Domestic Violence
She is a reluctant dreamer,
afraid of who she’ll see tonight
beneath her eyelids.
Outside you wait with muscles and wolves,
and a knife that only turns in the dark.
Your name is on a sealed record somewhere playing over and over.
Your hand is a voodoo doll.
Watch her bend when you close your fingers.
Shudder, shatter.
Glass friends and
gossamer days.
What outlasts is an ideal.
But what happens when you reach utopia
and find it brittle?
Pretty talking like
soft sugar in the air
like snow while wind admires herself
in the mirror.
Space sparkles kindly on our undulating cities,
the land groaning with the weight of buildings
that rise and fall with generations,
while our beloved build
and we try to furnish our vainglorious homes
with ourselves, diminutive,
wispy, fleeing from the thoughtless force of the wind
The Glitterati is at my doorstep.
Did I know I was a star?
Yes, I admitted,
Because I am always burning
And everything is so dark.
But look at the sunshine,
all your sparkling!
Around me the air is still missing,
and my soul died trying to fumble home in the dark,
so I say nothing and close the door.
Scrapbook Page
They beam summer red
dribbling on her mini thigh
while the nurse checks her labs.
He is her comforter
a teddy bear when the catheter comes.
Tiny text. Fair font.
A spray of sea.
A wash of greenery.
His mouth opens crazy
eyes bulging
to make her shriek
with gladness
Outside each frame
I sit rigid behind the lens
frayed
frazzled
grateful that my miniature joy monster and I
are never alone.
“You Look Melted and Poured”
I am melted and poured
into a sheath dress with lace overlay,
my scars making it look like a cookies and cream filling
has been poured to fit a sexy mold,
but with maybe 20 pounds too much filling –
the molding bursting at the seams.
Too often I have been too rich for my wallet
Too free for my cage
Too fat for my shell
But now I shimmy,
break open the mold
let the skin sing electric under a sunlight sick
of being filtered and blocked.
I am free.
In a bedroom deep in the jagged heat of Georgia
I am a queen and I need no molds,
cages will not hold me,
And my wallet is not the only language I speak.
Absolved of my needs
I am free to make wishes in the lab
behind my house.
I will give one to a neighbor,
one to a frenemy,
one billion to the child in his cradle
listening to his box being built
You, baby, need a wish from each of us
to buy the days needed to learn to spell your name.
I will make you premium wishes
in the truest shades of purple,
with gossamer threads of longing
unraveled from rainbows.
I will seal each wish with the cool light that shines off
the stones in the brook.
Each wish can purchase a minute or a moment.
I will package them in pods of 9.
Sister Mercy be kind.
The room at the end of the hall with the sealed window
Wild light through a red Pepsi glass
On the sealed window ledge
In the blue room.
Miniature Moon 