His Lines

His phone light dances across the panes of his small,

rectangular black-framed glasses.

With my eye I draw the shape of his hand becoming a wrist,

forearm becoming a bicep, shoulder, inclined neck

like a hungry ant crawling the line he makes against space,

pressed upon the world, no pencil in hand.

A young artist once, I realized that to perceive line and value—

light, penumbra, shadow—

is as rewarding as creating them.

I vowed to live my life like that: no patron, no place

needed to store large Modern lonely paintings,

or cardboard sleeves to stash charcoal sketches, yellowing.

Here I am now, in my 50s, unknown but knowing.

My own lines softened. So be it.

“What do you want to do,” he asks.

“Stare at you watching your phone,” I say and ask,

“What do you want to doooooo,” flubbing my finger

over my lips on the oooooo like two silly flesh guitar strings,

my mouth the sound hole.

He laughs, says, “Now I don’t know, since you asked it like that.

Anything is possible.”

For Dorell on our 13th Valentine’s Day

Why Not Tell Myself I’m on Vacation?

Why not tell myself I’m on vacation?

Look at the blue mountain there, the peach sunrise       

behind it while I stretch, hands prickling with cold.

I live here, sure, and work, but to say I’m on vacation

sharpens my eyes, softens my heart toward this day,

wondering what novelty of beauty or kindness

I’ll find in the people I meet, as if joy is dormant

beneath the mundane surface of every single thing.

Felt Heart

It is easy. Gather

colorful puffs of wool. Roll

them into hints of shapes—

one large asymmetric lump

and several tubes—hold

these fiber springs against

a foam brick, stab

them into hardness

with a notched needle. Lay

the forms upon each other, prick

for six hours until they

stick together, resemble

your anatomical heart, complete

with ventricles and atria.

You are not through. Tattoo

in twisted wool thread forked arteries in red

over blue veins upon the tiny fist

of fuzzy muscle, one that could pump

wool blood

through a wool being built by gods—

your own hands and heart—

against the cold world.

But who has time for that?

Only wool mothers.

Stop with the precious heart, its hacked tubes,

disembodied totem in your wrinkled palm.

Promise yourself to love like this

feather light, wounded and beautiful.

It just happens

Leaves relax into winter work of becoming mud

in the driveways and guttered curbs of Portland.

They even cast themselves as chemical prints—

countless, urban concrete shrouds of Turin,

their palms shadowed points of dark reminiscence.

He falls in love with the city’s tannic smudge

like faces found in charcoal scrawl beneath his thumb,

eyes shocked wide on the stained page, unblinking,

reflecting any pinpoint of light the city permits,

accommodating, elevating every gutsy Gethsemane.

Immaculate Conception

They made the manger birth about Jesus,

not Mary—archetype of every mother’s secret hope,

our silent prayer, studying the silken face and limbs

of sons whom, we know, fueled by our milk

and poverty, will save the world of awful men from

themselves, having filled us countless times with unwelcome

seed, fabricated a fantastic tale of God coming

in the form of a dove (swan, eagle, bull, ram, rain)

into her. It is not a woman’s story. It is a man’s

ruse. Immaculate conception. You and I both know—

had she told the truth, men would not have believed her,

would have blamed her, or made a miracle of it, of her, child

as she was, cradling their newborn hero against her heart.

White-Out

Clouds release a wide blanket on our mountain,

tuck us into stick frame homes.

Entire days I stare out windows—silent flakes

fall in calm accumulation. We are slowed.

In the stove I build tiny cabins of what is left over

from my husband’s construction sites—

strips of trim thin as matchsticks broken into kindling

laid over wretched, crumpled news, flaming up

like weak prayer to catch afire thick fuel—

the quartered bodies of last year’s pines.

In cities and suburbs, pathetic bloated men—

finally off their Rent-A-Center couches, fingers twitching—

cosplay favorite Call of Duty avatars on actual streets,

paid more than teachers, quaking with T,

play dress up as ICE, fall on legions of terrified,

weeping bodies, smash scores of brown cheeks

into concrete, go home and eat from the hand

of meek, complicit wives.

A small woodpecker plucks at the suet basket

black and white masked, no red crown. Larger magpies,

blue wings thrashing, hurry her to finish.

Undeterred by cold, obeying their bellies,

all are easily lured by a woman—cozy, white,

able to afford suet—fighting her fear

winter birds will not return for months, like last year.

My Black sister-in-law asks:

Where do the wailing women and children go,

stuffed into cars by masked men? Who are they?

ICE? Traffickers in disguise? Border Patrol?

No one can know. In this blitzkrieg of bigotry

and ignorance, impotent politicians, who can we ask?

To refill the feeder, I have to break

the pristine surface of snow. I postpone,

wait until the minute the last crumb is snatched

to not disturb the continuum of fluttering returns.

A brief pause in generosity before I soil the view

with evidence of my own presence—footsteps.

Why can’t I disappear?

To protect myself, save precious, countless hours,

to salve and take a break from gutted rage,

I stop scrolling social reels for weeks, scan headlines only,

oblige despair, factual curation, numb with cold.

A veteran friend, her voice raspy with smoke

and wisdom, reminds me of resistance,

people suing, rising up in protest and ferocious joy,

algorithms of hope. Cautious, I open my feed,

careful not to gorge, sure our phone conversation

was mined, content suspiciously tailored to my need.

Played by billionaires, tossed seeds, I breathe.

After heavy snow, undiscouraged, birds fly tip to tip.

Agitated branches slowly throw off their white load,

spring up, startling the ground below.

Sharp Tone

Hot words

cut joy in two

like room temp butter.

Two separate sticks.

No bread over which

to spread ourselves

cooling hard

as night drops

on our bed.

Summer 2025

Necking with Death

Death gave my neck a kiss.

Sweet and small, a peck,

a smudge,

it grew, longing to eat me up,

as some kisses do.

His jealous foe, bound by oath,

unsung old hero,

cut it out like a bullet,

like a tongue and now

it heals into the shape,

the blush, of a fresh hickey

or rosy mouth smashed

and swollen with kissing,

spitting out its teeth

of stitches.

Circumstances

The doc and I talk

Rush—a shared love of prog rock.

Needle in his hand,

he fashions a scar,

thread closing the eye opened

on my neck, now lashed.

Stitches stagger, leap

in tense, strict asymmetry,

a lone boy dancing

near teen me singing,

hunched over an inner sleeve,

Closer to the Heart.

With thanks to Dr. J.S. for being human with me on a tough day

Note to non-nerds: The title and last line of this poem are Rush songs I found intriguing as a teenage girl trying to make sense of the world. I know people love to make fun of Rush—their intellectualism and supposedly soulless musical precision, but they were my obsession, my introduction to poetry, a heady, earnest alternative to the shitty glam metal of the 80s my friends loved. I dare you, sweetheart, to listen to their entire catalogue, to watch documentaries of their incredible decades together, and see if you’re still too cool.

Shared Fruits

Too busy to net the cherry on time

or repair the hole in the netted plum,

too relaxed about generous apple trees—

we married in the fall of the year

that summer squirrels and chipmunks—

prolific after last year’s bumper of pinyon nuts—

celebrated by stripping and storing,

gluttonously feasting on every last fruit.