life after

three across, I plant pink geranium


ma would prefer red
and glen purple

papa's preference
escapes me but i imagine him just happy for the visit

i chatter and pull crab grass
as i have since childhood

brush the dirt from stone
releasing dates and names

my history etched beneath scrub pine

finally, at the base of each slab i tuck a coin
a silver amulet

a rote prayer

in one dream my mother reassured me she had no more pain

i convinced myself it was a visit
as i do when lights flicker or phones buzz

for two years i saved glen's email

he never replied
i never really expected him to

but sometimes, late at night when i write him into poetry; my cursor flips erratically
a strange dance across the screen; i tell him; i know he is here and that i miss him

i figure some day a psychic might say

"they are showing me dimes"

and that's when i'll know the truth of it











m

in this dream i am nowhere near home

a hutch, these dishes,
a milk-glass cake plate
no longer belong to me

in this dream
i am a trespasser


in one room, a skeletal spider spills from a clear vase
and lands beneath the lazy susan where dust clumps and dried insects gather





in another,

a betty crocker cookbook falls apart -in my hand

a tight faucet spits orange


i am thirsty but decide to wait


just inside the back door,
mother's yard coat and a bent rake hang, on side by side nails


the yard
is full of red and yellow leaves

i realize it is fall
i realize it is fall again


in this dream
there are no words- no faceless footfall
no sense of belonging




m

in the car with showtunes, strawberry smoothies and conversation

on one such trip we
spot turkey vultures
devouring road kill

heads bobbing
in a tug and pull

big as black labs
i say

kelsea counts four

five, i counter
motioning to
an uneven sky

before listing
the top ten
worse ways to die

kelsea offers shark attack

like a dolls eyes
she mimics

i wonder aloud if shark
trumps fire

smoke is peaceful
she explains

it'll get you
before flame

but with shark

you watch your own
leg chinese-finger-trapped

before he finishes you off


nope, that would not be fun

i agree



while wiggling my straw
back and forth in the cup









m

an act of contrition

god does not exist in an open sore or grey-cast eyes

or in final moments
when a chest is pounded and ribs break


(although
i concede he
may have been
the calm
inside
my head)


___

i would hope to find god in the face of ambivalence

be given a chance to create some calculable shift - a rift greater
than the distance between forefinger and thumb and more expansive
than a uterus at three months gestation


___

i would like to reclaim faith

discover a mustard seed
to feed
the sparrow perched
pretty on my shoulder

__









oh! to find god in an orange sunset

in the stain of a dry river bed



___


i dreamed
i was at the river
with its musty air
and murky water
just beneath the surface
ten thousand souls
floated past- the youngest of
whom had your eyes
and my cheeks- he
caught and flipped in a current

i thought to save him
you said it was too late




___


i believe in god
in all things seen and unseen




if god were to lay his
hand on my shoulder
and escort me across the river

would he explain modality
or crisis - would he
pluck trillium from the river's edge
tuck it behind my ear
kiss me hard on the lips, part my thighs
and finger my naughty bits



how perfectly scandalous that version of god would be

our lord as a playboy, a grifter
packing moves we had never seen



___



in my dream
a fish laid
dead on the shore

i piled twigs and
toasted his remains
scales and all

he never complained
thousands were fed




___



the relationship you once failed
will repeat itself again and again

the fish
the child
the mother
the sparrow
god

they exist

the relationship you once
failed will repeat itself


the fish
the child
the mother
the sparrow
god














m

the day my mother died was somewhat like this

like the day i stepped barefoot on a dead mole in the garden

he'd ascended
from inside dark tunnel and rooted passage

where he surfaced fat above the broken skin of turned soil

and offered his final breath to a baking sun
a fresh breeze
to lavender growing just above a pointed snout

paddled-feet raised
he laid there, bared to fresh rain
and cotton wood

his head cocked at the insistence of shrill cicada
in a place where the wren's song was no longer muffled

silence about a thing just magnifies it

ma said glen's voice woke her from a dead sleep

he had called her name so clearly, her eyes startled open



she said she expected his face to be staring right into her own







__









at glen's visitation
my mother's husband smirked,



now maybe you can be your mother's favorite




___









for some time after glen died
pieces of his life played like a movie through me


like the time he ran across the meadow and fell flat onto a broken barbed wire fence

and how he bobbed there, spread eagle like some ridiculous shit-fly caught in a spider's web




___




in a conversation with phil, in the year before he died

i said my mother was dying

and he laughed his phil-laugh and said my mother is always dying

i admonished
saying that dying is not dead which means it is an ongoing process
and hers is winding down

and he said at the rate she was going, she would probably outlive me

and i was mad at him for not understanding dying
and didn't speak to him for a full month







_______







in one reoccurring dream
she repeats herself

it wasn't just tom who didn't want you to move home she says
i didn't want you to either

and each time i plead with her to stop talking,

the way i did during the living conversation



the way i begged her not to say more or expound on it



each dream i tell her i don't want to be saddled with the memory of those words







and each time, her false teeth rattle about inside her mouth

i hear them clinking together as she chesire-grins





___







after her funeral, on my first work-day back

phil walked the length of the gym
met me at my car door
and wrapped me inside his arms








_____










in the dream where i wanted to warn phil about his own death

i saw him on a cliff and went to him

i wanted to tell him about his bike and his speed and the curve that will take his life

i hoped maybe, with a warning, i wouldn't have to lose him too, again



but he shook his head no and motioned instead to



my own body tossed inside deep, gray-black waves
and my arms like water mocassins, flailing

soaking a funeral in vinegar and lemon juice for later consumption

is it wrong to sit at a funeral and write poetry in my head?


jesus called to lazareth
and lazareth came forth

and i; dressed black as death

wondered about decomposition
and whether, if when jesus rose-him
did he de-rot him also

a little defunking of the mandible

a scraping of maggot from scalp
before the grand reentrance


and if he didn't
how was the formerly-dead received at the dinner table

or later in the marital bed





is lazareth really fodder for a new poem?



what is the life span of the no-longer-deceased
a year, maybe two

did jesus in his do-gooder haste
forget the importance of mortality
the relevance of life-cycle

the undoing of done
for the redoing of undone




why was i too fucking lazy to throw the bulbs into the ground before the weather snapped?


hankie in hand
my mind wandered to seasons
and change

it isn't as though i had no warning

leaves change in autumn
the earth cools

marigolds die
and certain flowers, when planted in a timely manner, lie dormant





if infinity stretches forever, why can't i turn my neck far enough to watch it?



i think of my own father
stretched in his casket
and how little i understood then of death and permanence

i watched for him
on sundays

waited for him to sneak in to the choir loft
to bellow the lord's prayer





why is the pear tree the last to turn colors and why is it the most brilliant?




so i learned
at a young age

dead is dead.

but oh!

the curtain call of a pear tree
with all the flame;

its sunlit dance















































m

on a journey home

fingers slip
the neck of a
dried marigold- i shake seed like
gourded maracas

hum soft
a lullaby

let the breeze rustle
trees into a big band boogie - and think back to my

mother
and the loud music of
her laughter as
she ladled
soup over
steamed noodles

limp
in a round-handled
bowl

a river

over stringed beef
and

bright orange carrots
sopped in
cow fat

and i think of how she loved color

splashed about
every corner

dashes of yellow

speckled reds

and of her own flower beds
plumped with sun
tweaked and pruned while hands could still
fold enough to tame them

and later when her body failed

and black eyed susan spread
beyond clothesline poles
in through the steeples of white wired fence

how she still admired
from her kitchen window

the smiling nods of their black faces

and how she fretted

until one day
ceased fretting

and in a distant
memory i remember

trillium
white-clumping
a spring shore

and my own two hands gathering
straight stems for a small glass vase

i remember too, a
drift of language

grown in the cracks between truth and peace

and inside that particular memory

a log floated
the length of a creek

until hard caught in a dam

my breath caught there too,
at the peak of
a hill

at the top
of a drop

in the span
of a home
no longer
my own
















m





m

an agent of change

hundreds of bats

flew black
and returned wingless each morning;
tuckered little mice
laid quiet in rows

do you remember

how strange thumps of night
settled when temperatures dropped and bodies slowed

where does one begin to write bloodied phlegm
on a handkerchief

or the burnished yellow skin of rage

how does one begin and
whom does one ask

when those you would ask
are all silent, laid tuckered in rows

















m


for papa
and ma
and glen...

to steal a star from night

i should come clean against the grass stain of morning
resolve to objectify a cause

let it roar rapid through veins
pump hydraulic against temples

feel my cunt swell; a disobedient child
smooshed and manhandled between thighs

i should raise a wire hanger and fist
scream absolution into the faces of right women, quote leviticus
like a conspiracy

allow protest to drip from my tongue;

raise a blue flag, crawl through a pipe line

stake a new claim

destabilize a small, white holy man
and never once
adorn his suffering with laud
or imagine him alone without a chair, a lamp, a table or a bed

i should walk as night

ferocious and dark;
a determined hunter ready to disrupt the underbelly of a shadow

chain animal noise together;

the soft grunt of a pig
to a rat's scurrying feet


a heavy cow sigh to a rooster's squawk

and toss them 25 yards off a cement bridge; a square jawed ruckus, dropped like soft kittens in a bag

but instead of a mewl, i need a scream

some tension
the tickle of a wet tongue at the back of my knees

if i could
i would steal a night's star


turn it off

until 10 billion eyes watered from the missing

and when i thought they'd had enough
and could suffer no more

i would turn off another and then another

and just before the pith of forgiveness


before tide washed a clean slate, in the heavy moments before

the little white man finger fucks me into submission

i would turn off just one more























m

a bone white moon

bone white; the moon hangs
in a northern sky- i long
to stroke it – finger

skeletal smoothness


pinch a desert pall
and toss as spilled

salt over my shoulder


or perhaps hang the moon
from my rear view
watch as it dances light


if i could collapse the moon

i might laminate it, fold it map-like

and place it in my bottom dresser drawer

tucked beneath linen; this beautiful moon stored
as summer clothing

and on certain nights, when the drawer’s glow

awakens in the perfect shade of blood harvest

i would hold the moon
kiss it hard like stone

and marvel at its relevance













m

a story of smoke signals and colder nights

i am loved by a man
who would wrap me in grapevine

drag hip and hair through hayfields, sing an owl's song in pitch dark



and call me always, his wicked, wicked cell mate, his moon, his north

in a spit

of flame



i am five blue hues
six passive notions
and a lean toward the door handle

none of which casts a warm glow or earns proper ceding


and on a dark stretch of night
i hum an unplanting
of dogma
of fire
of a dormant daisy, long since bloomed pretty
in the ditch; smoke fills the car
maple leaves burn red and orange


and a cat's yellow eyes stare headlights

tomorrow he will not come when called

over and over again
he will not return

my hands are busy creatures; stringing words together, tapping time in my lap, unraveling blue thread from the hem of a coat

the tendency of determination and other misnomers

you had your own language
as winter trees do, all naked limbed and bared teeth;
face in a chattering wind

did you know then, the smell of vicks
would send you now, down snow-filled roads, long shoveled drives

and onto the wings of the chickadee, your head nooked
in a tiny wind-raised tuft of black down

you were small
and imagined things greater, perhaps

the toad and snake were better prepared than you
buried deep beneath mud and leaf, preferable, i suppose
to frozen blood or the trudge of heavy feet

and i wonder, what of the morel; a thin gray species, grown delicate in perfect
circles, gathering strength in dormancy

and then what too, of your mother's purple iris,
and clumped jonquil resting deep in the ditch - will they bloom beautiful still,
even when you are no longer there to love them?













m

channeling an unholy past

the earth
buzzes
a slow orbit

this sun of
a moon
lobs
his soft ball

a pearled
glow

my fragile
neck

he once surmised
that i am incapable
of hurting
anything

i lie
by omission

never speak of
the killings;

beneath a hot sun

dead flies
mid-coitus- small moans

i gobstop spit
in my palm- flesh
him pale

lick
his
lips












m

death became habit

in our house, death became habit - and we knew its ritual- in shallow graves, cats were buried with a shock of lilac or cluster of dandelion- and dogs were lowered wearing thick, leather collars that jingled a final time as neck and bone settled into a dirt pocket, which glen had labored all day to dig

and men-

men were buried in dress blues, beneath american flags, with photos of us tucked carefully between fingers












m

seven

i suppose i should
be grateful for plums
and oranges and
january dates

for a brown breach of dried pampas
slicing white landscape

for a flustered jay
and the long, cool shadow of a cooper's hawk

and for the
number
seven

which through winter, has
trilled insistent

begging to be written

naked me; all breasts
and eyes, seven
a steamy mirror

head tilted, i

finger dripped lines
and seven spreads

like the spindly legs of an avocado pit- pegged over a water tumbler

or cancerous fingers rooting the lengths of my own soft tissue

i sit with pen
and scribble
seven- flipped
sideways still it offers nothing

answers no prayer
gives no concession

i wonder if i am meant to write the

seven times seven hundred times- i walked
through snow inside your footprints

they were larger
than my own

you held my hand


or it could be that i am to write seven shoes
tossed in a back closet- an odd one alone, disconnected- tongue flapping
like a mother’s final breath

or maybe i am to write seven sisters
clustered in the heavens- huddled erogenous;
little explosions - seven small gasps

or even the seven reasons
to ignore reason- i wonder about
a lapse of judgment
a growling dog; chained to chain link fence

seven nights
without food

seven days
of no shelter

i doodle another seven and study implications; lucky i think as i trace a singular line without lifting my pencil

lucky i tell myself as i digest the timing

it all seems so deliberate
the dog, the grass, the date, the spindley fingers reaching

perhaps after january blows her final gust i will discover

seven maps leading to
seven routes

all of which
a brother may have chosen instead










m

the movers

when i sleep they rearrange furniture

and when i wake with my head still deep in the pillow
i hear them; the low pitches of night
damned and spent, muscling a table from foyer to den,

scraping a chair across floorboards



just before dawn, i hear the chiding ping

of glasses clinking














.

a poet thanks a grandmother she never knew

ribbed vessels which
carried my grandmother's

mother from france to old quebec
carry me too- to my next
next

inside the lines of
my own hands a needful cargo
settles and delivers itself

into the breach of a midday moan

her cheekbones flatter my face

and my breasts are hers too
passed down, they rise; shrines to a french maiden; two peaked

sisters raised side by side, two shining moons plumped fat with want

and her uterus; a wave

filled ocean - bore a pine ship replete with

white canvas sail which delivered me full

to the language of here

dear glen,

i settle deep into a new brown couch
one on which you

would have surely claimed and sprawled

were you here to either claim or sprawl

truth be told, as your taps and knocks ebb
and the tea kettle whistles only a boiling point

i miss your impositions
your expansive banter

i think of you brother; the queer smile of discernment
your steady doll eyes
the slow mix of man and boy - you; who were your father's last leg
his last long step

his spilled word slopped against a back splash

were you the sponge, the slush wrung and drained

or just an upside down attempt at right-sidedness

i wonder, would i know you now;
a man-bear trapped and gnawing a limb, or perhaps a collector of forces and word
a man traveling the reasonable pathway
of a reasonable man

and at night, were you still here, i believe you would stretch into a long
graying fence, rowed beside your son's bed

his wooden planks held firm

i wonder;
knowing what
you know

now
would you
still choose
to write this
life?

and in the deepest dark hours, in this january shiver,
inside dusty, static air

do you hover close and read me writing you?



love,

me

on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of your death...

silent all these years

Well I love the way we communicate
Your eyes focus on my funny lip shape
Let's hear what you think of me now
But baby don't look up


The sky is falling



Tori Amos

her mouth is a cave
where miners once gathered
and left behind sorry, gray death

low in her clavicle still, a deep throated

canary whistles a yellow song

too pretty to die
it cries

too pretty to die

her lips; in low light

open like dried petals
blown in a breeze- she smells like he stinks

and never flinches beneath a stone shower

instead lifts her face
to catch a pebble with her tongue

slides teeth over lips
and gnaws clean a fresh layer

while wondering how much flesh would have to peel
before she could completely disappear

my hands are
narrow passages
she muses

the length of your arms; their only reach

he chuckles
and zips his trousers

flips a towel in her direction

licks dried lips; hard
[his or hers is unimportant]

do you remember

the long hallway,
splintered floors on your bare feet
and the small black cat
i kicked when it pissed on the couch?

she remembers, (yes) too
the phantom voice, a child's laugh, a painted virgin

embellished on wood
outlined in gold

and moon flower grown thick;

choking rhododendron

in the neighbor's back yard