haiku #10
Read More »Tag: childhood
Measuring Cup
Left, right, fingers and toes,
climbing up through kitchen drawer
handles— just the daily grind
when you’re only four—
helping bake by eating the quarter
cup of flour given to you, helping
yourself to the dish of butter,
sticky-fingered, when they turn their
Captioning the Photo
I’ve got all the things I’m supposed to say-
just buried beneath
Fairytale
Home, skipped with every symptom
known to fifth-grade-kind,
sick of every re-run
and trapped outside of storybooks,
what adventure could be better than emptying
the overflowing closet?
Even the sickest faker
would clean if they envisioned
a clubhouse in a 3 by 3 foot space
Rocking Chair
You don’t want to lie down, but it’s not time to run,
so you arch, throw yourself, scream, dive, and you hate me.
I bring you to myself and calm your body down.
You tire out then wake slightly, force some side-eye
like you trust me, and I slide you to your bed
as seamlessly as I can, deep-breathing in your ear
until you’re long-lost. You sleep long enough to little more
than recover, sit up in your bed and smile, start whining for me.
I say, “Come here,” and you wedge between my thighs,
contentedly rest your head on my leg, and you need me.
I pat your back, so you switch your face to my stomach.
You’ve forgiven me. Oh, you see your twin has the doll you like,
so you squeak, forget me. You go out to the world,
glance backwards at me, loving me, and carry on.
Laps
Sweet girl, eyes shining, endlessly dying
for attention she knows I will give-
what she shows with her lips
that she wants: Soft smile, chestRead More »
jumping
I like to jump.
Jump is the good thing for me.Read More »
The Calm Before the Storm
It was the calm before the storm
that stole my breath
with its icy silence.
In those everlasting seconds,
instead of his raging words’ predictable humming,
the still left you wondering what would be coming.
His face wouldn’t wear its usual anger, but a death-like grief,
as though he knew what monster would soon be unleashed.
‘Don’t hold it in!’ I was dying to cry to him.
‘That makes its bursting that much more violent!’
I did what I could- I anticipated, and how I hated
the calm before the storm.
Before the calm, you could see the storm clouds brewing,
but the churn of the sky- it was so close to soothingRead More »
On Being an Ideas Person
After a month of nearly falling off the bottom of the earth,
Ma placed me in my bed, where I woke imagining
feeling wide-eyed, refreshed, wondrous of where I was-
jumping off the bed, landing in flexible splat as impossible
as the dogs I used to try to draw were ugly.
I didn’t really know how dogs’ heads or human bodies worked,
but I wanted a Lisa Frank retriever and my butt to be in the air,Read More »
The Speed of Slow
I want to know the Speed Of Slow;
I want to know To Never Know,
to have no Known Idea.
I want to know the beat that peace makes-
Rhythm played
by feet of horses towing Amish buggies.
I want to taste the fruit of labor, ever savoring the flavor-
honest scent that never says nor once implies
that man can fly through time and never
whispers that the times are flying either.
Equivalence-
Movements…
I want to get from creek to peak remembering that every moth
that I walk past is passed by in the sum of beats that leave its wings
while in my presence-
wholly as it should be and only as it could be,Read More »
Alphabet Ravine 