When I was a little thing, you were always in the backyard,
after dark you would chase me up to the house.
In a few years, you found your way inside
to stand by my bed at night, until my sister’s finger-puppets,
her shadow play, translated into dreams.
At age eleven, I turned to my father to ask –
am I the Devil? – by then you were truly
inside. I prayed to God because of you.
For twenty more years I would do things
I hated, because I should, to be good,
because of you.
You pressed the juice from my eyes;
the ones that used to turn men into syrup,
women into comedians.
The years roll by; you are still
hot on my heels and I am so afraid to look behind me,
I have built the muscles of my back to fight you
I am a grown-up now so I play with my own shadows
to throw you off, like my sister did when we were kids.
But someday, I will turn around. Thirty years is
long enough, I think to myself. It’ll be one gutsy half-pirouette,
but I will finally behold you, and your face will be pretty like mine,
with those same eyes
I thought I had lost.
Buttermilk petals, butter yellow petals, and there is time this morning
to write about these buttercream petals. I left no invocation of yellow unturned;
I combed the metaphors out of Spring; I rolled away the stone but His body
was still there; Mustard is a blister I burst for the honey inside –
I deflowered my own childhood imagination in the process.
Every spoken word was chalk.
I began to hate the shimmy of cream
outside the window whenever the wind picked up
Those little kamikaze
petals,
though it was never
really about them, or butter, or
Spring. I just used you, I said.
Your sensuality turned me on.
I wanted something I have never tasted before to fill my mouth
such tiny pools of Sarin, mistaken
for rainwater collecting in each
buttermilk pistil,
were they to find my tongue – what would they make me say?
In the years I learned
to love, my shirt was
low my skirt short
my shoes
tall.
There was no more room
left here, in those years.
Nobody seemed to get this.
We all looked for jobs,
there weren’t any
roles to fill.
In the years I learned
to love, I ditched my sweetheart
for a hundred thousand
different men.
Those were the days of drinking,
to unremembered things
that happened to us
when we were
smaller than
a barstool.
In the years I learned
to love, I felt nothing
but a fibrotic clock
inside my chest.
It was an age of righteous causes
and everyone had them:
water, food, and air. Even
the laundromats and bill-
boards would pontificate.
All of us, moonlighting
as diehards, rectifying
our own history,
catching the
swindlers.
Back when the hubbub
was a pacifier that we
sucked at gulping
and greedy until
we learned.
In the years I learned
to love, I hated
easiest of all.
original artwork by kaitlin deasy
I keep the words small
to see if they will stay –
the words, I mean, and you
and me, stay put and wait –
for the magic hat
If they are small
there’s more room for you
to stop by, we can visit awhile
the hat is en route
please don’t leave
it has no bottom
it can hold whatever you want
tell me, how’s your wife and
how’s your daughter
I stay small, keep
out of the way –
there are surely more to come
for the hat to be magic
I need you here
have you seen it before?
no, neither have I, just
wait till you see what comes out
when I reach my hand in –
please don’t leave
so you don’t believe in magic,
no, neither do I, but when I heard
it can be whatever you want,
I thought I will give this hat a try,
only now I can’t find my hand
please don’t leave
for g
her body is a placeholder for woman –
some century old reservoir, captured on film
time and again, a favorite for devotees –
all that blue taffeta, plicate from levee to levee
beaks ply the ruche to their sky, stitch by stitch –
revising the noun she is in.
1882, Étienne-Jules Marey
She held a newborn & still no fever swelled her belly; she obtained the exhaustive allegiance of a man, first from his body, then deeper from an umbra, with a grit; she waited for love to conclude womanhood –
so she overfed on glass lakes and silence like a glut, until she learned to grow her own food & not rely on the moonlight to fill her, by trees on the mountain numbering in the thousands to stop objective thought, or by children and men building nests within her –
inside were the gods with witching sticks, she said, after years of straying towards lyric of lush depths & thirsty heights; she enunciates her swollen heart with a concentrate rarified by hearing ears so that all the girls to follow might know yet another way of burning.
> photo courtesy of thewmking.wordpress.com
He left her for the thought of them
in the suburbs, delivering pizza,
fried fish skin dinners, coffee,
piss-drunk poverty.
He left her for Europe,
to carry the torch of his forefathers
who governed by dialectics into
supremacy, into dominance of land,
separation of class, warring of peoples.
And she stays with their spore print:
barefoot on the linoleum floor, their sidewalk,
his drunk pissing wall
plastered with advertisements
at the edge of the park where they would
roll around until the sun broke or clouds cracked.
All these remain, left to deposit their dust daily;
while she capitulates to the gale from this ocean,
or rain from her side of the split sky,
to carry the fruit away.
photo by teresa gierzynska
thickened hands wary to grab more
pleasures they cannot own
eyelids wrinkled after privation in the flat country
no glimpse of those depths or shapes written about
by the gibbous moon,
just a worn locomotive body In flight
ears emptied on the pillow at night
machinery in the mouth, that
for every orphaned abstraction
one recumbent field waits
with the left-handed sun designing the sky,
no hours no revelations
only angled bones
learned to rest.
(photo credit to Collin Morrow)
Mountain from the window
Mountain brings rain to my pillow with unseen hands
Mountain in your back, mountain in your away
Mountain in my mouth
Mountain in a word, more mountains after
Mountain in the forces that shake and panic
Mountain in stillness
Mountain where we drop
Mountain where the high earth flips
Mountain where the moon sits
Mountain at night where we keep watch and want
Mountain, listen for water,
Mountain, be hungry.
original photography by kaitlin deasy
Paint Chip Poetry is a project inspired by an artist colleague who suggested using the paint samples found in hardware stores to inspire mini-poems, beginnings of fiction, haikus, surrealism, fantasy, word-play.
The rose orchid kissed with fuzzy crumbs of cherry pollen.
Fairy beach inside the pink, blushes.
We danced like love junkies to the biscuit song until the apricot blush of dawn.
Poor beached beluga, all shades of mushroom and scruffier than a pirate on flat seas.
Moth flosses its wings in butter, flies with the gleam of a copper coin burnished by the fountain water.
You were a defeated statue, lying on its side. Burnt words from your elegant mouth and I knew I had lost. She had already fortified your heart and lit the ceremonial flame.
Dutch door opens to a tulip shaped bell. The ring brings a woman wearing dear, wooden shoes and painted cheeks to the counter. Petite camellia cakes served under a snow of lavender sorbet. Her boutique has a flair for whimsy.
Midnight is a patchwork quilt of plum and grape and a lullaby of darling darling darling
Her, him, red cayenne.
Have you ever seen wind tango with sand? We stood on a jagged ochre Mesa and the elements were in motion with the colors, and the poetry found its way to our hair and into our socks.
We went to New Beginnings Island once and never found it again. People say it was just our imagination.
original photography by kaitlin deasy
petals and bees 