Day 4/30: There are some things we know about the devil:

Not that he is evil, red, or even for that matter
a "he."  Not anger, not torture, no flames.
The Devil is patient, and kind, speaks slowly
and always looks both ways at the crossing.
The Devil rewinds.  Crosses all Ts and dots
every I.  Takes a pie to the new neighbors
and always has a spare cup of sugar to lend.
The Devil will tell you when there's food
in your teeth, will help you put up signs
for your lost pet, is really interested
in your latest art project.  Brings you a plate
after Thanksgiving, keeps your secrets,
always has jumper cables in the truck,
is a wicked fast change of a flat. The Devil
doesn't even need to lie.  One sly smile
and you'll deceive your own self, lie down darlin,
rest your weary head
neath my arm.

Day 3/30: Eulogy for the Disinherited

Some things must first be cut away.  From behind my knee,
an old Victrola, playing your song.  An antique key pulled
from under my tongue, and like that: I've forgotten
your name.  There are birds that must be shook loose
from my ears before I knock out the sound of the beach
the night we built that fire.  Once the smoke clears,
the entire city of Tucson.  The name of the street
on which we lived, and then the real challenge:
my Hydra heart.  Each time I cut out the parts that loved you
two more hearts grow in their place.  Until I am left,
blossoming vines blooming from my chest, growing over
all the rubble, one thousand new organs that have never
sung your tune.

7/30: almost made it a week without writing about my mother

thanks and bonus

Dear friends, I know I'm not writing up to my full potential this April. I'm not writing like I can, or should, or have in the past. But you've been so wonderful and supportive. You're leaving me comments, you're sharing my words with others, and that does my heart so much good. I'm sharing, as thanks, a piece with you I am proud of that I wrote in a workshop a month or two back led by the inimitable force named Rachel McKibbens.

I call it, "How I Got my Spots."

In this freckleless nation, my students ask why I have spots. Why. What a half-loaded gun of a word. I tell them my birth mother was a cheetah. They do not believe me and they do. It is a lie and it is not.

There is a song in my blood, a sonata in three movements, the cheetah woman put it there. The first movement begins with the particular onliest sound of her keys on their rings, the way the sound could make me snap to, and the sweetfear sourlove taste of the sound. In this movement I surrender one third of all future kisses and a handful of teeth. Ocean sound and the hotel room that night three sequential strangers came and left and could not epoxy me whole. The smell of sewer steam and the silence before a clap of thunder. In this movement I cannot love the mirror because it is broken, too.

In the second we hear her lacing her shoes, hear them so hard we see them, still pristine white after all those years of running away. In this movement I bury a flock of childhood memories in the soil behind our house, they will never sprout and I will not remember why not, I put them there and turn lose forever, kick dust over them as I turn my back. She turns her back and there it is again like it never stopped, the staccato crunch of driveway gravel, even the rocks sound angry. They will call at you caw at you claw at you tell you they know why you did it, they saw it, how you held on to a corpse for two thirsty years, they mock you for holding so long, they mock you for letting go, dare you to run for the cold comfort of the bathroom floor.

You won't realize the third movement has started at first. It opens with the echo of no more words, the wish to deserve the word home, the feeling of death tucked behind your left ear. Then a dream of flying, then rubber bullets, applause that does not catch on, the last glass he drank from before he left, sound of rain, unlocking, floorboards creaking, look, the cockroach is getting away before you can kill it. The tinkling of icicles, a spider's footsteps, an ecstatic eulogy, and behind it all, still, the echoing silence, overripe fruit hitting tiles. And the grand finale, the most dulcet of terrors, the sound of a cheetah hungering home.

Mom and Dad

30/30: this time it's personal and it's naked and it's ugly.

And it's prose.  Whoops.

I'm feeling extremely restless.  Something about spending an entire day expecting to learn at any minute that any number of people I hold very dear had died.  Something about this ovulation being extra cat-in-heat-like.  Something about too much introspection and existential thought.  Something about I love a man on the other side of a globe and what am I even stringing him along for if I will probably just let him down by going to bed with someone and never live near him anyway.  An open relationship in theory and in practice are different animals.  A past lover asked if I wanted to get down.  I wanted to get down.  I went to see him.  It was fun and it was fine but how will the man I love be after I tell him?  And I left still feeling cat-in-heat-like.  I wanted to go to any bar and go to bed with the first person who made eye contact.  I wanted a stranger to slap me full across the face and tell me horrible things about myself.  I went home and wrote a tender poem about my love then spent my whole dream fucking strangers who said yes.  So instead I drive too fast after school down rural highways and the wind is too cold because I don't have a jacket and it hurts my skin and I like it.  And a car in front of me is kicking up dust and it's stinging my skin and I like it.  I follow the car down roads I wouldn't otherwise have taken because I want the stinging to keep stinging.  And the cold and the sting is making me tear up and I like it because I have an excuse to shed tears and a reason for them I can name.  I'm driving too fast and I'm fantasizing about leaping off and flying for a few seconds.  I hold the accelerator down until it will go no faster and dream about brick walls.  And what am I even doing staying up too late every night and I just want to sleep all day and why am I going to work what does this work mean for me for my future what is a future do I even want one?  What is living for and can't I just sleep under an overpass and start drunk fights with strangers and get my teeth knocked out?  Why do I feel like shit and why do I want someone something to make me feel like shit?  Because then I'd have an actual reason for feeling this way that I cannot otherwise name?

20/30: The dictionary of obscure sorrows

Vemödalen
Because what can I write about you that has not already
been written?  The loving of you creates within me myriad
obscure sorrows.  Vellichor: You are an antique bookstore, all
dustsmell and ancient knowledge, and I am sitting in the floor
in the middle, hopeless in knowing I can never
read all you contain.  Onism: I hate every other body
that has known yours before I could.  Hate every
past lover who took your body inside theirs, hate your mother
who carried you first, who nursed you at her breast
decades before you touched mine with a newborn's
wonder.  Mahpiohanzia: because no matter how hard I try
I cannot make this body jump up and fly through the air
around the globe to be with yours.  Aimonomia: If I know
your good name, in its entirety, might you cease
to exist altogether?  Nementia: There are times of the day
I can taste you on the tip of my tongue but can't remember
how you got there.  Gnossienne: because you
are a house with so many rooms I will never
explore them all.

17/30: things are starting to get weird... need more prompts and more TIME in my days to write.

The month before she left she began
eating walnuts, cashews, almonds,
hazelnuts, peanuts, pecans, then
garbanzos, barley, sunflower seeds, pepitas,
chia, flax, buckwheat, and lotus;
anything that would sprout.  She spent
her nights standing out in the desert
with her mouth wide open, begging the moon
to kick-start some tide.  The night the rains came
she gave birth
to an exodus
and rode away on a river of vines.
It was Mother's Day and she was giving birth
to herself.

15/30: Prompt - write about something that will never happen

HALFWAY DONE WITH THE MONTH SUCKAS!  LET'S PARTY!

(oh yeah i'm supposed to give you a pome):

The day you called me and said

I’m sorry, truly, for all of it, I woke up speaking

every language.  Rivers flowed

from their deltas to their springs. I checked

my bank account to find all I needed and more;

politicians quit telling lies.

I looked into the heavens and saw

the sun going round the Earth,

the earth going round the moon, I reached up

to slice a hunk of cheese off the moon

and ate it calmly with wine while I watched

the parade and the bands go by.

12/30: After Jan Beatty's "Shooter"

Poem Removed because Wicked Banshee Press is going to publish it!  Link up when it happens.

Today is the 24th.

Back on the 18th I wrote four poems.  I figured that didn't put me ahead, as I still wanted to write every day.

I got a little behind on the weekend.  Been working on an application for a master's degree.

So, I still want to write for the days I missed.  I'm two behind, plus today I haven't written yet either.  

I'll post two tonight, and we'll see what happens tomorrow, as I work a double then.

I’m not excited about tonight’s quality, but then, the April 30/30 has never been about quality, I don’t think, as much about writing every single day no matter what.  Or, missing a couple days and then writing two afterward ;)

She Dreamed of an Old Shoe:

Comfort, said her daughter.

Shedding layers, said her friend.

Your childhood, said her therapist.

You’re tired, said the quiet voice within.

It’s me, her tired husband.

The urge to run, said her lover.

From this prompt by Nicole Homer:

First, she lost her comb,

the one her mother left her.  “You must not have really

loved it,” said her husband.  How quickly the flames

consumed him.  Out of the ashes crawled a spider, carrying a song

her mother used to sing, and faster than light, she realized

she had to swallow the song.  When the comb reappeared,

she did not cry, said only, “I knew you’d come back.”

A Portrait of the Artist's Abuser as a House

“I know that his punishment is that he has to be himself forever.”

                                                          – John Paul Davis

These bricks, these strong, difficult bricks,

are the sort you cannot look at without remembering

the rusty clay they came from.  Walk up,

through the trees, low hanging, shadows their only fruits,

and stand on the low front stoop, covered

in Astroturf, faded and balding.  Knock

on the wooden door, painted moss, and it will open

unto you.  When it closes behind, you will not notice.

The house will always be just

out of focus, in the way of the memory of a house is,

the house of your friend from fourth grade, you remember,

almost.  Try to focus – you never will, something in the periphery

always grabbing for your attention, keeping you from remembering

why you want to leave.  When the walls start to sing

it will seem so natural, singing that you’re pretty, please stay,

have some food, take a nap, you deserve this, you can never leave,

you must never want to.

                                                   Beige walls, tan carpeting, no music, just

singing that you’re ugly, you have to stay, if you leave no other house

will have you, sparse furniture but a kitchen full of food, and outside

a storm has started, warm wind blustering, knocking trash down the road,

occasional thunder but never rain, only the threat, only

cloud-to-cloud lightning, never touching down, the fear

of the storm is worse than the storm itself, you know,

and you realize the house

                                                    has done all this, grown the trees,

started the storm, turned in on itself, begun wilting like a plant

removed from its soil, like a fish taken from its sea, like a brick

stolen from its clay because it wants only you, forever,

and no one else must see you at all.  This is why there are trees,

a storm, a song, nothing else can live here, no friends,

no visitors, no roommates, no pets, just you, the song,

and a kitchen full of food.

From this prompt.

10/30 O G Will

Shakespeare doesn’t give a flying fuck

if you like his sunglasses.  Doesn’t care.  Wears them

cuz he wants to, cuz they feel good, cuz he knows

he can rock some fukkin pink.  Shakespeare

likes to wear his pink wayfarers

down to the market, lean up against a wall,

leave everyone wondering whether

he’s looking at them.  Shakespeare likes

to stare at people with his head turned away

so they’d never think, likes to dissect

their characters with no repercussions; this way

he can stare as long as he wants.  Shakespeare

can’t write without his sunglasses, can’t fuck

without his sunglasses, refuses to come to the door

if he can’t find them.  Shakespeare never wore that collar

until he got them sunglasses, and even then he only got it

cuz they looked baller as fuck together.  Shakespeare wore

his sunglasses to meet the queen, no lie, spent

the whole time face tilted toward her perfect shoes, his eyes

burning straight into hers, unabashed. 

7/30: ghost line from Melissa May

The day I killed my mother, I got out
my Sunday best, washed it again, just
to be sure, pressed it with starch,
curled my hair, flossed.  I wrote her
a love letter and wrapped it
around the blade.  I ate well,

two eggs over medium, bacon medium,
toast and gravy, orange juice, coffee, hot
and black.  I went to the chapel and prayed
for the first time in years.  I kissed
a stranger and stared directly
into the sun.  The day I killed my mother,

I went to her house, rang the bell,
placed the love letter directly into
her heart and then left, cut off
all my hair, didn't cry, burned the clothes,
didn't cry, tore the pages from the books
she'd given me, carved her name
into the soft flesh of my belly, didn't cry.

1/30: Telling jokes with the moon

If you want to tell jokes to the moon, you must
abandon all your old tricks.  She's heard them.  Knows
the one-two-jab, the dance and punch, knows
them all.  You'll have to be clever, but not quick;
the moon does not like sudden.  Her changes
come on slow and heavy.  She is an expert
on fear and patience.  Tell her a joke
that is mostly sad.  Start with sorrow
before you move in for the laugh.  Finish
with something sparkling and she'll love you
forever, call you her favorite, promise never
to turn her face from you, and her laughter
will ripple like the waves she's always moving
and she will never let you drown.

day 20 pome 18: silver

Ode to the Silver Hair on My Crown:

You weren't there at all, and then
you were, fully formed. That is, there never was
a time in which I saw a hair
half-silver and half-brown. No,
just last week you appeared in the mirror,
no warning, no call, no letter. And I

stared. I thought of pulling you out,
and almost did, I'm sorry to say. But you
were silver, not gray, silver in the way
of stories of magic, perhaps like a
Pegasus hair. I used to believe
in Pegasus, back when I was much
too young for you to appear on my crown.

But here you are, and I, nearly thirty,
have already accepted that I am not
immortal, nor magical like Pegasus. At least
you are silver and shining, not dull,
not flat, not a white that might yellow,
and so you shall stay, in order to teach
your sister around you how to shine, for soon

enough I will be forty, then fifty, and then
one day, dead and forgotten but perhaps
if I can leave this life as a Pegasus
none of that will matter. Shine on.

Day 17 poem 15

Poem for a poet whose voice I love #1:
-------------------------------------

When we marry, which we will of course do
in a way entirely our own, without man,
without building, without book, we will spend
the entire moon that follows in a tent
in a clearing in a woods, watching the moon
's phases change, commenting on the way
she clearly approves of our union. When

we go back to the world, to our new house
with a pink picket fence and a doorbell
that honks like a goose, I will secret
every single word you throw out, will use
the words to construct a complete fresh
manuscript, I will name it after you,
will wrap it in butcher paper, tie it
with shoelaces, share it only with
the moon, not even with you, not even
with you.

6/30: Write a letter to someone dead.

Dear Gin:

I'd like to say first that I'm sorry
I haven't talked to you in so long but now
that you're dead it's difficult,
naturally, I'm sure you understand.
To be fair, I haven't heard much
from you either. I guess I wanted
to thank you for a few things. First,

for trying so hard to make me a lady.
Sit up straight and cross your legs and
use the smallest fork first and all
the other seemingly trivial things
you'd remind me of that added up
to make a larger message: be lady-
like. And I am. Lady-like, anyway.
Then, for being so darned beautiful

in all of your old photos, for meaning
that I came from Beautiful Stock, that I
might one day grow up to be beautiful too,
and for the other photos, all the ones
of you in foreign countries, which gave
me permission to travel, in the way those other
photos gave me permission to be beautiful.
It's important to have permission
to be beautiful, I think, what with all
the messages women get today, and also
to be able to travel on your own. Thank you

for so many things. Thank you for
every single school year, the way you would
send my mother, my sister, and I off
to the big city with your credit card
because we two girls would outgrow our clothes
too fast for our parents' budget,
and you knew this, and you loved us
and wanted us to have nice things. Thank you
for the story of the way you and our grandfather

met. For the story of how his parents
were just country farming folk, never sent him
in to school, and the system found him,
third-grade age, and brought him in, and showed him
the third grade classroom, and said, you could
go here if you wanted, these children are
your age. Showed him the second grade classroom
and said, this is right in the middle, if
you like, showed him the first grade class
and said this is the beginning. What do you think?
And my grandfather, the love of your whole life,
just a boy, looked up, smiling, and said:
What classroom was the black-haired girl in?
Of course she was you. This story gave me
permission to believe in love. Do you see

the trend, Gin? O woman who refused to be called
Grandmother because of what it might imply,
woman who threw respect to the wind and said
instead we should call you by your nickname,
Gin, from Virginia, the name I now bear in honor
of all your stories, thank you for what
your stories teach me and thank you, even,

for the story I hate to tell, the story
my father told me, the story in which it is
late September, 1957, and my father is watching
you do the dishes, happy in the kitchen of
his childhood home, happy in the way that only
a privileged white boy in Arkansas in the 50s
can be as he watches his beautiful mother
do dishes, smiling, in the home his father,
who loves his mother, built for his family,
whom he also loves, and shows it. In this story
you are elbow deep in suds when the trucks go past,
down the highway which runs right in front
of your house, and you look up, and you see
the line, as dark green as they tell me
your eyes must have been, and you throw

down your dishtowel and you run out into
your front yard to shake your fist and scream,
as if it were anything other than ineffectual,
at the 101st Airborne on their way
to do nothing other than help a few kids
go to school. Thank you for what I've learned
from this story too, that even gods
and goddesses can be wrong, that it is
my destiny to learn from my heritage,
that my shame is my teacher, that I
can be like you and different at once,
that I can be lady-like, beautiful,
well-traveled, deserve nice things and
deserve to be loved but that I
should love others, too.

Sleep well,
your loving granddaughter.

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.

day ten, so difficult

The Girl Next Door Dates the Acupuncturist:

When she opened the door, there he stood,
well-dressed and so polite, wearing a grin
and holding a boquet of needles. He didn't
offer them to her so the vase stayed
where it was. They left, went to dinner,
he asked about her childhood and when
she said they didn't hug her enough,
he took a needle from the bunch
and ever so carefully buried its point
in the nape of her neck. She didn't blink.
She went on. They picked on her, she said,
and there, a needle in her forearm.
No toys, she moaned, and he placed one
right in her palm. I still have problems
making friends, she admitted, and he threaded
a needle through the skin above her heart.
And with her admission that she had
no idea how to fall in love, he opened
his mouth, pierced his own tongue straight through,
kissed both her eyelids and then her mouth
as sweetly as she'd ever been kissed.

22/30: The man who could rewind time.

The first thing he did
was win a whole bunch of money.
They boys at the track thought he just
"had a knack," a "good picker."
He made sure to lose at the poker tables
just often enough.

The money (it was a surprise
even though he'd heard it
a million times before) did not
buy happiness. So he met a girl.
Learned her habits well enough to rewind
and win her over. Made her love him.
It was easier than picking the
trifecta, the daily double, he knew
everything about her before they'd even met
(for the eighteenth time) and they married,
raised a family, and he did it all
just exactly right. Handled every situation
perfectly (by the eighth or ninth try),
was a model father, a perfect husband and at the end
of it all, as he lay on his deathbed,
he found himself too afraid to die.

So he went back.
Became a bank robber. An astronaut.
A famous country singer. President.
Learned kung fu, calculus, French.
Read all the books he meant to,
twice.
He still wasn't happy.

He began inventing favorite ways to die.
Driving off bridges was a fun one,
rewinding just as the front of the car
kissed the water hello. He'd play with time,
see just how far he could push it - how much
carbon monoxide he could breathe and still
go back.

Eventually he started getting confused;
surely you can imagine. When you've lived
a thousand lifetimes it must be hard to tell
which one you're living now.
It wasn't until she saw the girl he'd married
in the grocery, walking alongside another man
(one who'd won her fair and square)
with the same exact two babies they'd borne
that the real, heavy-hitting questions about life
and meaning and the nature of reality wore him down.
He ran up to her, crying, but of course
she did not know him. When he demanded
that the babies were his own, she called for the police.
When he snatched at them, tried to run,
they knocked him down. The report later said
he'd reached into his pocket and they'd thought
he had a gun, so they fired and he clean
disappeared.
There was nothing else to say.