If the sky is navy and the sun gives off
a lingering bumblebee glow,
when the snow dares to fall but is too shy to stay,
and you start to sense that you’re alone,
with the village distant and you in the desert-
I see how you feel in my soul.
But what do you hear? And what do you cry?
What secrets do you know?
When my black butterflies come
with their razor wings that make me bleed,
and they darken the horizon as far as eye can see,
(And the black butterflies do come,
with their razor wings that scratch and screech
on the chalkboard of my heart, to start to suck the nectar out.)Read More »
Clustered leaves form a nest for the cloud
as I lie below, the tree’s outstretched arms
strengthened and still, waiting for the sky crown
to up and flit away, as I sit upon the tree’s feet
like a second weight, fragile as a burden,
heavy as royalty.
Scrapes and scuttles above my bed
but beneath the record player crooning
carols for the sliders and shufflers
to grate and whoosh to-
Do tree and garland rise in the upstairs room?
Or does the furniture scoot to perfect
disorganization?
And that, for feet to twirl and sway-
for the first or hundredth time?
With arms open as wide as the heartsRead More »
Place me along the breast of the blue jay when it claps its wings,
that I too may turn concave,
blown back by its power’s rush,Read More »
It is with urgency that the crickets chirp in each other’s gaps.
The wind rushes through the reeds on repeat,
as a lapping wave, and the owls insist
on crying out their rhetoric. Would that I had doneRead More »
She wraps the word up in French,
like a foreign language leaves her
one step removed
from the vulnerable truth-
she has a love in her handsRead More »
I like to jump.
Jump is the good thing for me.Read More »
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 »
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 »
Alphabet Ravine 