Write a household poem
This poem has its own house, a hundred closets where the mismatched towels go, one cupboard where the dishes rattle and chip because a train loses its track about 50…
The day has no itemized list but it must be completed
Lacking heat, I line my ribs with decorative votives, light them, and forget to say a prayer. A service of lips reading words that slide away like the difference between…
List of my lost body parts, some found
Tongue. Found balled up in an inside-out pant leg while pulling laundry out of the dryer. Slightly felted. No longer fits quite right. Manufacturer discontinued the original model and has…
Who wants to hear your dreams?
Joni's looking at both sides of the clouds, and I wonder what could make me feel like I'm not walking on a marble. I'm hidden under the swirls of smoke…
My song, to me, the way I need it sung
Dear woman, love your belly. Wrap yourself in handwoven dresses; let starwhispers linger in your ears. Don't dismiss your wisdom just because it's incomplete. You learned how to tend your…
New memories for dark fields
Our family arrives in the field after dark. Though it isn't really dark—a streetlight illuminates the alley, the sun hasn't quite released the horizon. My children are giddy with invisibility.…
Letter to an old friend (who might contain my younger self)
Dearheart, you're not the person I walked with. It isn't you in this blurred polaroid. Remember: I learned your lips one evening, only that one. How did you become yarn…
You do not need to explain your absences
Sometimes I don't know where I am. I don't know how to describe what I'm doing, the company I'm in. My surroundings don't want to be encased in language. Roots…
I am not one thing. I can only be one thing at a time.
My first month off work didn’t have as much writing as I'd hoped. My time seemed to get nibbled by mother things: dealing with school, appointments, the 24-hour care of…
Not all odes are love poems
It's too simple to say you are a candy I've never tasted. You ask me to go to the circus with you. I buy peanuts. Neither of us enjoy eating…