The rain turns me jeweled
spangled refractions catching the light,
but you rush by,
never noticing the display.
How do you touch a heart
with no hands?
What happens to the unnoticed?
Where goes the unshed tear?
Seining the Subconscious
I seine the water in my sleep
water still and deep
floating on the tide.
Am I the whirling wind
or the center it revolves around?
This IS happening.
This is my skin
tea steeped and caffeine bloody.
It makes sense,
truly it does.
I haven’t menstruated in seven weeks
I haven’t written in seven weeks
I haven’t shed a tear about either.
Sometimes the carousel horse
is up, sometimes down;
either way my stomach
is never with the rest of me.
I collect dolls because they are small things
and only move when I rearrange them.
In the dream though
the water was full of floating toys.
I stole a rake from someone’s porch
because I had no net.
He talked of travelling once;
I’d love to show you Italy, he said.
The only response was a soft laughter
and amusement crinkling at the eyes
turned a soft brown, like the deeply furrowed earth
with a back ground of green hills
and woody grape vine. My eyes.
How does one explain ‘knowing’?
How do you explain about a small town,
with streets so old and tiny that cars cannot pass:
that people walk, or ride a bike.
Somewhere in my soul resides the sea,
Arco Felice calls me in my sleep.
My first memory is of the sun on cobblestone streets
and the Italian tile upon which I learned
to crawl.
I met a gin soaked bar room queen in Memphis
and he says to me,
Honey, what’s it really like ?
I was drunk enough myself to give an honest answer
about my sex life, dwelling upon the lubrication
and the friction and the smell and taste and
he chimes in,
agreeing with me that some men are sour like lemon soaked gin
while other men are merely salty, leaving you thirsty
like you worked 15 hours in the hot sun.
Dry, like the best martini.
We kept on drinking and telling stories about the men we knew,
until the time came when we wove paths around each other
trying to find a bathroom,
where we companionably puked into the same toilet
and he swore he could only love me more
if I had a cock he could suck to prove it.
And we fell asleep in the corner of the bar,
no innocent lambs, either of us
just two sad people found by chance
some where in Memphis
when the rain steamed up from the hot pavement
and all the buses were on strike.
We make the sacred pilgrimage
be come as salmon
swimming back upstream to spawn.
We laugh and the elders lead the younger
down the road
dust from another age
cycling back
We come home.
The children fight- its all about dominance
about who will lead the pack
And our mothers and our fathers
are dim cigarette glows
in the darkness.
Shhh, someone whispers,
Jimmy brought fireworks after Tante Eileen
said to leave them home.
someone else answers
yeah, wonder if he’ll burn off his eyebrows again.
Kyle just laughs and says he found a snake by the pond
and we all troop down to see.
The cigarette glows gestured animatedly.
Jimmy set off his fireworks without singing his hair off
And the snake was gone,
so we skipped rocks and swatted at mosquitos
until the night was punctuated by Uncle Roberts flashlight
cussing at us for not being in bed.