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The Years Dad Blamed the Breeze

Some nights I imagine Dad as the lift in a shoe or wing of a plane—
his wisdom packed with imaginary insight:   
all shadows have eyes,he'd say, stoking the embers

I murdered the cat on a Tuesday and by Wednesday morning I was back to work, saying nothing to anyone, scanning milk cartons and zucchinis and rolls of toilet paper.

When I was about five, I prayed to God as I lay in bed. I prayed for the speed of a cheetah, just like the character I had seen in a cartoon on TV. He could run away from anything.

Something bad happened. I sat on the bed. Tammy was under the bed but I didn’t know that. And the mattress is held up by wooden slats but the slats weren’t cut long enough, so they barely hold up the mattress and if you shift your position on the bed, there is a good chance that the slats will move out of place in the frame and the mattress will fall through the frame. And that’s what happened. The bad thing.

“and where’s the melody
to remedy the melody, the remedy to remedy the remedy” 
      -Diane Seuss 

Last ever moments of falling 
asleep with you, last 
ballooning mood & heartbeat 
so I

You find yourself crying on the phone to your manager, telling them you don’t know if you’re in an emotionally abusive relationship or not. That probably deserves certainty.

When she died, she just wasn’t there. I had to ask about her. She wasn’t in the usual place.

I think they mean they just don't like a woman going around going "cunt cunt cunt."

Across the vacant middle seat an old man is sleeping through all of this, chin to collarbone, neck bent at a right angle.

Macy’s Closeout Sale                                                                                                             

I am curious what newcomers think of my city,
but it is not really

I forget how many jobs I got let go from and how many houses picked me up, sheets and everything, and dumped me around the corner until some other work, some other roof overhead, seemed to gather me up and dropped me hence. 

And any of the people that had been counted correctly, including me, could move or die, making the incorrect count accurate once again, if only for a moment.

CYCLE

i sit
drip blood
think i am
such a giver
(whether
i want to be
or not)
where’s your effort
your trail of crumbs
leading to
better understanding
safer sex
i love you
you

I am in a storehouse of answers, am I not? I head for the reference desk even though there's no one behind the counter.

No one comes. I walk up to the bike. The seat’s taller than my bike.

It was revolution by music. The world would never be the same.

Upward Mobility

First, we push the children into their games and giggles, to insulate them from obscenities circulating in the kitchen  / Then we lose our temper, & act like masters of a new

I don’t smoke, I called out, but no one heard me, and I sounded uncertain. 

seeds

when nothing smells like you
i let dawn-colored fruit rot in the blue bowl
spray perfume thru the air and try to touch 
myself the way you touched me

too bad we met/never met

I just remember the room dense with familiar sound, the melancholy howl of the perfectly in-tune saxophones, the electric brilliance of trumpets, a drummer with eight arms; my mother looking over at me, expectantly, as if to say, “This is what you wanted, right? This is making you happy?”

What will be will be. She was a good swimmer, and at least he was getting some exercise. 

in the bella resource center

that lesser bond girl
her name was a play on genuflect

i can be good
lowering myself to the ground
everyone says reverent but they always
mean deference

i

I leave behind a lot of empty wine bottles.
You said eat anything in the fridge and I did
right down to the last gherkin.
Unrelated: your turtle is dead.
You failed to mention it and I failed
to

...a person is like an ocean, or a country, or a forest...

The grass here is incessant.