my heart remembers more than me,
a gathering of pain
and all the blood that has been spilled
in war, in rage, in shame.
each beat recalls a life before
ticked down and now gone free;
its meaning, track and old network
are gathered up in me.
the rain on leaves that sounds like shots
and towns after tornados,
the tides and sun and lying tongues
that speak of gold and rainbows;
all these things and other signs
of life and pulsing minds
are bundled in one crawling beat
to seek what it can find.
within my blood, the memories range
infesting joint and vein
to plague me with the sins and joys
and memories of trains
that rolled away with brothers, sons,
and husbands dressed the same
to fight a war the state had waged,
part of an ancient game.
i know when coffins came on planes
or telegraphs were sent,
i know the men that witnessed death,
the places they were sent.
i know the women who stayed home
and prayed each night for peace
and dreamed a family whole again
their lovers in one piece.
history ties me to each breath
taken years before
uninvited, never lost,
their lives make up my core.

another leaving is imminent.
a chapter closing, the real book
beginning: here, with us.
every word means something, and
gets charted on this page;
every look, step, sigh
is gathered up to take a poll
and receive a judgment.
(we'd be luckier if the judgment
was passed by us instead of
others.) a jangle outside the door,
my heart leaps as the key gets
jammed into the lock--
it is not beneath me to beg you
to come home. or to ask for quiet,
to seek peace, requesting gentleness
all along this coarse, crass path.
if i was any less of a woman,
if you were any less of a man,
the difficult melodies we sing
wouldn't ring as clear as they do today.
a hundred thousand notes,
each a measure of adaptability
and solidity: sing me to sleep,
sing me each night a brighter day.
it is not beneath me to beg you
to come home.

i always thought the ones who were good at this
should write books.
you know, titles like "how to not hate your mother" or
"it's ok, i'm not a size 4 either".
enter all the words with the prefix self-
beautification
justification
mobilization
(all subtitles to the books that should be written).
supposedly when you age a little bit,
mature, or wise up,
you take your parents as they are
and love them as they are.
(supposedly when you age a little bit,
you can get a job
you don't hate
and live somewhere that isn't infested with
mice or mold or malnutrition.)

today, a toast:
a toast to all things woman.
a glass to raise that's filled with
secrets, silence, self-deprecation,
subservience. a glass
that bubbles with the void we fill,
the vaccuum of other people's lives.
raised with a quiet hand,
obediantly following the path
that's set before. raised
with a slow retort,
a years-long complaint of
ill-treatment and lovesickness.
today, a toast:
a toast to all things woman.
a toast to violent nights
in creaking beds, to men that say
you're fat, you're ugly, you're dumb.
an acknowledgement of
all straits female:
a monthly disruption of selfless
service, a daily discharge
of self-hatred through
someone else's words.
today, a toast:
a toast to all things woman.
today, a weak smile
and weaker thoughts;
tonight, a revenge wreaked
in finality, a voice that calls
to sisters and mothers and daughters
for different futures, for
contemporary change.
and tomorrow, a lackluster glass
raised, tiny ego bubbles breaking,
to all things woman.

montana fantasy

a new obsession with the apocalypse--
whether christian or foreign (setting up these old dichotomies)--
where is the end, i've been expecting it for days now.

a man on a black horse, a pegasus of steel and salt,
who rides the ancient skies in disgusted patience;
and beneath the earth, beneath the dirt and the
granite and limestone-- beneath the magma which makes
its presence known constantly these days--

she waits, clothed in fire. her eyes
that burn, her flagrant words that push
lava out onto the earth, writhe in this
burning world. individual flames.

silence, golden and breaking, lies listlessly on the
garden path. the flowers are brown, the dirt is white,
the grubs surfacing because their old habitat is sour.

he waits on the porch swing, idle:
feet up against the railings,
holding a cold drink in a blue glass.
the sky is grey and all the earth
smells green, like waiting for rain.
his salt turns the drink to bile.

she sends her words first, a volley of pain and fear
resounding across the mountains and echoing through
the vacant valleys. she HATES. she LOATHES. she BURNS.
a quake, undulating, then buildings tumbling: dust to dust.

the ripples reach him, barely
upset the hat over his face.
resting comfortably, the cold drink
sweating against the glass.

she sends her ego next, a potency driven by mustangs
careening across the plains: ill-fed, ill-groomed,
seeking barbed wire fences to HATE, to LOATHE, to BURN
with kicking heels, firey eyes and dusty breath.

he pushes gently against the slats,
the impetus to set the swing
in motion. the mists advance,
his relaxation uninterrupted.

and in sudden, jerking bursts, she hauls her ancient
crackling body, all fire and heat and red, up through
the injured earth: fingers grasp, biceps strain, and
slowly the long, arching back emerges from the rift.

the first reaction, a tipping
back of the brim to peer
at the damage. the soles
and spurs abruptly hit the floor.

she looks up, and fills her lungs: a wild, sharp shriek
burns an entire mountainside away. the mists, the clouds,
escape her wrath and soon the sky above is black
reflecting millenia of space and stars above her head.

he sighs, sets the glass
on the deck (a ring of dew
forms immediately). he rises,
and sets the hat straight.

his motion attracts her colorless eyes, a milky gaze
still pure like ice seeks a cause for fury. the male
form, shouldered like atlas, to HATE, to LOATHE, to BURN,
rises some miles away with immeasurable weight.

he steps away from the
deck (now missing its house,
the winds picking up
anything not staunch).

she reaches her kilometer arms of flames towards him
and tendrils of hate flicker at his belt: the acrid smell
of burnt leather immediately apparent. the stench rises
and greets her nose like an old friend, an old friend.

he walks forward just
as slow as he pleases,
unconcerned that his
skin is melting.

she advances, shoulders hunched like a hawk, intent on
destruction she will BURN him. her fire robe flickers
blue and purple as she finds the heat deepest inside
the many-yeared and many-pained heart that fails to beat.

flesh falls off his
frame in great orange
blobs; dropping behind
on his path to her.

in cupped hands, she builds a bomb of the core of the
earth, all its grinding seeking magnetic power cycles
frantic in her palms. white-hot, it emits a shriek of
its very own: unworldly, unnatural, incredibly basic.

his skeleton only
comes forward, still
evidencing his soft
slow stamina.

she hurls the ball, it arcs across the sky like one long
stretch of heat lightning, and lands inside his rib cage
to displace the beating heart. her wild cackle slams almost
as fast into his frame, cracking, burning into his marrow.

he has reached
her rift, he rests,
looks down into it:
bending, creaking.

she sweeps his little skeleton up into her great flaming
arms, and leaps back into the rift. liquid rock issues, flows
over all the surface of the earth as they descend into
magmatic phosphoric heated hate, linked bone to bone.

his last thought
is a grin, one
final barb: woman
would end the earth,
but take down with
her hatred a single
seminal solution.

endeavor

grandma, i remember when
i was very small, the world was very big
and airplanes to florida were an experiment
in wide-open wonder.
i remember when you took my sister and i
in your big black volvo (i still
can recall sticking to the seats
in the atlantic coast heat)
down to cape canaveral, a little spit
of land out into the blue waves.
i remember the big clock, and the bigger roar,
and trying to take pictures
of something that was
first impossible to see because it was so bright,
and then impossible to see because it was so small.
i remember hands over ears, the little
children who screamed (silently,
underneath the roar of the thrusters)
and watching this shining tube
go higher than an airplane,
higher than the clouds,
higher than the blue sky itself.
and grandma, you reached down to me,
and you held my hand.
and i remember, grandma. i just
wanted you to know that i remember.

this has been said so many times before:
your words like ice, like ice,
sharp and cold and clear and
leaving no room for the benefit of the doubt.
a dagger that stabs and leaves no trace,
a wet wound matching you glare for glare.
when you act like this i hate you
like you hate me when you act like this.

misery on default mode, the kind of mood
that wraps an entire week up and
binds it into one long fever. silence
that is hard to come by and even harder
to banish, the clank of humanity
moving slow, miserably muted.

one winter you grabbed me around the waist
and said, skate, skate, run and jump and fly
and leave little trace: thin lines
on thinner ice. the track indistinguishable
from the cracks, the distance between us
less and less as i rolled off your hands.

these days the sun is glaring,
and leaves no room for aging or sight.
the dirt tracked in at the front door
illuminated each morning, the glow
between us diminished at night:
the monthly disruption of ego and
shining light where darkness loves.