Posies

I knew death before I could write my name.

I was sitting on my great-grandmother’s lap when she died.

We were in the big grey easy chair that now sits

in my uncle’s storage unit. Great-Grandma Rose

had two embroidered doilies over the armrests.

She liked to stitch posies and never once made a rose.

We were watching a western, my mother and grandmother

in the kitchen cooking and arguing. As the credits rolled,

I looked back at Rose. Her jaw was slack, her hands

palm up. Her eyes looked like my sister’s china doll’s.

I leaned against her silent chest, patted her cheek.

The next time I was carried to the yellow farm house

was after her funeral. My mother picked up McDonalds on the way.

I don’t remember the funeral, it’s possible they kept me outside,

but when my mother carried me into the living room

and I saw that the easy chair was gone -

a white shadow in its place, no dirt on a square of carpet -

I threw up all down my mother’s back.

I didn’t have a another strawberry shake for thirteen years.

They sold the land last summer and tore down the old house.

They had to get a big dumpster to clean it all out, shingles

and silverware litting the green bottom. My uncle can’t afford

to keep the storage unit.

I’ve been trying to cross-stitch. All my posies

look like raspberries.

Identify Yourself

My first gay pride parade:

I waved rainbows in the air

and a leather daddy with

a whip on his hip patted my

head and said: ‘Awe, honey,

what are you doing here?’

One ladies’ night at Flame,

I was sipping a $2 rail,

when a crowned pixie cut

in flannel says to me:

‘Sweetie, I think

you’re at the wrong bar.’

My first girlfriend rocked

an undercut and suggested:

“Maybe you could get

a septum piercing?” while

she bit at my collarbone.

I never was able

to look the part. The fact is,

I have known only one

and I may just sink forever

into his dark, curling hair.

Berry Stain

I was baptized in blood and berry juice. The washing occurred

behind the house with the red garage that is always closed

with the cars always outside where I lived

as a barefoot girl with tangled hair.

The falling was a catching of branches to skin. Somehow

I landed on my back, blackberry bush reaching over me.

Its thorns ripped through my skin like beads of sand. I bled.

I had to push myself out, eyes closed, lids stained

and salt and iron and bitter pulp all ran down

to seep between my lips.

It’s still here on the back of my neck -

a stain that never can be washed away.

My lover likes to kiss it and I wonder

if he can taste the bush that punctured my skin.

In the room that we shared

When we shared a room in our mutual youth, we grew

to dislike each other with the fever

past down to us from grandmother to mother

into our own small hands. I remember one day you

were having a sleepover and I made a mask for April Fool’s Day,

though it was still March, to frighten you.

You pinched both my arms and your

friend wore it on her face and danced

and laughed. The day you were allowed

to drink coffee while I stared at the swirls

in my steamed milk - that was the day I knew the years

between us were meant to tear you from my side.

In that childhood room our beds were

placed as far apart as the blank white walls allowed.

The green carpet crept, stretching over

hills and valleys, dividing our corners

into countries. We made a mountain of toys

spilling from our closet to divide our

colonies and enforced border control.  

We held court custody cases with our mother-judge

on who got the cat on which night.

It is now many years later and half

a country divides us. We Facebook message

and your profile picture becomes a mask

glued on to your image in my mind. When I visited,

we unspokenly decided we would both sleep

in your bed, a different cat biting at our feet,

same blanket wrapped around all our

tangled limbs. I woke up with your back

to me and my hands clenched together

at the base of your spine. I didn’t unclasp

them until you began stirring in disrupted

sleep. I can feel the bonds beginning to slip

past my fingertips, flying on a westward wind.

Crush

Crush

The butterfly was dead, laid out on her back in the grass,

suspended on the blades. It was like she was pushed

backwards out a window, wings spread out behind her,

legs bent as though

still desperately trying to cling to the open panes.

Florry took her up and I could see her second

pair of irises, milky yellow swirls circling plum pupils.

I reached one finger to caress her paper

limbs. I wanted to see the alabaster powered on the tip

of a pointer and taste flight. But

before I could glimpse her spread shawl, Florry clenched

his hand, crushed closed. He brought her remains

to his lips, his fingers blooming open and blew

her stained glass shatters into the breeze.

Her core was dragged down, lost beneath the grass.

Crick

‘Hush your mouth,’

Mama said, ‘the word is creek.’

But Mama creek is

split wood meeting air

and crying out for the bark

it once  knew. Creek is the

taste of a caught breath

of a skipped heart

beat. But Mama

crick is - ‘Creek!’

but Mama crick is -

Mama. Mama listen,

the sound of water

meeting stone: plip,

rush - ‘Hush!’ - crick.

I remember water

hitting the sides of

my paper mache boat,

the open earth parting,

roots climbing, reach

out over the waves’

and my head, tickling

tops of our noses. Crick

is that place in the woods

where the sun can’t touch

the ground and nothing

burns and the leaves

fall and the branches

laugh and Mama don’t

you remember that?

Remember that.

Bottle Me

After Sharon Olds

I think of it as blasphemy now

to compare a  sore throat,

however vicious, to a tumor.

But, the day I woke up

and was unable to swallow

I thought of the father and the glass.

I put my own spin on it -

I used an old honey

container. It was plastic

and every time I spit

the remissions of honey

linger on the rim of my

lips. Nasal drippage was falling

down my throat like soiled water

down a gutter drain and

I had to expel it or face

the wretched clenching

and scraping of fleshy walls.

The first  was green like the luna moth,

puss wings spreading to meet

the rounded edges of a cage. Now,

spit bubbles  like sea foam.

With each new admission,

a milky pod of whales rises

to the surface. Today the whales

are striped with blood. One

has a round gathering

like an eye - my little Jupiter.

It’s a kind of worship,

these offerings from

my insides. To dull the pain,

I’ll make a sacrifice of myself.