Category Archives: Healthy Health

Garage Sale Liver Disease–a tiara of sonnets

Day 1
We were running anxiously, ridiculously late in the dream
I had right before I woke up this morning. At first
I was driving and realized I was taking the scenic route—
I go that way a lot when I’m asleep—
and then I was on my bike and completely lost track
of where the sidewalk was and all the sudden
I was inside a hospital. I couldn’t find my way back
at first and by the time I did, it was noon….
In real life, this morning, we started right at 8:00
to a flurry of people looking for cameras and toys,
of which, of which, of which we have a great,
vast really, trove; along with other…joys (?)
just waiting to be yours, all priced to sell,
and so much more we’ll be bringing out as well.

Day 2
There’s so much more to bring out, but it’s just as well
the sale ends tomorrow. Even though
we have enough to hold a goddam sale
every weekend from now until…who knows?
I’m fond of saying we are just one half
a matchbook collection away from being an episode
of Hoarders. This sale has pulled us safely back
from the brink. A house can only hold so much.
A house is like a liver. Everything
goes through and if you have too much of everything,
production slows. Deposits accumulate.
“Fatty liver.” A disease I have. A name I hate.
With virtuous living, it can be reversed.
What happens to an abused liver? Does it burst?

Day 3
What happens to an abused liver? Does it burst?
The sheath around it a shoe that pinches.
My liver gets uncomfortable. It hurts.
My ability to overindulge is diminished.
All those years of “Yes, I’ll have another,”
of thinking, saying, “too much is just enough.”
My body’s damaged. My house is still too full of stuff.
Less and less is the way I’ll recover.

“Well, no, I won’t take $10 for that. $15.
No lower. I’d rather give it to St. Vinny’s for free.”
“I’m sorry, no, we didn’t end up bringing out
any CDs or DVDs. Yes, those are all the tools we’ve got.”

We did the best we could. It wasn’t great.
As always, we were running anxiously, ridiculously late.


Half-vast is way too close to half-assed,
both in how it sounds and how I do it,
aim for one and miss. Too slow. Too fast,

the one I want goes hurtling past.
Like ice melting and turning itself into fluid.
Half-assed is way too close to half-vast,

which is a measurement so imprecise
it’s no surprise I so consistently lose what
I aim for. Consistently miss. I’m slow. How fast

and clever and organized do I need to be?
I can’t begin to explain or even intuit
how perpetually close half-vast is to half-assed.

I still very much want my teachers to be pleased.
I want, I want. All my grinding duties
aim for safety and miss, too slow or maybe too fast

for anyone I want to impress to be impressed.
I had elaborate plans. They are somewhat ruined.
Half-vast is way too close to half-assed.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so depressed.



She tattooed a purple armadillo on her ass
but wouldn’t say why. Also a caption that read,
“The armored possums are advancing fast.”

She’s always been the type with lots of worries,
chief among them, ways she could end up dead.
She tattooed a purple armadillo on her ass

then said she felt as though she’d run out of gas.
As though nothing made it fun to get out of bed.
The armored possums are advancing fast

already into Southern Illinois. They crossed
the river bottoms by letting out all their breath.
She tattooed a purple armadillo on her ass

but she still makes so much sense to me. At least
I think I can guess why she did what she did.
The armored possums are advancing fast

is just her way of saying everything’s gone past
recovering. There’s precious little hope in this world.
She tattooed a purple armadillo on her ass
because the armored possums are advancing fast.



Asking for a Friend

Where does ramshackle end and squalid begin?
How do you know when you’ve crossed the line?
Thanks for your help. Just asking for a friend.

Wow. One matchbook collection more and you’d be in
a clutter monkey reality show of your own.
Where does ramshackle end and squalid begin?

And if there is a demarcated line, can
you live inside the shape you’ve bent it in?
Thanks in advance. Just asking for a friend.

When your life falls apart, what does that mean?
Will your house ever be clean, ever again?
Where does ramshackle end and squalid begin?

What if you remember one scary time when
one of your cousins seemed way too interested in
your secret parts. Asking for a friend.

You don’t recall his touching you like that back then.
Where does ramshackle end and squalid begin?







It’s pretty early to be thinking “How
can this day be redeemed?” But when you draw
from a deep well of self-loathing, trust me,
you can ruin your hours well in advance
of inhabiting them. Insomnia is
such a fucking waste. Of time,
of course, and energy, and the sheetness
of sheets,  so innocent with their way
of seeming cool and warm as needed.
Note also: I wasn’t asking
“How can I redeem this day?”
Well, no. Because that would indicate
some level of control. A modicum.
I very well may sleep
a little better tonight.
I could stand outside
and get absorbed
in how very gold
the goldenrod.
But some days there is no resolution.
There is just the question of redemption
and the passing of time and giving up
or almost inadvertently
having an o.k. but unredeemed day
that will not count on any list
of very good or very bad
days of any description at all.


Rotten Apple Yoga

Apple, apple, mother-fucking apple.
I tried counting, the way counting
can be meditative. I got to five.
Listing colors worked a little better:
yellow, red, green, brown, black,
beige, rust, orange, peach, pink,
dark red, dark brown, white, off-white.
I modified some poses to enable
picking rotten apples simultaneous to
breathing, just breathing, well, mostly breathing.
I talked to my right wrist as it began to hurt
and then my left when I shifted.
My knees both hurt but not at once.
“Hello tightness, my old friend”
I’ve begun saying to my lower back and hips,
but not tonight when I was gleaning
from below the apple tree I loved
when we bought the house but which now I hate.
Somehow my familiar pains were simply not
there tonight. It’s standing and sitting that hurt me
most, not crawling on my hands and knees,
putting all those apples into one broad, galvanized bucket,
one five-gallon cat litter bucket, and then aiming
so many more apples onto an old bed sheet.
apple, apple, apple, two apples, three apples,
another apple, apple, apple, apple.

This task I loathe is loathsome largely
on account of the symbolic baggage that grows
prolific with the apples:

I waste resources.
I am a woman from whom things get away.
I don’t keep up. My ambitions don’t match my energy.
when we bought the house is not the person I am.
I have a million mason jars I don’t fill
with anything
but dust.
The mother-fucking tree isn’t even on our property.
Why am I the only one who worries about attracting
Why haven’t I sabotaged it so that, dead,
it would have to be cut down? Why won’t my husband
prune it back the way the orchard pictures show?
Why won’t he cut it down?

Why don’t I remember to put out the organic fly traps
in time? Why don’t I make applesauce every year?
Why don’t I pick up the few apples that drop
every day and add them to my compost pile?
Why don’t I have a compost pile at all?

I am an awful person. I must be.

I thought all those thoughts. I tried not to.
But I thought them anyway.
And when I thought those thoughts, I also thought,
What if someone sees the white expanse of belly
and hip laid bare right at this very moment?
And then I thought so what if someone sees?
None of what they see should be a surprise.

Each time I thought those thoughts I also thought
Rabbit carcass. Or possibly excrement.
Apple, apple, apple, apple, apple, apple.
Then I was breathing deep in my big belly,
the belly this shirt’s too small for,
breathing in and also out, a little longer out,
and in again, the rotten smell, the cider smell,
the smell of apple after apple, apple, apple.







Go Ahead and Do Nothing

If I loved you before I realized we are really, really far apart in our views about how to respond to school shootings, then I still love you. If I liked you, respected you, before, I still do.

If you’re posting all kinds of articles and links and memes I don’t agree with, I’m probably not responding.  If you’re posting things I agree with, I’m not responding much to those, either.

Here’s my blanket response—go ahead and do what you think is right.

If you think it’s a mental health problem, vote for people who will fund mental health care.

If you think mental health care is messed up, vote for people who will reform it.

If you think it’s a matter of domestic violence and toxic masculinity, the vote for people who are funding shelters and education.

If you think that we need to arm teachers, vote for people who will make that happen*

If you think the FBI dropped the ball, vote for people who will fund the FBI, or work to reform it however it needs to be reformed.

If you think schools and communities need to do a better job fighting against bullying and making sure no child is ostracized, then vote for people who will fund schools and community organizations who are already trying to do that. Or if you think schools and communities need to do something differently, figure out who’s doing it right, and support them.

If you’re not sure what the answer is, do some research. It would be nice if we could research gun violence as a public health issue, but we can’t: Still, there is research out there to read. From other countries, who don’t have the school shootings we have.

If you think there’s nothing we can do, then go ahead and do nothing. Keep doing nothing.

But if, like me, you think there is something we can do, let’s all just go ahead and do it. Join organizations that are working for what we think is the right thing to do. Let’s all vote for people who don’t just SAY the right things, but are actually voting the ways we think they should.

Maybe you’re already doing that. I, personally, could work a lot harder in terms of sending money, working on campaigns, getting involved in organizations. So that’s what I’m going to do. I just made a donation to Moms Demand Action, which I first heard about last year in church.

Why now? Why not sooner? I don’t know. The answer to “why not sooner” is easier–I tend to be cynical about the possibility of progress.  Why now? A teacher I admire wrote a really impassioned piece I found moving. And Emma Gonzalez is just one more example of why I’m pretty excited about Generation Z.

So, anyway—you go ahead and do what you think is right, and I will, too, and we’ll see how it goes. I’ve read that the majority of Americans support sensible gun legislation (but I haven’t researched it, to be honest). So we’ll see.

The only option that seems absolutely inappropriate to me is doing nothing. Although, I suppose if I revert to my cynical self, if you disagree with me, then go ahead and do nothing. OR just go ahead and keep posting stuff on social media. Which I mostly won’t respond to.

(I don’t tend to post a lot about politics, anywhere. I don’t think this’ll be a trend.)

*I’ll quit teaching when teachers are allowed/encouraged/actually armed in my school, but I’m pretty ready to retire anyway–could you just make sure the wheels of legislation turn slowly enough so I get about four more years in? Here’s a blog I wrote a while back talking about why I think arming teachers is a cowboy fantasy