the SUN, the MOON,
your face between my hands, warm
soft sticky with peanut butter
and god-knows-what else
Monthly Archives: January 2015
name unspoken
You know, when he’s with me, he
doesn’t talk about you.
There was that one time
when he called me your name
from the kitchen
“what did you say?”
FROZEN, cutting onions,
SILENCE.
“I didn’t say anything”
Then nothing.
More chopping, more sauteing, more
movement, oven door opens forcefully
and is closed just as forcefully in an
uneven jerking motion.
His forehead vein bulging,
blood quietly pumping, and more
chopping, cilantro this time.
Now that I think about it, the
only way I really ever hear
your name is when it drips casually off of
my children’s tongues, artificial syrup sweet, and, like old spat out toothpaste,
sticks to the corners of their cotton
candy pink mouths.
It just stays there, dried and caked and cracking.
No one really notices, other than that
it looks odd and out of place on such a
beautiful child from such a
beautiful family.
But he himself, the master and commander of his
own destiny, the sad girl, no he never says your name,
in fact has never once said your name– on purpose— and he
pretends you don’t exist, when
he’s with me.
i’m obvious
It all seems so obvious.
I sit down, profound,
emerge from yoga, pilates,
the works.
Instagram super models:
LEGS LEGS LEGS
that’s all I see up in here,
ground floor apartment
“bankrupt on selling”
modest breasts
heavy laden heart.
It all seems so obvious,
cold-pressed, Taylor
Swift red and reverberating, cat calls,
does she remind us of someone we used to know?
Or is it just an innocent crush?
A longing for an old hidden place,
the inside of a shell, an under
stair closet, is that it?
All I know is: red lips are all I can think about.
“Do I need medication for this?” I wonder
aloud to no one in particular, wishing though
that he could hear, that he could hear and care
and perhaps do something about the irreverent
madness that settles in every so many moons
or so many months or
whatever.
[ aside: all the while I’m thinking about my stomach, repeating “Up an inch, down an inch” my abdominal mantra.]
Here in my shell I forget about God, its all self effacing and navel grazing.
It’s a cold and dark place, wet and
unsettled, like water inside your sleeping bag
on a camping trip, and you’re drunk, and
you just want to go to sleep. In between dreams
I can hear the wind whistling through my bones,
but like I said,
it all seems so obvious,
so uninspired,
I can hardly even write about it.
Gag reflex,
oh the embarrassment of
being so obvious.
domestic doomsday
I’m a domestic failure
I spend a lot of time cowering
in corners
paralyzed by spiderwebs
mold growing in tiled crevasses
hard pressed for strength,
time, endurance,
the character needed to push
through the rock,
the hard place. It’s concerning
really, how difficult the simple things
are, sometimes, all
the time maybe. Waiting for quiet, echoless,
still sweet spaces, and when they come–
as infrequent and as glittering gold as a gilded butterfly–
those untouched corners chase them off again
hurry hurried never ending
hungry like the wolf, as they
say.
oh, to be golden and winged, a creature gliding on currants made
by the breath of others!
domesticity killed the cat
the bear,
the lady in waiting,
but
the butterfly waits, breathless, inhaling
a parasitic lover,
but golden, aloft, spotlit
nevertheless.
