Paved paths pillow an even
harder earth,
crusted with my previous bones.
From beneath,
the gift of water rising sneaky
through the crevices,
a notice to vacate pinned to the crest.
Category: poetry
Schumann
Diagnostic rock stars
light the pink sickness
on my forehead
with the squeal of a spirochete.
I am sick.
The antibiotics climbed
the mountain
and blew away like ashes
at the top.
Who will I turn to
when the music stops,
perched on one screaming
foot in my box?
The seats in the crowd
are filled with the
whisperers.
On stage, the fully
realized monsters of
scientific sound.
Actualized mindfucks
who are going somewhere
because the conveyor
belt from the stage
runs only for them.
They see through me.
The extra vision in
my head a hammock
supporting the exhaustion
of my pine cone.
I have thoughts of lances,
of silver mercury
waiting for a cog rail
that sleeps.
I will take the mercury,
apply it to my forehead
like Ash Wednesday.
My Easter is on tour
with the band.
Grateful
The coordinates of my gratitude
are inestimable.
Somewhere on an earth of regret,
a small point of velour gratefulness.
The small seal
of my face
with the veritable scent
of a name
the size of a fall from grace.
Living at the bottom,
the detritus falls like
snow on the blanket
I never bought.
At the right latitude,
where it glides into
an unresponsive longitude,
the gifts given by the one
who burns my name as incense,
his arms draped in velour.
Foreign Language, Primal Sister
The clouds drag over
the prairie to work
in the horse fields.
Rain—an instant sister.
Outside the barn,
the Mandarin language
in a raincoat.
Always the words
wonder where they
will fall when they
drip off the tongue.
My sister floods the plains
as a gift to our ancestors
who wove bicycles on looms.
Instant sister never arising
from good faith,
but falling from certainty,
a meteorological right
I’ll fight for.
In the wind,
Mandarin chatters.
My Story
My story is the decor
in a vault robbed of my
birth certificate.
Painted chapters—
good information about the
berries who influenced me
and the flowers I changed.
Chapter by chapter,
my flag unfurls,
a rainbow stiff in the breeze
on a line that could snap
and cut the sweet planet in half.
The juice will drip into
the hungry mouth
of directionless space.
The epilogue is encased
in purple plastic,
a report with glittering graphs,
sobering statistics.
Fire. Then Water.
The forest clutches
stolen fire
while lightning loses her identity.
We hold onto bad things
and are leveled like
post-tsunami water.
In the forest,
trees in pain –
the communication between
leaf and air severed.
When the grasses and branches
have burned,
the forest repents.
And then the falling
of fallen water.
I Shed It Like a Skin
On the shore the tree leaves whisper
Heavy.
They will fall at the loving
touch of cold.
Cold is compassionate
stilling the river to keep
families of silt together.
I’ll probably fossilize under
the pressure of glamor,
among layers of lipstick,
bleach in the sun on the shore.
My days on the glowing shore
are limited edition.
I collect them.
The autumnal lake
licks the shore like a kitten
behind the mountain,
cold waiting to love us,
our lives.
The leaves chitter nervously.
I feel age, volume
pulling me down.
Youth no longer fits me,
I shed it like a skin.
I bleach,
sanitized.
The pressure of cosmopolitan glitz
is entirely too much for my brain.
Cautiously, the cold spills over
mountain peaks,
desiccates me.
The lake freezes,
kitten asleep in a box.
rough draft
Undrunk Museum
Green glass glitters
in the museum of the undrunk.
I stumble through the doors at noon,
unfamiliar with the concept,
gibbering in an outer language
shaped as a sieve.
My inner contents spill from my throat,
the dam where the winter ice has broken.
Like an explosion,
I unfurl
exhibit to exhibit.
The glasses are remnants
of another woman’s more
acceptable thirst,
chalices and bowls her penchant
for racking up posterity.
In my pocket I have
a wet match,
a blank schedule,
a barrenness described
by my late parrot
as an “unbearable brightness
of breeding.”
Too fertile to breed,
exiled from my ambitious hips,
my spaces sing like a heavy anthem.
Museums like this, their vessels
gauche and green
are not for women like me,
a person of filling,
then emaciating,
then filling the goblet again.
With a sigh,
the glass on the edge
slides forward,
shatters.
Vows
In a cool, inconvenient marriage,
the wedding vows thatch the roof.
Rain makes itself at home anyway.
The bride drinks.
Groom swims.
Outside,
a torrent ready to swallow them.
Coming Down on Me
Mechanical clouds,
the pendulum to the pit
sink lower and lower.
Since I was born,
the threat of water has
been as a canopy above me.
My diving gear is holey.
Nothing breaks down
With a promise of pain.
My lungs will fill as sponges,
And then there will be
the catharsis of pressure,
the implosion as the
weight of water lays on me
like caramel on whipped cream.
Miniature Moon 