In the room with the low light
and the high shadows
she says hello to her grandmother,
her grandmother’s sin,
and can’t see Heaven for all the Earth that lies ahead
on her head.
Tag: poetry
Like Fish
The machinations of weeds often go unnoticed
but I can feel the dandelion’s dark intent.
Inside my computer are vices I can’t explain
and virtues I won’t.
What battles for more are fought silently
in a world of less and less?
I was born in a gold mine.
Gold is a poison.
like fish we die far away from home
in houses that will immediately be given to someone else
The 1st of November
The 1st of November
A photogenic witch is caught
with her jeans down
(Do you know even traditional witches shop at Abercrombie and Fitch?)
the day after Halloween.
Gets in trouble for being out the day after Halloween.
There is a season for everyone.
and mine for you was the summer of my life
when you were the glare I saw reflected in everything.
It is the 1st of November now.
Go.
Godless
On an idolatrous planet
a gold vessel waits to be filled with something better than itself.
Throngs love themselves.
A yellow leaf on a lonely planet
crunches beneath a confused boot.
Love
What if love is a yellow gel pen?
Bright, beautiful, illegible?
And if you have left your vision in someone else’s well,
what then?
Cinderella
Seasons of castles, cathedrasl, fortresses
go by.
Pride with his transparent wings buzzes outside the window.
What if Cinderella was as awful as her step-sisters?
The mortar between the bricks says,
Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Beneath the cathedral floor princely hands wring desperately
to extricate themselves from a promise.
Ghosts
Inside the house there are ghosts gnashing their teeth,
whispering into the baby monitor.
At the other end of the house I freeze
hear the voices amid crackles of static,
stop folding towels.
She is the final holdout,
but the bread has crossed over to our side.
Fair Weather
My friendships are all pastel.
Neat
Trim.
Tidy.
If I do not hold them close by their mint fingers,
children in a meadow of death,
they will fly away.
Mania
Frazzled fire
licks me frenetically.
My mind is the Monday after a holiday weekend
that meandered into a new month,
and the paperwork in me chafes and squeaks.
Behind my eyes I am filing.
I have begun 178 projects.
177 are exactly what I have been needing, what I have been waiting for.
1 is even better.
My eyes,
my hands,
my judgment ache,
and all I can hear is agitated paper.
Scrape scrape scrape.
Watermother
My watermother holds my heat for me
ambles through my mind reminding me
Hair won’t comb itself.
Yellow cables radiate sunshine and trigonometry.
I think about all the weeds in the sidewalk cracks
of the neighborhood where I grew up.
One woman planted roses,
A confused cloud asked no one in particular,
What does it mean to rain?
Watermother is tender.
She helps me take off my aluminum slippers,
my slummy makeup,
her mind an ever-growing equation like a cancer.
