The Words in Your Mouth

When she
thinks hard
she looks down
and hides her mouth against
her index finger

what she
scents there
lavender and
garlic and

my wavy hair
that's the only way
I know the smell of
my own hair

her in her white shower
in the morning
her in her red kitchen
at noon

her in her happy picnic place
in the afternoon
with my head in her lap
and her fingers through my hair

and me holding her
small hand
to my lips

her on me on her.

The Day Ted Kennedy Died

I.
Ted Kennedy died today

my husband calls up the stairs
as I am
ironing my skirt
standing in a slip
with my coffee on the dresser
and the light from the lamp
waxing and waning with my motions

what is wrong with this outlet

II.
I catch mosquitos
in one hand
parked on a hill
with the windows down
listening on my phone
while she tells me why she quit
and I'm tired of it
until I think to say

just because they're moving their mouth
doesn't mean you have to listen to it

these mosquitos are huge
and almost striped
and I accidentally
honk the horn
while achieving the last killing

III.
Tell me what's wrong/
with having a little faith/
In what you're feeling/
in your heart

she sings
and my heart
feels something
at the way she sings
heart
and I want to be moving fast
when she sings that like that
and I want to tell someone something

continuing down the highway
I am unprotected

it is not a day for bullshit

IV.
Wide open.

I pull up a chair
next to Charlie in bed
and hold his hand
and watch the reconstructed
roof of his mouth
and his lovely white hair
and we talk about this:

his dying
inevitably
and he is useless
except to those
who love him
and have him
this one more day.

I have Charlie one more day.

I kiss Charlie.

He is a good man. Charlie, I love.

That is the truth in my heart
that I don't beat back.

V.
I tell someone
the truth.

I can't not do it. I can't do
anything else
but this.

VI.
I have seven patients
in this facility
I am
quick and light
in a skirt. I have nothing
to be anything
other than seeing everyone

and seeing them
and touching them
and their hands
and my hands
and their brows
and my lips
to their temples
and my hands in
the hands of their daughters
and husband
and my head to
their heads
and their tears
streaming

and I have nothing but the truth tonight

and I bought myself
hours of
documentation

I could not stop.

VII.
I come home. My
little boy
lost his first tooth
hours ago.

I put my face
into my husbands shirt.

Too much hospice
is the best I can say it
though its not
it.

VIII.
When I came home
there was a big black cloud
overhead and it was
humid and warm and
there were crickets

and when I looked west
there was
a hard line
with an orangey pale sky beyond
and I wanted to
drive towards it
and see it better
a dark summer night here
the last day of summer
here
and autumn
and coolness
over there.

I turned east.
I came on home.

Beads

Small epiphany on the drive home this evening. I'm making fimo beads. Those little ones where you make a long sushi-like roll with different colors and then slice: the cross-sections show a miniature image. I can almost see mine. Red mushroom with white spots, maybe even a tiny spotted fawn if I'm getting really good at this. At THIS. You see them and you think oh my god, that's really amazing! that's so cool! and you buy some and put them on black strings and give them to your friends.

But who wants to wear fimo beads long-term? You don't. I don't. It wears off.

I want to make a giant canvas with oil paints that isn't technically perfect or anything but gives you a feeling you're in someplace lit up with golds and earthy greens and that it might be breezy and that there might be a storm coming in about an hour and a half. A little blurry with motion.

Hang it right over the little table where you eat breakfast in the kitchen. Its not that precious or anything. Its not a big deal if the milk splashes off the corn puffs onto it. Its just nice to have around.

Not there yet but a stronger feel what I want to make next.

Not so many fimo beads. Or origami animals.

Untitled

its not
the sun and the moon
like everybody thinks

marry the moon
you'll be happy together
you will never get to the point

where you take off your shoes
and line them up
with the double yellow
lines
and lay down
in the middle
of the street
perpendicular
to the lines
to be funny
or tragic
no one can tell

marry the moon
and all the love songs
are for you

the sun knows better
what he wants
steady to warm then
steady move
the air
into a wind

wild affair
of sun and
his unlikely love

winding through pines
a dust devil
a darkening on the water
and the expectancy
of it coming to you
breezing your face
and the bareness of your forearms

sun
and wind

but all the art we make
is wedding photographs

my sun and moon mobile
my sun and moon earrings
my sun and moon
garden decorations

no one can draw the
wind anyway.

Back

An exceptionally good week. It really was.

Vaca

Going off the grid. Quiet time. I'll come back with something else, I think.

Untitled

He steps up
with his small height
and too-large bony face
and prominent teeth
and legs poking at odd angles
at the fabric of his black dress pants

He makes the wedding toast
to his sister
who is pretty
and older

and you wait to see him walk
yes
something off there

stop right there
and don't discount him
for love, and sex, and marriage

less likely perhaps
but what do you know?

I know this
that you were perfect

and that
you were perfect
when you beat a dog
you were paid to walk
when you were twelve

and when you beat a dog
you were housesitting for
that kept shitting on the living room rug
when you were twenty-one

and when you beat your own dog
once
and then never beat a dog again

or anything else
for that matter

you were perfect
each of the mornings we
woke up together
there is me
there is your arm over me

which is less likely now
you and your
arm over me

or us in a watery grave
with waves moving us
and you no longer looking at me

me just passing
in and out of your
field of vision

here at the boundary layer
between Pacific and sand and

the little crabs
carrying the small pieces of us
away, away, away.

Untitled

I don't know
what takes so long
it is so hard
to say it.

I don't want to say it.
I do
want to say it.

You
broke my heart
and broke it
worst of all
so far
because I have
a lot of heartbreaks
and no terminal
diagnosis so
maybe by the
end of this year
you can get off your
dubious podium
hang your medal off
your bedpost
and dry the laurel
out in the shed
until its dusty
and faded
and covered in old spiderwebs.

You'll take up
something new
after that
I don't know what.

As for me
you
breaking my heart
is a pair of
blue underpants
of indeterminate size
dirty
and flattened
up by the curb
on a street
in my
residential neighborhood
that you
walk by
every day
and think about picking up
and throwing away
but never do
instead you see them
every time you
step over them
with mild distaste
and they
don't degrade
very fast
in these conditions
it will take years
of rain
and cars
and snow and salt
and a plow
and the baking sun

I'm not
casting aspersions
I don't
pick them up either
I step over them too

thinking about how long it takes
and how long lost they are
and the asphalt under them
made of real small rocks
and something else
and the substrate asphalt
under that
that they strip down to
for resurfacing
and the medium gravel
under that
and the big gravel
under that
and the hard packed and tamped dirt
under that

and then the relief
of just plain old rocks
and plain old dirt
under that

nothing special at all.

Yankee Homecoming

I suddenly
realize that now is the
time that I'm
going to do this and

when he starts to
play the piano from
his ear he doesn't
know how to read the
music that's open in front of him I
sit down on the
bricks by the
green pot-bellied stove and I listen and

a couple of other people
at the party
sit down and listen too and I am

right next to the table
covered in still-covered
desserts and I am

hoping for a
lemon square later

and the music is rushing
music and it isn't really the
music its him playing its him
being right there and making it
under his fingers and I think he is
so beautiful in his
blue tshirt with orange words some
jokey tshirt and

everyone is sitting with their
drink in one hand and their
face in their other hand and
leaning forward and
listening

and what is better the
music happening or the
listening or the

burgeoning table of
sweet and
home-made and

waiting to be shared.