Sad Wife

I grew melancholy after my first marriage, too.
But I attributed that to post grad school blues
and funerals
and identity crises.

It got us into therapy, which was good.
(I wonder how much money we spent
sitting on couches over the next fifteen years.

Clearly not enough.)

That first time, I sat in the rented house
on Fourth Street in Columbus
and sewed curtains
and watched reruns of Mary Tyler Moore
and cried.

I wonder if that scared you.

That first therapist wanted to make your childhood
into something sinister
but there was nothing lurking behind the facade.
The Myers-Briggs was helpful, though.
Things made more sense after that.

And then fifteen years passed
and we were someone’s parents
with mortgages and debt
and I stopped wearing all five earrings all at once.

And the melancholy must have been lost in New Orleans
or packed away with all the baby things
or forgotten in the apartment on Williams Fork Trail.

After that, sorrow always had a cause
and the effects were always tragically obvious.
Not this mysterious weight that has no name
and sits behind my breasts
frightening you, brave husband number two.

You who wake up joyful every day,
who has such utter faith in me
and proffers all your love without a string in sight.

How impossible I am, how wrong to live
in my magical life
and yet confess this gentle sadness in my eyes
and stuffed up in my throat.

I have no explanation.

except divorce and death and fear
and loss and love and lack of follow-through
and laziness and self-esteem
and loneliness and fraud and grief.

But then so do you, too,
yet you are fine to jump right up each day
and celebrate the sunshine or the storm.

My grandmother was mad.

Perhaps this is her legacy to me
and I should simply pin it to my collar
like a brooch
and wear it without fear or shame or guilt.

I think that I would rather ride a bike.
Or walk along the boardwalk holding hands.

I’d rather sleep in late or read a book
or make sweet love to you or draw a bath.

I’d rather bake a pie or make a cake
or take you out to lunch and sit outside
watching the people walking through their lives
on their way to the therapist’s or their OB appointments.

Watching the rotating blooms of flowers on the mall
and the various hats on the cart by the courthouse.

Watching the sad girls and the gentle boys
loving each other the best that they can.

Trumpet Voluntary

within the cupboard
of my chest
a trumpet lives
the herald of my song
and master of my breast
celebratory marches
together or alone

t’was strange inside
the child
stranger still
inside the crone
but heavenly sounds
of God’s own laughter
when it would play
me home

the complete package

papers filed
novel simmering
house painted
lawn boy mowing
furniture polished
flowers blooming
wardrobe revamped
widow waiting

primary source

you can do all the reading you want
but until they write the book on me

you are wasting your fucking time

there isn’t an expert sitting on my head
taking notes and faxing them
to the local library for your edification

so that you can more quickly reconcile
your dick’s social life
with the product of its fidelities

she’s not ready and neither am I

how many assholes does it take
to spin the earth off its axis?

New Rules

no clocks in the bedroom
from now on insomnia shall go
uncontextualized by time

laundry shall be a manageable pleasure
sweet smelling and warm
completed in less than an afternoon

flowers shall adorn the home
a tribute to the seasons, to the planets
to the virgins and harlots who live here

my best fiction

the madwoman in my attic
keeps pasting poison-pen letters
to the insides of my eyeballs
halting information to the brain

and
requiring a mirror to read them
from out front

narcissistic reflection combined
with fumes
from wallpaper paste

all of which result in promises
to restrain myself
(homicidal
only in my best fiction)

On Sundays

There is no room for me next to you
you push me over slowly

You start over.

You slowly ooze over onto me throughout
the hour and I
turn and adjust and show you my back
and feel you pushing me

Your chair is not enough for you
you take mine too

Your air is not enough for you
you breathe mine too

Your song is not enough for you
you sing mine too
and leave me voiceless mouthing words
gasping for breath

and at the end you feel Renewed
Rejuvenated
Fulfilled
Affirmed

and I am coiled in a knot under
my chair (yours now)

on the floor
between the feet of the faithful.

When the pen lies...

When
the pen lies
like a dead seagull on the shores of the page
there
is nothing left to do
but head back up the beach, toward the defunct lighthouse,
noticing
the empty shells scattered on the sand.

Thanksgiving

you standing on a chair
next to me at the counter

our four arms
in synch

our four hands
on the pie crust

fork between your little fingers
pressing birds' feet around

the edges that will contain
the farm-grown pumpkin

faces of the grannies
peeking over our shoulders

like visions

in a mother-daughter
country-western duet

Wax Works

the fury I will not unleash
flows like melted wax
into the corners and crevices
of my body

like the sand candles
we made in second grade

hot paraffin

searing and casting
the shape of anger in my limbs

requiring a lifelike stillness
enacted only to protect and serve

to spare the bystander

one more breath from you...

one more breath from you
and I will exceed capacity

overfull of carbon dioxide
blown hot from across the room

leaving only hints of bruises

irresponsible id with
its sense of entitlement

hurtling through space
to lodge in my limbs

like a tugboat

ramming the dock
and knocking people
into the sea

while the crew laughs
and disembarks

looking for a vegan café
that serves wine in stemless glasses

poured from tattooed hands

glass girdle

glass girdle
woven around my
hips and through
my vertebrae

curved beneath my coccyx

attached delicately at
the tips of my pelvis

needs shattering

Homecoming

Tremendous
grief.
Galaxies spin around
inside my belly.


Pain like smeared
zebra stripes
across glass.
what am i doing here?

my ego shrinks and withers
under this
intense heat.
Fruit rots.
They do not grow and

I cannot have
been away or surely I would not feel so
desperately dead inside.

Innocent bystanders watch and dodge
the arrows so carefully
aimed to miss.
Rubber tips
and suction cups.
Impotent.

I am in the crossfire.

Shame like indigestion moves around
inside me
and rises to the
surface of my skin
like gas in water.


If I were
a sculptor
I would sculpt a woman out of lead
and I would leave
the edges rough and bulky
and I would twist it like
a grotesque helix
and I would hand it to my family and say
YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE THIS.

Then I would leave it in their house and
go away for Christmas
with a special friend I chose myself.

Philadelphia-area Premiere of "Music's Music"

Renowned composer Steven Sametz used one of my poems as the lyric for a commissioned piece for the Los Angeles Master Chorale. "Music’s Music", originally one of the poems in the "Mother Music" series, premiered in Los Angeles last February at Disney Hall as a part of a program featuring new works by contemporary American composers. It is having its Philadelphia-area premiere this weekend at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. Concert details are available on the Lehigh website.

Blue

you fell in love
and so I had to paint the room
where nine years before we laughed together at
the vitamin E that should have eased my swelling belly but
somehow landed four feet up the wall above our heads
and now the frozen wasteland on your side of the bed
has sprouted white and purple crocuses
and the spring thaw has begun

Mourning Men Who Haven't Died

incredibly
the power of your choice
leaves me eviscerated
deboned
like a naked piece of cold poultry
and it’s all just happening again
really and truly
for the very first time
as if you just came in and broke it to me
and the floor just tipped out underneath my feet
and I am reduced to nothing but viscera
no skeleton nor muscles to hold me up
no words nor voice to articulate my grief
only worthless puddles of blood and pus
seeping across the carpet in oily pools
putrid like me

Bomb Shelter

my hand explodes

and I can't reach you from over here

trapped between your infidelities

and the wall

scattered shards of cardiac muscle

decorate the bedspread

in flecks of red and blue

that seem

at first glance

like part of the floral print

but stick to my skirt

and leave a stain

that sends me to Heloise and the internet

looking for the remedy

to heal the inconvenient mess

Spoiler Alert

Do not read this poem if you have ever cheated on a pregnant woman or fallen in love with one of your married students or told your wife that you just don’t find her attractive any more and then got mad when she was hurt by your noble honesty. Or if you ever moved out of the home you shared with your wife and eight year old child and went straight to Target to buy a jumbo pack of condoms before you even thought to buy shampoo or toothpaste or a nightlight for your daughter. Or if you ever wrote a love poem at Back to School Night and then volunteered to read it aloud to your New Wife in front of your Old Wife and all the parents with whom you’d been attending Back to School Night for the past seven years.

Do not read this poem if you ever thought that carrying controlled substances across state lines was a reasonable thing to do in the name of art and religion. Or if you call illegal drugs “medicine” or getting high “journeying” in an effort to mask your adolescent attempts to create spiritual meaning around the hole in your heart. Or if you look to twenty-eight year old white men to be your shamans even though they regularly deceive their friends and speak disdainfully of their parents while sleeping with married women and justifying it in the name of enlightenment. Or if you are unable to be in a monogamous relationship without falling in love with this semester’s ingénue and then running home to tell your wife all about it in the name of radical truth and honesty.

Do not read this poem if you ever confused drug-induced intensity with courageous intimacy. Or spent a week tripping in the desert with naked strangers and then came home to condemn your wife as square because she didn’t want to do Ecstasy with you in an attempt to see the face of God and maybe save your marriage in the process. Or if your wife, by the time she asked you to leave and not come back, was so lost in her attempts to adjust her principles that she had banished all but a few tattered shreds of her original dignity and integrity. Or if by the time you left, she was left a bombed-out shell of her former self, unable to discern her own taste in throw rugs or to feel the warmth of a man’s mouth on her breast even as she looked down and saw it there.

Do not read this poem if you ever broke a poet’s heart, even if you believe you had no choice in the matter, even if it was fated to happen. Even if you loved her but didn’t know how, even if you hurt her but didn’t know how not to.

Praise Poem

for Traci

the perfume of her labor
permeates the school

subtle as air

invisible hint of love
humbly shared

lingering
before and after bells have ceased to ring

she is
the unknown variable working quietly
behind the curtain of each equation

the thinking space between the words
before the showy sentence takes the credit

a century ago
we would have named her
for her virtues

Faith
or Constance
Patience, to be sure

but here in our small moment
we turn to simpler tools
of many poets

impossible expressions of illimitable love
and blessings on the fortune of her birth

Continental Breakfast

the fruit on my plate arranges itself
around the virtuous bran muffin
and the pious hard-cooked egg:
watermelon nestles
next to cantaloupe stained by strawberries
grapes are conspicuously absent
but the requisite honeydew
occupies its watery place
on the periphery of the plate

acolytes digest
the words of the keynote speaker
while chewing and spewing
into notebooks and laptops
and I

loner in the corner

horde the pineapple
like little yellow bricks of redemption
saving its pulpy rewards until
every other morsel is consumed
and the PowerPoint presentation comes
to its impotent climax
and the speaker sits down to sign his books
and then

only then
do I allow it to traverse my tongue
and lodge firmly
between my pencil and my teeth
receiving absolution in its transubstantiation
from simple fruit
to momentary miracle

So Many Unexpected Things

Outside the window,
the snow is falling off the eaves
and crashing to the deck
in raucous heaps of springtime defiance.
The branches of the evergreens
and canes of dormant grape
bend low under its watery weight,
while the roses you arranged on the table
(the one you built,
just for this meal)
stand sentry, pink and white,
and the ache in my ribs
where your bicycle bucked me off its back
throbs, like a car stereo’s subwoofer,
muffled by traffic and steel.

The cup that holds my tea
was thrown by the first woman
who stood before an altar
and pledged her troth to you.
Not worth much in the end,
as it turned out, but odd to think
her hands caressed and coaxed
this vessel into shape,
like they once caressed and coaxed
you into her.
I am surprised when my tea
tastes better than usual.

And these strawberries on my plate,
the reddest, plumpest of the lot,
I would not normally be so greedy
as to take the ripest for myself
but no one else is here,
and no one else will eat them,
and so my motherly inclination
to choose the smaller, paler fruit
is shocked and set aside
as for once I give myself first dibs
and taste the privilege
of breaking fasts alone.

drips from the wet ends of my hair...

drips from the wet ends of my hair
feel like bold print asterisks when they explode
on the inky surface of my skin

but despite my absolution
I’m still quivering in my father’s chair
like the wrung out dishrag I’ve become
cleaning up messes and forgiving trespasses
like all patient mothers are meant to do

it occurs to me that
saplings bend and sway with the seasons
but older trees grow brittle and break
crashing down to the prairie floor
too many tire swings hung on their branches
too many curse words carved in their trunks
eventually they twist and fall

and I am growing taller every day

shift to compassion

shift to compassion


open suitcase
try on theory of relativity
find shoes to match
(desperation is so unattractive)
click

feel the ache in her body
understand (no) her pain
click slam shut

exercise compassion
(with passion)
without reason
or right
or justice
or goddamn common sense
click

so disappointed
we expected more
click

doing the best she can
seeking something she cannot name
wanting what she thinks we have
casting spells at the pity party
pathetic
click

so disappointed
wanting a vote
more maturity in a can of cheez whiz
click

shit
(back to the beginning)

shift to compassion

open suitcase
try on lobotomy
find earrings to mask
the dull ringing in both ears
click

smile through razor blades
click

spit out bits of bloody tongue
click

struggle with the stains
reach for the bleach

quit
off
out

the words pile up...

the words pile up in angry red scales
on the surface of my skin
flaking off into cups of tea
handed smilingly across white tablecloths
to the outstretched hands of simple-minded actresses

they execute tour de force auditions
ingénues doing backbends
into leading lady roles
contorting themselves into obscenities
designed to charm and delight

I am a snake in the footlights
coiling around their sequined ankles
shedding my carmine skin
leaving trails of blood and pus
daring the handler to misjudge me again

On the High Wire

balancing on tiptoe between faith and fear
I suddenly understand the need for parasols

not just to aid in fall-prevention measures
but to shield against the thoughts
that pummel down from clouds
where Worry waits

she must have played college ball
such an arm on her
hurling nuggets of nightmares
at my unprotected head
laughing when her aim is true

while I’m left gasping
trying to focus
on looking straight ahead
ignoring the fate
that will rush up to meet me
the second my footing is false

I would choose a pretty parasol
with two pink flamingoes
surrounded by red hibiscus flowers

their necks would wrap around
to form a heart

and people on the ground
would squint into the sun
and then move on
indifferent

worries don’t begin from down below

Former Lovers on Facebook

they post pictures of themselves
with their toddlers/beautiful wives/happy dogs
nothing to suggest
the horizontal hours we shared
when we were young and free

and if they don’t remember me?
and those days that shaped my knowledge of myself
were less than nothing meaningful for them?
only half-hearted glances back
at times they’d just as soon forget
and not the moments when we set the bars
by which all future lovers would be measured?

the man stretched out beside me
loose and lanky in his sleep
is neither memory nor mystery
and all I have to do is slide down next to him
to be embraced in warmth and sinew
unconcerned with histories or legacies
except to hold my face and say he’s sorry
that I ever shed a tear or spent a moment grieving
over any kind of loss

and all those stamp-sized faces seem so small
and looking in his eyes I have to kiss him
just to close the dangerous distance
between dissolving into lovesick adolescence
and spontaneously combusting in a fit of fever
and the only face I wish to read
is his wide open book of devotions
whispered nightly down my spine
and spread out oh so slowly over everything

Overnight in Joshua Tree

I bled on sheets that weren’t my own
and hid them from my hostess,
not knowing what to say or do
to cover my faux pas.

She was a performance artist
who liked to burn things up
while local townsfolk stood around;
the smoke became applause.

I later learned
her house burned down,
an act of jealous arson
by the married lover’s wife,
(those who play with fire and all that.)

Such relief, you cannot know,
the calcination of my stains,
particulate floating above the smoke
into the desert night
and then, at last, to nothing.

in an instant

walking through the world with the tears of forty years
embroidering the cuffs and collars
of my clothes
sleeves damp with weeping
the moist surface of living
the sharp inhalation of falling in love
or falling apart

premonition

the onset of madness
scares away the crows
all its shiny moving parts
floating in my eyes
above the crops you planted
before last summer’s drought

a la mode

sometimes the poetry comes unexpectedly
like a side of ice cream
on a slice of pie
sweeter than you planned
but still willing to make an exception
especially since you
didn’t intend to order it
which means you can’t really be faulted
for going ahead and eating it

Wisdom of Solomon

one blue eye for me, one blue eye for you
one right thumb for me, one left thumb for you
shuttling back and forth across the warp of our separate lives
we’ve made her life the weft
pulled tightly in opposite directions
stretched to the place between taut
and snap

Invitation

Contributor reading for
IMPROV Anthology of Colorado Poets, 2008 - Peace, War, Love
published by Green Fuse Press

Friday, October 10, 7pm

Loveland Museum, Main Gallery, Downtown Loveland, 970-962-2410.

Readers include but are not limited to: John Blair, Connie Boyle, Hilary DePolo, M.D. & Mari Friedman, Megan E. Freeman, Gordon Holladay, Amy Irish, Shirley Kobar, Pat Maslowski, Veronica Patterson, Maggie Rowlett, Jared Smith, Katherine West…and many more.

Copies of IMPROV 2008 – Peace, War, Love will be available for sale and signing as will be copies of individual volumes of the contributors’ work.

it's pretty simple really

we do not have to lose those things about each other we adore
we do not have to sacrifice our friendship on the altar of intimate histories
we can love each other with the passion of siblings and the ferocity of parents
celebrating the freedoms we loved each other enough to risk

Beetle Kill

the valley has broken out in hives
blotchy and red-brown
the earth twists and rolls
in an effort to scratch its back
but the rash spreads too quickly
and the as-yet untouched acres
hold their breaths and squeeze their eyes closed
pretending quarantine
not wanting to see as they are slowly consumed
in the contagion of the ages

Fraser, Colorado 7:48 p.m.

so much to lose in a sunset
the fading colors of the western mountain sky
dusting the golden meadows with shades of rose
and falling streaks of gray
divided sharply by twin contrails
slicing blades of light across the darkening clouds

below in the twilight
trains stretch the length of the valley
as far as the eye can see in both directions
pulling with all their might
the fuel that keeps the country warm

what happened to cabooses?
tugged along at the rear
the exclamation points at the ends of steel sentences
traversing the pages of highways
through the darkest side of midnight

the confidence of rose hips

the confidence of rose hips
fat and sassy on their feathered branches
clustered in cliques of three and four
triumphant
gleeful
downright noisy
celebrating their successful metamorphosis
from delicate pink blooms
Mother Nature’s happy plan

adrift

did the leaf that just floated past fall in the river of its own accord?
or
did it slip from its branch when a black bear bodychecked the tree that grew it?
or
was it blown from its perch by the exhaust of earthmovers shoving
boulders and concrete into shapes of winter condominiums?

perhaps a little boy
set this leaf on its course
for oceans and adventure
then
bored of the game
and
abandoned the helm

leaving the leaf adrift
on the
swirling currents
of
autumn

Waiting for their mother

three children crouch
on a round picnic table

cranking the umbrella
closed over their heads

eliciting giggles and peals of delight
as the sky collapses

octagonal wonder of the world