Moving Over Christmas Break
We moved into the place next door
It’s a mirror reflection of the old place
The windows, the closets, the mail drop,
The heat vents
They’re all backwards now
The sun shines through the windows
At different times of the day
I dream backward dreams
And if we get up in the dark to go to the bathroom
We nearly always end up in [...]
The Arch Nemesis in Three Parts
Part one: 11 years old
There is a girl.
She is not real.
She does not grow.
She is always mourning her mother
face down, sobbing into her bedspread
while I sit on the edge of the bed
and watch her black curls tremble,
a useless friend.
Part two: 24 years old
She is another girl,
still not real.
She never knew about me and
I’ve never met [...]
Dress
It had been wrinkled and awkward
for more than eight years
in the bottom of a chest.
Once in a while she would peek
down underneath the others just to
see if she remembered the
exact shade of blue.
Last week she pulled it out
to see if it would fit,
tried ironing out its shape,
but clumsily put fresh creases
here and there and then [...]
After the Surgery
My yellow teacup children
in an afternoon window,
Their names were
a favorite pastime.
My Olives and Stars
were put away but
not as carefully or as quietly
as I would have liked.
Try revitalizing an impossible past
and it will only fill you
with second guessing.
{Image borrowed with permission from Cori’s beautiful photos.}
Ekphrasis: The sister arts of painting and poetry
On “Flaming June” by Frederic Leighton
Sleeping in a corner at noon on a bench
Too small to stretch her full 5’11”
Her full figure
I warm my hands quietly up close
To the reaching oranges climbing
The resting light
Afraid my presence is enough to
Disturb a rhythm of sleep or
Is she too deep
Shallow in slumber and curled
In summer windows
At odd angles
1998
***
I [...]
A Blue Kite, or Yellow
Once, and a big fat why
will pass before I am no longer my
allergic me. I am the blue body, dyed
the hue of our crummy old couch cry-
ing to be replaced. I already tried
on the theory “The Normalcy of Body Types”
and I cover it neatly with air-dried
dress and socks not made with the same tired
blue light. [...]
Sips
the best view of
the sunset
is here
in the parking lot
the sky a mystical
light of change
if I were to walk
to the store
just for a sunset
and some Fruitjets
I’d not forget
the ginger ale
and to take a sip of the universe
1997
Rapunzel’s room
If I got to live in a high, high tower
in a black forest and away from
backyard fantasy
I would have round pink walls and round
red pillows silk everywhere
and would cut my hair shorter and shorter
of course I would have gold-framed mirrors on the walls
and I would weave my hair into doormats
eat star fruit and bananas
maybe a [...]
On Breaking Men and Glassware
There were six in all:
Little globe drinking glasses I bought at the thrift store
Crystal and matching
Each brushed with blue
Close to the base
Faded as if washed too many times
I broke them all in the past three years
Except for one—only one left
It’s always pointing that out to me
Sitting there on the shelf among other matching sets
Of plastic [...]
My first sonnet
at Portage Glacier
Alaska was always an eternal
word to me. empty, cold as an opal
ocean’s surface. and dad held the world in
his fingertips there. he could point and dim
horizons lit up with hot-air balloons
and floating glaciers turned into ice-blue
steamboats sculpted on a still lake. we walked
a lightly lapping shore and seeing all
the sites I thought [...]
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