Category: museums
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she kept her honor
so he took her like an animal
but my father’s ghost wept
so she went to the men
like a good American
good people don’t want to believe
in visionaries good or bad
especially when you have red clay mud
starved stabbed scabbed over and over
on your grandmother’s dress from being raped just like her
from ft. Sumter to Wounded Knee
he’d never seen that color red come out of a living fertility statue
my veil is torn
the dog is dead
the natives have resumed their drumbeat
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Poof* Take MY water
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master class
i suppose you could say
i’m one of those people
who has seen more than their
fair share of things
you will certainly find
me adept
in a broad range of topics
from culinary techniques
to obscure music
embalming
comic books
addictive substances
and
lesser know shitty diners
of the northeast
some of it owed to college
and my need
to join the rat race too soon
mostly it was my proclivities
my insistence on taking
a master class
in dating old fucks
what an education
Categories
activism Americana analysis art baseball writing battle behavior belief cemeteries childhood chronology civility comfort corsets crime criminal behavior dance death destruction deviance divinity ecology education electoral process Europe fairy tales family feminism fiction fucking furniture geneology geography government government and a lack thereof happiness Hell history horror human behavior humanity humor iconography journalism Kentucky kindness kinetics literature local color love medicine mortuary science mourning muse museums Music mythology nature nightmares non-fiction Ohio ornithology painting pandemics papyrus parenthood Paris performance physics poetry politics pop culture psychology
of thee I sing
the true measure
of a civilized society
are the rumors
told by its ghosts
Categories
aphonic
you’re a thousand poems
I’ll never write
Back in 2012, when I had my first book release in Los Angeles, I had a crystal beaded necklace that pulled apart in my suitcase. It seemed wrong to rid myself of the estranged gems, and I harboured unlikely notions of restringing the beloved bauble one day. As I was packing to leave, some of the beads accidentally rolled under my voluptuous bed in The Biltmore Hotel. I suspect they may still be there, as things seem not to change much there, except the sheets, and I liked the notion of leaving a part of myself behind in the City of Angels.
The beads remained in my suitcase as I drove and flew to poetry gigs all over the country for the next few years. In keeping with the precedent set in Los Angeles, I started purposefully dropping them in places I stayed. I would toss the pea-sized stones into locations they were unlikely to be found: down antique brass filigree air vents in byzantine hotels, behind cabinetry permanently affixed, through imperfectly sawed holes cut for plumbing to climb and dive through plaster, beneath the loose floorboards of my friend’s apartment, into the chasms of airport elevator shafts. You get the idea.
There are pieces of my secret crystal beaded necklace hidden in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Redondo Beach, Berkeley, Venice Beach, San Francisco, Oakland, Salt Lake City, Chicago, Cleveland, New York City, Elyria, Canton, Nashville, Lexington, Dallas, Cincinnati, and even pitiful Little Rock, Arkansas, a place I didn’t care for at all. I consider them amulets to protect people and cities with whom I fell in love, and talismans to keep away those whom I didn’t. The faceted baubles keep me tethered, connected through minutiae, in the smallest of ways.
More beads remain in my suitcase to this day, an impossible amount hidden within the satin folds, certainly a greater number than my finite crystal necklace was ever originally composed of. It is as if the universe is telling me that I have more journeys to take, love to make, and fine people to meet. So, if you’re staying in a heat wilted hotel by the Pacific Ocean, enduring a vaulted matchbox overlooking the Hudson River, standing by a tuneless luggage carousel, or renting a beautiful two bedroom flat nestled near Lake Erie, and a magical crystal bead finds you, that’s just me…and I’ll be seeing you.
my desire becomes primitive
when i consider the way
loving him is more than emotion
it is biological
chemical
our own space on the periodic table
elemental
i want him
with the parts of me that desire
to nurse children
eat meat
wear fur
find warmth in firelight
especially when
i am beneath him
skin wet
my hands in his beard
watching the muscles ripple
from his shoulders
down his arms
certain
i could remain there
until the next ice age
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i knew he loved me because
in a room full of art
he would
stare at me
he is tall
strong
an artist
given over to smiling
he laughs for centuries
he speaks of incomparable love
growing old and
traveling together
his eyes are soft
while
the rest of him is hard
best of all
he is mine