Then

Do you remember when our arms were all that held you, and you said,
Look at the heavens, look at the light

You weren't alone then, and you have never been since.
You weren't alone then, and you have never been since.
You weren't alone then, and you have never been since.
Never been since.
You have never been since.

B

Her face melts at the end of a cigarette.
"How are you?" she mumbles, and I try to answer
sweetly, normally, I'm not staring,
like I didn't stare at the man
in the produce aisle without a nose
when I was seven.

Most days its not that terrific being me.
Just enough like everyone else I've no excuse
for either pride or bitterness.
If I am capable,
I would like to turn small and rare
and be remembered by one or several only. 

You Keep Yours

If nothing else, I gave my word.
If you aren't Who I thought
you were,
i am
still committed
to what you Are
because if nothing else
promises are meant to be kept.

Joan, Mary, Jane

If I leave you call me back
I almost pray, I supplicate
your prayers in the lap of a sabbath.

Chastened

I fear for myself, for the warmth in my face,
I am one that blushes at some things
and would rather.


-


Choose this small hollow with cold and reliable
rocks for company, safe
in the confines of a narrow purity,
cleared from the twine of complexity.

But lonely. So cold and so stonelike my brain
shuttles and grunts like stiff iron, fearing its own firmness,
washing out the cracks where things might grow.
More afraid
that color washes out with each rinsing.


-


Dyeing is repeatable.




Quote: Kiran Desai, "The Inheritance of Loss"

Free Members

Are we always compelled into rebellion
by the backside of a magnet? Always
keeping just far enough away

I recoil as from flame,
from cold air,
from anything too much like absolutes, like netting.

Letting myself be still just long enough
to have my edges drawn
in chalk on the pavement then
jolting into contortions to prove it
all wrong.

In some mild way I will be other than. Be bolder
than I was before, but meekly...
barefoot in November.

Purple Loosestrife

This is a poem I've been wanting to write
for a long time.
A poem about purple loosestrife,
because Tanja told me their name,
the name of purple flowers
we passed in the car on the way to a teahouse
three months ago.

I thought at the time I'd write something
deep and rich and varied, maybe
throw in phragmites or algae or something
brown and bubbly but I never
got around to writing               anything

about purple loosestrife, and wrote very little
about anything else either, until now.

Small

Lord, if you're gonna make me
make me into something small.

Something you can hold in the palm of your hand
singing like a seashell when you bend your head.

And if you make me a bird,
make me a brown bird, with wings too short to fly far with.

Name me anything at all: boot, thimble, spoon, oil,
as long as I am yours.