Bamboo and rain drum the time I was a child and my mother was mapping the neighborhood dynasty with her sister Corrine. For years they plotted to overthrow the geriatric mindset of their mother who kneaded Judaism into me and my sister’s Play-Doh.
All in Poetry
Bamboo and rain drum the time I was a child and my mother was mapping the neighborhood dynasty with her sister Corrine. For years they plotted to overthrow the geriatric mindset of their mother who kneaded Judaism into me and my sister’s Play-Doh.
Her chameleon eye in the moon
like a crater, and hair falling in meteors
over bare shoulders.
Forgetting how to swim
was like losing language,
a silencing of the limbs
that once knew fluid
like the vein of a wrist,
the curve of an eyelash
Madness is not the only art that consumes.
In our mind, rooms, and in them the scuff
of footsteps and faces veiled in tulle.
Once I was immortal,
condemned to endless mornings,
empty of the knowledge
of manmade rituals.
my parents have a joint facebook account bc my mom found out my dad was messaging someone name TexasTitties2006 in an online poker game and she lost. her. goddamn. mind and threw the tv down the stairs.
The bridge rumbles as I drive across,
trestles shake.
Below me is yesterday's town:
abandoned mills,
brick crumbling, machinery rusting,
the industrial revolution's terminal ward
by the slow brown river.
my mom got us banned from the swimming pool at the trailer park we lived in because she punched our neighbor in the face for walking to her mailbox to get her mail in sexy lingerie.
New skiff of snow on the roads and lawns
and a full moon above the night’s overcast.
I drive past two neighbors — two older men —
shoveling slush, their sidewalks scraped clean
The ambulance drivers in this town have no clocks
in their homes. Instead, the kitchen tables bear
sandbags and bean cans
and old issues of Playboy.
Iodine adorns the night stand.
the worst thing i ever did was spit on a mcdonald's cheeseburger that my aunt bought for me and threw it at her feet because i was mad my mom kicked me out of the house the week of my birthday for telling my hot english teacher that i had been in foster care.
Their bones keen a brittle dirge
for departed faith in possibility,
legitimacy, carried to rest
on backs bent over.
Imagine planting a garden. Imagine planting a garden of only yellow tulips. You love yellow tulips, the dusky smiles, stems’ green neutrality. Yellow tulips are your favorite. So mild.
His head was an apple
chest proud, deadman's float
while rows of parents looked on
with drowsy interest
His ghost was with me that morning
Wandering round my room
While I tried to write,
Lifting the corners of my laundry,
Making the dust dance in the light.
They do so quicken
to warn don’t they?
‘specially those that
have never dared or
worse, but sadly, onced.
Here I am wearing June on my fingers,
earrings on my ankles, skinny dipping
in a public pool regardless of awe-struck
children, writing a note between gillyflowers,
slurping breakfast on the ice veranda, braiding
lavender though it’s long been brown.
You are in a new house. It is your fifth birthday.
The Charles River shushes your tantrums,
infrequent as they have become. The moon moth
is an introvert. Her wings light up the night like limes
but she prefers her Sycamore hollow.
Lay your head down to sleep with word for word transcripts of murder trials still ringing in your ears. One thousand stories from neighbors of lawless men. Their mouths open like baby blackbirds spewing out ink, instead of tiny songs, a river into the corridors of the dead.
1. For instance, forsythia catch April on fire and this is when babies learn the color yellow and adolescent girls carry their new chests like medals, momentarily. By May, the fuss has diffused and branches shiver without flower while dumb daffodils gab and lilacs diva the garden.