is a crossroads of means and ends.

A housewife manufactures sunshine in her laboratory,

the beakers from the store always having a sale,

her thesis supervised by green,

and critiqued by her children.

After 20 years who will know whether the

skirts were mended or replaced?

Just that they were infused with laughter

and smelled like mother in the living room

living with her eyes full.

 

Translated into Afrikaans and Xhosa, then back:

 

Skirts twirl in the grateful air
they were meant for.

Design and the Holy Spirit,

are enamored

of each other.

Is the intersection of the cross where it all begins?

The woman who produced the sun in her lab,

is studying all the ways you make happiness from the mundane.

Her thesis is green from watching her children.

After 20 years will you know that

the aprons can be repaired or replaced?

You will appreciate the humor.

She won’t.

 

 

skirts and gratitude for the atmosphere,

either of them.

Design and Holy Spirit,

make enamored designs,

are the ends on the cross.

The woman who makes the sun in her lab,

Her laboratory in Delaware furnished by a company

in Hong Kong.

Her thesis supervision is green.

So is the clock looking at her children’s energy,

their youth,

her youth.

After 20 years you will know that

the skirts can be repaired or replaced.

As you appreciate the humor in

And sort mothers by whether they baked cookies or used the microwave.

In her eyes you live fully,

live fully alone.

Marilyn Monroe as a Housewife

A congress of confetti has decreed

every wind must blow up.

The ground breathes.

I look like Marilyn Monroe as a housewife,

standing in my yard with my dress billowing around me.

My husband sees me with his eyes shut.

Hands open.

The hours I have given him clump between his fingers like cat litter

I will wash them with aloe.

I will dry them in silence.

Our daughter has been sequestered with the sequins

and she has sewn a shining dress.

See her straddle the breeze.

She learns from me.

In The Hospital Since Sunday

I have been in the hospital since Sunday. We were in Chapel Hill eating lunch on our way back from Tennessee when I was hit by acute abdominal pain in my lower right stomach.

Then we went to the Mapleview Creamery and I felt so bad I couldn’t eat my ice cream.  We left a few minutes later, and I spent the car ride East doubled over and running a fever. By the time we were to Elizabeth City, I decided to go to the ER before going home.

They thought I had appendicitis and did a CT scan. Instead the doctor found I had Diverticulitis  (infection of a pocket in the intestine) and a small hole in my intestine. They admitted me and I have been here since.

It seemed like I was getting better on Wednesday, so they pulled me off IV  antibiotics and IV fluids, gave me oral antibiotics , and gave me permission to drink milkshakes and other non clear liquids.

I drank a shake that Craig bought for me and about 15 minutes later I was in absolute agony. It got so bad they had to give me a double dose of painkiller. I was yelling and crying. It hurt worse than when I had gallstones. So much pain. Then on top of that I started getting really thirsty and I was drinking so many fluids but I was still parched and sick. Apparently all the flu and I’m drinking is going to the inflammation in my stomach so now they have put me back on IV antibiotics and IV fluids and I’m definitely not going home this weekend. I’m sad about this because my wedding anniversary is on Sunday. I really want to go out with Craig. And I miss the baby. My parents have been taking good care of her and I really appreciate it but I miss having her around. Hanging around a hospital is really difficult for a three-year-old though, so I don’t want her to have to do that.