Turning Cartwheels

Consider
struggling into your mother’s pocketbook.
Invisible doll.
Yeah.
Cooking the witch,
white linen
and Hell bent?
Swim on your voyage
like a salmon,
but leave a light on
to find your way back.
Across the room
the hypnotist works his trance.
I am turning cartwheels.
The twelfth fairy.
A burgundy
religion
of sorts.
Inside,
I am like the wind
blowing and blowing
without direction.
How dark it is becoming.
Soon I will be in your bed
drinking from your cup.
A princess
painted in kisses and anger.
An insomniac listening to the clock
waiting for the unfortunate whole.
You say no weather reports.
No Sofa Blues.
No booze
waiting in neat rows.
We took our colors
and painted with them.
Green for the forest.
Red for the bed.
Each twig snapped
for the mice
under the blanket.
On Saturday,
I will crawl into the cupboard.

Too Old For Comfort

The couple that came to look at the house today
were too old to live here.
I could see that after a few seconds of meeting them.
Why their broker brought them here is a mystery.
The old man could never make it down the hill
with the trash can
and neither would be able to navigate the curve
of the driveway.
Didn’t they know my house was on a hill?
And over an acre?
I can just imagine what they must have thought
when they saw all that grass to cut.
He must have just scratched his head,
pulled his hat down lower
and shook his head, ‘no’.
And she must have looked out the windows
to the mailbox at the foot of the drive
and feared she would never be able to get her Social Security check again
without bypass surgery.
Still,
she told me how much she liked the house and
for a few brief hours I thought maybe there was hope.
Maybe the original tile bathrooms appealed to their nostalgia
or maybe the wood paneled den gave him visions of Sunday mornings
reading the paper by the fire with his slippers and pipe.
But it wasn’t to be.
The agent sent the feedback sheet saying they, “weren’t interested.”
So for now,
it is back to reality.
My perfectly clean home must wait,
along with my desires.

This One And That One

I think about why
some of them
are still available.
This one’s feet are too big.
That one has a funny nose.
That one won’t be big enough.
This one sheds too much.
That one isn’t cute enough.
This one doesn’t know how to “sit”
or “stand” or “roll over”
when told.
This one looks mean
because he has small eyes.
That one has too big of a head for his body.
This one likes to chew shoes.
That one smells funny and has bad breath.
This one is really timid
and stays away from human touch.
That one doesn’t know how to fetch.
Or thinks gardens are for digging.
All I know is
This one and That one like their belly rubbed.
And This one and That one
deserve love,
no matter how ugly,
stinky, lazy, stupid or lame.
If I could,
I would take all of them home
with me,
This one and That one.

Tamed Kitty

Woke up tired.
I don’t think I fell asleep until 2a.m.
even though I got in bed around 11p.m.
I think it’s those weird Chinese vitamins I’m taking.
They keep me up at night.
So this morning,
because I was so tired,
I didn’t get up at 6a.m. and check the substitute phone line
to see what jobs they had for the day,
and by the time I did get up,
around 7:20a.m.
there was nothing available.
It seems everyone has the same idea as me,
to work this week since you only have to work five days (instead of the usual ten) to qualify for the $100 bonus.
The only problem is,
when a job comes up,
rather than just grab it and take it,
I hesitate.
First, I mapquest it to see how far away it is
and then I look on my list
to see if it is one of the “scary” schools
that pays an additional twenty dollars
to any sub brave enough to sign up for it.
Then after I think about it for about three minutes and am ready to press the accept button,
the job is gone.
It’s happened two days in a row now.
I guess I lack that killer instinct or else I’m just not desperate enough.
I’m not willing to take anything,
just to make $100 for the day.
I feel like one of those lion cubs
who was taken from the wild and raised in captivity by pacifists in a commune.
My killer instinct, my ability to react, is gone.
When I see meat dangling in front of me on a string,
I don’t just reach out and grab it.
I look at it,
and then I play with it, and then I think about it,
and then by the time I actually decide I want it,
some other hungry mother fucker of a lion
has grabbed it and run off with it.
Tomorrow, I swear I am waking up early
and I am grabbing the first job I see.
(as long as it’s not in Antioch).

Dark Water

Purple pansies.
The ant is sleeping
in dark water.
Spring,
once buried in the South
now sings
tulips
and pies.
O,
what beauty
beneath the clouds.
I walk barefoot
picking up thorns and twigs
with my toes,
like a lost wood nymph
longing for a field of bluebonnets
to lie in.
Be still
and listen.
All of nature is here
waiting
to give itself
to you.

In The Cold Dark Mud

When I buried him
almost two years ago,
I forgot it was his bones that had stopped moving,
his heart that had ceased to beat,
his eyes that were black as empty nut hulls.
I forgot that I could go on a walk
and listen to the silence.
I forgot the beauty of mornings
and drives in the country.
I forgot the excitement of putting my head out the window
and sucking in the wind
as if it were for the first time.
I forgot the child-like wonderment of smells:
Pinecones and roses.
Honeysuckle and mint.
I forgot how to lie on my back
and let the sun bake warmth in to me.
For two years now,
I have been in that cardboard box with him,
buried alive,
struggling to find my way
in the cold
dark
mud.

Gone With The 'O'

I broke my ‘o’.
It happened last night
when the ‘o’ key on my computer
started acting weird,
like it was stuck.
I had to hit it harder than every other key
to get it to work and my wrist was getting carpal tunnel syndrome
trying to make words.
I decided I would try and fix it.
I thought if I could pry the key off I could look underneath
to see what was wrong.
It came off easy enough
but now I can’t get it back on.
I felt a wave of horror come over me just
like the time I cut off part of my eyebrows as a kid.
Or the time I got gum stuck in my hair.
Or the time I lost my baby tooth
down the drain trying to rinse it off for the Tooth Fairy.
What had I done?
I called the Apple store and told them what happened
and the kid laughed at me.
Yeah, snickered.
I couldn’t believe it.
He said I’ll have to come in for a technical appointment now
and then he said something about he hoped I didn’t break my clasp
or clip or something like that.
I hung up even more panicked than before.
Now there’s a hard plastic nipple staring at me where my smooth ‘o’ used to be.
And every time I touch it
it’s feels like I’m falling into a hole.
I miss my ‘o’.
You never know how important an ‘o’ is
until it’s gone.

Texas in April

There is so much to be grateful
for in this life:
The sun coming out this afternoon,
warming the grass.
The little black-headed bird
grasping the wooden fence
outside my window.
The people in my life who
have helped me and saved me.
The taste of fresh kale
and roasted cauliflower.
The redbud tree’s pink blossoms.
The feel of hot water on my back.
Longer days.
Spring.
The red cardinals’ mating dance.
The sound of my own heart beating.
The freedom to walk
and run
and skip
and jump.
Making love Sunday morning.
The New York Times in my bed.
The fluffy tail of the brown squirrel.
The way we can begin again
in an instant.
Texas in April.

Unleashed

Could I have a piece of
pie?
You know the kind -
Cherry red
or peach
Georgia Southern Baptist.
Sweet
and hot.
The crust a tender flaky
only for my eyes.
The curious girl stalks mushrooms
in her backyard
and never asks for more.
Not me,
I am a dream,
a target,
laughing in the hour of ghosts.
I want in.
I want the magical nightgown,
the human puppy,
strange
hands
touching
me
in
the
beans.
A pink dress
of magnolias
I can scatter at weddings.
Branches of blue
and purple
and polished chords.
I will not wait for the child
I never had.
I will inherit darkness
and daisies
and I will roll in both
unleashed.

Let It Pass

All week I have been sick.
It started last Friday in Denver
after I ate at this Indian restaurant my sister said was good.
Later that night I was nauseous.
By Monday,
I couldn’t eat much of anything
and by Wednesday everything I’d eaten
for what seemed like the past three months,
was pouring out of me faster
than you could say the word
“projectile.”
Now I have had stomach pains
so strong I have been unable to sleep.
Last night,
when I was writhing in bed for hours,
I was sure I had discovered what labor must feel like.
To combat the effects of whatever this is I have,
I have resorted to a variety of tools:
heating pads and hot water bottles,
Sprite,
apple juice,
white rice,
saltine crackers
Gatorade,
and even swallowing half a glass of baking soda.
None of it has helped much.
So this morning
I called the doctor
thinking I must have some sort of bacterial food poisoning.
I was prepared to go in,
and face the litany of blood tests and stool samples,
when the receptionist
told me there is a wicked stomach flu going around
and there is nothing that can be done for it except
to “let is pass.”
Easy for her to say.

Something's Coming

I can see it in the grey of the skies
and hear it in the robin’s call.
It is in the wind
blowing
the leaves back and forth without direction.
It is on the wings
of the buzzard
who sits on top of the metal highway light
like a lookout in a bank heist.
It is in the air,
moist with the future,
and in the slamming of my backdoor.
It is in the moment,
the hour
before
the grass turns green
and the water flows.
It is underneath the covers,
and in the rabbit hole,
persistent as a dog in search
of his buried bone.
Yes,
something’s coming.
Better shut the windows
and pull the curtains tight.

Listening For Blood

This isn’t the first time
I have sat
with my head
in my hands
waiting for words to come.
While others dine on Dim Sum,
my diet is consonants and vowels.
Each one more delicious
than the next.
Each one a titillating proposition.
It is like that with writers.
We can not help ourselves.
Our world is internal.
A zeroing in on the heartbeat,
a listening for the blood to flow.
We live for the sentence.
The ending.
The beginning.
And what comes in between
is heartache
and unbelievable
pleasure.
It’s a lonely world,
one that I would never trade for
a “normal” existence.