Author: admin

Here’s to the guides
Who light our path
Saying nothing of our twists and turns
Simply holding a candle
Some paths are wide
Worn smooth by wealthy men
Other paths are hidden
Even from those meant to walk them
This uncovering is my life’s work
The story before the story
My path wasn’t a path at all
Until women warriors
Slashed the branches and brambles
Transforming a wall into a door
Those of us who came after
Keep wandering and widening
Wondering how far we can reach
Reaching back, always
Lighting your candle with mine
The wax drops are gratitude
For the warriors
For the path
For the guides
And for the wondering

Dusk after sultry dusk you brood in the window
‘For the air’ you say but we both know
It’s for the darkness.

You flash to the thundercrack of my horses
My arm hard across your stomach wrenching you breathless
All the way down.

Your mother wept for your virginity
While you wept for the narcissus that slipped
unpicked betwixt your fingertips.

I fed you what your mother could not kill:
Roots and bulbs and the business end of my insurrection
You choked them all down.

You are not gentle ever since –
You held the arils in your mouth
Rolled them between your teeth.

You choked them all down.

I spat you back up
And now you rue your cursed freedom and garish fruits from trees
only your mother could love.

I have missed a lot of boats.
Most of them I saw clearly
only when I looked
behind me.

Boats I coulda, shoulda, woulda boarded
and sailed away to some place
happier than here.

But I have only this boat. This houseboat,
this beat up leaky canoe, this something
or other called my life.

Lots of currents, lots of eddies, lots
of snags and lots of lovely scenery
passing by.

I am not in the scenery
because I am in the boat
wishing for better oars and hunting
the best place to land.

If you only land at the best places
and pass by all else
that might not be perfect,
you go forever
longing to at last land home.

I don’t know what it’s like
to go home, I just know
it’s not here.

fields of December grass shift eloquently in deep winds
do you sense the down of my back?
the smallness of feathers in slate grey
looking out amongst the birch branches sprouting white fingers
to sift golden rays and melancholy piano notes
a melody to sink the blood in my heart
in the evening do you lay in your bed, blanketed in darkness
the bottom of night’s belly and think of me too?
the nightgown and the rise of my chest
a single star visible through the curtain
do you have the medicine inside you
to heal the hard walls you’ve built?
when the solstice bells toll
the inside of my palm is strong
I can hold your warmth
cradle you in the softness of my voice

unearthen shards from where they lay
encase you now in my clay

sculpt and mould from what I find
a beating heart undoubtedly mine

a kiln for you akin to me
brings forth ceramic poetry

Her face lit up the sky
Hovering there
In full control of tides and time
Nothing so banal as day
But night
And crops
And blood
And seasons
All that matters
All that mothers

The morning sulks with impending rain,
held off for a moment when the sun bursts through—
star-shell of anxious illumination.
Here is that line of French infantry, their bayonets
the bristles of unshaved chins, their eyes drawn,
but of course, to your breasts,
which they admire or curse or consider
as merely another target in a world so at war yet
oblivious to its most lethal motivations.
The post on which you’re tied stands alone at the center of a lawn
sloping into a realm of spirits, where the ghosts of all
the officers you entertained—French, Belgian, German—
sip cold drinks and draw lines across blood-stained maps.
You were less spy, I think, than an accomplished liar,
pretending to be Indonesian and thus exotic to a western public
already sated—even jaded—with the plundered wealth of Asia.
So where was it you learned the Dance of the Seven Veils?
How was it you acquired such a sheen of mystic credibility?
Like a defanged cobra, measuring the world outside its basket
but writhing to the rhythms of some cross-legged piper,
you were the seemingly dangerous woman caught
in your own pretensions, your cover story undone,
your life the cipher no intelligence service could decrypt.
You decline the blindfold, staring at your executioners as if gazing
into your own abbreviated life—the defiant dance of the single woman,
the half-breed adrift in a world flush with eugenics.
Do you also decline the final cigarette?
Difficult to imagine that you would,
you who boasted of your time in the opium dens of Mumbai,
the secret annex of the Sultan’s harem.
Instead, your eyes glow with the intensity of a woman
determined to defy her past while scorning those men
too weak to stop the carnage, too dense to see
the dancer behind the veil.

                                                    for Arlo

The black night of old constellations
has not yet thought to open its eyes.
You are tucked in your car seat,
bundled against the pre-dawn cold.
In the glow of the dome light,
I lean close to say a last goodbye.
My lips touch your hand,
I look up at your face
and when I whisper goodbye Arlo
you simply shake your head,
not using your newest word no
but something sadder, something
that echoes in the darkness
after I’ve kissed your father,
our cheeks damp,
hugged your mom until we felt
soft woman against woman.
Your slow shake of the head
surrounds me on the path,
and across what’s dark and vast
stars record a history of loss.
In the lit house
I see your grandfather,
head white beneath the lamp,
he who had asked
when we awoke side by side,
who am I saying goodbye to today?
I step back into the house of him,
into my wish to fathom
the unending dimensions of light
one might give to another.

An owl in the night
down the road in dark
moonless night in a
snag perhaps with
knotholes and rough
bark out there in the
dark like here in a bed
pushing back dread
for a sound like hope
but the old apple tree
that once held a swing
nearby hollowed out
fell over dead last
year lying there still
as I in this bed.

“The world is better now that you are here.” That was what the sign above the entrance read. It was wooden; the letters were black. I remember analyzing it as I shuffled off the bus, my mind going through the motions of acceptance, making sure to harden my features, set my shoulders, align my stare. I thought of my daughter. I was glad I talked to her the night before. There would be a hold; communication was a privilege, of which I held none. I don’t think the world is better. No, I don’t think it’s better at all.

We shuffled in line, one by one. The guards, in hopes of displaying how tough they were, stood in a line, as the warden himself did his welcoming speech, reminding us of our standing, reminding us of our place. Gut pushed out, the man was hefty, a good ol’ boy with a heart attack around the corner. I don’t think the world is better. No, I don’t think it’s better at all. One by one, they shaved our heads. They said it was for sanitation, but I found it to be a lesson in degradation, a way of breaking us, which was what this was all about. It was about control. They had it; we had none. Locks fell, beards fell, hair piled, as the barbers, inmates themselves, cut the hair off our faces, our heads, to be bagged and trashed. I don’t think the world is better. No, I don’t think it’s better at all.

We were assigned our dorms, which housed around two hundred, the jungle, beds stacked, three high, single file, with no more than three feet between each bed. Our homes. We kept them neat, as most convicts do, as a way of keeping control over what we could. It was hot inside our concrete fortress, as summer in South Georgia is. Sweat poured from the walls, and tensions flared. When violence broke out, I thought of the families. Brothers, sons, and fathers with loved ones, alone. I don’t think the world is better. No, I don’t think it’s better at all.

She didn’t deserve this.
She deserved a full life.
To be a wife.
To have children.
A rose wilted, petals flying away,
drifting in the breeze.
She didn’t deserve this.
Such a kind soul.
We release butterflies
With love in our hearts,
Tears in our eyes.
We’re broken, but mending.
The waves hit,
Crashing.
They slow down, waiting, always there,
Because she didn’t deserve this.
She deserved a long life, full of bliss.
Just look for the butterflies; that’s where she’ll be.
We didn’t deserve her, such an Angel, too beautiful for life.

She turns off the news
and watches the yellow and black fat waxy caterpillar

make its steady trek through the goldenrod and the ferns
over and under the leaves and up the milkbane

to find the perfect slender stalk.
She watches while it sleeps

then turns itself,
hides itself in a green and golden cocoon

and dreams of transformation.
She thinks about the mountain stream

that starts as a trickle, and gathers speed as it responds to gravity
and over time, days, months, years, decades, centuries,

softens and wears that mountain down to stones.
Human time is more limited, which is why the rush.

Human time
hair turns gray, shoulders stoop, teeth fall out, skin sags, eyes dim,

an aging mind
when memory becomes imagination.

What else can she do?

Appreciate the purple eggplant dying to spread their seeds,
along with all the garden produce,

watch the squirrels make nests and hide things
as they run up and down the trees,

listen to the geese cry out
as they fly away.