petals and bees

There was a fire at the ridge top, one year of miles away from our home but we didn’t know how close or how far away when the smoke snuffed out the light. Knowing distance from closeness without air, light is delirium. I forgot how you smell, how you taste I lost my eighth sense the fumes swallowed it we shared one amygdala two blind moles smoked out from the underground. The hill from our window was gone and with it the way we used to look at it together. Sooty smoke turned us into ghosts and Springtime became Halloween I really thought these costumes could fall off, I thought we would be naked again I willed desire to come from nothing and yet, nothing. So, you went for defensible space your vows turned to sweat turned to salt, my lot in life became Lot’s wife with ghoulish unsleeping eyes clearing a fire line and I went towards the flames like a villain, playing a hero, but really a young girl, with no plan and no map home only my bared body to hold back harm. I am no different than a tree, burning with a force much greater. You are no different than a heart, bleeding out. And when I find my way back a thermal burn is a moral injury ripened into poetry, into heat our heart can hear into a sear our tongues can taste, when I find my way back the bed will be made your hair will smell like a campfire, your hair will smell like a campfire. When I find my way back, we can watch the sun and the moon kiss through the window. When I find my way back, we can watch them kiss, together.

for phx

You have no spiral strand of me in you

but do I feel real to you? baby boy,

I make me a mother when I wake up 

to you frightened or fevered

I make me a mother when you don’t get what you want

I make me a mother when I don’t help you

then watch you find out how 

I make me a mother when I go back to see you born into the world

when I spell safety with my hands on your small head before words, before harm. 

A poem is a movie to pretend I was there, right here, 9 years later, sweet child with busy brown eyes

I make me a mother when I brushed your acorn teeth 

I make me a mother conjuring bedtime stories out of the day’s rubble 

I make me a mother with or without your first step

I make me a mother now that my heart is no longer my own

You make me a mother when you tell me about your wanting

You make me a mother.

You make me a mother when you took my hand and said: mother

You make me a mother and you can take it away

I make me a mother; I make me stay.

It is the heat of summer. It is how your shadow slopes because Sun is working hard, because Earth won’t go with her the way she wants and your shadow bends towards the hill like a hall of mirrors, go get lost, let your tires run over the oil slick mirage on the road. The beaten path is tipsy, what it would give for another cold one and a busty woman with knee sweat singing the blues.

Say something new about summer. I dare you. Eat a blackberry and try to not remember feral hot nights capturing the flag and high pitched squeals, your bare feet baked by the asphalt and blemished by gravel. Put an image on top of another one, find out if it makes a poem. Count our summers together, lose track. Look up at the ice cream moon. Still melting, you and I, well into the night. 

It is summer, your shadow is ten feet tall stretched by light and peppered by insects beating the heat, humming for someone to suck on. It is your sweet, sticky belly with skin crisping under the lamp in the sky. A peach is yellow and fleecy, a river is deep and cool. Your shadow will always be in front and as light as a water skeeter, never tired of another year going by. It is july holding hands with august, it is drawing hearts in the dust. 

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Blanket can be unthreaded and used as floss
or to tie back hair so it is out of their eyes. Blanket
is a splint, a towel, pillow. Blanket is quiet when nothing 
else is. Blanket is a noose, a blanket keeps out the cold.
Blanket will hang a man whose feet don't reach the floor. 
We gulp all the air to the count of thirty and we gulp 
some more. The neighbor knocking at his cell with no sense
of rhythm. Blanket
is a curfew. We keep eating air from twenty-nine
to thirty but he's so far down joy rd and
Deep summer morning
rolls its fog blanket up to his neck, where laurel tree is peppery
and crushed pennyroyal is sweet, where the wet
rocks can be blankets if you are unfocused enough and
we cover his blank face then call for an end.
Blanket is for resting, to keep out the cold. 

for Joan Didion

I love rivers that run.
I imagine I have feet
to leave swift prints
into granite
and forceful enough
to disrupt a continent
of grids, of acreage
veins that can hold
snow all the way
into summer, a body
that can take everything
and hold onto nothing,
a body with skin
so thin you see all
the way.

we choose a flower

by the petal of its silk 

arrests my tongue at the hammer 

of a gun its grip a waist 

tender as Lisianthus this

death is lip in this lip

I’ll sip from the muzzle

one bullet for every beat

of every hour I’d blast 

a breast at the barrel

lock our eyes in a safety

so stemless so thin this satin

feral feeling lower your arm 

where I can flower, I follow 

and the petals too we hit

the dirt cold sole to sole

heart full of holes each

one glance wide ~

Bless the chimes brought back from Hawaii bless these arms spun to honey bless the sign that blesses the home blessed be those who live alone bless these twelve breaths per minute bless this bed with no one in it bless the shouting neighbor girl and bless her mom for holding still

Bless that summer sound that sliding screen and bless our fence we share its lean bless the time it takes to grow bless you especially when you don’t know bless our floor-plans they look the same bless you but I don’t know your name

Bless your bright white dolomite and bless the moon for swallowing it bless the hound that howls at night bless the whistle bless the bite bless your hand that waves at me bless your gold mop cypress hedge bless your palm its scalloped edge

Bless the weeds that grow too tall bless us not returning the call bless your plans though some will fold bless the mildew bless the mold bless the doing that takes too long bless the years that turn to song 

Bless us forgetting bless us wrong