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.

day nine, all apologies for messiness of draft

Most mornings you woke before me
to begin your sacred rites, first
bringing a glass of water and leaving it,
just there, on the nightstand that instantly
became an alter with your offering. Then,
to the kitchen to brew coffee and sometimes
I'd wake with the smell of it, stretching
into its earthen scent, the hazelnut creamer
you knew was my favorite.
If that was not enough, you'd bring out the pans,
the tongs, the spatula, and cook a breakfast
that would almost certainly coax me out
of dreaming, convince me to leave the comfort
of cotton and down. These
were your rituals, your prayer beads,
your communion, each morning kiss
an ablution, a baptism, a benediction.

I've never been good with the concept of the divine.
I left the church at age eleven, had a talk
with God to apologize, said I just couldn't hold
the idea all at once in my mind.
And so, on the rare mornings with you
when I woke first, all I could do was stare,
my heart trapped in my throat, wrapped in awe
and fear and rapture like a cloak, my eyes brimming with love
and wonder, too frightened to move, afraid
even the smallest ripple could shatter it all,
that you, like God, were just a fragile dream.

day 8 of 30

For Tyshani, in the hopes that she can forgive me for writing it:

As sure as you know that you love her
with all the wild strength of a runaway train
despite never having lived with her outside of your body,
you must also know she loves you,
that the not knowing you doesn't matter.
When she plays make believe, it's your voice
she speaks in, the tones of your voice
a soaring tune she wakes up humming, never really
caring why. When she was given the doll that she knew,
sure and immediate, would always
be her favorite, she instantly gave it
your name, or perhaps some variant,
Tiffany, Bethany, the exactness
of the consonants muddled during the swim
to her tongue from the depths of her dreams.
When her adoptive parents ask how she conjured up
such a name, she shifts her weight from foot to foot,
anxious and darling, scratches the exact same place
on her body where you have the tattoo on yours and says,
iono, i think i dreamed it; in the dream
a pearl-covered mermaid brought me the name,
carried in a basket hand-woven
of love songs and tears.

day 7 of 30

Today ends a week of depressing poems. Someone posted (on facebook) a "Pay it Forward" for creative people - you reply to their status and they will give you something handmade, and you then must do the same for five others. I'm giving poems.

For Erica:
------------
Your mother may have told you tales
of hospitals, painful labor until dawn,
your brand-new foot slathered in black ink,
your grandmother cutting the cord.
These are all lies, of course,
and some part of you knows it. That part
remembers the dark cave wall, the breath
of the one who painted you there, remembers
the thousands of years spent waiting
until the day the woman who would become
your mother arrived and saw your image,
ancient and wild, there on the cold stone,
and she stood there, breathless, awe-struck,
and decided she had to have you. And so,
she gathered wood, lit a fire beneath you
and sang to you every day
for a full cycle of the moon until
you fell off the wall, crying with joy,
into her arms.

One day your son will come to you. He will
inform you in his infinite innocent wisdom
that he knows the stork is a lie.
When you look at him quizzically
and he will state with all the sureness of a prophet
that he knows his father brought him to you,
a giant swollen seed wrapped in butcher paper
and sheet music and together you sprouted him
in rich dark soil until he grew big enough
to love you back. You will not correct him.
You will look at him, silent and stoic and finally
you will nod, and say, "That is the way
of our people."

day 6 of 30: Running In Water

With apologies for quality...

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

to have a mile-long grocery list,
but an empty checking account.
to have a clock but no desire
to keep track of the construct called time.
to have friends over for dinner
but sleep alone. to wake alone.
to have a dog who loves you but
no motivation to throw the ball.
to not want to do anything, in fact,
to not want anything.

One day at the university pool,
I witnessed a girl in a lane
standing upright, making her way
across. I asked what she was doing,
and she replied "running,"
because she was a runner, and
an injury had slowed her down.
Her doctor had told her to run
back and forth across the pool.
She said the extra resistance
made her stronger.

it only makes me tired.

day five of thirty

From today's batch, I hate this one the least:

These are not clouds. They are ghosts
of water buffalo, pregnant, lumbering slowly
across the sky for two days now, the humid air
so thick with their sweat I must push it aside
like curtains just to leave the house. The moon
is waxing; I can feel it, but cannot see it
for the clouds. I come home and close only
the screen door, so I can relish the smell.
The charge is driving the whole town mad.
There's pollen covering everything and
the wisteria has all exploded at once.
I go outside in the night, throw back my head
and bark at the sky but there comes
no moob, no rain, no relief.

4/30

I've been writing all day but nothing I want to share :(

3/30

Having never expected to marry, the divorce
came as an even greater shock. Fortunately my friend
had the courtesy to die, tragically, gracefully, right in the same week
that I signed the papers; I cried blessed tears and named
every one after him, pictured in detail his car going
over the bridge instead of the beautiful blond back
of my ex-lover’s head driving away, thought
in detail about how he’d suffered as he drowned, and in a way
it helped drown my own sufferings.

That summer I left everything, took a job overseas, finished
the work and went to Spain. Only a few days after
my twenty-second birthday a boy in the bar told me
he loved my skirt, danced too close, called me pretty.
That was all it took. The sangria went to my head and I
took his hand, we left the club, kissed on every park bench
we passed, went straight to the beach and he fell into me
much in the same way, I imagined, as that sweet boy fell
into those dark waters, and I didn’t shed a single tear.

2/30

((I was in the woods yesterday, a field trip for class credit, and unable to upload.))

What the Brothers Grimm neglected to include,
whether because they didn't notice or they were just
being kind, is that Cinderella's feet didn't
actually fit. A cruel joke on the part
of the old fairy godmother? An undersight? No
idea, but rather than pull some trick
like her sisters, and cut off a toe or a heel,
she sucked up her pride and squished
them on in there, keeping her wincing
all to herself. And then never took them off.
It became a source of pride, not just for her,
for her beloved prince as well. He'd invite
his friends over, ask her to show them, to dance,
to spin, to step prettily while they all stood
and admired, he loved the praise they'd receive.

And then the day he invited over
her old flame, just to show him, and she made
a misstep, and they shattered, and there she stood,
beautiful, a sight to see on broken glass,
rivers of blood running between the pieces,
tears streaming down her cheeks, she went
mad as a result, was locked in a tower,
and all she said for the rest
of her life was "They never fit.
They never fit."

Happy April. 1/30.

I don't know how to write about you without using the word
loss. I open my mouth to talk about our first date and
say it was a blue shirt, with buttons, my favorite, my father's,
I lent it to her and she never gave it back, I know she had it
when I went to her house and asked for it back and then
she moved away and she took it, I know she did and now
she wears it in all of her photos, smiling. The first time
I invited you into my bed becomes I was seven years old
and thought I could surf on the life raft but I went
out too far and the waves started to pull me
further out to sea and I was nearly lost forever
until my father and the lifeguard came out to save me
but there's no father, no lifeguard here now.
I move my pen as if to write "the last time I saw you"
but all that comes out is I've been looking for days
and days and days but cannot seem to find a single
one of my teeth.