A Self Titled Poem

All my dreams are of houses.

Hallways narrow to wakefulness.

Try to make sense of a door that leads to the room I’m in,

the intruder in the window, the devil in the cellar.

They say dreaming of houses indicates

unexplored corners of the mind.

What can this mean to an overthinker?

My creativity feels just out of reach -

a groping in the darkness, a dim knowledge

that the surface of the water is just above me,

a Peter Pan shadow that eludes capture.

Is it the looking to the light that blinds me?

My eternal hopefulness? My light-filled rooms?

I’m drawing the shades on inspiration. 

In darkness my shadow surrounds me.

Does it matter which room I’m in?

I imagine the darkest corner of my house

is the one where Death places the tool in my hand.

But all he becomes is fodder for contemplation.

What else is there? Every repulsive thing I haven’t been

brave enough to say. Desire and revulsion.

Bits of bloody self I cut off years ago.

May I become a collage artist here in the dark.

Something horrible pasted onto the tenderest piece of my heart.

A smear of red, sanguine lust. Ashes of some joy my father tried to burn.

It’s an acerbic, unsettling picture.

Where light shines, shadows fall

Broken Dishes

I am not a violent person.

When I step outside for air,

I find it thick, choking,

if only I could claw it away.

The glass jars glinting in the sun

with their film of forgotten ambitions

freshen my anger.

Like the jagged, sinister edge 

of broken glass, your disdain and delusion

await my frantic efforts to clean up, repair.

I’ll cut myself again and again.

My pieces soon irreconcilable to my shape.

My hand closes slowly around a jar,

lifts it skyward, the trees distorted through

its fuzzy, melded shape.

When it shatters against the stones,

my own shattering acquires a sound,

a sensation.

Later you complain about the mess,

or was it before?

I can’t recall.

Every jar is broken. Every dream is ended. 

The pieces spell out

every undiscovered sin.

The pieces are glittering.

The pieces

are lighting my way.

Glacial

see how my skin is this impossible

blue-veiled-green

bluer than the shocking sky,

greener than the yawning evergreens

that my fingers stretch out 

beneath cool peaty earth

to water into growth

mountains towering above, pillars

of creation, gifted

their millions of glittering rainbow gems

to adorn my edges, my foundation

where delicate hooves of deer and elk pause,

dip their slender faces 

to my icy, holy bath - without reserve - 

come. come baptize yourself here

where millennia worships with silence, abundance

the violence of my creation was

cacophonous

only a gentle lapping, the slap of a fish’s tail

or the cry of a bird - high - a black speck

remains

a choir you can only hear

at this altar

Me and The Crickets

Today I typed out a long list of numbers

nothing important, but the numbers aligned

into years

Years of tiny details forgotten or remembered,

who could say what would make the books

In front of me, the crickets snap up from the grass,

their tiny shadows bending and fading

Suddenly I am hands-on-my-knees

heaving, the weight of all those years, all those 

little details

I scream, my throat catching and rasping,

it burns, but it does not help

The dogs only look at me with vague concern,

the crickets continue leaping

Why is your impatient voice the one that rings in my ears?

Why is my long list of years a paper-chain of grief?

I straighten, I keep running, the dogs ahead out of sight

     Snap snap snap

You will leave, what else can I do?

Winter Sky

Descending to the west

the moon is but a single, pale eyelash 

on the rosy cheek of the horizon.

One blinking star, a planet I guess, 

at the ether’s edge.

My whole body is a prayer.

My words are the black trees, the upward pull 

just beneath my eyebrows.

If I pray hard enough 

I’ll lift right up, dissolve 

top down, 

my toes the last thing 

to touch the earth.

Known

*Honorable Mention in the Carolina Woman Magazine Writing Contest*

In blades of tender grass 
and opulent black 
raspberry bushes edging the woods, I look 
for myself.

Barefoot, I pad along the steaming road, 
incense of sun-ripened pine 
filling my breast, these green giants incline 
toward me with every zephyr, benevolent 
nudging toward an exploration 
I cannot see.

My hands and lips are 
sticky with nectar berry, 
I'm green at the knees, 
jewels of dew drops and 
slugs garnish my legs: glittering 
stockings. Tiny sun-yellow 
cowslips and Queen Anne's lace 
crown my hair, speckle my skin.

I am neither girl 
nor child 
nor lost 
nor found, 
yet 
embraced and subsumed.

 View on Carolina Woman