At thirteen, she wanders
fields near razed homes in Bucha,
hears echoes of cries eerie
in shattered walls. She shelters
in hollows of a hospital turned home.
Once upon a time, she was a child
with eager eyes in search
of trinkets in a greenhouse—

in this poem i will assess all the winding routes to betterment

examine my inner workings
and optimize them
make another list
a financial report
break down my existence into simple word problems

if the world continues on
long enough, past
you and me and everyone
we know, will every
house be a house
where someone famous once
lived, every home a museum, except maybe ours

The waitress didn’t call me honey when she set down my bowl of clam chowder
but said she liked my cheap sunglasses,
and looked at me strangely when I made some graceless joke about them,
utterly unprepared for a compliment

My hanging basket of geraniums dies
on my front porch, soil in a pot
surrounded by three sides of bricks.
I leave for work, come home every day,
thinking I should clean this thing out,
put something new in its place.

In a low-slung stone building
commas return like monks, slightly
drunk after sipping Trappist Ale.
They have taken a vow of silence
and do not hum between titles of hymns,
films, foreign phrases and blessings.

Conjure a faun in the middle of field.

There’s a cabin in the distance, homespun
& brown, & the thick-torso’d wild turkeys
march a few feet away, leaving dinosaur
tracks in their wake.

Don’t let any of this stop you.

The smoke runs thin
by mid-morning

The river is once again
worth waking for

I approach the water,
spread my arms,

wade,
then rise

You belay each old conception
Clean into the next room.
Meanwhile, I turn my heart over
To some crooked star. It burns

This morning the divine is wearing my Land’s End robe
and demanding chai. It seems unwise to deny her appetite,

given I don’t often wake up with her, but usually spring
from my bed like some ludicrous toy that hones

when sweetness was simple
fruit split easily
their light filled my mouth.

the world was
clear juice, spring air
round and right as a grape.

I was sweating
through the dress
I had picked for someone else.

The club was closing.

Particularly at this time
I like to look out of the window

Tree branches cutting the picture into pieces
Hanging wires crisscrossing from the poles
The garage roof with its wall block the sight below

Wake Up!
Wake up, Celi!

No, not yet, Cinth
I am far too cold
I need a long shower
I feel like mold

DNA remembers…the passage
ancestors transferred, morsels of
inheritance
safely kept in tiny packets
memories within cells
red headed, blonde, brunette
ebony haired mothers

in small acts i
carry what came from before me
that fire where:
earth met heat, kept shape, kept
catechisms
on my lips.

nursing teaches a heart attitude
not learned from studies alone
we become genuine strangers closer than friends
compassionate for physical, spiritual worth
with cores that cannot turn from service
from the courage to feel

My car, a rust-infested attendant of me,
reliably pressing on, content with its
purpose to the bitter end, an endearing
thought that overtakes me suddenly and
intensely, that there will soon come an end

anyway, i keep thinking about the old laptop we passed around after school,
blue light pooling over our faces like a second puberty—hot,
cords under your desk, knotted around our feet.

She never forgets to water the piano
So that under her fingers white rivulets
Punctuated by black peninsulas
Maintain the tonal integrity
Of each percussive encounter.

One-Cent wasn’t his real name,
just the name taped on him
by authorities who had their own purpose,
taped on the wood of his forehead
at a slight angle, trueness unimportant.

I am a catafalque
rising pretentiously
like the pie in Jason’s oven
out of a conflation of a changing self
& a pile of remnants of Nan’s DNA.

Quill-feathery high-minded rhetoric declaiming
on life liberty … well … try pursuing happiness
if you’re woman if you’re enslaved or poor
unpropertied or indigenous facing genocide.

Standing amid the death-censors
“You cannot succumb to Thanatos
all for all”, I said to them to ward off
their collective suicide. Unheard.