The residue of angels drapes
like fine linen
over our hands
our language
our thighs.
Death and I do not care what time it is.
He is a delinquent
I am night’s dilettante.
A lighthouse is afraid.
The gray sea is a dancer and a whore.
Stop feeding the birds along
the craggy shore your dinner.
They are waiting for you.
He casts his net among the rocks.
Broken jaws chatter beneath the water.
Two towns over he is a baby licking
his mother’s paintings.
Today he is a glass hunter
All shine and no stick.
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.
I’ve been going through old photos on an old laptop and I have a bunch that I want to post. These photos are all from when Craig and I were engaged, and early in our marriage. It’s quite a walk down memory lane.
This was taken at my friend Emily’s wedding, where I was a bridesmaid. A few weeks later we had our own wedding.
Emily and I!
Out at lunch together.
Adopting Autumn
Scrapbooking! Cell phone cameras used to suck so bad.
Uncle Jerry and Craig
Jack, the best bunny ever. Loving, nondestructive, fun. He died a few weeks before the baby died of old age.
My handsome man when we were newly weds!
I’d never wear something that low cut now.
World of Coke in Atlanta!
Visiting Virginia Tech. Me standing in front of the dorm I lived in freshman year, Lee Hall.
In front of Drill Field at War Memorial.
Fuzzy snowmen smell like turpentine.
Why all this wistful wind,
this heavy quiet,
these creative snowmen dancing in slow motion
to no music?
Not inaudible music,
or even illegible sound,
but nothing at all-
Machines with no factory.
This snow covers a ghost city.
The children scattered and died.
Yes, I am freezing.
Would you like to dance?
Church of memoir,
of discovery,
of chants.
Cloistered in my name are ten lives
I did not live
in favor of a sublime 11th.
What is better than best?
What can joy can be discarded for ecstasy?
The taste of salt lines my mouth
when I look back.
translated to Xhosa, Afrikaans, and back
Church of Love
I find joy
while I lay cloistered in my ten lives.
Auroras swirl beyond my reach.
They will not live.
There is a reason I am so inordinately fond of 11.
What is better than a lot?
Why have I ignored peace?
It tasted of salt in my mouth.
Power lines guiding me back home.
Church of Love
Separate the gaiety from the joy.
Lonely in my ten lives,
they live,
it is as though they live without me.
How do I dispose of gaiety?
Of me?
Bride of comparison,
you have found me
living through lacy love letters
to the glowing voice of the world.
I have loved and lived
and lavished
like a euphoric angel,
all over the world.
See how North America quakes beneath my hands?
Hear the tender whispers of my name from Europe.
I am tired of molds and braces and boxes.
What They have is not better than what I have.
Always They come with a capital T and claws.
They possess than,
But I hold hands with then,
and waltz over the sea.
An envelope locked out of sight,
buttercups giggling in the fields –
and then a pink fog rolls over the view.
It is all so dreamy.
Don’t bring a mirror here.
Gloomy, graceful ghosts
lounge under the beach umbrella.
They are nudists.
They are like frosted glass.
No sunburns will befall them
as they get drunk
and carouse on the beach where they
washed ashore.
Welcome to the Life Center
With sparkly resources to help you warm winter.
Are you a cartwheel?
A suspicious glance?
A still wind?
We can help you get back to work.
We offer many courses:
Earth Spinning
Bone Knitting
Light Painting –
and certifications in
Prebirth Fantasy,
Pain Sculpture
Freeway Fashion.
Visit us today in the building of roses,
at the corner of Air and Fire.
Eleven mirrors watch videos of sky.
Clouds breed above the enemy.
What sleeps inside my teeth
that my hunger has become so fragile?
My face is a tapestry unfinished.
Below the town a garden planted by boys
grows velvet tumbleweed.
Miniature Moon 