L U M I N A * N O S T R I

Rosemerry Wahtolha Trommer once told me if it’s true, the opposite is also true. That inspired me to try this take on Mary Oliver’s The Journey. Enjoy! THE STAND STILL Everyday you really don’t know what you have to do and you stop, though the voices within you keep whispering their good advice— Though part of the house ceases to tremble, and you feel the new-nothing tug at your spine. “Break your death!” Each voice exhales. But you don’t move. You don’t know what you have to do though the water seeps with all its twinkling toes through the very foundations. Though their joy is delighting. It is not yet late enough, and a calm day and your chair, empty of fallen leaves and sand. And leap by leap, as you bring your voices in closer, the stars soften their burn over the cloudless clear and there is the oldest voice there ever was which impulsively you mistake as your own that abandons you as you stay further and further away from the world, uncertain about doing the many things you could...

I have not felt this good in what feels like forever and I’m afraid to go to sleep because what if it’s gone when I awake?

 Tomato, Tomato At some point I decided if it wasn’t you, it could be anyone. All mugs work the same after your favorite breaks.

  Tree-ache. These two bend toward each other then split. Their parts never meet. Not at the root, not at the feet. Limb to limb, they remain just out of reach.  But they bend toward each other, two adams apples that almost kiss. I could love you if  this one whispers. I could do that if  that one pines. What is it between them?  Race? Politics? Would-be  in laws? The number 3? I could do that if  that one whispers. I could love you if  this one pines. Air. Air builds narrows like these. Come on, we all know Air’s  greatest pleasure… to rush

Horseman I smell your soldered scent on my dark blue v neck sweater. I know you are gone for good. Which boots are right for a walk through the mud? Do I stop at the top of the hill? March on to bottom of the glen?  Where can I sit and feel winsome as a younger me? How I long to stare at a horizon as if you haven’t already galloped through. 

 Not All Sundays Are Created Equal Wake up early to a world renewed. See your children’s teethy smiles, Disneyland on their horizon A photography talk on magic realism on yours. Spend your mistake with a psychic and talk about everyone but yourself. Rinse off in the Pacific, let its cold salt shock you three times through. Sleep unprotected beneath  the sand spattered sun. Sing your afternoon away  with stranger friends. Dine with your complicated family and come home with one author tried and true, and one author brand spanking new. Smash as many hearts as you can stand on the ‘Gram And sit on your back porch as the stars poke through the lies of pooling blue skies, endless. 

  One Poem To Rule Them All I am still learning to sit topless on my back  porch. The sun would ripen my used breasts like two misshapen plums. Chen Chen and Meg already know how to keep their neighbor’s secrets. The boxed wine. The infrequent visits from a daughter.   I am still learning to keep mine. What I really think about hummingbirds, the unspeakable afternoons, swirls of red paint and smoke. Even if, like Sedna, one were to lop off all my fingers, I’d keep my top held down while I ceased to struggle, while I sank. Tell me more about the music of your youth, how it feels  to know no one is coming to get you. Don’t you remember? I said I’m still learning. I hold my palms behind the backs of my ears, catching  whatever reverberates in the wind.

 Summer’s Callin’ The day I picked up your little book of poems A lady at the County-Clerk’s called me Summer On accident, first time in my life Someone’s Looked at this face and thought Yeah, that’s it. So imagine my surprise When I read the table of contents aloud, how Summer was a repeating title. There’s mention made of her In all the parts. I asked the fairy’s What I needed to ponder While I cleaned my house  instead. Like a mean bitch Princess of Autumn snickered “Study.” So study I will or I won’t, while I pick up everything Whether I find the energy drink or not, and their gone, and your collection of little poems is here.

An homage to Edith, a collection of poems written by Meg Freitag   Goddamnit I finished  Edith ,  and now all that’s left  is this an unwritten list of all the words  Meg   Freitag  knows and I don’t.  Like what’s Friday in German  according to a guy the wrong age to work at the used bookstore where you weren’t.  You’d never be!  I’ve been used by this book, Edith . You’ve undressed all parts of me. I am just another small, round fruit  you’ve picked at, entirely.  When I say bird feathers stick in the mouth, what I mean is from now on what I    put on the page Edith , is puppy dog shit, You know? It’s got you baked in and there is no going back. 

The man you've been seeing- six months in- brings you breakfast in bed.  Bacon, eggs, french toast with powder sugar strawberries and orange juice. And coffee Don't forget the coffee. You don't notice the foil on the pan,  or the tension between his brows as he eyes the bed-comforter. All you see is bounty--sugary,  starchy, bounty with a dash of protein,  topped off  with all that tart. You think this is love like you read about in children's books. The kind where even before  you wake up, there is so much   to say thank you for.  So when he proposes, five days  later, on a mountain top, what can you say?  Who would say no to a meal like that? 

 Anger She’s a sly dog, but no fox. Anger’s got no burrow, no furtive fleeting feet. She helps herself to treats that lay in wait for finer company then cutely covers her warm, wet nose with goofy-clawed paws, as if to say Oh dear. I just couldn’t help myself.

 Baptism In these parts the power goes out with out warning often enough,  we’re no longer alarmed. The kids and I just look at each other, shrug, and shove off  to our collective imagination isles. Me? My notebook. Them? Everything else. Today though called for something sweet something to ease the hankering anticipation of something godly. Brown buttresses over green frocked Episcopalian priests Permission to say Jesus Christ and mean it. We sit beside the salted water Throw rocks against rocks, see if we have what it takes to break them. Faith and hope and Emily Dickinson   later, someone was baptized, but it wasn’t us. 

 A List Of Things To Try Before Smoking A Cigarette 1. Meditate 2. Do a headstand 3. Draw something. Anything.  4. Write something you can then light on fire (wishes, burn letters, whatever.)  5. Take a shower. (No one want's to smell like cigarettes after a shower) 6. Sign up for an exercise class. (The thought of moving will make you want to protect your lungs). 7. Put on a face mask. (It'll remind you that skin ages on it's own fast enough, no need to encourage it.)  8. Brush your teeth (similar to five, but not quite as dramatic.) 9. Go for a quick walk.  10. Change your bedsheets. (Even more effective than 5 and 8 put together. Think of all the work!)  11. Write a good things list (David Sedaris calls this a "Reasons to Live List." Tomato, tomato.)  12. Read things (that do not mention cigarettes).  13. Pick a chore and do it start to finish. Better yet, write all the chores you have to do, put them in a hat, and then pick one. Chore Roulette...

If You are Going To Marry A Poet Be careful about the day you choose.  Dooms Day, for example, may be the day which  allows your brother and her brother in law, and the family from Canada to be there, even though you gave far too little notice. But in year seven, when she's tired of breeding, of changing, of boundary setting and shifting, a poet will look at that day and go "See? We were doomed from the start." 

A Small Gift From Our Neighbor Shameful, really,  how I can't remember the first time.  I think it was chocolate- I know  it was delivered in a tight, clear, pyrex with a purple lid. It always is.  The children raise squeals like piglets at the trough, and I rummage the cabinets for the silver moon-shaped scooper. Our neighbor's small gift? Homemade heaven  on our tongues. 

 Far From Perfect In another life, I was a Latin teacher, and I have a sneaking suspicion I was the bad kind. For example, I'd  tell the students perficio was Latin for I thoroughly do, to show off, a little, but also to pontificate about my theories on life and meaning.  Like a math teacher, I'd scribble down my proof-  each red principle part with it's English meaning in green. Then, woosh! I'd spin toward them with a ring-master's enthusiasm,  after having underlined the past participle, and offer a little dramatic pause.   "So you see, class," I'd say, as if presenting the verb’s final trick to a room full of…well, teens whose hormones raced due to anything but Latin, whose eyes darted to the clocks  hidden in their pockets, tucked under their desks,  sometimes boldly behind their books, "you never want to be perfect- because having been thoroughly done ,  if you really think about it, would have to mean, obviously,  that you'...

 Souvenirs I am a things person. Give me an experience,  wide and vast, porous and leaking,  and I'll bottle it up. Shape it  like a little boat. I'll go find  a mold to withstand that-one-time's heat.  I want to put things on the shelf,  heavy in my palm, where I might pick them up from time to time and feel the wind of it, whatever it was, blowing through my hair. Wouldn't you rather something textured, sized, with weight?  A bobcat figurine or a coin.  So much heavier that unreliable collage of Memory— the one that shows up  when she wants to, the one who makes an Irish exit.

Our House (Draft 2. Final draft on substack ) A house starts as four lines, a red, crayon, box shape with my five-year-old hand's signature stroke. Three decades later, my eldest daughter would switch to green to draw her triangle top. Her younger brother will add twin teal smaller squares, will divide them into fourths.  My mother's eyes should recognize how these windows represent the promise  of known depth, but they don't. The only thing I know? My youngest, a daughter, will not be satisfied. Not until, passing that five-year-old-threshold, she scrawls pink and purple flowerbeds on the right side, on the left. In time, for all of us, the shapes move, the colors layer. Our crayon melts into something we, a kaleidscopic household, can't quite control. Something neither my nose nor their father's can quite smell. Sure, whether here or there, time will be measured in dollars and cents.  Perhaps, like on our broken marriage license, each name on the le...

 I Madonnari We sprinkle in our mira mama between isles of chalk artists.  On hands and knees they make  from pure black top art happen.  Some work alone, others in teams.  My children's tongues teem with questions.  "Who is that?" "Jesus's mom." "Did you see?!" "A Eurasian owl!" "They always hide the best ones!" (Crane Country Day School, my oldest gave that title to you.) We go early to the festival, because my sister says we will avoid the crowds. From the blacktop of their  childhood may they say, rather, "We'd go early to the festival to talk to all the artists."

  Melancholic Do jacaranda blooms count their Mays the way we do  our anniversaries? Not for birthdays.  Not for weddings. The other ones we all hold onto in silence. Here, the day I unraveled, uncoiled every last hinge. Here, the day I pulled up the roots of our marriage. Here, the day I lost the baby. Here, the day I got what I wanted.  The jacaranda just bloom- they count nothing. Not even the number of ways their purple blossoms punctuate the gray of our Mays.