Roots and Branches: 42nd Post

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He feels for the roots
pushing cracked, lined hands through the soft dirt.
He removes the intruding hedge’s dark knots
to spare the thin struggle of a tree.

He wants assurance
that his new lady is the right choice.
He rolls a stone into place while
the earth turns on its axis.

I think of the farm my partner and I didn’t buy,
how we came to this house with no curtains instead.
The landscaper wants to know
if he will be a good parent.

The air smells of dislodged spearmint
and crushed lavender.
The blood blister on his palm swings skyward
as he cups a drooping branch and clips it off.

He does it over and over, the swinging and cupping.
What would mean “I don’t know” in my hands
is a pruning ballet in his,
the tall tree an answer.

I think of the child we didn’t adopt,
of her photo in the book: Kristy.
She had so many letters: ADHD, ODD, PTSD.
My lover couldn’t see the girl

in the forest of letters.
Next spring’s seed catalog lies on the seat
of the landscaper’s truck in the driveway;
a diagram of next year’s garden takes shape in his mind.

He hurries to lay gravel and sand
but loses to the rotation of the earth.
“Want to save this nest for your daughter?” he asks,
laying it carefully on the porch steps.

The daughter we did adopt.
The one to whom I am a good parent
most of the time,
alone in this house.

“Yes,” I say.  Yes to the lady, the good
parenthood, the nest.  Yes to the removal of roots
that held nothing so strongly that a mistake
couldn’t make it all fall down.

Erosion: 40th Post

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forgets that parts of her
are missing
that other parts once
angled for attention

she took time
as if it couldn’t be bent, flattened, eliminated, reordered
and effort
as if it was matter
as if it mattered
as if it could be compressed or exploded, colored in, Photoshopped out
with her everywhere,
twin burdens slung from a yoke

she ignored the warnings all around
the flags, sirens, scars, flashing
beacons, allergic reactions, slaps on the
cheek, fullness, emptiness, the color red,
the lack of color

she had let it go let it all go let it go let the cells
puff up or fall where they would into the cracks in her arms and legs
over the dents in her lips through the tunnels in her scalp
into the empty spaces she’d forgotten

a landfill of woman
a historical dustbin
an entire lost tribe
too remote and ugly to signify

Some Give Up: 39th Post

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has heard enough.

The enterprise is not loyalty.
Daggers.  Blood.  Mermaids.

She has seen
best intentions

fall like the snapped bodies
of cedar
waxwings beneath
unimpressed windows.

The enterprise is stolen words.
Death Before Dishonor.
Jesus.  Mother.  Semper Fi.

She has tried to pull the no-trick
ponies from their sunken

The enterprise is cold so
bitter the tears
before they’ve left your eyes.

She is not
a symbol-dove
nor a

Along twisted pathways
leaves reach for
the back of something
that ran by
centuries ago.

Her anger
hunches close,

a staring ape.


Wishing for Harmony: 37th Post

Woman 3

How nice it would be if both one’s internal and external dialogues could be peaceful…



I am a square-shouldered
decision, a kite
snagged long ago,
my tedious semaphore

It’s snowing, but
I cut the sound:
everyone’s already heard
bloodthirsty barking,
the scrape of claws

on tree bark.
Let them imagine
the tap
of each crystal flake
shattering on impact.

Placing my ear
to a rock,
I wait patiently
for the translation.
A thousand frosts later

the answer is
mine in a
of sturdy flour.
I spit

and knead:
a lunge of knuckles
and there’s bread
and blood
all over.

Stopwatches of Desire: 34th Post

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I’m sorry so many of the poems come out of the dark side. I’m trying to keep myself in the light, but that’s not when writing occurs.


The Word “Are,” for Example

Raised to be frugal with self pity,
I hesitate to complain.
Alibis run from my mouth
like ants from a flooded hill.
I went there directly from the funeral,
weary of the mourners, severe,
time-spotted, hunched like flowers graveside.
I went there wanting to speak in tongues.
I went there, where attraction divides itself
into hungry collisions and sweaty testimonials.

I met a charismatic,
pierced his ear with a sewing needle,
scrubbed his stubble with my gums,
licked his sagging pockets every one.
He said what we need is sleeping pills,
stopwatches of desire,
cheap insurance.
I killed him for his assumptions
scratched on tabs of paper in his insoles:
“all” and “never” were some of his claims.

The Good Girl: 33rd Post

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The Good Girl sleeps quietly
with other women’s husbands.
Dimples cast in concrete,
she cleaves a breast of white meat;
a potato bursts in the oven.


Homeostasis: maintaining a couch,
a fire, a coffee table behind your ribs,
fine art on your turbulent heart.


The Good Girl has forgiven music
for the pain it has caused her.
Bathing herself in vanilla and almonds,
she gets a job and keeps it,
collecting her pay like rainwater
in clean pools and pockets.

Here are the morning, the noon, and the night,
her silent partners, investors
in waiting, their solar and lunar coins
strung out like a dazzling bracelet
shimmering a dance of lust.




Good Writing Habits: 32nd Post

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Not About

Poems often are about
exactly what they are not about.
This poem, for instance,
is not about the person
all those other poems were about.
Good writing habits forbid my telling
what this poem is about, but I
assure you
it is not about
what it is not about. Here
you see no mention of smooth hands,
no sly references to sex disguised
as descriptions of long train trips,
rivers slamming into bridge pilings,
or autumn trees bursting into flame,
no metaphor comparing that person’s eyes
to whatever the next best thing was.
Not even anything like a simile.
Not in this poem that is not about that.





We Eat the Seeds: 31st Post

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  1. Sally, Inauguration Eve

This dirt gone?—white.  I am
and Everyone says He’ll do the job
Give us hope but I was
wearing wool A-line skirts with
the very clouds above for shirts
last time, when my opinion
meant something.  Click click
my tiny Italians on polished
boardroom floors Gentlemen,
I said I fail to see I
did fail to imagine this cardboard
throwing its brown cast on me.


  1. This Red Scarf

White clothes mean sticks in the arm
but if you stay clean sheets
one night or two.  On the lake bank there were
white trees!  I had ice skates.
They had no leaves so the light came through.
The Polish girls wore scarves tied under their chins.
I was no Polack but see, I tie this scarf
tight and keep my head down
watching for ice.  You fall here
no boys laugh or help you up.
But if they stick you
they help you up real nice.


  1. Richard

I’m used to being in charge
so this will be about you.
I want you to know I appreciate the aluminum cans
so neatly stacked beside the trash can.
I see you see me take them, see you hurrying
to meet my six o’clock pickup daily.
I admire your scheduling abilities:
kitchen scraps to the chickens before work,
the soft globs of their droppings to the compost heap
before dark; the garden weeded Saturday mornings,
fruit plucked and distributed to neighbors in the afternoon.
I would have hired you in the old days—
kept an eye on you, as they say—
recommended you.
I keep you a secret now,
for the cans.


  1. K.L.

What’s left of this planet is my home.
Birds are not afraid of me, curled in this bush,
unless I jerk my legs, dreaming
I fly with them over the roofs
and across the highways.
We eat the seeds that drop
and peck at the not-ripe pears,
scattering when the farmer comes
to nail his straw-filled savior to a post.


  1. When I Was One of the People

All these things I shall tell you are true.


like the sashes of the old ones.

When I was a warrior I devoured the night

and spit stars at the immaculate moon.


a blind slave stolen from an enemy camp.


and we brought forth spring, summer, fall

and the weaver child, winter.



feverish and bloody,

and I could sweat until the earth was healed

and I could bleed until the earth was whole.

I am the owl and the darkness now.

I am the hawk and the light.

I am the crack in the clouds now.

I am the wind in the night.


Freaks: 30th Post

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cannot twist a poppy to pluck it
nor see in a single movement
the entire surface of an apple held aloft.

He admires the resilient wrists of women
washing clothes in the river,
the blurred wrists of pear packers,

the sturdy wrists of boys playing tug-o-war.
He watches the violinist’s bow arm
dance its sexy hula,

sneaks a look at anybody’s watch
at every easy chance.
Drunk, he slobbers over his mother’s

lilac-scented translucence
until she powers a slap
to his wet cheek.

The Amazing Man with No Wrists!
I bought a ticket to see him.
In the audience a woman waved,

her arm a fluted column,
fingers swaying like palm fronds.
A man threw pity like a discus.

Where can he see his heartbeat?
I wondered, looking at my slender table
with its feast for slicing.


The Mockery of the Swollen Garden: 29th Post

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After the Death of His Twin

—for John Fuller, age 80


The solo creak of his Naugahyde chair.


The excess of fruit broadcasting its ripeness.


In the closet, twice the needed pants and shirts, twice the needed gaping shoes, worn at the heel.


The nervous voice of his landlord, trying to remember which one passed.


The sniff and yip of the dog, double-checking under the table.


The mockery of the swollen garden.


The sports section left folded with the classifieds.


His unspoken opinion of the news story about welfare mothers.


The uselessness of the second bookmark pressed into the novel.


In front of the TV, half the snoring noise to waken him to his started insistence, “I wasn’t…”


The other narrow bed, tightly tucked.


The hearing aid left on the end table for the first time.


In the bathroom mirror, only two hips, two nipples, one penis.


The surprising regularity of his heartbeat.