“He said that a man had to escape to the country to see the world whole and that he wished he lived in a desolate place like this where he could see the sun go down every evening like god made it to do.”
~ Flannery O’Connor,
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Category: poetry
secret
loving someone in secret
or
losing them in secret
i am someone who can whisper in your ear
and tell you
which one hurts more
march
bluebird, let me borrow a spot of your blue
your bright blue of song, work, flight
brighten my dark blues of winter
and make me all yellow
he swept
swish, swish, knock
swish, swish, knock
a rhythm, a metronome
once a week,
usually Sunday
you felt very near to me today, also a Sunday,
me weeping while sweeping, or vice versa
my movement conjured you, conjured the once-me and the eternally you/
me, looking down from the landing//
you, nearing the top of the 2-flat stairs
in your white t-shirt
looking up over your thick glasses at me, with your big eyes
with your snaggle-toothed smirk, mustached/
broom in your beautiful hands / pure lank, elegance
had i snapped a photo of you on them stairs
with that look/
grail
here am i
my eyes stigmata
overflowing saltwater
corresponding
heartache of this life, heartbreak of this world,
this cross of water, women carry
here i am
creating
fresh watersheds
from my headwaters/
my tears runoff into wrinkle streams/
flowing tributaries converge into
rivers desalinated in sediment of flesh/
creases of time and depth
weather my face/
carved canyons carry
rapids down my cheeks/
raging confluence pours into
the lake of my mouth, onto bed of my tongue/
spilling waterfall
down my throat
into ocean of my heart/
torrents cascading over my lips, chin, breasts,
Continue reading “grail”vessel
love, don’t make me a vessel
don’t make me your vessel, love/
you filled me, i filled you
we drank from each other/
you poured me out
i’m empty/
yet you ferment in me/
i know no peace, no piece
only drunken, unquenched thirst/
i need water
i search for |a| spring
james, thank you.
a man who knew my father befriended me
and caused me to question the nature of my reality,
my history, its validity,
my possibly-false memories
— all, viewed through the lens
of the person
who had a vested interest in
indoctrinating me
who preferred my naïveté
under the guise of protectivity
Christmas break, age 6, Waukegan, Illinois
parents can write stories on the folds of a child’s cerebrum,
their pens go unchallenged
until they’re challenged /
their ink is like cord blood,
except it can re/generate — or damage
but it only takes one person
to crack their sky,
then, we astronomers spend
our lives asking these zealots
the non-answerable “why?”
poem for poet: Joy Harjo
The First Time I Saw Joy Harjo
Chicago 2017
long, midnight, blue-black hair,
unmistakably hers,
melding into her pitch black jacket
an uninterrupted flowing river of velvet
she, a radiant silhouette,
like the haloed total solar eclipse that would occur later that year, in August
her regal face remains unseen, sustaining the mystery
then she rises like a sun to speak, and i am in her orbit
her first words: “i feel The Lake so very present in me.”
her voice ancient with the Earth in her throat
later,
my glisteny eyes meet her glisteny eyes,
i memorize her face, and her hands tattooed in black ink
she is dignity embodied, i think
she inscribes a protocol for me
in my book of hers, made from trees,
i give her a cord necklace
suspending glass vials of seeds
watermelon, corn, clover and milkweed from my garden in these forced-treaty lands, an onion field once, a portage between two rivers
a reciprocity for her words that seeded me, collaterally,
her poetry an eternal spring
watering my thoughts and words
i want to be worthy of the drink
from How We Became Human
New & Selected Poems 1975-2001
Joy Harjo
Continue reading “poem for poet: Joy Harjo”
delayed gratification
wildly akimbo,
i miss or graze the
easy target who arrogantly loaded my guns
it was always better to
conceal carry
my own spells
and sharpshoot
with a silencer on my tongue:
fail, fail, fall
and patiently
watch the death notices
audio: reading a dream[t] poem: “dynamic rib”
Continue reading “audio: reading a dream[t] poem: “dynamic rib””this poem was inspired by and derived from a dream that occurred
during the 03:00 hour on February 15, 2023
dream[t] poetry: “dynamic rib”
this poem is inspired and directly derived from a dream i woke up from/with
on February 15, 2023
and is an experiment of raw dreaming dialogue and internal dreaming monologue to express the dreamt experience in poetic format using minimal metaphoric phrasing and language
a familiar woman sitting on the couch
in your house asks me
how many hours do you have to yourself
i am perplexed: “all of them”
they’re all my hours
the roof begins leaking
the one you fixed last year
the one i was reading under while she asked me about my hours
i noticed when the book
suddenly became smattered with rain drops
water drops or raindrops, what’s the difference
it was a Rugrats coloring book
i don’t know what page i was on
but Angelica was waiting to be colored-in and one of the boys was saying “mommy” in a speech bubble
it must’ve been a thought bubble because the Rugrats, except for Angelica, are not verbal
bardo
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”poem for poet: Nayyirah Waheed, Salt
[ The Lethal Salinity of The Truth ]
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 down Her Salt words/
like when the surf breaks,
and surprises the exhilarated, Great Lakes girl
with a mouthful of seawater
during her very first swim in the Ocean
Her words were not meant for me
Her words were not meant for me
Repeat
but
they quenched then 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, integrity
i’ve been so weak, so broken this winter
a fractioned shadow, i am disintegrating, disappearing / my light given or grifted away
Wolf Lake
for
+Willie Mack Riche+
a prologue included for father’s day:
the man who bought my kindergarten clothes when i was 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 high school graduation 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 of and subsequent parental abduction of — and then, the tragic 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 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 doors and quarter panels – it has two gas tanks, you know.
Bought it used, but 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 you.
Later, you will insist on the “Pocket Fisherman” – as seen on TV.
the limineen | earthling, poet & crone 