Bathtime
You told me once,
the older you grow,
the more you value balance:
Poetry Month 2022
Room
She did not know to engage in such things would leave everything familiar flailing, everything worthy slapping itself against stucco walls and memories. How could she have? Rooms like these stitch their own lips shut, hold their beaten secrets close, squeeze bits of breath and laughable hope into air packed tight with pain. No, this
Memory Care
Every second, you give up a little more, stare at the space between us, mumble one-word answers, refuse your favorite sandwich. I understand. It’s part of the sickness, part of what stitches our suffering together. No pill or doctor can cure us. So I sit with you as you empty the last bits of yourself
Azalea
I don’t know what you think of white, but tonight, I see azalea petals outdoing the dark, and I think, you know, I’d love to have a clothesline. Yes. I’d love to amble between shirts and sheets, get caught up in the touch of everything clean. I’d love to play Goddess, wrap myself in white,
Wishful Thinking
I’m in awe of chaos and how easily it erupts, how fragile the audience of everything: one wrong word an unexpected May wind, unseasonal cold front, and the world falls to petals. Or maybe it’s more like the button push, gif or emoji from someone who’s had a bad day, the discord of sticking a
Speaking of…
You’ve come to grips with it: no one’s in the audience. Every day, you hear yourself, reverberating in the mic, saying the same things in different ways, repeating your truths like mantras, your words like they came from the mountain. You must be doing something wrong, though. Nothing is happening. Nothing is changing. Nothing nods
Reminder #3
Open your notebook. Log the times you think you failed. Read it to the wind. -Katherine Gotthardt
Advice
This is my advice: slice the morning. Make wedges out of hours, minutes where you could be writing poetry. Carve the fleshy part of day, the time when words mean exactly what you think, exactly what you want, exact like a sharp, expensive tool you bring out for the big jobs. Poetry was made for
Tattoo
5 a.m. on a Sunday and I accidentally wake my husband. “Poetry piled up overnight,” I explain. He murmurs, “Death by poetry,” and rolls over. But I am here thinking how Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, and great poets I don’t know enough about have carried me through the night— this most recent night, one that