Tag: poetry

I Shed It Like a Skin

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

Poetics and Motherhood

For me, being a mother makes me a better poet – and being a poet makes me a better mother. I am fortunate to be writing with the support of my husband, but were I to be a single mother I think the effect would be the same. Motherhood greatly enriches my life and adds depth to it. Anytime you’re deep in your soul it will show up in your writing.

Writing fashions me into a better mother because I notice things. I stay in touch with the shifting loveliness of the world, and try to keep my daughter attuned to it also.

The creative outlet I get through writing poetry keeps me focused on Angelica when I am with her. I am refreshed from my time creating, and when Angelica and I play or do lessons I can really throw myself into it. I am not drawing from a dry well.

Undrunk Museum

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.