Text version of my own book of poetry. Review as a whole, or individually, as you please. |
(To leave reviews/comments for individual poems, click on the edit point at the end of the poem. That way you won't forget what you wanted to say about it. ) Swells Love – bittersweet, irrepressible – loosens my limbs and I tremble. - Sappho ~~~ Life Blood I woke, walked blearily to the bathroom and brushed my teeth, eyes still closed to the bright light. I didn’t know. I was innocent, immaculate, tear-free shampoo in young, damp hair. Then I felt it – a jolt, sharp in my side. It was you. I reeled, cringed as you punched the air out of me, first with butterfly wings, gentle ticklings in the gut - then with fists. I thought I was dying, life draining from wounds I couldn’t even see. I opened my eyes and found you - blood red stain on my bleached white heart. I didn’t know what love was until it was seeping out of me. ~~~ Dance They say, dance as if no one is watching, but most people dance alone, their only audience the mirror. But I weary of mirrors; I want to be seen. I want to dance in the world – in the partial reflections of cars and store windows, gravel scraping the soles of my shoes, dirt in the treads of my sneakers. I want to see me as I really am, in context, embedded in my surroundings, in puddles – small and distorted, blotches of beige rippling in the light, shattered in pieces, manifold. I want to be everywhere and nowhere at once. Motion become life. I want to dance in the vastness of being - join the whirling winds and crashing seas, float like clouds, flow like rain. I want to feel the heaving of air in my lungs as I cry to the universe: Dance! ~~~ Raynaud’s Phenomenon Raynaud's Phenomenon is a discoloration of the fingers and/or the toes after exposure to changes in temperature or emotional events. When I enter cold spaces, my heart sucks in the warm, pulsing blood, leaving my fingers ghost white, tight, skeleton skin grasping for a hold on things, and when I slip back into the heat, my heart releases, and white-blue flesh explodes into red, my own private 4th of July, fingers numb and swollen in the booming. ~~~ By The Sea As we sit on the bay-side bench shivering, your coffee eyes warm me and I hold you against the deep chill of the sea, your steam rising to warm my cheeks, a stone hearth breathing softly in my ear. I bring you to my lips and sink into your heat. When you leave, I sit still, quivering under locks of damp hair – a child in a tub of cooling bath water held by the memory of warmth. ~~~ The Worst Nightmare is the Waking One Sometimes I wake to spiders, every hair follicle turned spider leg. For a moment I am buried in spiders, the egg sac hatched from nightmares, black bodies taking over. I jump, slap my skin, brush frantically until my hand finds the light switch and my eyes tell me there is nothing there. ~~~ Jam Jar I bought a tiny glass jar of jam at a local bakery. I peeled the label off, and the contents looked like blood when I held it up to the light – flecks of strawberry flesh in the viscous jelly. I twisted off the metal lid to sneak licks of the sweet preserves. At home, I placed the jar on my desk and thought: it’s the perfect size to hold toenail clippings. ~~~ A Dream About My Teacher My teacher wants to make me her apprentice. To do this, we must look more like each other. I have high, curvy eyebrows, so she takes a knife and slices her eyelids in a curve, so that her eyes open up there. She is just about to shave off some of my square chin, when she leans to kiss me. As her lips touch mine, the pressure causes her head to fall off her neck and roll away. ~~~ Undone I want to rest you on my lips until you are not you, sliding, liquid, down my throat, dissolving into me. ~~~ “Where are you going?” The words chase after me as I chase dreams… men, and cheap motels with crooked fixtures and layered paint on the walls to hide the stains from alcohol, sex, kids and accidents. Spillage from life’s little science experiments exploding into puffs of cigarette smoke that taint the air for years to come. I cough, the sickness in my bones, in my blood, seeping into sheets as I sleep, a fertile mess of a miracle shouting, “Oh God, yeah,” in the room next door, making me dream of illicit kisses that are really just too-close whispers at my ear as you f*ck me from behind, making a mess to go with the bottles of vodka and oily, unrecyclable pizza boxes that house-keeping will find later and throw away, along with all the other imperfections of a room that was made to be temporary. ~~~ My Heart I You leave tiny purple marks, kisses that ache and remind me how much I love you. II Like the ghost of bruises fading into sickly shades of green and yellow, I ache long after the marks have gone, dented bones under unbroken skin. III People tell me I look well, but every time I catch your scent, I throb. ~~~ I Want to throw you into a vat of crackling oil and watch your skin curl; to watch you glide across the black, sizzling surface of the world, rich, sliding slick, ripening to a crisp brown, simmering in the warm summer sun; to see you lie prostrate, allowing the ground to move you, bubbling up from underneath to caress you as you melt, insides collapsing into a soft fleshy center, giving under the pressure of my insistent fingertips until I break the skin. ~~~ What Happened? Attention, my bloody knee wants your attention needs your bloody attention wants you to feel my bloody pain, you know how I feel pain in the ass need to know ask me you know don’t you want to ask know I hate it don’t you? Aren’t you concerned? I know your concern, want you to know what I feel to know what exactly you want to what I don’t want you to know - what happened. ~~~ Swells The blood seeps down my naked thigh, and I wonder what it would be not to bleed – to silently swell with life, and smile at my little secret until my belly grows taut and large – to rest my hands over the warm bulge like I sometimes do my breasts, admiring the soft globes of my body, the heavy gravity of the curves as they shift, tides under the sway of the moon. I want to feel the kick of a new heart in my belly, and feel it merge with me, filling my flesh until it overwhelms and explodes into climax, bursting out in terrible waves of ecstasy and spilling onto the floor, blood red and shiny, mine no more. ~~~ Nipples Like an old married couple, they wake to the tender touch of fingers and lips, and crinkle into smiles and laugh lines, ridges peaking in familiar excitement, flushed and happy to be together, always. ~~~ Lungs My nose pressed against yours, your warm breath hisses out onto my lips, enters me and exits, leaving me gasping until you fill me again. ~~~ The Sea The sea clings to my skin. She offers diamonds, crystalline trails of salt, beautiful in my hair. She bribes me and curls her finger, come back. ~~~ Stains I fall into the cool, cut grass, and the sun warms my eyelids as your stray hairs tickle my skin like mosquitoes settling over my veins. But when I look down, I find only stains where the grass bleeds green – fresh from the mower. ~~~ Arrival When summer comes, I will put on my wrinkled summer skin, don my chlorine-green wig, and dive into a pool of murky ice water left by winter. |