Then this is all.

Midnight will cauterize the wound.

Silence will swallow everything

my three hundred n'sixty-five teeth

couldn't chew.

| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

I dream that I am holding you -

your teardrop face at

10 and 2

9 and 3

 

your lips like languages

long lost,

slain lovers

un

avenged

 

8 and 4

7 and 5

 

I dream that we confuse the two.

Pronounce silent letters like a righteous

eulo

gy

 

6

I dream you trust me with

your mouth's Rosetta

Stone

 

6

I dream new words are formed,

their strange articulations like

ribbons around our

tongues.

| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

 

Hands off and I wake slowly.

I taste something like blood.

I return to my life wond'ring

which one of us it's

from.

Is it too soon to start celebrating

the quiet after the storm?

I positively cannot wait to stop

telling you every

thing.

Wildly, I imagined

taking the day off,

and spending it all

at the pool hall.

Happiness like a garden

protected by martins.

Happiness like a boy whose

always-working mother

decided to take the

day

off.

 

I write this with the boy on my lap.

I guess that would make me

the martin.

I can't sleep.

I must be doing something

very important

in another universe.

 

For a while, I imagined

I had a daughter.

I do that almost regularly now.

And because I am a girl

and alone

and allowed,

 

I imagined who the father might be.

 

And do you know,

only one person came to mind.

And he's probably sleeping like

a baby.

To think that he won't remember this -

his Wella singing to him in the mornings,

his Wello creating

new taste treat sensations.

The liveliness of the household.

That he once had a dog.

 

That I was a young woman who once spent

an entire year crying.

 

Forgetting is probably best.

I wanted to cry all day today.

In another life, I probably did.

In another life, I probably have

nobody at all.

Just a quiet place

with off-white walls.

No cast iron love telling me to

piss off.

Nobody and nothing. Just me, me, me.

And I'll bet I cried today

anyways.

Apparently, I'm just skipping my period this month.

My ovaries bitch and moan, they say,

"We don't know how we feel"

Manage, I say.

I've got a lot of other appendages

who cannot think for themselves.

"We don't like it when brain tells us

how to do our job"

Manage, I say.

The eyes are puffy.

I'll be tending to them all night.

"Well we're just going to hold our breath

til brain puts down

the gun"

MANAGE, I say,

but it's too late.

 

They're turning blue and brain replies,

"Lady,

that's all on you"

I joked about you sending me

your severed left ear.

Instead you sent me both

intact

 

in perfect

working

order.

 

I cannot know what music does

to you when you sink

in it.

 

I'll whisper what I think

to them,

just tell me if you

hear it.

Love, it isn't that I wouldn't accept

your severed left ear in the

mailbox,

it is that I live with five other adults

and a child

who will not eat anything

Marie Calendar did not approve.

Send instead

your whole living self;

there is simply no room

in my

freezer.

So near to the end,

I might be in shock.

The heroes don't overcome

in this one.

My son is just another kid

who feels weird on Father's

Day.

I wrote a poem tonight titled "writing with Herb in the room"

and maybe he'll think it's neat that he's

kinda sorta famous.

Or maybe he'll be mortified

that the portraits I paint

of our everyday lives

refuse to wear their

night creams.

"anyway, ALL are required to swim in the new dominion, and expertly at that. how expertly? so expertly that mermaids will fail to fascinate any longer, and be replaced in classic folklore with humanoid blob fish and anemones, and any that refuse to swim expertly will be taken to the Tree (where Sajak has remained miraculously intact, rejuvenated even, thanks to the honey, and the attentive concern of a subterranean race of dwarves that emerged from the pacific northwest when the act of ‘treeing a Sajak alongside a lesser man’ inadvertently fulfilled an ancient prophecy, a kerfuffle in which Grand Overseer Ortega denies any involvement) to have their foot fingers thoroughly sapped, until the union of phalanges is so complete and flipperish, the refusers will have no recourse but to use the metropolitan system of aqueducts for all travel, or be bequeathed to the ocean proper, which is the preference of the state. YOUR CHOICE"

 

Today is a bit of a cop out.

I've been sad and tired and forlorn.

THIS, however,

THIS made me cackle in a crowded room.

I've got nothing.

The roof knows very well

this table.

Where I sit and I write and I

dream about being

closer to being

alone.

 

The roof creaks like laughter.

I cover my head.

 

A man I still love offers his umbrella.

It's as nice a thing as he's ever

done.

What do I even talk about today?

The likeness of the cold to the

sharp edge of envelopes?

The dozen glances I took at the

bottle of rum,

flirting that it could really spruce up the

flat soda?

How my son has fallen out of love with spaghetti,

which brings us back down to just

two foods

he likes?

 

Fine then.

All of those things.

My son's singing voice

reminds me of train tracks

and a single train car chuffing

gladly

along

and you can join him or not, it

doesn't much matter

but he's always in line and on time with

the song.

A woman, well-meaning, asks me if I write about

anything other

than love.

 

And I get that question a lot, in fact,

it's always that and never who

it is I'm so grossly

in love with.

 

It's a hard thing to answer.

I think that I used to

write poems for music and

weed.

 

But I haven't been stoned in God knows how long;

music often finds me

asleep.

 

I could probably write for whatever thing,

but I have been staring back blankly

and she can't hear me thinking.

 

"Not really",

I reply.

If you want the truth,

it's exhausting to be me.

I find strands of love on everything.

Sounds mimic the soft sighs of seasons.

A person's face is comprised of shapes

and I find myself piecing together their puzzles

while appearing to stare blankly

at them.

 

I woo so easily that I

forget that I cannot

accept it.

 

I am tired and in love

and tired and

in love and tired

and so dumbly

in love.

The moon also makes me feel in love.

Its roundness reveals like a woman's soft shoulders

shrugging that it had nothing nicer to wear.

I stare the way grooms look upon their brides' faces,

and I wonder if you, wherever you are,

are walking nighttime

down the aisle.

it's an interesting question, I guess you could say

my love is sort of flat, or soft, or cupped?

I mean that it's kind of shaped

like a catcher's mitt, I mean

there's nothing that reaches out from it

which is to say it cannot fit through tiny holes

of hope the way some other tentacled loves

could,

but it's receptive, I mean receiving, you know,

soft so's not to crack the egg

when passed to me from many miles away

but it is bowled and therefore cannot hold on

to something ready to be let go

Christmas lights make me feel in love.

I cruise neighborhoods with

bright bushes and tall trees

dressed to the nines in

twinkling lights,

and I remark the beauty of every one,

and it's like you never

left.

 

How many times must I say it?

I don't hate you.

I don't even dislike you.

I don't even nothing

you.

 

You're like the hard cramps

I feel on the first

day

of every

period.

 

You're like my trick knee

and bad back and

cold nose.

You're like my hips that remind me

randomly

that I was pregnant

once.

 

"It is what it is" you'd always say.

And so I am.

You are.

We is.

Knowing love isn't the hard part.

My mom tells me to put a paper towel in

the bottom of a black bowl of fruit.

The whiteness of the paper will contrast the grapes

and make it easier for sweetie

to see.

 

I ask her how far she thinks she could throw him

if the floor was lava n'

stuff.

 

She scoffs and says she'd

lay across

 

so we could walk over her

to safety.

 

It is not the lack of knowing.

My whole life, I have always known

love.

 

It is that I am only Now realizing love

often is not

enough.

Time has passed so strangely this year.

I work just as often as I possibly can

and that has contributed to this

warped sense of time.

It's another Christmas.

Another New Year.

Another round of passing by

cold corpses of memories.

Anniversaries like the shells of cockroaches

my ferret used to leave after eating

their guts.

 

Anyways.

I may not believe how quickly time has passed,

but I believe in love,

I believe in babies,

I believe in mom and dad,

and I believe in...

"Wrongness grows in the skin and makes it hard to touch."

 

It is not the drama of how she went,

or that there was no way to stop her from going.

It is her recognition of hooks in the happy times.

Smiles that snag like a kitten's nails

on every goddamned thing.

It is the hopeless yet totally conscious love

of a man who could not love her back.

It is the futile attempts to outrun the wrongness

resulting in final concessions that one

cannot outrun themselves.

It is all of these things that make me think

that Neruda had no idea how

it felt to be the

nectarine.

There are days when I love you

the way a mother loves her child.

You are acorns and ivy;

I love watching you grow.

There are days when I love you

the way a woman loves a man.

You are carpet and concrete;

my body knew your natures before

it realized mine were

the same.

There are days when I love you

the way flowers love the sun.

I am frightened of my dependence, 

but I am infinitely more beautiful

when I turn my face towards

yours. 

 

And I couldn't say what kind of love

tonight most closely resembles,

 

but every day,

every day, soulsong.

 

Every. Day. 

In the older days,

when Herb would sleep curled in my arms,

I would feel like lightning trapped beneath

a sweaty, smelly, rubber mallet. 

Hours would pass and my mind would reach out for

this digital playground to jot how I 

felt. 

 

The worry, the wonder, the

wet whistle wanting...

 

But Herb was a hammer I was unfit to lift,

so I stared into darkness until my body

surrendered. 

 

These days, however, Herb sleeps on the bed.

I have the freedom to get up and do things I like - 

like write, or drink, or shoot some pool,

or watch a movie, or drink, or write,

or drink, or drink, or write, or kiss

the husband I tried to convince that THIS

freedom would surely one day

exist. 

 

But I am just so doggone tired now.

 

My mind starts to reach like it always does,

but before I can drag the clam tongue of myself

across the floor to lick creative salts,

I pass out and morning doesn't care

about the way things used to be. 

The days I spend with my son feel like

constant declarations under my breath

that I could house no greater love

than the love I have for him.

 

Then I put him to bed

and he sings himself to sleep,

and 40 minutes later, he's still singing,

and I think okay, okay,

no greater love than this!

 

Then he sings a word

and decides way late

that he'd like to make it plural,

"Kitten.........s...."

And I think declarations are useless.

 

I just love him, is all. 

30 days left. Robert says that he bets

I'd be interesting to live with.

And I tell him I am, but he's pronouncing it wrong.

The divorce lawyer pronounced it

'insufferable'. 

In the silent, dull mornings

I wait for you.

For your words. For your body.

For something to bring me

peace.

 

In the evenings, I pretend you'll

reach out to me.

And I feel something like violence - 

an egg cracked on my head;

the feelings disperse strangely

and I am waiting

once more.

My son wakes up with a happy thought

"Let's make a pizza" he says, his tongue

still gumming up his s's and z's.

He slept well and knows nothing of Thanksgiving,

only that he is awake and I am still

here.

 

His father made no plans to visit, which works

since my son made no plans to

ask.

 

We spend the day doing the usual things.

Laughing and honing his hunting skills,

his stalk, his pounce, his

wrap around,

he is strong and I only disallow

hooking his fingers inside my

mouth.

 

His father couldn't punch his way out of

a wet paper

bag.

My son is strong and might someday consider

his father to resemble

wet paper

bags.

 

I tell myself to write a poem about this.

Anything to make the nothing seem like

something.

But I am tired and the boy is tired, too.

He winds down echoing his everyday thoughts

"I like to eat pizza, how about you?"

 

Maybe I'll write it tomorrow, I think.

 

I collapse the way I imagine trees do

in that joke where nobody

hears them.

I ate great food and had a lovely day.

Consider this up sucked.

Kicked when I am down,

I tell myself that I am better

than cruel comments,

unkind actions,

and everything that makes her

Her.

 

I have myself so figured out that I

don't even cry for long when she

reminds me that his Tinder profile

doesn't mention Herb

at all.

No poetry today.

Just headaches and heart ons.

Well come on then, you big talkin man.

Find your way here, and I'll take you back,

and then I'll take you back

home.

I think I'd like to be kissed this year.

When the countdown commences

and I'm sitting outside

shivering in the driveway while my son sleeps

right through it.

When the trees blow and softly

shake out their last wishes

 

when I realize I'll never

feel this way

again

 

I think, instead of

crying to no one,

I think I'd rather

be kissed.

Little boy digs his hand inside

his butt, scratches,

then holds my face

 

"aaaaand I

love you so, and I want you to know"

 

He runs away and I smell something

like hot peaches stuffed with

aluminum

 

"I'll always be right here"

 

I walk to the bathroom to wash my face

and imagine what my daughter

might be doing

 

watching me wash my face, probably

expressing her own sisterly

disgust

 

"and I loooooove to sing

sweet sooooooongs to you"

 

Men, I would tell her.

And she would laugh.

 

But she is a fantasy and so I

towel off alone.

 

He is eating chips directly out of the bag

with his metallic peach smelling

butt-hand.

 

Impossible to think that I could do it again,

raise another child, let alone

a girl

 

but wincing at the thought of how much Dorito dust

is surely stuck in his crack

and still loving him more than realities where

I don't have to wash butt juice off my face

 

I think I could most definitely do it again.

And who knows.

 

Maybe she'd have the decency

to wipe her hands on her brother's face

first.

 

"because

you

are

so

dear"

To the beautiful bozo who asked what a Cliburn concert was,

to which I replied, "Classical piano",

to which he replied with a bluegrass banjo impression

while dancing

a strange little jig,

 

I'd still hit it, you dumb, delicious bastard.

I don't mean to be so lazy with these.

I'm in the home stretch. I shouldn't stop now.

But.

 

He has 300 days of proof that I

hurt in ways he'll never

understand.

 

And I don't believe the last 40 will convince him.

But.

 

I

I

I

I toe the line between missing you

and hating your catfish skunk guts.

Not that it matters to you,

I think you'll die

when this series is over.

And so I must miss you now.

I must miss your lips now.

When the series is over, there won't be much left.

Apart from the catfish skunk guts, that is.

And I got the rest of my life to hate those.