Once Upon A Time
there was a narrative
she clung to like
a branch above
a dragon in a moat
it wasn’t comfortable
but it was safe
this branch, this story
she’d been told, been sold,
been fed like broth
that found its way inside
the marrow of her bones
then one day curiosity
let slip her grip
she splashed into her moat
and wrapped her legs
around the dragon’s neck
who carried her to see
when they returned
she threw the castle
drawbridge out with
shouts and cut it’s chains
now lots of dragons
visit all the time
they light her hearths
and coil before them cozy
with their iridescent tails
but sometimes still
when winds blow wrong
straight through her open gate
these stories in her marrow
shake her bones with
once upon a times
but having been to see
she can’t recall the
happily ever after.
 

Strawberry Pancakes
 
Plump ripe strawberry time
bought a big dollar box from
the all-night-fruit-guy
set up by the 7 train
cuz I ached for someone
to make pancakes for.
Sweet treasure carried
juice-stained palms carried
over that dark patch
of raw summer sidewalk
I always mistrusted
torn up by tree roots
deep-buried shadows
so carefully carried
feeling along my dark way
like reaching through
the wicked dawn across
the bedsheet to
an empty space.


Hot Dad Poem
 
There on the corner -
striking on my sinews
popping sonic like
a fat string rings -
see a sweet hot man
with a baby in a carriage
and a husky on a leash
tattoos, pierced nose
I thrum for him
bones resonating as I
dance on down the street…
Is this the last held note
of my surely dying womb,
or that good good beat ever
pulling me to kind and caring
men?  His smile rests at
my chest like a hymn
and warms me with its
end-of-summer song.

A prisoner
confined in my body
my need
pounds the gate
of your teeth
like only your throat
holds salvation.

“Five more minutes”
became forty five
no wonder
the drugs wore off
my hollow belly
a clothes washer full
of razor blades on rinse
I still don’t want
to leave my bed
cuz Advil’s in Arabia
but it’s warm
down in Belize
Elysium dreams placebos
purring me to burrow
in the sweet soft
Tropic of Comforter
curiously chewing
on my pain.

So on the 33rd day of my cycle I built three terrariums...     

Terrarium Poem

Racing at infertility
I urgently buy plants
research hot obsessing
what survives a black thumb
what won’t kill a black cat
She’s too cute
            to eat with sense
I’m too cute
            to want a child
so I redesign, I nest
blood urgency mistaken
as green life, cat life,
love life fills my womb
and thirteen possible models
of the same exact toilet
I faint from art deco
encaustic cement tiles
while my cranky cycle
defies arithmetic
but if the plant is spiky
and lives in a jar
safe from the black thumb
safe from the black cat
if the plant is spiky
can it draw my lost blood
if the plant’s in a jar
can it clean my dead air
how many plants
how many days
in this black expanse
of dwindling tides and time
my creative grand gestation
is beautiful perfected
space
to be alone.


THRILLED this poem will appear in S/tick's upcoming issue, 4.2  www.dontdiepress.org/stickmag/

Look at me,
this is my heart
it has so many rooms
and many loves and friends
stay welcome warm
a hotel
in full occupancy
such space, I expand
my property value
increases with joy
always renovating, I
am not what you erected
no standard model heart
set back from main roads
with that picket fence
you had expected
a big happy hotel
open twenty-four-seven
downstairs you’ll find
a bar that’s free
a kettle’s warm
a disco ball above the pool
and you can hear
the music
of my love for miles around.

Warning:  Blame Dylan Krieger
 
Like a cannibal
I tore a small piece
from my own
journal's page
to feed to this
hungry new book
marking the poem
that provoked me
to move my dead pen
press deeper
indent with intent
 
my teeth will not fear
the great danger of words
 
         Take note:
         I will bathe
         my old skin
         in spilled ink
         I will stain
        your subconscious
        clean sheets
        I will stab out my heart
        with my sharpest blue pen
        and then mix
        my lost blood
        into yours.


March Poem (For Jimmy and the Bird)
 
I never learned
the names of birds
and language
challenges our nature
so you say:
we’re like melodies
in different frequencies
arranged refrains
and counterpoints
that make the songs up
of each other’s lives.
It’s Spring,
my song has harmony
and I like how it goes,
making me smile
like this shiny
black bird
whose name I don’t know,
singing her song
for green buds on her tree
on a sweet morning-after
when sunlight melts snow.
 

You see our love
was just good chemistry
those first date cocktails of
raw pheromones
and evolutionary drive,
despite your ego
we are not divine
just well-dressed test tubes
mixing atoms
and hot molecules
so when our unit split
that pain of fission
was our power bursting free
but I matter
and was not destroyed;
I am stronger and more stable
without you.

This poem was published in Adelaide Lit Magazine, May 2018!

Wrote this poem on Friday morning when I felt fine... then was stomach-sick all weekend. Draw your own conclusions about the power of a poem, my friends, and choose your metaphors with care!  Ooof.

Indigestion
 
When I was young
I ate the world
and felt fine
in the morning
I was happy
with strong teeth
I never flossed
I wore no glasses
unaware of what
I could not see.
Now I wear glasses
and I read the world
it does a number
on my gut
and everything’s
in pain.

Magellan
 
Can’t write with
these old words
in this new land
I am Magellan
got my compass and
some drunk untested math
choking on salt water
charging boldly over
churning warning seas
dark waves curl
like ribbons
through a mermaid’s hair
while I admired her beauty
my words went swimming off
to where they felt more safe
so I stand without them
naked on this beach
there are no church bells here
I move my lips to kiss
and call this kiss a psalm
this is how new language
will begin
and like Magellan
who kept heading out to sea
no longer does my old world
feel like home


Gypsy Dreams
 
Thinking I could hear your drums
crawled out my bedroom window
with a knapsack and a knife
I ran with thirst, I drank too many stars
then passed out with five wolves
beneath a tree, and wondered
if I dressed myself in furs
could I trick you into thinking
I was brave enough to dance
with your wild tribe?