Poetry
Someday when I have spare time, I'm going to publish a chapbook. So far I've chosen the cover's photo and the title. The easiest part.
The Way Back Seat
Here are some oldies but goodies - some of which I read at Stayton's Second Sundays Series of Poetry Readings as a featured poet and at the Governor's Cup in Salem, Oregon.
First place, Whispers, 2000
Relative to Snow
I am letting myself shrink
like the snow that disappeared overnight
to soak back into the earth, where it is safe.
Can I quench your thirst?
I am cold and wetly fluctuating -
Have you ever gone crazy on purpose?
My defenses are ways of melting
I pull the pain inside and divide into thousands
of molecules, individual flakes
so slowly you don't notice I am gone
until Spring, when things grow back beautiful
and I rest dissolved.
First place, Whispers, 2001
Charitable Fund
I sit at the corner and beg
not for cash but explanations.
I plead with the world because
technology has made genius impossible --
cheap answers just a search engine double-click away.
Every minute children with bloated stomachs and glassy eyes
starve to death. Here, I waste away craving
book nourishment, human experience.
Maybe I'll build something like a lemonade stand --
draw on cardboard that donations are welcome and hope for stories.
Then re-sell cycles of hunger in notebooks
five cents per emotion.
Second Place, Whispers, 2002
Road Trip
I thought about driving away forever,
my only companions the am radio and highways.
I would have first stopped in Montana,
just outside of Glacier National Park
and brought flowers to the graves of my grandparents.
I would think of them only from stories told--
the small town Baptist preacher and his wife
picking blueberries in summer, ice fishing in winter.
And the Olan Mills photo, bent deep inside my pocket-
his angular dark-rimmed glasses,
her thin white hair curled in tight rolls.
Both in smiles.
Maybe I would have stayed longer
to ask where I come from
and tell them where I plan to go
then drive straight through to home.
I am writer, hear me roar
"Let me propose myself as typical" - Margaret Atwood
And this is said because
the writer is overexposed to simple things --
like sunshine & phone bills,
and turns them into dramatic grocery store novels
that sell for 5.99 hardback --
centered between bubble gum & tabloids.
Shall I produce a career driven image
to match my wardrobe of all black
and being melancholy?
After all, I am writer, I am woman,
let me propose myself as being typical.
New Mexico
The mountain range next to Albuquerque
always shows you east.
So that lost is a clear choice.
And I will find you--
in the state I have never paid attention to
because our love is not measured by longitudes
not weighed only in words.
It is in the blood that flows through our veins
like small highways connecting
us forever as sisters.
Spaghetti Western
“Headache the size of Texas,” I slur.
But you’re passed out next to me in your faded jeans
Still wearing your work boots.
Two aspirin later and I’m asleep again
Dreaming of cowboys and Indians
Riding into the sunset
While the credits roll, and there you are
Galloping past like a hero
Roping in my good, bad and uglies.
- untitled -
I trace the veins of leaves --
mimicking the outward flow
with my half-moon nail.
You are on the other half of bench
and I am shy
listening to you breathe -
InandOut. InandOut.And
the rhythm makes this home --
beneath birch shadows and beside
cool waters. Here
are my lips, tracing yours.
Here is your hand, warm against my own.
Here is the sound love makes
when exiting the branches
to see-saw down into the river's throat.
Second-hand clothing
You are wearing my sadness
like trousers;
zipped up, buttoned.
I'm all dressed up like evening
trying to sell midnight
for half-price to the moon.
Sunroom
Our invented dream is made of
salty air against salty skin --
the ocean, you, and I.
A make believe stone house next to the shore line
the kind with a sun room
where books will be written,
where books will be read.
(Imagine sunrise at the point where ocean and sky
are one. Feel the wind create flurries in our lungs.
Taste early morning on the crest of my lips)
I wonder what kind of looks we'll give each other
after years of seeing the same ocean, the same love,
constant yet moving around us.
Will we remember each tide that came,
every cycle of the moon that pulled?
After we've made love a million times but also
fought each other hard
then loved each other harder still -
like the repetition of surf pounding out rhymes
You are a thousand incomplete sentences
perfectly aligned on antique shelves, in alphabetical order
Like beached prayers spellbound
by shore.
