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