Category: New Writing
Vis 22
Acknowledgements
“Forest/woman/alone” first appeared in Levee Magazine.
“Strangled whistles of my old lives” first appeared in Drunken Monkey Magazine.
“I excel at the construction of spirit limbs” first appeared in Chaotic Merge Magazine and was
nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
An early version of “better than anything I can offer sober” first appeared in Artful Dodge.
“bordertown” and “achilles” first appeared in West Texas Literary Review. “Bordertown” was
nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
“body farms and bridges” and “places to store unwanted adoration” first appeared in arc[hive].
“you are not what I want, thalasso” first appeared in Great Lakes Review.
“the leaves fell too hard and fast this October” first appeared in Hive Avenue Journal.
“stones and shockwaves” first appeared in Smartish Pace and was a finalist for the Beulah Rose
Prize.
“my cells are separating” first appeared in Perch Magazine.
Vis 21
strangled whistles of my old life
Cold sun is strong today, in the spring tug-of-war
where winter clings just to make a fool.
But change plants its roots in little ways to yank back:
the dove in its nesting place,
swelling puddles pushed by the wind,
the red of rich awakened mud on floors.
I can feel my cells stretching,
ripples of greedy digestion along my arms,
the birch of my skin ready to shed,
papery life between my fingers,
death in translucent layers,
easily stretched with scissor edges to form curls
for pleasure. But I note all my opposites now:
light/dark, thick/thin, textured/delicate.
How commercials flicker like villains in the black,
sticking evening that’s speckled with old star beauty,
how the day’s brilliant hues are translated through clouds
that I long to push my arm inside to see
if I would be soaked through.
When every morning I still hear
the strangled whistles of my old lives,
but the whispers of future fables grow so, so faint.
Vis 20
sticks to burn, stars to count
Let me remember his nine-year-old body in my arms, weightless,
when for once, the Atlantic is gentle, and if not for the smell of salt,
this could be Huron, and they could all be behind me:
all my blood mothers in the sand dunes, my lost sect
of hands-on-hips shore callers scanning the shoreline,
looking for their sons. On release, I watch him swirl hands in the sand
to cast spells, and wonder what mutations
have taken place in this year of alone, if he knows
how attuned I am to every one of his vibrations,
how I’m
watching as he unearths potatoes and asks to run
through the mustard fields; I’m
watching as he breaks through snow-pea vines
and spruce hedges, I’m
watching as he takes rest by the dog grave
by the lilies; I’m
crying when he asks
for more sticks to burn, more stars to count
because I cannot speak, because I’m
the only one here
who is so afraid outside.
Vis 19
you are not what i want, thalasso
The shoreline rattles. Fist-sized rocks roll front to back,
like thousands of hands desperate to hang on every time
they’re dragged from the dry land. And so much red seaweed
has been thrust under the sun, melted between the stones,
that it has taken the consistency of burned flesh.
Yet ahead, more revulsions: the cracked bottom half
of a horseshoe crab, a seagull carcass with webbed leg still attached,
black skate cases long dried and stilled. You see?
I have reasons for my fear of this American ocean,
but I admit: even creeks and rivers have been suspect to me.
I have read too many stories with leeches and other creatures,
primed for pinching and destroying if I take the wrong step.
Huron, clean and known, you store thousands of my footprints
like fossils, and every summer, I burrow down my toes to recover.
But not this year, nor next, I fear, with the shutters drawn
between my countries, and so, thalasso, full of death and unforgiving:
you are all the water I have, so you can crash up my calves
and loop an arm around my waist like a slithering corset,
but I will not squeeze my eyes shut
and I dare your undertow to try and take me.
And as I taste the salt-strings of my hair I’ll sing grace, grace,
because there is more color in the ocean than I’d known:
silver salt clouds, golden funnel-billows,
mint in the crest, violet in the stones,
and yellow ochre that sways like forsythia along the seabed,
and I am tempted to lose my edges just as they do
with every current that passes, with every bone that’s gone cold
and longs to be buried.
Vis 18
prayer of the honeysuckle
i found a single bloom left to wither on an ocean boulder.
the petals have the same-veined structure as a butterfly wing,
the center spray of yellow a micro-solar system suspended, so much like me.
i drop the galaxy into the foam and say goodbye, just for the catalyst:
may the ghost of good luck go across borders.
may no one suddenly pass in their sleep.
may I not be woken in the dark by blue, terrible light.
may I never hear a sob that I cannot absorb into my shoulder,
not even if I shook the gate and begged to enter.
Vis 17
the leaves fell too hard and fast this fall
The wasp at my elbow quickens, so I watch the wings: what is there to fear?
I might prefer the definitive sting of venom to the silent shedding of the world.
I never second-guessed the depth of my breath until this year,
never measured how much I can go without. Now I know.
In the pause, I’ve forgotten the exhalation of forests outside my home:
the crack and rattle of dried trees,
left alone for too long, choking for life, but still full of swagger.
And how long have you survived? their voices rasp.
Oh. Oh, how precious.
Vis 16
haibun for woman/alone/in a motel that pings
My Viking knife cuts into my palm, as my other hand fiddles with chains. I’d pulled the blade
from my purse in a panic. Now embarrassed, I press the wound until certain I don’t need stitches,
but I should have known when my beads broke as soon as I crossed the border, when they
plunged reckless from my neck in a nervous tug, that same dread when caught in the riptide a
week before with my son, and now in the motel booked in the setting day, no, I cannot deny it:
something rattles about this place, and there is hurried research for murders, tragedies, some
newsworthy reason that I should be far away from Room 208. I find nothing, but I blow one
hundred dollars to be as many miles away to slip into Room 802, arbitrary, reverse sanctuary, but
knowing somehow
I missed somebody’s set path,
broke away from a timeline
that was slowly gaining strength.
Vis 15
stones and shockwaves.
Yes, I feel the edge of the cold, how it hovers, but never penetrates.
I see colors, but they are just numbers and letters in a database.
My bones are as light as aluminum, smothered by the weight of my skin,
the crust that hovers just high enough to me to suck in, but never breathe.
In my palm, all these pills become planets in visible orbit,
blue stones on lifelines, and after absorption, I catch little distortions:
millions of fallen grey sticks as fascia, network of exposed root vessels,
the redberry-laden branches as vibrant cells that hold fast,
the shore-bubbles on sand as diseased cells multiplying,
the nut-brown oak leaves as dissections, piled across the school track.
And yet, in another light, they are hands overlapping,
offering brittle, disintegrating comfort to me.
Vis 14
taken out of me (we do not speak of those scars)
Post-birth, what blood-shades are revealed
under surgical light?
What splatter-push patterns are left
on the floor?
Which cleaning products are specific
to the aftermath of gashes not made with scalpels?
Skin is such a marvel, and yet so quiet to split
in contrast to the sucking release I remember,
how my navel sank in my chin-chest tunnel vision
and I thought thank god that’s done
before I begged for blankets, caught up in cold
I could not surmount, though I shook,
though my shoulders were held down by faceless nurses,
my legs splayed with stitches inlaid, and I wondered
if the last I would see
were these green-masked ghouls
and not the baby
I was never sure I wanted.
The air in the room at dawn
was just as frigid
when rubber hands removed yards
of red-stained white, and every yank
brought tears of disbelief:
how much more
can you possibly take
out of me?