For Diane Who will mourn the singular woman? The Big She with no he, no genealogical pendants dangling from her family line? They say “Your art won’t warm your bed at night. Your professional roles won’t cool your brow when sick.” Don’t you worry, dear, even in the dead of night. We will! I assure you, we will. We, sisters in arms, ten thousand strong who’ve basked in your moonlit reflection, cried from the rivers of emotion you had the courage to carve, and have born witness to you, dream: A singular woman, fully expressed.
I Can’t Let You… My right calf muscle Has got a flower shaped Bruise from a bite my daughter gave me that one time I said no, and it was hot, and she was hungry. It matches the one on my right bicep that I got in terror. You see, my son hates needles and he required a shot. “Do they ever mind?” My father asks, reminding me again, how his father used the belt. “I’m sorry that happened to you.” Is all I can think to say My flower-bruises blooming more beautifully underneath my skin.
Family Vacation You whine, You scream hit, kick, bite. You are Agony. People gawk. Uncle yells the way Dad might if he were here. Hold on— more than this — to how when we march Meadow we, sundripped, reach Stream, You, with the soft of your six year old hand touch the sharp smell of Pine, And you look up. You are Wonder
Can you believe it?! (A poem to sing out the absolute brilliance of All Fours. Page 36, and as expected, Miranda July’s work is impossibly good.) Miranda July has me thinking about time, this forward motion nonsense. As if anyone honest believes in erasure of their past! Her character says something like she’s equidistant from twenty five to sixty five, but twenty five is “moot” because “time moves forward, not backward.” I walk into the magic wood of that sentence, poke around a bit, touch things and smell them too. I protest. Right now, I teem with as much life as I did at negative one! I think that spark is immutable as I look up toward the idea of myself at seventy nine. I am not equidistant from these discrete values! My ego is. And that’s when I realize Miranda is telling me we all are the entity that stretches across them both, who does best when all the so called points in life move together in rhythm, in t...
Some Saturday Late in Soccer Season What little memory might I distill from today? Giggles before seven am with Baby, Cuz the game’s at eight (how else wake up)? My son’s little arms hoisted over head, yelling “GOAL!”? The tearful wails of my eldest justly crying “It’s not fair! I want mommy!”? Or my mother wearing a black and orange boa, a witch hat with the tag still on? Today I’ll choose the riddles I overheard in the Halloween House The one we dreamed up out of tents.