Skip to main content

For Marcy

who tends to the old man downstairs, wakes the incontinent dog for a walk; moves one dusty memory to another table, making room for her art. Realize her hula hoop of a dream,
moving from anxious waist to ready neck and then back down again.

 Adapt. Adept. A moving target. Wedded to starving, she laughs at last when we're together but in the solace of her car is likely to pound glass with the back of her hand, chewing at wrist restraints, planning escape.

 Her medium is pure black and white against sky; playful juice tumblers for others. No more April fool. Finally she has snuck back into the busy market of farmers, no longer lonely, scouring for basil, tomatoes, and a fist of dahlias big as her bursting thoughts and fragile as her kiln-fired heart which 
when tapped prematurely may tumble into a ship of splinters, a sturdy raft with bright, rippling pirate's flag. All those necessary trees hitched together. She will be disguised as Ms. Tom Sawyer. With knowledge. Give her a game. A throne. Standing ovation for her prowess, her balance. Gift her a tambourine, a solid beat, a modest yellow brick road.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vessel

Inside I imagine puckered cups of butter   cookies nested    in paper that  releases a sigh   But instead there may be fiction   within   wishes never reciprocated   Playbill of redundant arguments   One black glove    found fraying   This vessel on an emptied  table   solo     temptation is labeled with  another’s name   Guarded initials as if carved in melting snow     A tool unsuited  to the task of   prying open  Not yet valentine
8 comments
Read more

Shameless Early Promotion

My poetry book, The Fiction of Stillness, is available for pre-order now on Barnes and Noble. Official release date August 1st, 2024. Here's a taste: ... The table is smooth and round              symmetric         The chairs are haphazardly placed at the end of this day      I have breast cancer I say into the receiver   [communities must] pool resources   How to produce the sounds of the imaging                report into sentences that resonate with months of postponement weighty contrast on my right side   computing and comparing IM ratios for greater insight                          not sufficient to prove the efficacy of screening   ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Broken Bits and Mending Tape

S acred stones roll around on the floor of my car, carried in over years of scavenging. Pocketed. Parceled. Placed on dashboard or grave.  Markers of present coloring past. The sun bathes the windshield just so and the secret messages written in mud or snow show themselves for the innocent blessing that they are. I walk into this side street café with my bruised heart in a purple and black satchel and am greeted by a circle of banjo players and one free seat against the window. Chairs like we inhabited in elementary school when things were still made of wood, grafted together at the corners with metal, corners rounded and smooth. We kept our notes in desks and lockers, wrote whispers of names we adored on the plain brown wrappers around our math books. Took broken bits and mending tape, carted cassette songs of guitar players who have since died or changed their names. Like mantras, directions to the river canyon where we could picture the rough rope as magical swi...
7 comments
Read more