August

August eases into September, a slick slip

under warm water

Only by October I realize I’m drowning

In the mirror I watch my eyes droop, a Dalí

of self-abandonment,

unrecognizable form divorced from daily 

baptizing by lake and sun and glass

In the heat of summer the artist sparkled

at my fingertips

Eyes like emeralds and skin a prism of glass

Hopefulness, imagination sprouted

like spring seeds

When I turned, the current swept me away

with a whisper about falling in line

By spring I have wrenched the beast’s 

fingers from my throat, color coming to the surface

But heartbreak is a gust of icy wind in the shade

knocks me sideways–a door opens

Sunlit gold tip grass, my fawn legs totter

forward, what rests in wait

Water drapes over every rock, I’m there

again bare skin slick, can I have it all

August blooms on the horizon, the leap

is coming, fingers unfurl from the rope

What lies below each passing memory, what landing 

awaits my beryl body, my glass heart

The Sky is Marvelous

The sky is marvelous beyond

the striping lines of electrical wires

strung between uprooted, naked trees

like those skies out west 

that I danced naked under, took cold showers under,

let my hair whip in the wind under

The colors blur beyond my tears

I want to ask god for guidance

but I can’t trust a god who’d give me a heart like this

let it get crushed under the guise of love

Can’t trust a god who says he formed me

by hand, and won’t answer a single whispered prayer

This god of my childhood has only ever been

the kind to trick a child until they cry

I cry, no god answers

I’ve touched holy dirt and holy water, brought it to my heart, said

let this transform me, I want to be transformed

But it’s the common and vulgar that feels most sacred

An Italian man pours wine for me, tells me

do whatever the fuck you want

My breath catches like I might come

as I plunge into an ice cold mountain lake

I lock eyes with the golden glare of a 

disdainful coyote, feel seen, feel clean

Don’t think I haven’t sat in a pew long enough

to understand

I cry, no god answers

But the sky is marvelous

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.

Solitaire

*published in Garfield Lake Review, 2021

Can I see you ? 
I ask, silently, 
into Sky 

I see speckled breast, 
a flash of red wing. 
vibrato in the air, my heart 

Where does the light go -
or should I say - 
who takes it? 

The green is in my eyes,
and on the bottoms 
of my bare feet 

And still - 

the Red Dirt calls 
to me: 
paint me across your cheeks
and across your breast and
down your thighs 

Will I take flight then? 

Can I see you? 
Can I see? 

Can I see 

- a sigh - 

me?

Again

*published in Garfield Lake Review, 2021

the silver moon
dips below the edge of the velvet lilac cloud
blush rises
in the sky from the points of the trees
at times I feel painted too
and gilded
by the last rays of the sun
then the night descends
and the shadows grow deep
and I remember all the words you have said
and all the words you have denied
tiny silver moons leave glittering trails along my blushing cheeks

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