Above the nursing home
souls hover, wisps
and feathers
my mother’s eyes
are whites of eggs, oxygen
finally silent where we have sat
for days grown roots that steal
into the basement mortuary, snake
around waxen faces, press
against the eyelids of the dead
I am a tree
racing from the axe man
shaking raucous blue-black ravens
from my hair, fleeing
my mother, her days
in bed, my ragged fingernails
tangled hair. She rises
on shattered bones, darts
into the ice storm
searching for my father
dead these fifty years
a lit cigarette still between his lips
wandering among angels
and overturned flowerpots, hurries
back to her parents and the cat
she forgot she owned who purrs
as loud as the rusted motorboat that carries
her across the lily-choked waters.
(published in RockPaperPoem, Issue 8 March 2024)
Night of Ravens
“Lick Me Again with Fire”
~ for Louise Labé, 1524-1566
I ride through Lyon with only my plaited hair
for cover, lap cream from a broken bowl,
eat peacocks stuffed with their own flesh, swallow
a throbbing mouse. I wear a black opal
between my breasts, clutch a raptor’s feather
between my teeth. I lie with a man not
my husband, legs entwined like my father’s
golden rope. Unbind me that I may succumb
to the Sirens’ song, women, yes, and bursting
with lust. I am the comet’s tail, mistress of
of burning coals. A meteor breathes within me.
I divine the future from the wind. I am
the lioness licking her blood-stained claws.
(published in One Art March 2, 2024)
I
My child is the boy in the green
hat with stegosaurus plates felting
down his back.
As I watch him drag his sled up the hill,
I can’t feel my feet. It doesn’t matter.
He is the boy with the grin
showing off all his teeth.
II
Let’s say
my child becomes a doctor,
a psychiatrist. Sometimes
when he recognizes the absence
of light in someone’s eyes
he remembers how he almost
gave up but stopped himself.
How he wanted to live.
III
Let’s say my child marries a lovely
woman who cooks dumplings light
as pillows. They have two children
whom I tuck into my wings,
nuzzle my face into wisps
of their hair. Their perfume
of earth and air follows me
everywhere.
IV
Tonight, my child perches
on the edge of my bed.
I can feel his weight
sinking into the mattress,
his breath in the air.
He tells me that the hawk
I see on October evenings is him
flying home.
(published in Quartet Spring/Summer Issue 2023 Volume 3 Issue 2, nominated by Quartet for Best of the Net, 2023)
The Sightings of Birds
Seduced by seven thousand
flowers within, you labor
to penetrate the unripe fruit.
Did you know
you would sacrifice
your lustrous wings,
as you writhe to enter?
You are female
so you do this thing—
enter pollen-dusted
release your clouds
of eggs, die entombed
within the sweetness
of bruised fruit.
Your sons blind,
wingless, born
to fertilize your daughters
who emerge from flushes
of succulence,
tantalized, as were you,
by the perfume of ghosts.
(published in Change Seven Fall 2023)
Fig Wasp
“To eat a fig is to swallow ghosts”— Kenji C. Liu
I am the woman in the garden
but this house planted
with pachysandra and lilies
is not my house
hummingbirds buzz the feeder
where a wasp flails
I would free him
but this garden
is not my own.
you pass by, see a woman
in a chair in a garden
near a birdbath, a pot of impatiens,
her arms mottled, knuckles gnarled
like the crabapple tree.
hard, small fruits
have fallen at her feet
you pass by thinking how content
she must be in that garden
you do not know
that this place is borrowed.
you do not know
how practiced she has become
with elegy
(published in Equinox volume 2, Spring 2022)
Woman in a Borrowed Garden
dappled, mackerel-spotted
ah, pied! striped, stippled, speckled
flecked with glitter-gleam-shimmer
silk-glow, slipping
from beneath the bed, glow-eyed
glory of a brindle cat
retreating with salmon silver-pink
glistening in dark
corners of retreat to the underneath—
treasure-savor, unctuous—
licking rapture of fishiness, ignoring
one sly human finger stroking
the tip of one briefly forgotten paw
(published in The Dodge 2022)
My Feral Diva
Notice the meadow
as you scuff your way to the pond,
mites hazing about your shoulders.
Queen Anne’s lace, a few orange lilies
among a sea of stalks.
Heedless to oppressing earth,
be the mole.
Flow through sleek furrows,
be the snake.
Stamen to stamen,
be the insect.
Watch for whispers in the grass,
be the raptor.
To find the snake slipping among the reeds
you kneel in the road’s dusty ruts.
though you walk on pathways.
Hold your breath.
You are human, unattuned to subtle voices.
The meadow speaks softly.
The meadow speaks softly.
You are human, unattuned to subtle voices.
Hold your breath.
Though you walk on pathways,
you kneel in the road’s dusty ruts
to find the snake slipping among the reeds.
Be the raptor,
watch for whispers in the grass.
Be the insect,
stamen to stamen.
Be the snake,
flow through sleek furrows.
Be the mole,
heedless to oppressing earth.
Among a sea of stalks,
Queen Anne’s lace, a few orange lilies,
mites hazing about your shoulders,
as you scuff your way to the pond,
notice the meadow.
(published in The Tiger Moth Review Issue 8)
Palindrome: Meadow
cornflowers, poppies, three thousand years
of dust, beads indigo among olive leaves
already withered even as the tomb was sealed
and you who wove and sewed into the night
we have met, you know, among the licorice-scented
olive trees, in the poppy fields, wading among the reeds
as fish prod our ankles, we have together
pricked our thumbs stitching nightshade berries
to the boy king’s collar, our blood staining the blossoms
we have exchanged lovers' glances, flirted
from across rooms and millennia, kissed
secretly and so briefly in alleyways and gardens
I have touched your hair
I reach for your calloused hands, cradle them in my own,
know that you endure in the flowers, the beads,
the brittle papyrus
(published in Amethyst Review January 2022)