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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
On the gold prairie,
silver competes
with the dew.
Grass saws air
clean enough for surgery.
Somewhere below the graves,
a sea of oil lapping against earth.
What will happen
when the men with
long claws and downward hunger
stumble on this peculiar paradise?
Oval ounces of flutterby breeziness
string across the
marinating grass like
crystal balls.
what a brew he makes
from fog and my secrets!
I have been seen through to.
Beneath the weight of the future
blades snap.
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.
Everything 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.
Forgive me if I’ve already posted this. I don’t mean to spam you. I lost my place in my document and I’m not sure exactly where I left off.
I sift through softness,
through the pliable belly of the moon,
to find my star,
glowing like an electric song.
How many lamps are
hidden in this orbiting bed,
a million and one possibilities
in white.
Miniature Moon 