talent

It lies heavy on my palm:
small
and cold
how like a hole
in my hand
how like a chain
around my neck--

how much could i purchase
with this single coin?

It is a weight
i cannot walk with it
to market
to buy or sell
myself

I will bury it
at my feet
and sleep
until
a silver seed
untended
unwatered
it may
perhaps
increase--


will i dream rich dreams for you?
Yes
Let me sleep

song (version 1)

Hello, little snake--it's you again
bluescaled and cold
so heavy
on my skin--

I feel your cold scales pressing,
slipping up my toes
little metal ribbon
pretty ribbon
Friend, hello.

Come be my little anklets,
come weigh my ankles down,
come curl around my ankles,
hold my feet down in the ground.

You don't surprise me
little greysnake, little
friend
i heard your little whispers
i knew you were here
again--

you whispered little secrets
little lies inside my ear
heard you hissing in my headbones and
I knew that
you were here

Come be my little anklets then,
come weigh my dancing down,
come curl around my footbones,
come keep me in the ground.

Greysnake, bluesnake, little
friend
I knew that you were here
again
The way you turn my eyes grey, how
you pull my eyelids down
The way you press against my teeth
every time i smile, or frown

Come be my little anklets then,
come weigh my ankles down,
come be my little friendlet then
come hold me in the ground

I won't go dancing deeply
I won't go far from home
I'll just dip my toes in
wear you wrapped around my bones.

a birth day

Once on the day after Christmas I lost an earring,

half of my Christmas present, a little smiling kawaii squid

(this in the bad old starving days 

when I was a girlshape made of brittle glass,

I wasn’t sad

I wasn’t sad)

it slipped out sometime that day—

when I was pulling espresso shots, ignoring 
the cramping 
and the clotting—

or maybe later at the clinic.

I don’t remember their faces, 

just the white coats

the necklace stethoscopes

they said any residual tissue would be 
taken

lab tested

I guess they sent us the papers

later

I was too numb then to ask 
for the scraps 

so we left 

bereft 

All I had of you then 

was my lost earring 

Later you gave
your first 
last

best 

gift:

the glass cracked 

that night 

we cried,

I cried

I could never have been your mother

I tried

I tried

I think that I was born then,

when you died

gray november

A soft gray shawl, pulled
in around the earth, warm, wispy,
near: November sky

 *

Invisible birds embroider November:
Long satin whistling,
twitters picked and clustered,
french knots
in a gray flannel sky.
And at brown bushes
and leafbare branches,
they loop their songs,
crochet their lace around
the world's winter border.

 *

this warm november
the sky
is soft and gray and sweet
sad
like a beloved, outgrown toy

damp and close on the earth
and on shoulders
pressing down the corners of your eyes

it says, curl up your toes
your eyes look tired
sit down awhile
sleep

*

let's be bears today
it's too damn cold to get up
november morning

haiku september

less angry sun. The waspsbuzz around the eaves, the bush,
buzz loud, do not rest

one last rose, magenta
magnificent, full blown, drops
lazy petals down

the grass, full green, strewn
with dropped leaves dried to old gold,
smells dry, smells warm, smells sweet

sometimes through the gold
still air, a furtive giggle,
a hint: fall visiting

moments

Each day is a fist
full of moments.

Snot smeared fingers
brandish a bouquet
of boogers:
Here, Mom!
They are always for me.

Let's pretend
I don't notice you, quietly
poking little sticks
into the seams of the brown couch
and unpicking them.
White fluffs of stuffing drift
like spring flowers.

Let's pretend
you are dinosaurs, lumbering
through strewn toys;
you are better at sharing
when you are dinosaurs.
I am the mountain sleeping
on the brown couch,
I do not want
to erupt.
This volcano can sleep for
millions
and millions
of years.

The baby, walking
Here: hold
my huge finger
in your little fist.
Your folded hands are warm and tender
as wilting flowers.

angry

God help us
it were better to have drowned

than to come before your throne
and be found
wearing chains that we hammered

hammered and bound
around our hearts and our children's

nailed to our doorposts
nailed to our gates
nailed to our foreheads
nailed to our feet

You told us good news:
we made dead gold copies
of the gospel
and wore it like crowns

Made chains out of grace
God
help us--
it were better to have drowned