I’m sure that everyone experiences symptoms of OCD, or else has at some point in their life. I mean, I don’t know a lot about mental illnesses, but I feel the restless leg, the compulsion to check every unread email, and distinct and desperate desires to have things done, checked off, put away, etc. (and [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 5 so far )There is light in the tips of the little plastic fibers
that splay out from the top of the cheap party-favor toy
when you turn on the switch. It is multi-colored neon.
You click off then on again. It is purple. Off. On.
Then red. Off on. Orange. On and on it changes
going through a complete color wheel.
It runs [...]
I have lost an elasticity
from the skin in my fingertips.
Sometimes they bleed
or ache, openly.
It feels like something
that happens
to make me realize
there is this other kind of suffering.
But should I endure it silently
until I die, it will remain
the reminder that pain is real
and sometimes has
invisible reasons.
Comments, criticisms, and questions welcome.
{Photo by Man Ray, Hand on Lips}
Well, it’s one of them anyway. I’m currently working on a Master’s in Library Science, but am still not sure what I want to be when I grow up. I just wanted to share for three reasons: 1) because I love this poem by Rita Dove, 2) I love to read, period, and really, this [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 6 so far )God would be the first to
agree that we should’ve been friends by now
but there is always that awkwardness,
really. Or,
it is just me?
Even our children sense it, their
little faces with some knowing quality
like lifting light with their
eyes.
I dreamed I was visiting
your house
while your children napped
and you were anything but awkward
with my own never napping son.
You were [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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.}
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 [...]
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