somebody, quick!
pinch me,
call me,
talk to me,
see me,
kiss me,
curse me,
feed me,
bathe me,
fuck me,
flip me off,
for god’s sake
I can’t tell
if I survived
that last
collision
Continue reading “bardo”Month: February 2023
poem for poet: Nayyirah Waheed, Salt
September 2026 Addendum
Poet Nayyirah Waheed is back on Instagram -- and She is rightfully, and again calling out poet Rupi Kaur for anti-Blackness and Black erasure, and of the appropriation/theft of Her foundational insta-poetic style and of the blueprint of Her self-published, groundbreaking, first book of poetry: "Salt"
[ The Lethal Salinity of The Truth ] 2017
Her words are not for me
not about me
Her words are not for me
not about me
Repeat
am i, allowed
To float Her words aloud
To sink them in my mind
To lap them from the page
i accidentally swallow,
then gulp Her Salt words/
like when the surf breaks
and surprises an exhilarated,
Great Lakes girl
with a mouthful of seawater
in her first swim in the Ocean
Her words were not meant for me
Her words were not meant for me
Repeat
but
they quenched,
and drowned me,
anyway.
Her Light, her light
it’s mid evening
east of The Lake
and the night is dawning
like a second morning
the Full Moon’s light
in a clearer sky
gleams through the generous panes
of this blessed, old green house
February’s Snow Moon is glowing
in a familiar dance with her beloved Earth//
Sun, their invisible chaperone, is voyeur to their touchless, perfect tango
a family of four deer
mother and children, i think/
are gleaners here tonight
while i consume their Moon play
silent and sitting in the dark, i admire:
coat, tallow, hooves and warm flow of blood
is all that’s between them
and this howling wind and frozen ground
let me mimic their resilience, their integrity
i’ve been so weak, so broken this winter
a fractioned shadow, i am disintegrating, disappearing / my light given or grifted away
holy ghost: a statement
“The most important thing for everyone in Gringolandia is to have ambition and become ‘somebody,’ and frankly, I don’t have the least ambition to become anybody.”
Frida Kahlo
in the end, we are all just holy ghosts,
ghosts who sometimes want to feel, or be seen, or be felt by others who may also be seeking, whether they know it or not — and whether they become known forever after or become, forever unknown — to us.
if anyone were to speculate — or attempt to draw definitions or executive summaries about me — as one particular, ambitionless, ghostly being,
and, as a mother, poet, crone and Earthling — or about my collection of words, opinions, ideas, poems, photos, ephemera, art, beliefs and altars — now, or when i’m dead and gone,
— in the end, and at the beginning,
this is and was, always a place for me to fundamentally
better understand
my Self — for my self & by my self.
for me,
to try to understand my relationship to Others, to the World, to the Earth;
and also,
for me,
to try to understand my relationship to my creativity – the conception, process and act of creating
and finally,
to try to understand this strange existence, in and of itself.
no one else has ever been essential to experience, interact with, interpret, interrogate or validate any of it, ever — yet, they are welcomed to do so — if they happen upon me
Continue reading “holy ghost: a statement”Wolf Lake
for
+Willie Mack Riche+
a prologue included for father’s day:
the man who bought my kindergarten clothes when i was still yet four years old and paid my Lutheran school monthly tuition for eight years; the man who had the rusty 1972 VW Bug, gifted to me by my boyfriend for a high school graduation gift restored over the summer before my freshman year of college; the man who adored both my son aka “monster” and “bam-bam”, and my first dog, Digby aka “hound”; the man who endured both the devastating loss of custody, and subsequent parental abduction of — and then, the tragic accidental death of his only biological child,
a son.
the man who never got the chance to properly retire and healthfully and happily collect his 30-year, hard-earned Teamster’s union pension — and just go fishing all day because he became acutely ill with undiagnosed high blood pressure and kidney failure, and spent the last years of his life on thrice-weekly, hours-long dialysis treatment — and his last six months on Earth dying from a rare, aggressive and metastatic cancer.
may his spirit know peace eternally.
gingerly cradling his namesake Mack
on the first full day of the baby’s life,
and who we brought home on
Father’s Day, 1994
“This used to be my playground.”
and, our proxy for church on spring, summer and fall sabbaths.
These were the halcyon days.
Load up the International Harvester TravelAll with wooden door and quarter panels – it has two gas tanks, you know.
Bought it used, but clean, pristine
on payments – from the showroom on Logan Boulevard and Elston Avenue with zero credit history and all the
usury
Have mercy.
Follow me, and I will make you fishers of fish.
He will bait your hook on the bamboo pole he bought for you.
Later, you will insist on the “Pocket Fisherman” – as seen on TV.
the bearable light of being
we adapt, we mitigate.
beholding devastation,
in a moment of transcendent light,
we’ll call it beauty.
i am no exception.
thaw
i add my most intentional breaths to the land, to the atmosphere,
for the birch sapling, for a man i knew,
both, bent over
frozen
in a forced deference
mimicking reverence
it won’t, can’t, hold
[it never does]
with every exhalation
my pink lungs
conjure warm winds
from red blood cells
incanting
under my tender palate
over my dormant tongue,
though my worn enamel
beyond my hermit lips:
