Crutch

12.7.14

Writing every day I notice
I write the same thing.  Driving
rain driving home in the middle
of the night.  Almost morning.
I dream about you, what a shock.
Is it a dream or a memory, oh
the mystery.  You
with your lips pressed to my temple
murmuring be safe, be safe.  
I'm sober after bad sex
with someone nicer than you.
This is a bad metaphor about the complexity
of mourning that I realized
even as it happened.
This sex is bad.  
I'm going to write about it later.

You told me I use dreams as a crutch
when I don't know how to write what's difficult.

This poem does not finish.

Dialogue

11.23.14

I don't remember how to write.
The room is cold, cold
enough that my knees have stiffened and stuck.
What should I do?  First,
turn the heat on.

Then wait for something very
terrible to happen.  
Write about that.

And what if there is nothing
terrible?
Touch wood.

Why?  Wood burns hot.
And for good luck,
so that nothing terrible happens.
And what if there is no wood?

Words are made of wood.  
Touch words.

But nothing terrible has happened.
There are no words!

Exactly.  You have to wait for something
terrible to happen.

There's nothing.  You don't remember
how to write.  Jesus, how terrible
do you want?

Poppy

10.14.14

The cat is dead.
The cat's kitten three days later
thirty miles away and by the same violence
is dead.  I find my sister

face down arms against her body
on the quilt.  As if she keeled
with no effort to break the fall.
She breathes into the cotton.

Are you sad? is what I say.

Everywhere dust
undisturbed by paws
settles.

Kudzu elegy

9.5.14

I didn't write anything this summer.
Today I'm back in Connecticut and it's 90 degrees,
hot breeze lifts my blue skirt
in the glare of the parking lot,
and I hug my coworker Dre twice just to feel
my breasts pressed against
flat pectoral again.

Three days ago I-75 was shut down
in Campbell County, all lanes,
and the guy with whom I spent all summer not writing
swung the overpacked van off the exit at the last minute.
Down Tennessee forest backroads
with his hand pressed to the bruise on my thigh,
crackly speakerphone conversation about his new apartment
in his new city.

I stared out at the choked trees.
Sudden immense swaths of forest gathered, spun
and tamped under dense nets of leguminous vines.
Kudzu,
he said it was called,
and I felt the word break in me.
I scrambled, then,
for a pen and my blue notebook,
ready to grieve.

Gatherings

3.29.14

Laugh, laugh.  Whip of cold air from the automatic doors.  Greg nudges Milo out of the way, crowds me against the register and says this my homie.  We're debating the ethics of funeral afterparties: can you call them afterparties?  Jake says post-funeral gatherings.  I say shut the fuck up, Jake.

I get to leave work early to go to the funeral afterparty, so they're giving me shit.  No one's saying sorry.  The guys from grocery keep coming through, buying energy drinks and calling me sweetheart.  Jake says what, I don't get to call you sweetheart?  I say shut the fuck up, Jake. 

An old guy wearing bike shorts winks and tells me to keep the change.  I tell him, flatly, that we're not allowed to take tips, and that deflates him a little.  Whose funeral?  Milo's playing with the edge of the counter, grabbing it and hanging on, leaning back to test his grip.  My grandfather, I say.  Old? he says.  90.  He nods.  Cold air again as a customer lingers in front of the automatic doors.  There's a happy baby shriek from a couple registers down.  Milo stretches to look.

My next customer pays for six scones with coins only, Jake snorting behind me the whole time.  I had a dream I had a daughter last night, says Milo when I turn back around.  Yeah? I say.  Yeah.  She went from fitting in my palm to like, four years old.  But in a day.  He shakes his head.  I think I got baby fever, he says, can guys have that?  Ana overhears and shouts better stay away from me, papi, I don't want none of that.  Her first day here I told her she was prettier even than Milo.  She was shy and I was trying to make her laugh and now it's an inside joke I think.  A couple customers laugh like they're in on it. 

Found poem from Facebook statuses

3.28.14

1.
I see her at night, clear as fields.
We pour into Kapaa for a few ripe cherry tomatoes
and our first solo pints of universal law.

She's the only air-
I'm just beginning.  
Pretty flowers throw shade
and threaten each other's deliciousness.


2.
We're together again,
doing some inside joke about
living halfway down a very tall tree.
There's no moon, I have to document it.

Madeleine, someone is saying, don't be soft,
be tough to the end of the story. 

I'm just saying we haven't talked in ages.
I'm just having the craziest week
'cause you're so beautiful.


3.
I see her at night,
clear as fields.
Certain as whole tat soi leaves
singing the late blight blues.

Hearts are certain.
Hearts are soft-
gold hidden deep in the drain,
peaches pale as the shore.

Can a soft thing fracture?
What ending is this?
What story?

About not

2.26.14

touching your hair, your face,
your warm calves in the morning,
about not watching you scrutinize a redness
in the mirror, not running barefoot
from your apartment in the middle of the night,
not holding you when you cry, and crying,
and about not coming up behind you
when you're getting water from the fridge filter,
not pulling onto the side of the highway
to make you an emergency electrolyte
drink out of leftover juice and salt, not standing
in the windy terror of the breakdown lane
because you've gotten dehydrated,
about not taking photos of you in the orchard,
in the kitchen with your hands dirty, with half curls
on sand cliffs at sunset, not sneaking up on you
at work with cookies, not hiding my face in you
during gross parts of TV shows, not kissing you,
not kissing you, about not holding your hand
over the parking brake, not feeling your head
on my arm when I'm driving us home
at night, tonight I want to be near you, the nearness
of you a thing that brings light, the kind of light
I'm always looking for in rooms, turning off fluorescents
and opening windows, you are that,
specific and undeniable, about the heart in me
that knows you, wants you, love
of the sort that can't be quiet,
how to be away from you with this love?
How to bear it?

5-minute poem

1.23.14

Salt spread yesterday turned


the parking lot white as clouds.

I cried at having to live


this morning. There’s been a poem

nudging me all week, 


lump in the throat,


literal illness. 


When am I going to know what it means?


Every day I feel like giving up


and don’t.

Saviors

1.4.13

quiet in the new year, unborn
sitting in the glow of my special lightbulb

when we were kids, my sister and i
would sneak eggs from the carton
wrap them in dishtowels
and place them under reading lamps in the living room

i think we knew it was hopeless

there are people everywhere i can't save