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zip-zilch-nothing
nada-nothing-love
apparitional,  fictional,
spectral,  figmental,
delusive,  illusive,
abstract,  unreal,
imagined, un-bodied.

You, on your steady subtractive diet,
crossing your ankles in a subway car,
you can write beneath the footbridge,
"I was never here, "
but it will never be true. So be whole.

Taken, Not Found

These days I hold my anger
beneath my tongue like a charm.
Spent all my nights pining
for joy like some left lover.

[The griefmongers hoist up their billyclubs
The griefmongers howl from the satellites
The griefmongers polish collection plates
The griefmongers sleep soundly every night]

These days I realize
happiness must be taken,
pried from between smashed knuckles,
pulled from between gritted teeth.

I still have not learned to sleep in a burning house

I still have not learned
to sleep in a burning house
I weep smoke, dream ashes
fist full of matches

Marriage, Sometimes

Your breath this morning:
A failed cheese experiment.
Love you anyway.

Three Happinesses: Part Two

You’ll get no happy ending, and neither will I.

Bad drivers, bad haircuts, bad milk,

our lopsided loves, blown chances,

being too much and not enough.

All the hurts of age (my knees) (your hands),

the suicides of friends.

Whatever ever after you will get

is not one happiness, monolithic,

but many small ones:

a baby learning to laugh.

Bread baked by your mother,

and later, her recipe,

a sacrament.

A sudden mouthful

of kisses in the elevator,

or one tender kiss in the morning

as you’re shaking off a dream,

one that turns into your husband’s eyes,

soft with love in a rough face.

A friend’s voice.

Music.

This.

Three Happinesses: Part One

I know how it is. Darkness

seems more honest than daylight,

when we shuffle our hearts

to the bottom of the stack,

brew coffee, match socks, clock in.

If I tell you my happiness

I must be leaving something out.

So I write to you of griefs,

nakedly. But while you are

licking their salt from your lips,

somewhere that you are not looking

a songbird is taking a breath,

opening its mouth to sing.

Rockabye Baby: The Remix

My little sister was born when I was a teenager. I was so excited to sing lullabies to her. However, once I began to sing the classic "Rockabye Baby," I was horrified at the words, which I'd never really noticed as a child. Since then, I've heard a lot of other people express amused horror that our favorite lullaby depicts a baby falling out of a tree. So I thought I'd share the alternate words I made up as a 15-year-old. The tune is the same, of course, although I did add a few more syllables. Sing it aloud a couple times, and I bet you'll get the gist.

Rockabye baby, in the treetop
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock
Hear the tree whisper in the soft breeze
Sunlight is falling through all the leaves
A brown birdy sings you a lullaby
Now fall asleep, out under the sky


Enjoy!

River-dreams

The river, she dreams of oceans,
of shallow ancient seas,
Paleozoic, of losing herself
before she carved these cliffs
from yearning. Her river-dreams
rise up from the canyons
and hang here in the branches,
pearling the early world
with water, oceans in air.
Muttering in sleep,
she runs the red of an old wound,
returning to the sea.

Synonyms for Anger

The sunlight at noon:
hard, flat, and without mercy.
A bright blade against.

Your Childhood is Imaginary

Nowhere you’ve been can be home.

The paper façades
of last week cannot hold you.

Timekeeping

Your focus is absolute.

Your sticky fingers cup each apricot, giving it a gentle turn

to find the blush of ripeness. You have not seen the thundercloud

that’s slumping overhead, grumbling with the weight of rain.

The bird calls halt into an urgent stillness. In that hush

the pears become pendulums, the flagpole a sundial,

and Time slides by between canal-banks.

I barely keep from leaping in to gather up the water to my body,

to pile it and hoard it, anything  to hold on to your babyhood,

which has left you while I wasn’t looking, swiftly as the apricots

that ripen overnight.     

Already my memory fails me.

 I know that when I’m older it will wash away

and leave me clutching only silt and this:

a photograph of you at nearly four

running through an orchard in the rain. 

Storytellers

We are the dregs of the civilized,

the afterbirth of ego;

loitering professionally in libraries,

alchemists of metaphor,

the most artful of liars.

Is a paper offering worthy?

For the makers of stories
are the keepers of all the world’s brothers.

I Am Not Your Tender Flower

I am a weed.

I did not ask your permission.

If you withhold the water,

I will wait for rain.

Do not walk barefoot

across my arid earth.

30/30: The Things You Thought You Needed

Those golden slippers will not fit you

after your feet callus from  gravel.

Your amulet to save you from witches

was hasty; it nips at your dreams

like papercuts, now that you’ve

started hoarding white sage, eyebright,

and rosemary. And all the men

on white horses that pass through this town

are looking for women sleepier than you,

who prefer their kisses stolen, not given,

who wake only to promises less pedestrian

than a dog’s warm lick and the thought

of sausages on a cast-iron pan.

29/30: The Blue Boat

Our tenants, the neighbors,

have purchased a sky-blue boat.

We live in the desert,

it has no propeller,

and they have skipped the rent.

From my window I can taste

the salt spray off the Eastern coast.

Prompt: Kenzie Allen's "No Ideas, But in Things" prompt for Day 27

28/30: What You Gave Me

The best memories involve some blindness.

There’s a reason we close our eyes to dream.

Nightfall, or in this case a matte white mist,

your finger’s point, a hush, a fog-gray fox

who felt invisible beneath our oaks.

Each night, the stories, the self-respecting epics,

nothing with the stink of grade school on it,

another last chapter, until your eyelids drooped,

slowly turning your own words to dreams

as we held in our collective breath.

Dozing in our clothes, waiting for the moon to set

so we could match the punched-out patterns

in empty tuna cans up to the autumn stars.

With handfuls of constellations, we felt

big enough for joy beneath that vastness.

You neglected your yardwork but made a maze

through the head-topping subtropic grass.

We lost each other by flashlight each night,

hoping if we lingered long enough,

our bedtimes and the daylight world of baths,

neat lawns, and back-to-school would fade

like tired fireflies, our mother

would give up calling us and live a life

of clean quiet houses and grownup chats,

and we’d be left to grow shaggy and wild,

to live on berries and the smell of earth.

For my father

27/30: Blackface (Small-town Texas, 1990s)

In our town, there were several types of houses.

Historic homes, with scrollwork under eaves.

Ranch-style, siding or brick. Easter-egg pastels

in neighborhoods where words became palabras.

And over the railroad tracks, where the weeds got taller

the houses got smaller, the paint chipped,

and all the faces on the front porches

were black.

When I was eleven my homeschool group (white)

performed a play about the Underground Railroad,

in blackface. The audience (white) loved it. There was

a newspaper article with proud photos (black and white).

While we waited our turns to go onstage, we swiped

fingertips on the arms of a painted friend, laughing that

when we were little, we thought black skin really did rub white.

After all, “flesh color” is beige for bandaids and pantyhose.

One girl said, I licked a boy in my kindergarten.

I thought maybe he tasted like chocolate.