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And I saw a trash bag

fat and bloated as a stomach

unblemished and beautiful 

as the heart you traded

to winter for snow

to block out

everything we had.

Heron-grey clouds,

fat with rain,

remind me how you

dove into

what little I had left

to take all you needed.

Rain, It’s the Rain

That’s been wetting my total selfhood

Inside out

Reminding me

Amidst all shapes to be moistured

The water-drops are

The dews from a paradise long lost

Here is another soul fallen from above

I’m not going to mow the grass. I’m going to water the weeds.

I’m not going to wear tight jeans. I’m going to strip and breathe. 

I’m going to run to the woods. I’m going to release Eve.

I’m going to take back Eden. I’m going to dismantle the wooden gate.

I’m going to let in the beasts. We’re going to eat everything.

We’re going to share the apples. We’re going to sing with snakes.

We’re going to swing from trees. We’re going to sleep with ease.

We’re not going to succumb, control will never come.

He’s forty-six and still watching G.I Joe. I get the nostalgia, but I don’t get

why it happens when he’s drunk. I see it day after day, a deep-rooted  sadness in his gut during intense watering, bloated for a bygone time. 

It’s always the same. I sit and wonder why I stay with a waning moon.  

I binge watch Rex Smith in bed, the golden beast: sunrays hair, 

python hips sway & shake under the G in Gimbles.

His lips hit the microphone and it dawns on me,

I’m doing the same as he, trying to escape this sadness.

It was winter the day I set my book down, took glasses off, when the frames hit the glass, there was no other version of who we were left to be,was same old same old no matter what.

I drew a breath as cold as the first one in Iowa, a breeze so cold it froze my vomit, on the way home from pretending my sister and I were married at a fancy restaurant, just so I could get a drink.

“To bring me down here, three flights under our fair city, to see you, on that knockabout stage , open up your chords and bleed out, to watch me see you suffer adulation like that, to know how I care, and still want me to see it, is proof positive how you make art out of my suffering.

Art is a game to you, and I a worthy participant.”

– Doris

When dad bowls on Mondays, 

mom sets up the card table so 

we eat dinner with The Monkees.  

I have a crush on wool hat Mike, elan for a seventh grader.  

WCFL plays “Tapioca Tundra.”  

The lyrics make no sense but I’m drawn to them. 

In English we write about hidden meanings.  

I don’t like when meanings hide, though I hide too.