Forces

You’re laying in a field of clover

my nerves are pooling 

down in my heels 

gravity is a love force 

slow me down 

draw me near 

arrange the shadow 

at an angle on my cheek

I am aligning gaps in the boundary waters 

finding my way back to you 

minding the clovers 

giving way under my heavy feet

Sky stories dirt stories

 opening up the channel 

for an origin story to arrive 

plucking out strains of 

shame and misogyny

trying to sneak their way in 

loving on the leaves 

whose veins show paths for 

repairing harm 

making a way 

out of the hole of being 

mistaken 

lost 

temporarily cruel

searching for the conflict 

that is a thick mud 

for roots to strain against 

to give the story heft and weight 

and an arc of something 

divinely grounded to end on

what is it to be in a house, 

but not of it

not tied to the counters

not etched in the windowsills 

not stained on the floors

passing from room to room 

through door frames that are

always moving

a cold winter night in parts (light)

 

a cold winter night in parts (dark)

 

a cold winter night in parts (far)

 

Strange bodies

Meet the day

With hair and 

Without 

Swollen cheek

Bulging veins

Slack gut

Pinched pelvis

      

 

A cold winter night in parts (close)

 

A cold winter night in parts (green)

Contours of the no

 shoulders hunched

hate rolls in

on a memory of lipstick smeared

trying to still my hand

to feel the contours of the no

that boils up

where’s the refraction 

through a prism and 

where’s the thing itself 

the proof is in the contrast 

but the edges get slippery

when I look too close

Another earth

 On another earth 

I was

waiting for a package 

to arrive 

called hands on another earth 

standing at the curb cut

the van at the intersection 

the package in the van

the charms in the package 

culled hands to call

another moon to my earth

pulled close to her

deep rest in slow motion

the whirls in the grain of thought

Preschool

In awe of being formed by this moment 

Tiny fingers tug up fabric 

Mid sentence to cover his nose

And in another room a 25 month old 

wanders talking to himself

Want the pandemic to be over

Going to the grocery store

When the pandemic is over 

Knowing

Dipped out

Horizontal 

The flour goes every which way

When I’m not there

What’s the blessing

And what’s the curse of being
The one
Who makes the wheels turn
And knows the whereabouts
Of the small sacred objects
Being at the center
Of the story of essentialness 
Then what would that person do
When wandering the periphery?
Is that a lonely freedom 
of not being needed?

Is that a mellow dose,
Sun square on the bed
And the time to watch it move?

Transfiguration

Forgot myself at the fence

Elvis on the weathervane 

We’re guided by the diagram

Where water meets land

Where mud formed solid 

In gratitude

Where fabrics formed into felled logs

And angles of the beavers teeth

Draw to a point

From forest of nowhere

And back again

boundaries

 balancing the ipad on a garbage can
of the hallway at work

practicing saying no

two hands forward flexed at the palms

this is not a place to be

not a place to stand in my truth

tape a line down on the linoleum

and I'm ready to toe up

abcessed

It’s that tooth rotting out again

The cycle of hurt and forgetting

A fork in the branch

And choosing inaction

Or seeming to

Having wanted dentures since age 13

Desiring the sweet relief of abdication 

That buoying force of

This body is not my own

And yet here it goes again

Conforming to my postures

And rotting

Again

As a battle cry for

Making choices 

In a bath of love.

Another brother one

my brother one big walk together 

then come back here 

I wanna open my door up

Brush the crumbs of this

knock down drag out year 

Off the table

Skin air drying

From a polar bear birthday swim

Cultivating a sweetness in the air

Lessons from water

The hollowness of water

Holding you

The sacredness of weight

Shifting 

1997

When my greatest pleasure was

playing my extra long pencil as a flute

along to the Voyage of the Mimi theme song

and the year I struggled 

to internalize denial 

as confirmation of guilt 

to respond to you so totally like him

with an eww no

could only ever be understood 

as confessing my love/lust

which was somehow always disgusting —

(I tried to work out  part of the equation was deplorable—

me?

the boy?

the lust itself?)

eternally skeptical of the safety granted 

in coaxing sarcasm 

to make itself at home in my throat 

 yeah, he’s like so hot

believing my confirmation as sufficient denial

the conversation moved on

the target on someone else’s back

those wild west days —

of trying to will meaning from chaos

striving only for survival —

are largely behind me (right?)

yet I still find myself disoriented 

at denying longings to myself 

at naming them

at the wrongness of wanting

seeing faces frozen at the lunch table

forever repulsed

//.\\

Be an owl always almost swooping

Be winter light painted peach on the door 

The spread is wide

More options than words