Blood Diary / Deer Song Loneliness sneaks, succeeds only when full on blood and berries – the feast of the lonely on a Saturday evening. On a Sunday, no one answers. Framed in suntan and a problem: there it is – the lonely. Every other is another I used to know fully. In the deer [...]

Row toward. Swing. Birds are in my body. Recovery. Huffy with dream. Cold cream. Bloody lamb- are you bred to be a gentle bee? Recovery. Cold dream. The birds. Body.

We left our town in arboreal disarray. Pretty mess! We left, to the river. Woods that sing the air- oracle dog white-eyed whining (leave for the river leave

Memphis Song I will turn in Memphis. Hear its heavy lungs. I will not lighten its load. It will not call my name. Ask for it. Ask til it remembers your name. Ask for the singing of your heavy name. Black lines hold up. White lines too. Bloodbread calls your heavy name.

Writing Song Tuneless singing, humming humming. Blood or bread, black lines hold you up, white lines too. Cradle it and spit – make text. Ask for the poem as the morning asks for you. Ask for the singing ask. Ask until the word loses meaning.

Train Dream (Crusoe in America) An island blooms inside, bloody, a flood of islands. Capture the islands – American as hell, American as trains running through bedrooms (where we go trains will follow (when I first, when I first heard train crash clatter, I thought America was ending)). Was I absent from the ocean? Pack [...]

Back Catalogue – Lovers (page one) Table of Our Discontent INTRODUCTION: CHEMISTRY – with extended footnotes by the ed. I. French Kissing II. Conversation, Entertainment a. Values? b. III. Poetry – The rhetorical question? PART ONE: THE BODY POLITIC a. Gender and PDA b. Categorized: The way you looked sleeping in on Tuesday. PART TWO: BETTER [...]

Early Dark Song (Revision) Aching jaw. How to ache, the belly knows. Plant the rosemary. Dark just grows. Oh aching night – a cauldron of thought, a mouth full of snakes.

Early Dark Song Jaw is aching, the writing slow. How to ache, the belly knows. The jaw can’t find a way. In habit unsure. Dark just grows. Oh aching, come and make me a cauldron of thoughts (a mouthful of snakes). Shantih shantih, come and find me, I am lost. Inhabit the missing light.

This is another older poem. At the time, I felt like this was really close to Poetry. Now it reminds me of my tiny one bedroom apartment in Hattiesburg. The Weight Control is a ventriloquist. Kitten, hush this mittened mouth. Better To bend the morning back. Monday, you do yourself too well. The weight is an open [...]

Tornado Watch Interesting weather, all that wind. The frustrated trees rub like cogs fingering gears. You and I – awkward commentators, cosmonauts reflecting on the blue. In Russia, love eat you. Branches ache for release over powerlines. I can’t watch anymore, afraid of unseeing, like the sick terror look of that big mouse as the [...]

Sushi Rice Do this: Rinse and drain the white grains on clean pale linen. Do this instead of thinking. In a yellow ceramic bowl, buff rice in water between fingers and palms til rain clouds emerge. Rinse. Lost in the process. I am lost. My arms around your hollow ribs – not like a daughter. [...]

Curar -Spanish- to treat or cure; to heal What would I drive South for? Curar. You and debt and Jesus. Your Daddy’s gun and long legs, tall as blue herons, tall as telephone poles. You wear best the ripped white shirt, the gnarl of garden dirty rheumatic hands. Tattooed, I am stamped by you, by [...]

Salted Apples Salt engages the palate- a way to purge the sweet of a misnomer red delicious or a too soon watermelon, pale to the rind. I understand it: skin and sweet, tongue and seed, peach fingers kissing, reaching. You play piano. Keys dip under fingers pressing. The chords are salted apples – Gershwin, honeycrisp [...]

Brother Fawn herringbone stripe, dripped with brick – old paint. They don’t fit your frame, I assume, or more likely, they don’t fit your suitcase. T- shirts, cimmerian and soft, left in the chest of drawers last time you visited. Most are shapeless, my shoulders coathangers, but I like the monotone, the worn cotton, your [...]

Birthday Zen Poem Apologies, rosemary- spicy nasturtiums hoard the sun. Sneaky cat is now in possession of the landlord’s house. No rent for him, his living is trouble. Tomorrow is your 27th birthday. I would love to give you Oaxaca: toast of roasted crickets, and molé.

Because the muse up and left me this week, I decided to share a poem I wrote in workshop at the lovely young age of 23 about up and leaving my muse. At the time, when I didn’t know what to write about, I would confer with Gertrude (sometimes Mildred), an older jaded imaginary woman [...]

Beatline Road Corn silks and carrot peel – feed the maggots. Mealy pale meal – we could eat them. Show me something new, September. Little leaves rooting. The good feeling of roads. Yesterday we saw the river. Oh longing! Crooked Creek – hot spots cold spots minnows. In my strapless black swimsuit I pretend at [...]

Paper Girl Morning makes tough. Heavy thighs. My eyes, my sore feet. Holy basil and toast. Fall just folds summer up in slanting sun – an origami bird burnt, paper sun phoenix. The whole world is windchimes. Sleep just folds me up.

Domestic Sinister The relief of stretching flesh, the turning of fall – lantana begonia. Caterpillar. What will you do if your bird bones break? Gutted and uncomfortable. But some new ones are beautiful and sing! Gorgeous clementines with purpled poppy lips. I fear the worst and want for you one that sings (in the narrow [...]

Stroke Call Giver away of things, mender, meddler of family weight. Now still, stroke-bound, not giving. Loss and guilt – typical: a grandparent grown tiresome with the giving away of unwanted things. My house is not unlike hers, the hand-sewn quilts. She was busy despite her failing hands, always doing. I like to be still. [...]

Submissive, In Charcoal originally printed in Product 19, 2004 The professor traces the rising warmth of my spine with the dull end of his charcoal. He addresses the artists: Notice the contrast between the line of her shoulders – here – and the roundness of her thighs – there. The breath inside my still-life pose [...]

Recognizant Milk and toothpaste and money, the counting of it, the red smell of its lack. Push the dough, push it into itself, stretch it and fold it. This bread cost less than the sum of my worry. I knead at its muscle to work out the bad luck dream: I woke in the night [...]

Kudzu Restless as the interstate, it creeps one foot a day – an exponential reach that sings. Suburban nostalgia ignites a sparkler in my belly: glorious green ruin! Near this hill is a house rendered in kudzu: the furniture arranged, the piano waiting for fingers. “Death is always at work,” I remember. Invading the invasive, [...]