Alaska

You have nothing to say but to smile that strange Jack-o-Lantern smile, flash those dwarfed Alaskan teeth, warp that gray skin.
I smell like your sweat, the prehistoric dirt deep in the earth, the graves you robbed with an ax and a blade and a brush, at home among basements filled with the dead, a mortician of the orphans removed from the living by millennia, with no families and no histories and no names.

Living woman sprinkled with grave-dust

Rumpus

Now there are black birds above my bed
in multiples
your curves are sharp and angular and
it was just like the first time
you pushing hard against me in
a room that was not mine
with sharp beaks and talons
it was just like the first time except that
I said yes and
their wings beat against my face
once again I held my breath in
with scaly-feet and carrion breath
kept my soul from floating
away
some peer down because
they are watching the electricity snap
you have thick thighs and a round rump and
tyrannosaurus arms
you ask if
you can just
finish

Tangential

I am peripheral,
he said
to me
of me

I am
hardly touching
a matter.

I am
sine over
cosine.

I am mathematical.
I just touch
the surface
of the curve
at that point

2: Paleontological abuse mind-set

A map of Texas
is void of communication.

A skull on the floor
is an obligation.

Various creatures, framed or plaster or sketched or without skin or without bodies
is secretive.

Whimsy
is a commodity.

A pile of your boots
is a condition for receiving love.

An axe
is "doing to" someone.

Another axe
is additive.

A book on ancient birds
has no limits.

A pencil sharpener for soft-leaded drawing pencils
is power over someone.

1: Healthy paleontological attitudes

A map of Texas
is controllable energy
A skull on the floor
is a choice
Various creatures, framed or plaster or sketched or without skin or without bodies
is a natural drive
Whimsy
is nurturing, healing
A pile of your boots
is an expression of love
An axe
is sharing with someone
Another axe
is part of who I am
A book on ancient birds
requires communication
A pencil sharpener for soft-leaded drawing pencils
is private

define:metamorphic

Something unfamiliar, then:
a rush of pain
a shout
stench that covers my hands and my hair
and bleeding that I cannot quell.

why
I think, laying after
why did i do this
when he does not care about me
when this will mean nothing to him

But that is exactly why
and
realizing this, I smile
and turn away

***

A tile, at first glance
on second, something far more
insidious.
then,
blades between my fingers and
part of what drew me to you
in the first place

***

At some point, I must
not be
that rock
anymore

(Or Walk 19 mins.)

It is
It is
It is

I always find myself back here, and I do not know the way home.

Define:igneous

You have not stopped searching.

Here,
though.

it is      a different story





I want to sit within the twists of your cerebrum
and sing lullabies to your heart in its own rhythm

but only for a little while



. . .
you have not stopped searching, and i




have yet to begin

Yay/neigh

If wishes
were
horses
they would be the bay kind,
brown and drab with black manes
and they would lazy around your field, chewing your grasses and snorting at flies,
whinnying,
"my kingdom for a wish"
on occasion,
and then they would
go back
to
the grass.
This thing is
alive,
I would think,
mounting its back
which rippled with
muscles and
swayed under me,
no machine,
it has
thoughts
and
it can feel me here
it can
knock me
off.
Noticing this
throws me
off

Define:sedimentary

At some point, I must be
the rock
onto which
you lower yourself
but
At some point, I must
not be
that rock
anymore

Hands

You are like clockwork.

1Your one hand is shorter than your other

2and I do not know how to wind you up

3you chime on the hour

4you are made up of gears

5you have a pendulum that swings back and forth and

6you are watch-size

7or a grandfather

8you have a small bird inside of you that springs out of a little trap door occasionally

9and you are analog instead of digital

10and are esoteric

11and I have to wind you up

12did I mention that I do not know how to do that

That's not what I meant.

Cradle Song

My lullaby is the emptiness
the way that there is no one between the floor and the ceiling
the dart throw of solitude

a raspy voice that whispers
"you are alone"
to the quiet

the hand that is not around my waist
the lips that do not kiss me awake in the mornings

a locked door
two
three
locked doors

a twin bed with dirty sheets

eyes that say
it is the evening
you best be going
now

Silverjaw Minnow

Each time, it gets harder

In the evening half-light
filtered through trees and across distance and
red-green,

I wonder how you see me
sometimes I think that it is tall and beautiful and unattainable
and at other times I think that it is silly and childish and clumsy

I spent the day in the water, walking far out toward Long Island, past the waders and swimmers in bikinis with long hair, out to where the boats were and the seaweed was tall and the sand was silky and the water was cold

and I dug deep in the sand, to where there were fish eggs and shells and translucent rocks, and there was a child beside me but we did not speak, because we were both building, piling the sand and mosaicing it with the rocks we had found, digging moats for the minnows and crabs and repairing the toddler-damage to our fortified walls.

I wonder how you see me, because sometimes I am the girl riding the plastic sea-turtle around and around in circles and laughing from deep inside,

but sometimes I am the woman, sitting back, deep in the back of my skull, planning and thinking and analyzing, the very old woman with steady hands and a wrinkled breast that is a pillow for all who are weary, having lived out its reprosexual purposes and been upcycled...

and sometimes I dance in bars.
Sometimes it is in short skirts.

So on nights like this, when the light makes the trees black against its brightness and the sun considers setting,
Those women watch it.
Those women watch it, and they wonder
if you could love one of us at all
and which of us it is

Green Lacewing

There is a metaphor
which
I struggle to think of
like
pulling water
out of
sand
But that isn't the one,
not one at all
There is a pattern
of
seeing and
of longing
with which I
derive my
understanding of
you

What was it like for her, to be next to you for so long, to be sorted amid your creatures, each of her bones counted and catalogued?  What was it like for her to be the subject of your turning, the sight triggering your half-smiles, the slab of rock brushed by your fingertips?  To lay listening to your sleeping breath, exhaling directness and inhaling intention, as the sun set behind your head

there is
a metaphor
with which I
may understand
your turning

Torch Lake Township

If it had never happened

I would share your breath

Walk of

Driving by, I see our ghosts
You, me,
a third, also me,
and you and I are the only ones who wish for that moment
back.

The night before
driving the morning after,
weaving the one-way streets
to not say
good-morning

to the man with two dogs.

Hawk

You jolt awake, your hand coming up and back and your eyes opening, wide and intense like a hawk’s eyes, glazed in sleep.  I smile, whisper, “you’re dreaming,” but your eyes remain that way, as if they are meant for the top of a hooked beak instead of a human face.  “It’s me,” I say.  The changing is imperceptible, but the change itself is not; your eyes have softened and the hand that rose has settled, wing-brush on my shoulder.  And, in that moment, eyes fixed and unblinking, your strong, piano-playing talons clench into the muscle at the top of my back.  And you blink, once, long, semi-conscious if that, diurnal bird in the clutches of sleep, and then the eyes return.  You draw me to your lips.  My breath stops. Your hand releases.  Your head falls.  You sleep.  

I watch you, for a moment, but then it is my turn to settle my hands on your back, to pull myself towards you, to nestle under your chin.  I do not sleep, yet.  I lie awake, forcing my eyes to stay open, clinging to you, knowing that if I sleep, you will be gone.  Let me be an owl.  Let me be an owl...

Instead, I sleep.  One wish per person per night.

(I jolt awake, my hand coming up and back and my eyes opening, wide and intense like hawk’s eyes, glazed in sleep.  And I search for you, semi-conscious, and, every morning, or evening, or afternoon, whenever I wake, you are gone.)

130

You hold
my face
against yours
I say, "Is this love?"
You say, "no."
Thank God.
I imagined love would be more
magnetic
than dying.
Not really dying,
just
losing a life.
Held against you,
You do not say
Do not cry
because
there is not a chance
that I would
and not
because you
comfort me.

Lisa, 2009

“Listen,” he said, putting a finger to her lips.

“What?”

“Just listen.”  And there was a sound, through the window, a cooing sound that trailed through the night.

Autumn

To me it is September, and the air is crisp in the mornings, and I am standing in high heels on a yellow leaf.  There is a breeze, and I am only a few weeks into adjusting to this place, wrapped in a thin cardigan with energy buzzing along my neck, heavy books in hand, and as I walk along the stone steps, as the sun rises too-hot in the too-cold air, my heart is gasping.  I feel its beating and its gasping as it tries to span distance, to reconcile the too-many miles from where it is to where it is and I say, quietly and ever diligently, that if I stay pretty and study hard and am oh-so-kind to all of my classmates, he will come, and I take it in like a lullaby and find the best seat in the classroom and open a heavy textbook and a notebook that I have dutifully highlighted and annotated, and I dip my mind into Latin phrases and case law and legal procedure until I am so full that I cannot feel the distance.

Stomping Days

After the rain

Falls after snapping

Turtles who hibernate in the

Ether, after our

Regurgitated rhythms

Walk through the skulls of every school-

Aged girl who looks for a good time in high heels

Run through the Fields and the Woods and

Damn the Ground

Saying:

“Agriculture is not God, nor are

Forests turned to

TImber nor

Evergreen trees crossed through with

Rusting 

Wire nor

Aquamarine crayons melted down and

Run across our Hair and Fingernails, Bodies

Dragged through 

Sand is not God

And you with 

Five-dollar bills between 

Toenails and permutations of 

Elicit images are mutations of

Red

Wood

And I am the 

Real thing I do not burn so

Dare me to

See if I won’t”

After the world goes down,

Feeling fingertips

Tangled with 

Electric lines and

Radio Signals,

Wombat and Rabbit make 

A new

Rambit which makes

Drugs for the 

Sellers

After the world goes down,

Fire upon the

Tangles of hair, burning,

Everyone is

Run to the cellars,

Wistfully recalling their stomping days.

Alligator boots with

Reticent smiles and

Dogged glances will

See us down

I mean it.

I would leave before the end of the night, leave you standing in the doorway, eyes searching the darkness for me.