Undone diction
etherized upon a table.
Is or isn’t. In or out. For or against.
Ones, zeroes, x’s, o’s.
Klaxoned opinions clamoring.
A crisis indeed.

Many nights I go to sleep
a teenager and wake
up as an old woman. Mid-
life plays out in dreams

Since dawn Jesus has walked the streets
with different faces and portable PA’s
expounding on hell Jesus has nothing good to say
before the flowers come roll down the road on wheels
on floats made of roses and rice and lentils everything organic

we are called to rise when our souls awaken
collapsing over the edge of an orange sun
moving through its own heat
we awake from the deep
blue hair mussed
we are called to rise beyond the blood of the blind

Courageous Frida, icon to millions
who know no more of you than your eyebrows
on the t-shirts your face adorns,
what is your name worth now?

In two weeks’ time, I will depart,
and you will see me fading out the doorway,
disappearing from your time and space.

Nothing, no one ever leaves completely,
and so you will not see or hear but sense
the presence, the silence, the smile/frown

For years the school bus took the same path
past your grandmother’s house—just uphill from yours

each day the fields flickering past,
sometimes filled with corn,
autumn filled with hay bales

You can’t handle the truth of X
and Y complexities in your own
species, so it’s obvious you think
you can tell our gender by the
colour of our breasts or know
that we are born all-brown.

the better-off displace old families
leaving just a remnant behind
neighborhood changes fast
innovative foliage, bolstered lawns
porch, deck, people repaired and not
show it all happening at once

And in Venice, spring!
priest manqué
Baron Corvo’s pimping presence
passes by,
on the lookout for the right boys.
Oh che bel divertimento!

I take the cobbled path through town
that I have walked for years.
The streets are for the wary—
ice strewn here and there
as if they had tired
of the nagging shovels.
The air still
with the silence of February.

Goddesses of Rage and Despair
objects of desire
and hate
Did they drown in their own beauty?
curse their amber eyes and
silk thighs
gasping for air

As this afternoon the cotton candy clouds share space with azure sky, I surmise that God above does not abide the lie that Hamas’ savage strike justifies the Israeli government’s genocide.

Widows, orphans, strangers bear the brunt of extreme and arbitrary force. Displaced tented families eke out day by day survival, searching bomb-razed hospitals and schools for children’s charred remains.

He arrives on horseback middle of a blizzard
in the Rockies, boots on, to collect me. There
is a valley of snow between us. He says nothing
about seeing the parole officer. I’m inside a lodge
with a roaring fire, legion of kin, we’re playing
Texas no hold’em and Scrabble with occasional…

The idea of “necessary evil”
Is only plausible if you
Mistakenly equate evil with pain.
Reject the premise, then
Evil is never necessary.

Pain, on the other hand, is a different story
For human life to even exist
There is the matter of the
Pain of childbirth

I float in the pond
on my blue mat,
splash away deer flies,
close my eyes in the baking sun.
The mat deflates, I am
half in the water, legs and head
cradled on the remaining air.

While it was dark,
(and hellishly cold!)
the earth a frozen stone,
I dreamt of loam
and pomegranates,
and a warm, green shore,
and a boat to ferry me home.

The third eye opens. Treasure:
How dry linen pops into flame
With spark and magic instant.
In the sweet live dark the trees drip life.

You can call me a comforter
emitting essential oils
like quiet sighs, silk-washed
in tears silent as the ear of a baby.

are the worst, often perched
on a ledge at the edge
of a mountainside,
the danger palpable…

Can I take you somewhere special?
It’s quiet, but not literally
It exists in fragments of peace
Between strong-minded but gentle-souled
Tears from the sky

What if we stopped naming stars
before they’re born—
stopped dreaming up doctorates
in ultrasound rooms,
or calling chubby fists
“just like Dad’s baseball grip”?

To listen to a gentle rippling
blues and folk melody
and realize its one
of yr own and you’re
sitting under the same
immeasurable sky of feeling

Blue skies, seventy degrees
but it’s almost November,
the chrysanthemums hanging on.
Prickly burs fall
from the Chinese chestnut tree,
some stems loosen, others still cling.