Exploratorium

The children salivate when they see me,

a mother,

and dream of their own.

This is the exploratorium, she tells me.

The room is filled with grinning toys.

and the dolls go ignored because it is hard to play a mom

when you can’t reach yours.

Peace

frigid submarines slice the sea,

slit peace open like a package

but there is nothing inside

but a long wait for the tide to come in

Sweet Fire

Sweet fire chills in my bedroom

cool and

collecting dust.

The jealous window watches me,

tantalized by the molten heat.

Glass in love with fire,

melting in shame and desire.

It happens every day.

I stoke the fire.

Between panes the glass drools.

My Love

I see my face in silver water

My voice was in the bottle you broke.

It dissolved in the vacuous air.

My love you skipped like a stone on the sea.

I see my face in the water silver

My voice broken bottle.

This dissolved air color.

My love to skip a stone over the sea.

I see my face in the water silver

My voice broken bottle.

It dissolved air color.

save my love for a rock on the beach.

Pieces of Me

The dust stalks me like a black cat.

Every bleating town I go to

a chunk of me falls off.

My breath smells of earthquake.

Drunk my eyes tremor.

On the trip home I will find where everyone left me,

see blocks of myself in ditches.

Micropoetry

Scent of Water

Wino

The grape’s spirit is vengeful,

will wear red to my funeral

and hit on my husband.

The grape’s spirit

will liberate my fine linen

from my lines,

my signature from the language.

Symbols

She is a wind rippling through

a field of water,

the flowers gasping to stay above the plastic surface.

The world can blow away like a wish.

She is a wish of piano fingers

and leathery song.

The touch of her mind on the water

designs waves that don’t care who they drown.

He is an island,

crunched and crumbling.

Seven sisters treat the water to something

Red

New

Foul.

I Was Never Mild

Divine qualities.

Sparkling waters.

I thirst for sour songs that make me salivate.

Born to rise,

I was never mild,

a lava rolling over lives like a yawning lover in bed,

first one side than the other.

In the end I wasn’t a rock or a cliff.

I was mud.

Tableau of Realism

Tableau of Realism

Her barely tended fire

The furniture in gold raiment

Windows yawning

Into the gaping hole of night

Scourged by street lamps

Eyes shut

The wood veneer everywhere peeling

Him burning alive bellowing