I remember our trips to the ocean.She photographed the old lighthouses and anything that caught her eye.We watched the sunset and drank beers living life as now I simply exist.I remember the peace within those moments.It’s a twisted bliss I embrace now as I decay slowly.I still have those photographs although no longer do I... Continue Reading →
First: Just don’t.Dolphins don’t have bucket lists.They don’t care about yours.They get a little depressedwhen you look timidand scrunch up your shoulders like,“OMG. I am so proud of myselffor doing this.”Then jump infeet first.Afterwards,when you tell your buddies,you roll your eyesand say,“It was no big deal.”And they press you,asking if it changed you.Because social mediatempts... Continue Reading →
I think of this JanisJoplinlonghair, low-slungcorduroy,California flip-flop,cello-playing boy.His hair swung like a tiki barcurtain, the fringe of aflapper dress across my leg.Together in a twinbedthat hair was a shadeand I was a windowand the tassel, frommy neck to my navel, pulled Itself down.How many one-night stands do you remember? How many do you care to recount?That boy played like nothing we... Continue Reading →
Once it was a gradual thing to leave a place.Today a whoosh and everything is gone—the Rocky Mountains with their snowy glaciersmelting into lakes and rivers, preternaturallyblue-green, the skinny spruce and fir treesthreaded tightly in a tapestry, the unseenpresence of black bears and wolvesand wolverines—all disappeared, and we are backamong our shaven hills,beside our faded... Continue Reading →
Lake Tahoe, oh my gosh, I love Lake Tahoe! Feels like a forever ago I would ski on the water and ski on the snow . . . then just go home. Home was right down the road, right down Mt. Rose highway. Home was the Biggest Little City in the World, and the whole world knew it. Home was... Continue Reading →
There will be some pain.For me, a demon in the lower spine,a jab and a pinch, the body’s prophecy.My grandmother has needles in her hands,and I’m not surprised.Most of her life has been scissors and thread.There will be a change in the light,a body rushing between the sun and home.A giant bird, perhaps, a cryptid,... Continue Reading →
The candid game between the dead barrenNun-Mother and the satyr’s ludic libido grabbleDown the velvet tablecloth near a rose;Glass ocular balls tumble down in disarrayOnto the floor like the taboo-apples from Eve’sTree of knowledge into the orchard-gardenWhen Eden’s primal scene was interrupted.The children sneak into the naughty ball gameTheir mother plays with her Nun-Mother’s ghost,A... Continue Reading →
I was talking in mystic chordmemory, in chime and pulling throughthe light of all thingsAcross, across the battered bookkeepingdollar sense of where we left tostream beyond, looking up to starkShimmering blackness, whole pointsof galactic time swallowed inblinking pace before us.When you take the raw end of things,clasping and human against the bloodyedge of time, it... Continue Reading →
* Digital photo by author. San Antonio, Texas, USA To the man with the charcoal grillheld up by three flammable, wooden legs,you’re wonderful and so are your burgers.To the slow. ass. drivers.who have no place to be and, certainly, no turn signals,you’re wonderful for slowing so many rolls.To the stray dogs,that skitter into traffic in mangy packs,you’re... Continue Reading →
after Jan Gossaert’s Portrait of an Old Couple (ca. 1525-1530)So here we are,a few years shortof wizened, fitto sit dressed upfor a double portraitof a marriagethat’s lasted. My husbandhas his preoccupationsand I’ve acquired my own —our oldest son still learningto inherit the concern,the surviving daughtersnursing their childrenas I nursed mineuntil my well-used wombturned useless, the stillborn,the... Continue Reading →
