the illness spreads:
the platelets push, like dainty fingertips,
along the walls of my veins.
my skin bursts here, reflecting pain there,
all wrapped up and tied
with an apex of mortality, ring
around my restless soul.

when i am dead i suspect
there will be relief, though there is no way
to tell for sure.
when i am dead there might be stars
in the sky, or just stairs,
endless stairs,
leading upwards, nowhere, slowly.

the aches make me shudder, bring skin and joint
and muscle together in a tight little jig.
why aren't you here to hold me?
i shake with grief,
for the loss of a body and the birth of
a new pain, one that rises like bile
and feasts on my throat.
here, the doctor says, placing it gently in my arms,
this was part of you, and now
it is not.

from the iron that bows my shoulders,
the vertical strength in my spine, i have hands now
that do not hesitate to kill.
the weight of that choice is heated and heavy
and sits in my heart,
waiting for attention but patient for consequence.
the yoke was a gift, i think, from someone
who is part of my past,
who no longer knows me at all.
i bear loss like a charm, stitched onto my sleeve and
pumping polluted desires, because
its stamp on my skin grants me entrance.
in the secret places where absolution can be granted,
i leave a little of myself behind.

things that make me feel beautiful
even when i am not:
the ocean, sex, sunshine, the color black,
wind, wine, you telling me i am.
under the stars or summertime sun,
vaguely tipsy on something red or white,
thinking always of your hands
on my legs and your mouth
on my neck and the way you sigh
when i enact my desires on you,
your voice like a balm over wounds,
a polish over damage, a mirror
for only the best of me:
what i can believe i am, with you.

my life is a litany of projects half-finished,
half the tasks checked off of a very long list,
ventures partially begun, plans partly made.
reactionary, i swing only when pitched to
and find myself waiting for peace

caught in the rising tide of your grace,
it is hard not to demonstrate the best of me:
i am generous, gifted, precious
when buoyed by your ocean.

you were a map, an atlas, directions,
a trail and all the guideposts marked along the way.
a lantern at each turning, a sign
at each cross: choices to make, burdens to bear.
it was never easy, the trek was never smooth,
but who could doubt companionship,
or the warmth of affection in bed at night?
they say love gives you hope, or security,
or something-- but i don't think that's true.
hope would have led me to dreaming,
but the path was real under my feet;
security would have made me complacent,
but i never stopped fearing the loss.

it was in a bar somewhere in midtown
when you told the
"you can lead a whore to culture"
joke
and i with my overpriced martini
laughed
that i realized how deep facade can reach.
my ability to pretend
goes well beyond childhood,
extends past imagination into reality:
you are funny;
that was a joke;
this is an experience to be envied.

the martini was mostly old olive juice.

when i come home to pre-slammed doors

and unlocked locks and lightbulbs

shivering on the brink of burning out,

my prayer is not for lack of conflict

or for somehow, extra life to be breathed

into the electric bill. when i come home

to an empty fridge and bugs in the shelves,

to cardboard and crates and cheap furniture,

my prayer is not peace or longevity.

when these days are over, i will be stronger,

i will be safer, i will be more whole,

and i will know how to make peace last.

when you ask

mid-motion, thick in the heat

of your own desire,

when you ask looking down at me

why i am smiling,

with the sweat of you

sliding up my thighs

and the weight of you

pushing me open,

when you ask why i am smiling,

i feel like a legend:

who steals men's souls,

who uses men's energy,

who sells men's morality,

who strands them on islands, alone.

when you ask

close to climax, with my hair

caught in your fist

and my throat

hot against your teeth,

when you ask in a whisper

that suggests more desperate needs,

i feel like a legend:

i am calypso to your odysseus;

i am hera to your jason;

i am mary magdalene, and my story

will cling to you like blood.

most days, i am too tired to be in love.
some days, too angry,
too full of the hurts from self and others
to be able to provide,
still tasting too much iron,
acrid in my mouth, the bloodied words
i spat at you, on my front porch.
most days, i am too tired to be in love,
though some days it is heavier,
sadness like a bathtub
inside my chest, and my heart slips
inch by inch beneath the waterline;
this kind of sadness
takes energy to create, to feel,
to enjoy.
most days i am just too tired to be in love,
to wield the smile and words and touches
and gestures and emotions that it takes
to be seen as loving.
but most days, i am glad it is only exhaustion
and not the ache of anger that hasn't died
or the ease of quietly drowning
that keeps me from you.

i am a desert, parched and shimmering,
full of my own life and motion
without a thought for rain.
i am a river waiting for the waterfall,
weaving my way towards the rapids
in my own winding, methodical manner.
i am a star in the night sky,
blue and perfect, placid and inspiring
and waiting to be admired.
i am an unopened bud, a ripple
in a cool, flat pond, a hawk with eyes
like onyx, waiting for you to dart.
in the natural world i am in the company
of my own soul, coalesced and collected,
reflected and refracted by sunlight and
all the possibilities of myself.

when i woke up today it was dark,

and i didn't bother opening my eyes because

there wouldn't have been anything to look at, anyway. 

the weather outside these walls

means nothing, makes no sound, has no impact,

could not sway me an inch

from this prone position on the side of the bed.

(i leave room for invisible you.)

in the heated haze of the day, when i am

swimming through experiences and emotions

and driving myself through those daily operations,

i am vaguely warmed by friction.

but the core of me lacks pressure, inertia,

desire, desperation, the ability

to turn the everyday into the clarity

of rock-hard love.

whether i have lost something deeply genuine

or have lost the ability to be deeply genuine myself

remains to be seen,

but the loss is insurmountable

without the internal churnings of need.

if i was music, you could have played me, sightread
all the notes on the staff, followed my timing,
held melody and harmony in both your hands.
if i was a story you could have read me,
turning pages with delicate fingers and tracing
the arc of character development and denouement.
if i was a plant you could have grown me, if i was a dance
you could have moved with me, if i was anything tangible
or approachable you could have interpreted:
but like the spinning girl, like the generated art,
like pollock and joyce and all ethereal things
i gain traction only away from you, gain substance
only when tied to nothing, under no one's gaze.

If i lied, with my mouth and my tongue and my mind and my words, if i lied with my heart and my hopes and my dreams, who then could blame you, for your misgivings? And who could be blameless, in the end? If i lied, with my hands and my breasts and my throat, if i kept the truth in a grimy cell, encased in fear, entombed in doubt, if i lied, who could blame you for leaving? And who has abandoned who?

your hands, white keys, oh sell me melodies
demanding strict time, tempo.
preach in chromatics, steps and instructions,
directives in a crowd of atonal amorality.
how can i atone for my sins,
for my wanton abuse of the rules?
i am an ejection of the rudest sort, under your fingers,
which otherwise dance lightly up the board.
something you couldn't direct:
desire for minority, for difference, for distance.
sell me rhythm and pace, gift me
trials of methodical plodding to keep me on track.
on the tip-end of the metronome i sway,
waiting for easement, avoiding complexity.

the heat of me is obstinate, forcing itself
against my ribs and my tight-shut mouth, searching
for openings, for opportunity.
heat like sonar, measuring lengths and times, waiting
for words as they bubble up into
my brain, attaching itself
to the sentences as they swarm across my tongue.
the syllables come out red, fluid, angry,
sizzling with a fire i thought i had contained.
what i say then, much less than how i say it,
overshadowed by combustion
and the processes of molecular agitation:
burning with minuscule desires,
a hot heart pouring out with tempered articulation.

the taste of physicality, since the body
cannot lie: iron, chlorine, calcium, steel.
your mouth is a field where i
hesitate to invade but
am always sore to evacuate.
your body heat has a permanence, a way
of attaching itself to my hands and my lips,
till detachment is a bruising inferno.
when my muscles shake with exhaustion,
when my blood boils with frustration,
when my mind aches with dissatisfaction,
i will call you home
until the rust and the erosion drive me away.

stage one.
it's nothing i could have done, it's both or neither
or either but never just me.
i'm fine, it's nothing, i went to work today
and then out with the girls and then
back home and obviously i'm fine and it's nothing.

stage two.
what a joke, what a punchline, it's everything
to do with him and his issues
and what he did or didn't give me, i mean at best
it was circumstance, we couldn't
have fought those odds and won.

stage three.
maybe
if i lose weight
he will love me again.

stage four.
i just think i've seen what there is, you know?
i think i've dated every type,
fucked every fuckable person at least once,
loved every unlovable idiot at least once
except myself.

stage five.
i got some cats, so i'm fine.
obviously i'm fine, it was a good joke, i laughed.
losing weight is healthy.
at least i can stop having bad sex.
i miss good sex.

take the time
to know yourself--or,
when that is too challenging,
to know your body.
take the time to touch the whole
length that is your height,
the breadth of your rib cage,
the veins in the backs of your hands.
some skin rougher
than you remember from the last time
you engaged  in any self exploration.
scars that have disappeared,
some you've forgotten about
(fourth grade playground,
junior year fistfight over a girl).
find the bits that are
softer than you expected.
take the time to find perfection:
in your own skin, you are.

easy question:
why didn't it work out?

pause.

why when the challenges cropped up
as we knew that they would were we unable
to voice to each other the deep
injustice of inarticulateness?

pause.

hard question:
after the man at the baseball stadium parking lot
winked at us and said "don't let that one go"
why did we, and which one of us did?

she said, write
with your eyes closed.
then the typos are honest;
the grammar innate, misspellings
are just as they should be.
you can't go backward, when you write
with your eyes closed;
can't see what the end of a line looks like or how
long
it is,
can't tell where a comma ought to have been
or even
uses phrases like "ought to have been".
don't let the overeducated, overstimulated, overcompensating
bullying half of your brain
win.
write with your eyes closed, she said:
and with my eyes closed
i can still see the form of her,
the skirts she wears, her hips,
her long, brown eyelashes.
years later i will still remember
the careless flutter of her,
the whisper of her hem along the blackboard.
i write with my eyes closed,
and i see her: perfect, calm, affectionate, for the
college kids eager to please and preening
for the attention of a PhD candidate.
we wrote, for her, silly little poems
that rhymed or didn't and often
said nothing at all, but were packed
with meaning, for her white classroom,
for the cool tiles, for the pale sunlight
in the autumn afternoons.
when i first tried writing with my eyes closed, the thoughts
bounded across my brain--
why can't my hair do that half-curly thing like hers, why
can't i find boots like that--
it takes years of practice to remember
just her shape, or her movement, or her grace,
and to forget the mindful pettiness of youth.
with not so much more age
i see my pettiness now for the companion it is,
and have stopped projecting it onto other people;
in my mind, she remains compassionate, and instructive.
write, with your eyes closed, she said,
inviting the eddies of anxious and fearful and growing minds
to land upon her.

in my head you have always been
the narrator, the champion, the hero,
the singer of all the songs
i listen to when i miss you.
(a compilation of all the words i have sung to you:
longer than proust, denser than joyce,
more deceptive than kierkegaard.)
in some other life
i am much more desperate,
and therefore much more willing.
(remember the lake, remember the beach,
the smooth stones, the yellow-as-corn sands.)
this does not prevent me from missing you.
existentially; i miss the idea of you,
the action of you, the compatibility and the chemistry
and the memories and the era.
you are a time, and i am a tide,
and i sweep forward unbroken
using detritus to erode my own path.

this is what happened.
it's late, too late, we should all know better
than to be out here now: we
are all up too late, now, you hear?
for the signs, and the words, and the voices
that build on each other
like towers of anger, and strength.
but we're sitting now, outside the station.
we walked there
and we weren't walking back.
and i, in my smog, in my smoke, with my heart in my throat
began the words of the song.

it's been weeks we've been fighting,
for land and for space, for the right to speak
and be heard: weeks of
lectures on nonviolence, fights about peace,
losing our center and losing ground.
we have built, and rebuilt, and torn down, and rebuilt
relationships in ten thousand ways
to form up this group
that walked a long way with candles
and cocoa and raised voices.

this is what happened.
a mother, her children, their porch light
the lone spot in a block of dark houses;
a lost job, a missed payment,
now they are processing her eviction
and the sheriff will come
in the morning.
late by three days, she says;
late by three days. we've walked here,
and we're not walking back.
and i, with my body, with my blood, with strength like a flood
began the words of the song.

this is what happened:
when they came, we were standing
in a circle in the yard. there were neighbors
and a shared space to speak.
we were listening, and hearing, and
hot drinks were going from hand to hand.
when they came, we were standing
and when they pushed through the circle
standing became walking, became arms
linked in arms. we walked here,
and we're not walking back.
when riot gear met smiling mouths,
when clubs met flushed cheeks and mittened hands,
this is what happened.
and i, in my haze, in my fear, when their meaning was clear,
began the words of the song.

ain't gonna let nobody turn me around.
turn me around.
turn me around.
ain't gonna let nobody turn me around.
i'm gonna keep on walking
keep on talking
marching up to freedom land.

i can be as broken as i want to be-- as hopeless,
lustless, lifeless as i want to be-- but only alone, see,
since there is no one in the world for you but
her. what am i, wasted time dripping off the cliff's edge,
a tired raven perched above your chamber door,
the tired, stupid king whose weakness makes its own decisions.
i am at least tired, stupid, wishing i could be as
wasted as i feel. i can be as wasted as i want to be,
but only behind closed doors. in the world, i will--
i will because i want, because i retain power
and agency and will even when i lack you--
i will show a whole face, a strong spine, an open smile,
while millions of miles away you are bathed in her starlight,
in the open wound of her love and the gore
that is a new heart opening up to you. i am reduced
to a ghost in the hallway, wringing her hands because the blood
won't come out. my lungs, concrete and marred with breath,
drop out of my rib cage gradually, tearing away
from the constrictions of the diaphragm: with each exhale
they drop an inch lower, tearing away from my mouth.
when next your light breaks, i will-- because i lack everything
now except will-- be smiling, and appear whole.

in my home under the earth, i am free to stretch out,
lithe and lean against the weight of magnetic dirt.
above ground i am ponderous, lecherous,
willingly glowing with imbibed sunshine and oxygen while
my thin skin aches for the coolness and the comforting closeness
of home. underground, coherent and covered,
i manage articulation: i structure, and analyze, and rectify.
i am entirely carbon, solidly sedimentary,
and the erogeny of erosion is no match for my layers.
though the flow of your words slides around my body,
trickling in at the edges of my consciousness
and sidling in between my fingers and my lips,
a gentle kiss sluicing along the lengths of my legs,
i am not borne away: i am grounded, resistant,
and i am not ashamed of my deep, deep roots.

whether we are
or are not or simply are trying
to be-- to be let go of--
there remains a need
for ballast, for censure,
for someone else's hands.
when the heart of me
goes skimming over treetops,
chasing moons, wildly,
i forget.
to need you.
when i am home again,
tired, regretful, spent,
errant child that my heart is
i will neglect to remember
that i ought to have brought you
and instead go keening
to our bed, and your body.

love song for activism

usually we come individually,
slowly, after a great moment of wrongness,
resulting in a desire to do right.
we arrive at the progressivist conclusion,
deciding to eke change out of stagnance
and learning that the process
measures us, hazes us, finds us unsuitable
and dumps us into the fire of self-pronounced failure.
branded, we remove ourselves
and, sticky with the filth of healing,
dive into the fray, feeling everything, fixing nothing.
living in this way
is more dangerous, more daring
than dying, than being a martyr;
but i will see the victory, when i am done.
i will see something amorphous earn its substance;
i will see the skin of others
sloughed off, with mine, shedded
like some great social purge.
i will see change, and i will have healing.

the voice provides its own resonance,

but receiving ears must choose to hear it.

gaze, however, is not auditory,

is not as heavy in its existence, as insistent

in its execution. gaze cannot be witnessed,

and sidles by, quick as blinking,

a quiet hiss against passing skin.

the words can be ignored, or can be heard,

can be reacted to or shrugged away;

but the watcher's eyes, the sweep 

of visual presence is almost more tangible--

almost. held culpable for every investigative eye

i find myself unworthy, judge myself guilty,

so that when the viewer gives a verdict

i am ready for the sentencing.

tied up in gestational knots, keening
and climbing and crying for smoother pathways,
redefining what it is to be tangled:
i am all the words synonymous with desire,
remembering what it was to be loved by you.

what a dark mote against the clear background,
if it sank i would never tell anyone:
i, who cannot even act but only watch,
never exerting force or energy or giving any of myself away,
find myself increasingly lost.
another day might have seen me broken; but
you taught me facade, and the lesson does not fade.

i can't, i can't make the world go, these sudden stops and falls,
giant intakes of celestial breath
and all the lower orders have to pause, and wait.
i can't make the sea rise, or stars fall, or clouds churn,
though armageddon seems surer than surity, purer than poverty.
white on white pavement, cheap grout climbing the space between the concrete,
and what can two soft hands do?
oh, the mind might be willing, but the body is untrained,
unusable, distrustful, reluctant.
where maybe once smooth skin sluiced over quiet joints and tapered features,
now i am hobbled by anxiety, so thick it marks my skin,
emotional chlamydia, purple pock marks as telling as my ego.
when the fire starts, remind me that concrete doesn't burn,
no matter its condition.

viewing

it's late enough to feel alone,
the bedroom one populated island
 in the great sea of the darkened earth.
i'm watching her chest rise and fall,
her rhythmic breathing and the smoothness of it.
and how her fingertips scrabble at the bedsheets
(just curling, two fingers, three,
till the whole fist spasms, clutches, grasps)
that intimates the habits of her body.
the whole act is a code, a pulsing message
waiting to be translated from sounds and pauses
into the fitful expressions of her affection for me.
the inhale that starts a new thought,
the knees flexing then the fingers
and the toes curling and the biting of the lips and
the ascension of the timbre of her breath,
her eyelashes and syncopated respiration
beating out a message that needs no translation
for someone who knows her intimately, her impetus,
her abilities, the way she can lie
with her whole body at once.

i wear you on my sleeve,
covered up at every opportunity.
you are my history, my past, my logic,
the reason for countless choices
and reactions and fears.
whether four miles away or four hundred
my heart looks for you in the universe,
waits for your movements,
seeks the beacon of your heat.
without you i am ungrounded,
or fallow; far afield, or flightless.
so far removed, the memories
are refreshed by fantasy:
i am young again, and you are perfect.

a poem for dzhokhar

they say your brother dragged you into it,
the conquering warrior intent on land mass, on massive ego,
they say his convictions were not your own
but in a land so far from home, so far from family,
who else did you have?
they say, they say.

if reincarnation is real, i know you will return
as a monarch butterfly:
regal, kingly, Asianic,
but a power so fleeting as to be no power at all.
from a place of safety you will emerge,
from the wide, sweeping branches
of a royal tree in the heights of the highest mountain:
and, opening your frail wings,
you will be hard-pressed to not be caught up
in the harsh, high winds.
you will experience an unbearable weightlessness,
unthinkable strengthlessness,
you who are named in a tradition of kings and warriors,
you will be stunned by the violence of the world:
appreciable, in your brief beauty;
squashable, like all other bugs.

i am coming into my own, now.
strong and straight-shouldered, serious and long-sighted,
and searching for the ways
to make the changes i am going to make.
i am no nightingale, no half-life, no split personality and
no time constraints on my song.
i am no peacock, no tail for show or ostentatious strut,
in fact i am often awkward, and sometimes ugly,
mostly as brown and homely as the hen.
but sometimes hen, and sometimes hawk--
this is the difference, in me, between adolescence
and adulthood.
there is no getting past my habitual harsh self-hatred,
the frequency with which i put my foot in my mouth,
the tyranny of the inner monologue
and my tendency to judge everyone, myself most often,
on looks and codes and performances;
manifested in the full-body flush
that tells you without fail when i feel pressure or fear,
and those moments when my monologue
comes out of my mouth,
mischievous malcontent that it is,
intent on social mayhem and spiritual madness.
in these moments i am as squat and unkempt as a hen in the yard,
pigeon on the sidewalk,
pridefully preening fleas out of feces.
but catch me when i am feeling the fullness of legitimized rage,
the power of progressivism when i am on the street
or in the courthouse or the statehouse,
catch me when i have an audience and an idea at the same time,
watch me when i am wandering into
new political territory, someone else's sandbox,
coming up against established power structures or established egos,
people who have been in the game too long,
watch and see how this newcomer plays.
i have no time for your lies or delays, i have a message
and a mind that is slick and a spine that is straight,
i have a need to make waves
in this ocean where too many leaders
have been content to float, obese, obscene, shoved around by tides,
and i will make myself a tsunami
and you will be moved by my hands, by my words, by my work.
i am a hawk, strong-shouldered, long-sighted,
making miracles out of the molehills that left us stagnant for so long.
my power is built on memories,
my power is drawn from the weaknesses that i will still display
sometimes accidentally, sometimes purposefully,
because though i am a bird of prey
i remember falling out of the nest, and my straight shoulders
will catch my siblings as they fall too.
we are a phalanx of fearsome, awesome intent,
and my sisters and i will fly far.

redux, "things that stanley plumly said"

he said, tell a story.

give the context, and make the poem

breathe a little heavier for it.

he said, i am from pickwa ohio

and people there die,

and i said, i know they do.

(people from ohio

die young and old but always tragically,

though never from a drive-by

or an airplane crash,

usually just cancer or tractor accidents.)

people from ohio

all grew up in one-room schoolhouses

and poked crawdads with sticks and ate pokeberries

and dreamt of being one of the ones

who does not survive their 45th year

of being a farmer

to an ungrateful leached dry corn field.

stanley plumly said, this

is the way to get out of anything:

dance.

and i'm dancing my way to my car that night

and i'm thinking:

people from ohio are all the same,

all grew up in the shadow of insane asylums

and rivers that lit on fire in the 1960s
(memories only ohioans can see: ghosts of human victims,
ghosts of genetically manipulated fish),

people from ohio are born

already situated in the middle ground,

the demographic demarcations of society

having no effect in a place like east cleveland

or the foothills of appalachia—

people from ohio have a higher amount of nitrogen

and arsenic and fluoride in their bodies

simply for having been grown in ohio.

i know these things because i am from ohio,

because arsenic and corn and concrete have lived in my heart

since i was old enough to recognize

what having mud and dirt and chemicals in the bloodstream can feel like:

and the kid who sat across from me in social studies

found a rope of the right length

and hung himself from an incredibly stable ceiling fan,

and when we found him

he was still dancing, jumping a little, maybe it was just

the polluted blood still pumping.

i am from ohio in the same way

calves are from cows.

and i have seen a lot of cows.

some illnesses announce themselves,
brandishing their weapons and consequences
blindly, blithely, letting your body
betray you: vomit on the tiles,
blood bursting behind pressurized flesh.
by their signs you can know them,
a flu, a fever,
an effluence of bile, an estuary of sweat.
some illnesses announce themselves,
self-identifying, self-assured,
full of pride and hubris and vitality:
hello,
here i am,
a disease, a disorder,
malady and misery come to camp out awhile.
but the sly disease,
the slick illness that knows that
awareness will oust it from these cozy surroundings,
those furtive cancers
will linger lazily along the lengths of your limbs,
creep quietly into the chasm of your chest,
remaining mostly motionless
so that the beat of your own heart will spread the poison.
it can take years to notice;
and after all that time,
the illness is so entrenched, it can feel impossible to oust.
this is why we ignore our illnesses.
content to let it lie, because that's easier, because that's simpler,
because in the groups we surround ourselves with
it is easier to call it state pride than racism,
to call it traditional values instead of sexism,
conservatism, not homophobia,
fiscal responsibility instead of fuck all them poor people
that never are gonna do anything for society anyway.
for these diseases, the cost of a cure
is steeper even than the cost of a welfare program;
to strip those disorders
out of the heart, to mine them out of the blood
and the organs and the pulse,
to raze them out of your mind,
it takes fire, and burning, and pain, and a long long time.
this is no walk-for-a-cure kind of feel-good get-well mission.
this is rage, and hatred, and grief,
and a sadness so deep it will burn.
and maybe you never get to the other side,
maybe you are never quite clean of that illness, of the grit of it.
maybe you become a shell, almost exoskeletal
in your gauntness, fragile
in the breakable foundations you are trying to establish.
but you fight for that cure,
you fight till your hair falls out,
till your blood is poison or sludge or chemical,
till your skin is yellow and your eyes are grey
and none of the processes of your body
function the way that they used to.
change like that, it hurts you.
but the illness, and all of its consequences, hurt everyone.

in halves, i am peeling apart:
left-brain, right-hand,
sunrise vs. western skies.
the jagged fissure
demarcates breast from bone,
hip from hip, dream from dust.
i am a hazard,
a disjointed two-step
stumbling down the road,
a ledge for others' feet,
the jumping-off point of desire.

the furrow of a brow
that looks over promised land
and sees a newly barren desert;

the clench of a fist
in hands as thick as worn leather,
as brownly red as the dirt;

the grind of a boot heel
into pasture turned dusty,
fertile mud gone dry;

the silence of the field
marked by absence of crickets,
of songbirds, of bees, of mice,

broken only by the hum
of machinery, the crackle
of the fire as it burns

from the release spout,
the bellow of the press
as it pushes gas along the pipeline.

my love for you is a promise
that you will be safe, and grow old, and be well.
my love for you means
that even while you can't understand electricity
or gas or power or bills,
there will always be light,
and there will always be heat.
my love for you means you will never lack an advocate,
a defender, a companion, a friend.
my love will see that your little hands
and your little feet and all your little toes
are never broken, or bruised.
when you are tired, my muscles will work enough
for two of us. when you are angry,
my heart will make enough peace for us both.
and when you wake in the night,
upright and full of fear,
my hands and my voice will be there,
sure as sunlight, soft as spring.
my love for you is a promise
that while i am in it, there will be a path in this world
for your feet. and my love for you is a commitment
that when i leave it, the world
will be better for the love i have left.

i am a writer, a poet, an essayist, a blogger,
a social media commenter, an online forum frequenter,
a speaker, a teacher, a trainer, a mentor,
a friend, a confidant, a partner.
i am a weaver of words, a singer of songs,
a lover of nouns and verbs and verb phrases,
a user of adjectives, a writer of rhymes,
an educated, opinionated, thoughtful mind
behind a neverending stream of language.

my words are other peoples'.
my ideas are rehashed, reused, regurgitated,
not even upgraded but just recycled,
reordered and retched up in various forms.
my voice is the voice of deliberate liberalism,
my opinions belong to educators and indoctrinators,
my thoughts are the thoughts of privilege.
i am a girl who says nothing.

the taunt, lying in wait,
heaves its sun-dappled flanks under the shade:
plotting, scheming, stewing,
its long pink tongue rolling over its fangs,
it waits under the tree for you to pass.
thinking of all the ways it will maul you,
the taunt cackles to itself,
hyena's sarcasm and loon's macabre
combining into the long, low hiss of laughter
that issues from its dank, hot mouth.
in the summer sunshine it waits,
biding its time during the midafternoon pause
when the earth breathes a sigh
and your body sighs too, complacent.
the rasp of its quick inhale
a counterpoint to its slow-ranging gaze,
the taunt scans for you,
scents for you, keens for you.
traveler, when you pass, the danger
will become intensely immediate.

when i got stuck in awkward adolescence, someone told me,
figure out what you're good at--
learn everything you can about it, be the best at it--
and get a job doing it.
(nobody told me i couldn't have a job writing bad poetry
or rapping along with common or making street art or.)
so now i'm stuck in awkward adulthood,
seeking and not finding something tangible to do with myself,
with all of my manifold talents and dreams,
something sun-warmed, dirty, and free.
i demand an opportunity to prove myself, to be as wild and rash
and positive and forceful and loving as i know that i can be,
an opportunity to earn what i'm worth,
the chance to give all that i am to a cause that is worthy.
somewhere buried under all that plenipotentiality
remains an awkward adolescent, learning and creating and listening,
and ready to push adulthood into the full flower of possibility.

it's enough, now, to swallow pride
and tongue and tonsils in my efforts to be still,
to prove that i am capable of quietude.
it's enough to learn forgiveness,
to force grace upon myself, a willingness
to breathe in and breathe out.
when you come home to me,
when the burn of your absence subsides,
it will be a blessing.

for many years i've been
quietly tempering my closest-held dreams,
diluting and dampering the kinds of wishes
that are so deep
and real and true that they cannot even be articulated,
they cannot be depicted, for fear of
chastisement or abandonment or a very strong wind.
i have peeled these hopes out of my heart,
cast them off
as useless adornment, unintellectual, unwise.
if it doesn't further my career--
if it doesn't progress my education--
if it can't be put on my resume,
then i can't have it.
i am not sure what to do about this.
it is merely a statement of fact.

i write haphazardly for the imagined gaze, looking over my shoulder;
i listen to music quietly, waiting for footsteps behind me;
i read with phone in hand, waiting for it to ring;
i speak with hesitation, sure i will be interrupted soon;
i cook unsure of measurements, of how many servings are needed;
i park looking for other vehicles, one vehicle, somewhere;
i sleep carefully, arced along the absence on the other side;
i live breathlessly, fitfully, waiting for fulfillment, for you.

because by the time i say something
it will already be too late,
i'm writing a letter to you
that you will never read.
it's about how i've loved you too hard,
known you too well, kissed you too often.
it's about how i've
written this letter to you too many times
and never sent it, and should have,
many many times.
it's about how when i see you my heart
stops
and my blood races and i flush,
how when i kiss you my eyes close and
the churning of my body pauses
for just that one sweet moment.
it's about how your time
is so scarce, and how that in itself
wastes whatever effort you spend:
how i need more,
will always need more,
will never be sated or quieted or soft.
because by the time i say something
i have already decided
not to write this letter again,
i am writing it now, and will send it
after i've left.

when the white lady in the hood library
asks me if she can help me find anything--
seemingly grateful for a 'safe' face to talk to,
or maybe just to talk to someone
who looks like they might want to talk about books,
and not tax returns or job applications
or high school research papers and wikipedia--
when the white lady in the hood library
approaches me, and wants to help me find a book,
i ask her what the young people are reading these days.
she looks at me funny; clearly she hasn't seen
what's already in my hands, austen, joyce,
hemingway and faulkner, atwood and carson and friedan.
she says, evanovich? and i try to hide the smirk,
but she sees. proulx, she says; and i say, sure,
can you show me where? she hands me a paperback,
worn and torn, smiles and leaves me.
impulsively i want to touch her shoulder, turn her around,
and tell her-- i am going to read this book naked.
i read it in high school, and then again in college,
and hated myself afterwards, both times. for a book
like this, you must be willing to bare yourself,
to open yourself up, gut to sternum to mouth,
a red line of blood up your belly and tongue,
to get even a taste of what the author is saying.
i want to tell her, i will read this book naked
on my stomach, in the middle of my bed,
in the sunlight on a sunday afternoon when i
should have gone to church but skipped, to sleep,
and to read this book naked. because proulx
and irving and plath and morrison and vonnegut
must be experienced wholly, as the sentient, sensory stories
that they are. you can't do that wrapped in image,
you can't read them cloaked in your outside face.
but i don't reach for her, i don't admit this to her,
i just add the book to my pile and sigh
because the white lady in the hood library
probably talked to me because i am white.

it's a foggy night, the mist seeping up out of asphalt and concrete, a reminder that beneath the flattened and fortified ground still lies the original swamp. streetlights create halos of orange, spheres of fire turned sickly in the dense air, dotting each corner. from her balcony she can see clearly only to the ground, to end of her block; beyond that, more pale dots floating in the mist, but no sidewalks, no front stoops. pedestrians appear only to disappear at the other end of the block, engulfed by the dimness, the pallor, the pixelation of the fog.
she lights up, the fire in her hands the only bright thing, a visual event marked by its difference from the rest of the scene. the fire sprouts at the first click, as though eager to purge the dank air around it. the night smells oddly natural, the stink of urbanity covered by wet wood, wet grass, rotting leaves, and now the dark brown tobacco smell as it fills her lungs and nose and mouth. the first drag is long, and nicotine races into her blood, heady and unkempt. her pulse, quickened by chemicals, feels louder and faster than anything else in the night, even the cars slowed by an inability to predict what the street will be like on the next block.
she exhales, slow and smooth, the taste of burning leaves coating her tongue. the blue smoke rises into the mist, hangs heavily between the water molecules. silver tendrils shoulder their way up into the higher fog, visible for long minutes after their release, maintaining form and color as they crawl upwards. the second exhaled breath rises more quickly through the path cut through the mist by the first, catching the old smoke, joining to it, both pushing higher together. the darker smoke from the cigarette as it burns lists laterally away from her hand, lazy as it goes, unconcerned with its shape and all the more twisted and looped for it.
by the time the cigarette is burned down, she is the epicenter of a halo herself, one made of blue and grey haze, the smells of old earth and chemicals and burning carbon, and a memory of hot sun and warm dirt and greening, browning leaves. from where she stands the lights in the street are even fainter, disguised once by fog and twice by smoke. as she turns to go inside, she sets the smoke to swirling again, and agitated by her movements, what once lingered around her hand and her body now sets itself on a course for the sky.

always, the waiting.
this time, cemented by knowledge and desire,
stagnated by distance and stress--
for the depth of the need i have for you now,
there are not enough words
there are not enough memories
there is too much changeability, between me and you,
and i cannot be satisfied.
i am not sated by promises, i am not
filled with affection or articulation, i will not be
contented with hope.
i am caprice, winsome and lithe,
curling up between your fingers and
blowing away like smoke in a summer breeze.
i am all need, all desperation,
all loud and vibrant and crying:
the depth of the need i have for you now,
it could eat me alive,
it could swallow me whole.

i am a black hole for words, my stellar consumption
outpacing and outreaching all communication.
i am a sneering gulf of nothingness, of stagnation,
a pit that creates nothing, says nothing, provides nothing.
i am a path for hopes, when they get lost;
for dreams, when they are abandoned; for anger and rage,
when they are spit out, verbal, projectile.
i am a way for all of these, and logic, and illogic,
to reach across the universe, to be deposited in
some smooth elsewhere.
i am a road that lets language pick its own verb,
an allowance for ideas that want to run
and jump and hobble and stumble and skip and
claw their way into other minds.
dump a sentence in, find it where it lands.