4/30: In which the poet finally stops talking about herself

For the Workshop Facilitator Who Said of My Poem,
"You Don't Really Show Us the Other Person. I Mean,
Why is it that You Like Him?"

Because those girls who like
to date assholes
can have them.
Because my man's arms
are two constricting snakes
and I've never cared
for breathing anyway.
Because my head
on his shoulder becomes
a raindrop on a cloud,
a sigh
on a breeze,
an eyelash on a wish.
Because when he says
my name in that soft way
I unlearn all other words.
Because he tells me my hips
are pretty and he likes
all my tattoos. Because
he says waking up together
is Christmas morning
and he can't believe
this present
is for him.

3/30: Erasure Poem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasure_poetry

With thanks to pp280-281 of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte as published in 2010 by Harper Press's Collins Classics:


The moon opened a blue field in the sky, and rode in it watery bright.

Birds: sing, idle in your boughs.
The time of pleasure and love
is over with you, but you
are not desolate.
Throw on me one bewildered,
dreary glance
and I’ll bury myself
in a deep drift of cloud,
employ myself in dividing
the ripe from the unripe,
repair the fire,
let down the candles,
arrange time in the room.
I will run down the moonlight
a good way on the road,
save minutes of suspense.
Tears of disappointment
become impatient
and the clouds
seize hypochondriac hopes
too bright for so much bliss.
Your fortune has passed:
better tire your wings than
strain my heart. Joy
makes me agile,
welcome, I swallow
as well as I can. Rain
and wind has me dripping
like a mermaid, feverish,
hot, neither afraid
nor unhappy. My prize
is not certain. Slippery
as a briar rose, prickly
as a stray lamb in my arms.

Bonus Poems (Poemnus?)

I wrote these two on the last day of March. First is a short one, then a cheesetacular ghazal.

To My Adorable Mormon Friend Who Can Only Giggle
Nervously and Exclaim, "You're Such a Lady," When I Find
Myself Flustered and Holler, for Example, "Fuck a Duck!"

No, it's true, I really am a Lady, it's just this mouth. You'll
forgive me when I tell you I won it off a sailor in an
all-night game of cards. I liked the way it grinned

--------------------------

See the way she cares for you, see her face so gay;
she once said a prayer for you somewhere along the way.

When you met there riverside that breezy sunfilled day,
before you knew she fell for you somewhere along the way.

You never know just who you’ll meet, nor what path life will take
And you and she took different turns somewhere along the way

Now she goes here, now you go there, both busy, doing well,
you make some plans to settle down somewhere along the way.

And it might happen, down the road, but then, as sure as hell
You’ll find your life is taking you somewhere along the way.

You’ll come and go, and so will she, both living for the days
that you can meet
all night skies and sweet smiles
here and there
along the way.

2.1/30: Chayote

today,
i cooked
chayote.

chayote
is magic.
it's a gourd,

cousin
to squash
and melon.

it's hard
when you cut it
and then

becomes soft
like potato
when cooked.

it feels
like honeydew
between your teeth

and tastes
like the sweetest
zucchini.

so sweet
i thought
about

the first
time
i kissed you,

when you stood
there
by my door, ready

to leave
but i
said, "wait

..."
and you did.
so i planted

the most tidy
of kisses
there, on the apple

of your cheek.
chayote is like
apple, too,

anyway,
i just
wanted

to tell you
about
my day.

2/30: In which I build a church

The Church of the Year of the Split

I am tall
and so, I built the door taller. Me-sized. Tall enough
to make me feel small when I walked through, humbled,
the way doors felt when I was a child. That is, after all,

what churches are for. The first stained glass window,
naturally, is a scene, and it's you, the day
you walked into the room and found me there,
talking with him and in that moment you knew.
I was always good

at make believe, but I'm still afraid of the dark.
In this church, I have learned
how to knit. I sit beneath the window
with a scene of me in the weeks after you left, weeping

openly in public, and I knit enough sweaters
to clothe every cold orphan in town.
Beneath the image of you driving away
I taught myself to play the harp, and I wrote a dirge

that could only be played if we one day had
a double funeral, together, you and me, which of course
will never happen. The biggest window is the one that shows
me, the day you left. There I stand, holding the glass I found

that was yours, and it's written all over my face,
the fact that your beautiful hands held it last, that it's
your lip mark on the rim, your saliva mixed
with the swill. It is beneath this window I sit while I study

every language there is, all seven thousand that exist
in the world, looking for one
in which I can tell you I'm sorry.

((After a prompt by Rachel McKibbens: rachelmckibbens.blogspot.com))

April again already?

In that case, hello first messy rough draft of the 30/30:

you carry the first time you were with him
with you always, tied around your left
index finger because you use it less. this way
it's more of a surprise. on the off times you gesture
with your left hand, offhandedly, as they say,
you catch that tiny, perfect bow with your gaze and you smile
which makes you think of his smile, each perfect tooth
and you give them names, name them after your dates:
right maxillary cuspid becomes the time he tried to put his arm
around you in the movie theater when you still hadn't slept
together yet but you're much too tall for him anyway so you both
laughed at how foolish he looked. left mandibular lateral becomes
the time he cracked that awkward joke at the shooting range
which he maintains was smooth while you declare anything but.
but you're still stuck on that smile, how each sweet lens of his eye
looks like a porcelain spoon and you can't wait to taste its soup.

day 17: UGH.

Well. On the days I don't want to post what I've written because I don't think it's up to par, I get harassed by people who love me saying they damn want to see what happened. I feel like Michael Corleone here, staring my wife in her face saying "JUST THIS ONCE YOU CAN ASK ME ABOUT MY WORK."

See because while I wrote a couple tonight I don't like either enough to share, but JUST THIS ONCE YOU CAN ASK ME ABOUT MY WORK. But then if I'm feeling self deprecating and don't want to share next time well darnit that's tough titties.


CRAPPY DRAFT 1:
It isn't at all curious or even, really, significant
that I'm afraid of heights unless you already know
that if I were allowed one wish I would wish to fly,
that my first crush was on one Peter Pan. I hate
the fear, the blind irrationality of it, and so
at every opportunity I try to challenge it.
I ride rollercoasters and when it gets
to the very top and everyone else is staring
dead ahead to see what comes next, I am peering
over the side, looking straight down
at the ground below, piercing my lower lip
with my teeth. I climb trees, I go to the rooftops
of buildings and creep out to the edge, hold on
for dear life as I look over, trying to stop
my spinning head. I'm afraid of public speaking
and so I sign up at every open mic; I'm terrified
of bugs in my house but I somehow manage
to kill them or scoop them into cups
and carry their bodies outside do you see
what it is I'm trying to say what I'm trying
to say is that I will keep coming back to you,
to the idea of us, just like it's the edge
of some building because there's no good reason
anyone should allow something so trivial
as a fear of heights to keep them from seeing
the view because when one finds oneself blessed
with a love like this, fear should get nothing
but a shove.



CRAPPY DRAFT 2:
when she began cutting, it wasn't,
as some suspected, because she wanted
to die, far from it. it was just that
of all of the systems of coping she'd studied,
this one seemed best suited for her own
particular needs. well, to be fair,
narcolepsy had seemed more romantic but
as a newly developed insomniac she didn't
think she could make it stick. the first time
she picked up the blade and pressed it
to her canvas like a brush, she didn't
press deep; she didn't want to see blood.
no, instead she cut into that transtitive,
gossamer place just beneath the skin
where fears and memories stayed. she cut,
and out flowed that rooftop in winter,
the recurring dream of the grocer's son,
the first time a lover had hit her,
the eighth, the fear of never-good-enough,
the simultaneous need and impossibility
of sleep at four in the morning.
she pressed deeper. there, the first time
she cursed at her father, there, the tenth time
she she said she hated her mother to her face,
there, the times she ran away, filing out
in a meticulous line, one behind the other.
a little more pressure and just before
the single drop of blood that made her stop
came the day she first realized her parents
were not gods, the day she first realized
perhaps her lover might honestly be, and the day
she no longer could deny the truth of the canyon
of her own inescapable and utterly trivial
mortality.

day 16

i wrote but won't share it so there.

NO I DIDN'T

NO I DIDN'T write a poem for day 15 and I'm okay with that. This April has been a lot harder than the past three, and I blame my close personal friend depression and I do not blame myself and I forgive myself and that's that. I love me even if I don't write every day this time around. I'll still try, and some days I'll crank out two or three. And they'll all be terrible. So I'll write another one at the very last minute and share that one instead. Or something. xoxo

day 14: the science of it

she loves him hardest
on the nights when he's maddest,
when his anger approaches sacrilege,
when his raised fist becomes a feather of flame,
his entire body an iron jet,
each wicked glacial tooth cutting slow
across the flatlands of her skin,
each wave of rage revealing
a new coiled tempest in his chest.
on those humid evenings
when he tells her he loves her,
she can look him fully in the face,
and see the bald truth of it in his eyes,
the academic sincerity, the silver exact science.