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
Tag: writing
Redpoint
He asked me where I was planning to go
to accomplish the climbing route.
He beamed, called me sweetly simple.
I’d snapped at him, “Up.”
Saved Reel
The baby lemur’s back already
lies against his elder’s stomach,
but he gives a light tug
at their sensitive face,
Misunderstand
I’m tired of passing people the ball
and watching them place it in their court,
hyacinth
hips, heel, shoulder blades, and crown
for the tree bark
Safe
I regress through feelings of my girlhood, like a
woman healing. My shame hadn’t felt dirty
in so long, but my new dance moves mimic
clawing at my face, and I’m finally saving for the
teddy bear the house fire took away. Old raging
Force of Nature
As the wind whittles my bark,
carves my trunk,
19
Carefree, seeking pleasure, full of hormones,
bent on banter. Crashing towards, orbiting,
or straddling our fuel—no center. What
is gravity? Can’t hold us down, or back. Just
Take Your Time (cowriter: Benjamin Bush)
How clear is your mind’s eye?
Does yours zero in on your trove of wisdom?
My turf is confusion.
Facing chaos, while threatens despair
and narratives unravel.
How comfortable am I,
in labyrinth—
all I’ve known,
Variety Assigned
The schoolmaster shoved a smorgasbord
of poems down our throats, so that we would know
that poems can be anything so poems can be good,
even possible. But I’ve swallowed too many
Alphabet Ravine 