liquefy

they won’t even let you have

a chrysalis. you’ll liquefy

in the street. you'll be rapidly losing

precious fluids to the thirsty earth.

you'll be lucky if there’s a bucket

to fall into, to be contained by.

 

someone might come and keep an eye

on you, stir you a little. your face melted

down your chest, your joints came loose

from their sockets, and the liquid flowed.

a reformation is a choice, but did you choose

the circumstances? you're wearing two sodden

shoes, one of your eyelids winks

at the other from across the ocean.

pull it all together and squeeze

it through a cheese cloth, catch in a colander,

whisk until smooth.

five haiku

from the first assignment of the semester for my creative writing class.

strange marks cross my skin

but bring me no pain. i woke

late, my sheets tangled.

 

twelve bells envelop

the neighborhood at midnight.

who said they should ring?

 

cascading cups lie

stacked, filled with playing children

in a narrow gorge.

 

i carefully pinch

and pluck strings at the right times

but my thumb fails me.

 

of the two streetlights

outside my window i much

prefer the softer.

 

slaughter blackout

today in my creative writing class our professor brought in a certain campus newspaper and had us write blackout poetry from it. i haven't really read the article and would probably have a bad time if i did. one day i'll write about ai and that's not today. 

corner the edges upon

us and come out

to nothing. we will be inescapable

and no wonder. accept

help, heft hundreds of echoes.

try women, and have god

for yourself. now we live

plagued, but so what? big deal.

 

 

ink(from my pen)tober announcement + day 1

this month, i will be attempting an inktober challenge of writing a poem (or piece of short fiction) every day with a list of prompts. i plan to post them every few days, or when i have something i feel is worth sharing. this was inspired by the wonderful createglue, who often motivates me to write, and i'll be using their prompt list. that said, here's day one. associated song: day one by hemlock.

landscape

we read a story in book club last spring about a girl

who turned into a mountain, slowed and calcified,

with rivulets down her back and a treeline blanket.

it wasn't very good, caught fighting

the author's fractured focus and oil-baron aspirations,

but i think it would be nice

to be part of the landscape 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the story mentioned in the poem is "rock jenny" by callum angus from his book "a natural history of transition." i have a pdf if you're interested.

salt

consider low tide.

the water is peeled

back slowly and forcefully

leaving tangles resting on outcroppings.

i’ve always swam in fresh water,

lakes and streams with mud to my knees

and toes battling rocks.

my mud is not the mud of bay,

the mud of small bodies

and their neighbors’ dead,

empty homes.

mine is the river that runs past the developed floodplain,

the river near the substation,

water warmer than the air and pregnant with pollen,

the river not deep enough until it floods.

power washing

one weekend i went up the mountain

to powerwash the porch. i biked

past the stream, small bugs swirling and

gravel spitting from my tires while i swiped

sweat aside and spat on the road.

we painted the bathrooms first, me and some girl

whose name i don't remember. she was old,

or at least older than me; my curls

 

weren't yet long enough to tie back, connect.

later, layers of dirt came at my feet, 

all the dust that shouldn’t have been swept

out the door and whatever else had steeped.

 

"too long in one spot and you’ll damage the wood,"

you said. it's gone now, though it used to be good.

loose sonnet i wrote for creative writing. feedback very welcome!

come with me

it’s one 

of those summer mornings 

you forget about in winter where the 

haze isn’t quite bright 

golden or 

warm and the birds are quietly 

determined.

one of those mornings 

where you 

push yourself to the edge of the bed and 

tie your hair back to get it off your neck,

pull on shorts and

socks and walk around 

half naked because 

no shirt seems quite right 

yet, letting the sweat evaporate.

the day lilies are open and if 

i had a dog she’d

be surprisingly wet from the dew and 

i’d dry her paws with a towel before starting the kettle 

for a pot of coffee but

i have to get in my car and go to work

and as i drive 

a deer 

stands in the middle of the road

jumps over the whole second half

and vanishes

it’s about the process

it’s about the process

running down my face

working out the knots in my hair

the careful force of depressing the plunger

and i’ve always been

careful with force.

 

sold my love and bought a thunderstorm

open the window unzip the sleeping bag

watch the field without the horses

5 or seven of them

cap the needle.

 

ball jar and the door’s ajar

whipping in the wind

vein

i.

there's a vein in my nose, or so 

my mother says, that's only 

visible when i'm 

going through a growth spurt. i

look in the mirror and i

never see it. i wake up 

one day, every day, and everything 

is irreversibly different. 

 

ii.

my bras don't fit and my duvet 

is tattered and the backs 

of my knees don't hurt. 

they used to. 

i used to not sleep for 

the growing pain. inches in a year. inches 

on the miles i ran, 

drove, hiked. 

 

iii.

tonight it's raining. i used to sleep 

with only 3 walls around me and 

the rain would come right in. 

alessia

would read me a story every night. she bought bamboo 

curtains to keep the rain

out of her bed. mine was deep enough 

in the cabin it didn't matter.

both our books 

got damp all the same. jesse told me i was a 

carbon copy of her. 

none of us knew yet. 

my name's from her. 

 

iv.

when i was 6 we had a cat

named minerva and a cat named spike. 

i played dozens 

of games of euchre with our med student roommate. the

garden had a small gazebo and

our upstairs neighbor was eve. 

when i was 6 i had a 

cd player and i'd listen to bill frisell every night to fall 

asleep, through the pain 

of my knees, through the pain

of only getting half an ibuprofen, 

through the pain of not yet knowing.

i get deja vu

my dreams predict the future but i don't know they're the future and i don't remember they're my dreams. i forms shapes and patterns of people, of situations i don't know. i wake up and it's gone and years later it returns in a flash. i recognize it, we sit with each other in the feeling for a moment. i can mention the feeling, and the feeling might hold. i can not mention the feeling, and the feeling might hold. the feeling breaks. on wednesday there were sparkles in my vision. repeat.

my dreams predict the 

future but i don't know they're the 

future and i don't remember they're my 

dreams. i forms shapes and patterns of people, of 

situations i don't know. i wake up and 

it's gone and 

years later it returns in 

a flash. i recognize it, we sit with each other in the  

feeling for a moment. i can mention the feeling, and the 

feeling might hold. i can not mention the feeling, and the 

feeling might hold. 

the feeling 

breaks.

on wednesday there were 

sparkles in my vision, dancing.

repeat.

birch

the birch tree in my front yard

was there on the day we moved in

and bent under the snow every winter,

bent a little 

further each time and never quite 

stood back up. 

sometimes it froze into the accumulation,

stuck in the icy crust. 

one day it 

cracked. splintered. 

 

in summer i'll rip a twig off a black birch tree and strip the leaves and

chew for a while.

the stump in my yard is a paper birch.

in summer i'll scrape 

feathers into bark, catch it with a

strike of steel.

the oils are water-resistant, flammable.

in summer my mother 

broke up with her boyfriend. when the tree snapped

he cut it at the base and left it there. 

we moved out

and time passed.

and we moved back in 

and i took the cut tree from the yard,

hauled it down to the meadow,

and burned it.