terrible and good (2009)

everything was all at once terrible and good
because he was a mountain that you tried to climb barefoot
and when you reached the top you couldn't see the air with all the blood on the ground, all the blood in your hair that he wiped away with a finger and a concerned look
it was terrible because there was a fire and you couldn't save your dog
it was barking in the bedroom but the hallway was full of smoke
and you couldn't breathe well enough to move
so you just lay in the grass and watched the world burn down
you just lay in the sand and watched yourself drown and
isn't it lovely how the sky looks so murky when viewed through
rippling green waters that would have been cause for celebration
if they weren't the thing that made you go blind
in the first place
so you try to rub the dirt from your eyes,
you try to write a letter,
you tie a string around your finger to keep you from forgetting
but there is more dirt under your nails and
all the paper turned to ash
and it doesn't matter because by the time the knot is done
you've already forgotten what you'd woken up for in the first place

seaside

if i had a home to take you to

i would show you the lake where i learned how to swim

my father and i at the edge of the dock, my pink bathing suit

sagging at the crotch and threadbare

i would tell you how i shook, and cried, and  was so very scared

of the dark and glassy water

and how my father grew angry

i couldn't move, so he picked me up and jumped feet-first

into the icy cold where we bobbed like pale, bloated driftwood

and i screamed until he pulled me out

there would be the shore that we could walk along

not sandy, but pebbled and strewn with rotting kelp

we would stand and let the water roll up onto our feet

and through the fog we would pretend to see

any proof that i'm not still afraid

if i only had a home to take you to

you could know me better, and more completely

but i am more like a ghost than a girl

lacking history, defined edges, permanence

so when i lay on my back in the black of the water

you cannot tell me from the waves

i want you to unpack me as if i were a suitcase that you could fill with your essentials (a toothbrush, dull razor, a change of underwear) and lug behind you to your next destination.  i want you to unpack me and remove the clothes that have remained crumpled behind my pillow, under my bed, shoved into drawers and stowed away in the back of my closet.  i want you to remove the things i cannot remove myself.  i have become so full of time and trinkets, objects and reminiscing of past days that i cannot see the ground beneath my feet. i need you to unpack me.  i need to be empty so that you can fill me.  there is not yet room for anyone new, no space here for your hands, or your mouth, or the stories you tell me in slurred whispers late into the night.  on the train, you shove me into the overhead storage compartment and the door will not shut over my folded legs.  you push, and i cry, there is no room.  i make myself smaller.  exhale again and shrink my lungs into something more manageable; i fold into myself.  you shove again.  in a quick burst i tell you, i loved a man who fucked another woman, and there is space again in me.  i am smaller.  i tell you, my best friend died and i cannot pass his house.  i am smaller.  i tell you, i slept with a man who did not love me.  i am smaller.  i exhale, and there is less of me to store away.  you close the door, and in the dark, i smile.  the train pulls away from the station and i count the seconds as the wheels race bumpy over rusty tracks and below, you accept a drink from the cart and crunch the ice between your teeth.

at times, i feel like a pool of water.  behind my eyes, it is glassy and clear, and when i am still, and quiet, it behaves the same.  into that space a thought comes and it falls, plip, into the pool.  ripples move outward through my limbs and i can feel the tips of my fingers buzz and my toes hum.  my body is liquid, sliding under the cracks of doors and puddling up in the unfilled potholes on the road leading up to your grandmother's house.  but sometimes, in my head, the calm plip is not a calm plip, it is a torrential fucking downpour and water leaks out of me in ways i cannot control.  i want to build a boat.  it is not the simulation of drowning, it is the actual experience of drowning, your body filling up with thoughts of death that you cannot avoid. 

to speak the names of our dead

we are foolish fellows

we amble and trip

over the grooves carved by our sadness

deep ruts cut through hard-packed earth

your grief speaks quiet and low

and i see the way it paints lines

on the backs of your work-worn hands

and drops your shoulders down

to become like granite

your loss is whispered and you

have found places to bury it:

beneath backyard mud, tangled in tree roots 

sliced among pieces 

of fruit

the dead grow up stubborn and hearty

so i pluck and

hold them whole beneath my tongue

grind their barbed stems and

 bitter petals between my teeth

i will swallow all these ragged pieces whole

if it will let our grief fall mute

i will make myself

split open, ripped

pulpy flesh squeezed out onto sidewalks

ribs cracked raw and wide

but if these stripped-clean bones make the 

bird cage that you nest in ,

then where is the room for my shrieking,

wailing ghosts? 

take them,

loud-mouthed, persistent

let our dead learn the words to speak their names

to each other

and we will lay silent on green grass

staring up into endless, empty skies

lines from The Time Traveler's Wife that make me feel things

"I hate to be where she is not, when she is not.  And yet, I am always going, and she cannot follow." (Henry, x)


"I am suddenly aware of myself standing thin and upright in a Meadow where everything has flattened itself down and so I lie down hoping to be unnoticed by the storm which rolls up and I am flat on my back looking up when water begins to pour down from the  sky.  My clothes are soaked in an instant and I suddenly feel that Henry is there, an incredible need for Henry to be there and to put his hands on me even while it seems to me that Henry is the rain and I am alone and wanting him."  (Clare, 72)

then/now

once, i was a universe,
the expanses of stars and the intrepid explorer.
I was the newborn foal and the knock-kneed doe; uncertain, eager.
I was still, unblemished water, and long gulps of cool air after diving.
I was a dirt road, bare clapboard walls, rooms to be filled.
I was a phone call home, and the future wife, and the names of your children.

I gave it all.  I gave it all.  

Now, I am a filled-in map, no borders left unchallenged.
I am a burned-out light bulb and the fumbling that follows.
I am a picked clean, sun-bleached skeleton and the buzzards overhead.
I am feet encased in concrete and dirty bathwater circling the drain.
I am static, a dead line, the click and the dial tone.

I take it back. I take it back.

a poem about nick jaina

When he sings, his mouth barely moves

His mouth is a cracked slit, words eking out like

a secret he still wants to keep 

He interjects stories in between the verses of the songs he’s written,

and on this pressed plywood floor,

I am transported. 

We are standing in an alley. 

We are leaning against a brick wall. 

Our breath makes clouds in the air and he says,

quiet and self deprecating,

I don’t know if I’ll ever fall in love again.  

Sometimes I cannot sleep.  

I’m having trouble eating.   

I thought I was doing what men do.

And the music loops and his fingers slide and he is reading pages from a diary like we are all his closest friends. 

I do not feel like I deserve this. 

He sings, I have the same tattoo -   

Mine is black and hers is blue,

and I’m in Primary Ink leaning over with my spine exposed. 

Kai runs the needle over my back and I

hold my breath so that I won’t move. 

I hold my breath until I am dizzy, and the tattoo feels

like a slap on a sunburn. 

Jordan sits in front of me,

lets me squeeze his hands so tight his fingertips turn white and cold.

He kisses my head, tells me he’ll love me forever. 

He kept that promise until he didn’t have to any more.

Now I have the memory marked in my skin. 

Bold, black ink across my spine reads “Mea Maxima Culpa”: my most grievous fault. 

The voice at my back shouts, you are to blame. 

You are stained with guilt.

You are the one  mired in remembering.

I have the same tattoo - 

Mine is black and hers is blue.

And the music loops and his fingers slide and I

Do not feel like I deserve this.