Poetry
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Brookland Blues
My bare feet hit the pavement of the sidewalk, hard, heart pounding, going somewhere, going nowhere? It’s cold. Below freezing in February. There’s glass all over the sidewalk, shattered like the squares of a crossword puzzle. The sudden pain in my lower back causes me to stumble, but there’s no…
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Seconds
We share leftover spaghetti on the floor
I spill sauce on my tights
and beer on your rug.
I apologize
but you shoo it away—
the whole night is an apology
for the body,
the fugue of self-hatred
descending, the marriage
of you and me and her.
She hangs heavy…
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Whole
Mom
I love you.
I’m sorry we don’t get along better.
Why have you always been so far away?
I need you.
I need your kindness and affection.
I need your encouragements and reassurances.
I need you to tell me everything is okay and mean it.
I need you to…
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Stephanie in Bloom
The last time we were together you held me down, squeezed my wrists until purple roses bloomed. There’s only space to write about us in the margins now. The world has become more fractured, more confused. My grief is my art. My gift is my pain. I wrap it in…
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My Blackbird Heart
mother
i have been looking for you
in photographs from my childhood.
i see pictures of me
alone
aloof
never secure.
look closer
i am contained,
living inside the aviary you built
for my blackbird heart
soaring only as high as you deemed
seeing the world from the bottom of…
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One Week in July
Aujourd’hui, maman est morte — Albert Camus
I. Forty Minutes to Goodbye
You drive the familiar roads home
but there’s nothing
familiar about them this time:
home is a fleeting place.
You drive faster, wanting to
put it all behind you
wake up 20 years later instead,
not knowing the…
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American Sunrise
The things we do in secret
to prepare for the Apocalypse
I have always known the ending
carry the same evil inside my body
injected by my ______’s penis
five or six years old
the same evil Uncle Sam
is pumping into your children
I demand awakening through the
gateway…
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Heaven is Blurry
Heaven is blurrylike the window far off in the porcelain’s reflection
promises of peace like the beat of your heart murmuring its song in my ear lulling the body back to life.
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A Living Sacrifice
You asked whether
All the king’s horses
And all the king’s men
Could ever put Stephanie back together again
Sometimes that’s the point of healing
And sometimes it’s not
Every system is different
They say
I run a boarding house for divergent emotions
Inside my body
No matches, sharps, or…
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A Woman’s Body
you think it will never happen again
you step off the shore
you are vanishing
while around you
the darkness coming down
a woman’s body
called spring
floating around in the darkness
your soul won’t listen
so you relax
you don’t fight it anymore
your throat swells
as it beats…
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Experience
to begin again
this time
knowing what we do now
a quiet hope
shards of light
in Mason jars
playing childhood
playing June
the scream always dying in your throat
when nights were long
lying at the top of the stairs
listening for it to be over
and then
Portrait…
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But You Don’t
for Christmasyou can have a raincheckan IOU for the things we’d doif you felt anything at all for me.
Portrait credit: Nelson Jaimes
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A Spinning Wheel
Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you’ve done, what you didn’t do, what you look like, what age you are, any of it. Nothing matters at all. You have no control. Your parents don’t love you. No one loves you, not the actual you, the scared child, the terrified adult. The…
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Placeholder
Only the wrens dare get close
land on the table
puff out their chests
observe and flit
flit and observe
Their activity contrasts your lethargy
soaking up the slanted rays of the
Autumn sun
different than before.
You are here now like you were then
only you guess at the…
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Soul Moves West Upon Death of Body
“In Abenaki tradition, souls move west upon the death of the body.”
You used to dream, big open spaces and the mountains stretching out forever. The west. Always the west. It was your first love. Where you got married. The ocean, blue expanse, the cliffs and switchbacks, Redwoods reaching high…