wordweeds

“I no monkey! I balloon!”
Sage Magdelene, age two

My sweet monkey.
My orange balloon.
She blazes with summer
Wind and yellow truth.
Her red wings roar.

2013

Charlotte to Charlotte says,
“Watch. This week she will buy seed bread
and do five loads of laundry instead.”

Laura Matilda and Irene Genevieve know:
“But after straightening two sofa pillows,
her words will grow like dust on the piano.”

Margaret Irene whispers to Wanda Margaret,
“But first she will nibble dark chocolate
hidden in the kitchen towel drawer, I bet.”

Folded, uncluttered, sweet, alone, the poem comes.
The mothers hum two hundred years of grief-love
one month before my daughter leaves home.

2013

Somewhere between
Ape and alien we spin

Back to back, awkward
Spindly circle of arms.

We dance the blind axle
Of space. It has no body.

We turn seeking the other
With the oldest eyes

We can muster, primate,
Gape-mouthed with sight.

Our ancient brows jut
Wonder, lean far back

To touch. Before losing
Whatever footing spinning

Allows, our crowns
Make a bridge. A body

Crosses—light, love, dark—
Bigger than we are.

It doesn’t need legs
To travel very, very far.

2013

Funny,
Says six
Foot four
Inches,
Every
Body’s
Fridge is
Filthy
On top.

2013

We multiply families of ravens,
stun words in cool gusts,
then lift, winged heat. I ramble
mathematically, waiting for a language,
croaking, ready to give up everything tertiary.

What primal number,
what rough cut square footage
expresses itself in our shared gaze?

What equals one mountain plus one man plus one woman
plus three habaneros sliced thinly, coughing steam,
sex and gasoline, gratitude dividing
into soft apologies to one tree for sinking nails
to hold prayer flags and all sentient beings?

How do two people become
one home in a flash? Quite simply.
The sky calculates it all like this:

One crisp ponderosa accepts you. I notice.
We sniff its neck. The moon squints
through its 2 am limbs upon our tangled sleep.
One cabin, our larger body, stirs
under twenty fingers. Its engine spills and fumes.

One decomposing granite hallway
takes our four-legged gait like seed,
grunts us new. Like this, teeth smiling.

We might be two parallel streams and the earth
is giving way between.
We can’t account rationally for the speed
of our lives’ glorious destruction
or the volume of water tearing through.

The solution is in the weep, the wound,
the rocky crack. Guess how
the clever juniper grew where it grew.

2013

Inaccessible
Dark secrets dilate me, winged.
Shhh. The flock’s due west.

2013

You dropped the bell.
I starved.
What flame survives
a jar?

Come scratching glass?
How bold!
Your matchless hands
have sold

My fire to space,
vacuum,
Promethean
refuge.

Pandora’s gift
contained,
There’s only fire
to blame.

2013

On the run, nothing
refuses your long shadow.

Pavement or snow pile
your darkest shape is carved light.

2013

I cannot stop
your silent glide,
the slicing paddle
through my glass.
Nor would I halt
the silken length
of gentle glancing
broken mirrors,
mine. I throw
my milliard
diamonds
as you
pass.

2013