wordweeds

Broken open, the fortune cookie says,
There are no short cuts
To any place worth going.

But I have cut many and cut
Short to leave him and him
And her and him
To get here.

The cookie may say,
Many short cuts
Make the path longer.

But I am here all the same,
Cut and brack,
Wild rose and blackberry,
Bramble scarred by sweetness.

Today we don’t brag scars
But salve them.
Make jam.

The long road,
The switch
Backs go backward
Moving forward.

We know just where this leaves
Us, cancelling the length
Of the path.

2014

My world appears solid.
Two decades of educational debt
Prairie rent, propane heat, the weight
Of this generation of apathetic students.
I learn to empty my head, any willing head
The way my sister learned to empty
Herself of self-eating flesh.

The day I told Citibank Rebecca
Was dead, the moneylender, startled, said
We are sorry. Could you please send
Us the certificate of her death?
And that is how it begins. Forgiveness
Of the middle class fantasy of wealth.

Just like that, the hounds she worked for, cried for
Scrimped, and in death’s room wrinkled her brow for
Became a short phone call, a piece of paper
In a file that couldn’t follow or define her
Success in death’s vaultless new world.

2014

When Trouble came to visit
he limped into the open mic
with bourbon on his breath,
sweat in his shirt, a broken cane.

He took his seat, made himself
at home, planted long feet.
The room delivered prairie prophecies.
Quiet. White. No one yelled.

A woman took him home,
spread apricot on toast
to make him stay. He did.
And she unzipped that name.

2014

The house packed up itself with my own hands.
I chanted mantras just to get me through.
For years I’d dreamed that any other land
would promise more than Brush, but now I knew
the house had commandeered my very arms
and learned to move— itself out of itself—
a dream that leaves a body in alarm.
Boxed books revealed my skin on every shelf.

Once I escaped the little town, the house
lived on as empty rooms of light inside
my mind. I’d close my eyes and try to douse
the ache with inner sky. I’d beg: Abide
in me a little longer, dreaming me.
But home is not a house turned body, see.

2014

for Sage

I adore you, seed eater,
Spoke Demeter
From afar
To her daughter
Who, laughing,
Ate the whole
Pomegranate
Splatter-handed
In Seattle,
Her new home
Of fog and rain.
And flame.
Forget seasons.
She won’t return—
Hades no longer
A man
Or an underworld
But this one,
Where roads steal
And homes burn.
Persephone will enter
With her red-seeded heart,
Her jaws of life,
Her mask,
Her heavy water,
Every breath Demeter
Ever gave her,
And rescue someone else’s
Son or daughter
From a new kind of hell.

2014

No babes will don our married faces
or lope about in borrowed limbs.
No lessons how to tie their laces—
no babes will don our married faces.
We’ll never teach them social graces,
watch them sink instead of swim.
No babes will don our married faces
or lope about in borrowed limbs.

2014

January digs up her dead
And ties their limbs to sticks with string.
Night dances them across my bed.
January digs up her dead—
Blind words I wish we never said
Pirouette and, tangled, sing.
January digs up her dead
And ties our limbs to sticks with string.

2014

Then, as the singing ceased and the lyre ceased,
Down stepped proud Galatea with a sigh:
Robert Graves, “The Living Age”

Make love to a poet
(illicitly)
and he will make you
dictionary
(fill lines with light)
pencil scrawl
(prop the sculpture)
pedestal
(sisters all)
his résumé.
You will be put on
display.
No one need know
your name
once you become
a dozen poems.
Try to walk
off the page.
Be a screen
he reads
while his life eats
oatmeal.
Your poems meet
secretly
to pound each other smooth.
Galatea’s mouth
spills his sea
without you—
a wary diction.

They might
tell me
you’re not mine
to mourn—
white mother
of a white

fourteen year old son,

but sometimes
I hear your
bright whistle
in my lover’s
sweet brown eyes,
and, rivered,

everyone dies.

2014