I have 22 pounds of wishes hidden among the weeping wisteria.
The flowers by the pond have been melancholy a long time.
I drink with them.
Look at Lily’s tattoos.
Kind of abstract, don’t you think?
I’ve been told some people are really into that.
But the roses and I share the best laughs because we know it is not about pattern
but all about color and that soft, sweet texture on the fingerpads.
Meanwhile the snapdragons do deep, twisted math at the waters edge
and I drop a wish in the water.
I wear a necklace of thirst.
My forehead is emblazoned with
The idea is in the umbilical cord.
My shoes light up.
I cannot walk without marching,
Dance without dreaming,
Scream without reading.
I carry a satchel of books.
The first one reads,
In the aftermath are bunnies and prose.
The second reads,
Math is Armageddon.
The third reads,
Armageddon was yesterday. The aftermath
Is bunnies and prose.
Blue light is not chasing
my soul.
Shades of slate and gun metal pursue me
in a way the other women wrapped in their profiles and friends
would understand more than they want to believe.
Our spirits dream while we say,
How much? That’s too much.
I have to have her there by 3.
We need to get away. It is never just us.
In the suburbs I drive over hillock after hillock
again and again,
for bread and milk,
my fingers searching beneath my skirt for something so dirty it is clean,
so corrupt as to be pure.
So many shades of blue,
No Blue
Circumference Blue
Film Strip Friday Blue.
I wore a flimsy film strip to the Blue Ball.
Cobalt courted me.
Yellow felt alienated.
Yellow did not go.
Green was the doorman.
My friendship with Sky and Navy and Aquamarine
Has taught me how to talk with my eyes.
Nothing is louder than blue eyes,
Staring at me from the corner with the
Blossoming wallflowers,
Saying,
Dance with me.
There are special campaigns to spend money
Just like water.
Who ripped apart my land?
Black widows, cocktails, or dew?
I did not know that the world is a water balloon
In the hands of a child with interesting eyes.
My tongue has been imprisoned for immorality.
My ears have slept for years.
But my eyes, my eyes
Are blistering cold.
My tongue was arrested for disorderly conduct.
My ears have been asleep for years.
But my eyes, oh my eyes
Behind their gray irises a stinging surprise.
I was Lysol scented
dark light opening doors everyone wanted shut.
She was a bursting gummy bear the woman hugged
then devoured slowly.
But no one eats poison.
No one devours a sour black light,
and no one hugs it either.
The sweet blue west calls me.
A vision of endless land is seared into my eyes.
Why take this seasick sailor
and set her in the lovelorn Prairie
where emptiness is everything
and loneliness is nothing,
only to drop her from a thunderous cloud
in a crowded coastal city
to drown?
Miniature Moon 