Memoir as A Dress Outgrown
For so long gone I have been a good casing
Like for a bullet hard and dreaming of skin.
I am sleek and shiny.
but no matter the forces against me
I don’t know how to give,
so when the bullet inside me
became molten,
too much material for not enough material
I knew I would be shed,
flying backward to your eyes.
I feel ineffectual,
Insubstantial,
but I know I am beautiful
the way she watches my silken shine on the floor
the way she fingers my creases.
Cheddar fire and
wood smoke lull the senses into luxury.
Barbecued hours are sweet and tangy.
Laying here your silence is meaty,
your want moist.
The house is but a beautiful carcass
you bought from a taxidermist,
covered in cherry blood and the sweat of chocolate.
Everything is warm –
the flavors, the evening,
you when you ask the question
I am designed not to hear.
The grill is breaking his fast.
Do you really need your shirt?
Diet Music
plays from the radio,
and my soul still picks daintily.
Is it afraid of getting fat?
So much that it usually eats
it has cut from its pallet.
Friends have been left in the cabinets,
community life in the
desolate freezer.
Color is calm,
though my soul still sneaks scoops
of pulsating shades at midnight.
What soul does not like a bit of electric blue
or Kelly Green
before running away with the dreams?
Perhaps my dreams,
shrinking beneath all my scrutiny,
cannot bear away
a more voluminous soul.
Pink sabers stab a volume of Ashbery
and I shake the crying alphabet out of the pages
as soon as I am done checking my email.
I have three from God, but they look lengthy.
Maybe tonight before bed. B nudges my thigh.
T and F comfort each other,
latched for dear life. N bellows,
and C tries to slip under the table
unnoticed, but I catch him.
I want to reassemble them, create an audio montage
of the aural imprint of love
because I see its notes, high and low, everywhere
Republic of
Dirty minds
Dirty hands
Dirtier laundry
Red faces
Red eyes
Red accounts
Depressed minds
Depressed progress
Depressed lives
In the end they did not take either road
because neither had a sign
and they were not told to.
Mood like a leaf,
a falling leaf beautiful and dead.
I appreciate normalcy because it’s gone.
Quickly my neurons shudder,
power plants going cold.
Please someone find a rake,
pull me together.
Light a candle so I can see my way out of this darkness.
Global Warming
Beneath a polar pink sky,
white animal seeks ice.
Ice is life.
Southward,
the children of the Earth
row their rafters and doors,
looking for the beach.
Always now the beach moves,
Eats,
bulges.
A patch of ice so blue as to hold heaven
shrinks under the gaze of a judgmental Son.
Fat shadows hulk across the afternoon.
Frilly lines flounce in the sun.
My sweat is sick,
and change eludes me
Who are these shadow people
dragging across the hours?
Religion and faith
are best friends,
are enemies.
The law is a locket with His picture and
my neighbor’s picture inside.
I build cathedrals from beads and bubble gum.
I am a girl safe
in her Father’s arms,
dressed in silk and velvet,
diamonds at my throat.
He covers my war-torn wrists
in rubies.
Bodies so surreal
so intricately designed.
I adore bodies –
from the spare perfection of
thin bodies –
so small as to break at a harsh gaze,
to big, bountiful bodies with rolls and curves
everywhere all the time
I am consumed by the art of the body,
the elegant thin arm outstretched,
the belly a pillow to rest on.
Necks like flower stems and tree trunks –
hair brilliant, glossy petals.
Miniature Moon 