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.

I’m not one to admire change. I’ve been here
for billions of years and will be for billions more,
and in the time it has taken me to draw a single breath,
you meat puppets went from pissing on the savanna
to whipping past my feldspar plains a dozen times

Contemplating the eye of a loved one,
you have noted the white of the sclera,
Its contrast with the pigment of the iris,
the cast pulling your focus. Encircling

everything beautiful hurts
to be touched
your mother’s
cold hand on your forehead

the number on the thermometer
higher than your burning mind
can count
and now you’re the king

I am finally admitting
that I am never going to read War and Peace.
I started a number of times,
printed out a cheat sheet with the cast of characters,
made many a tasty snack,
read to around page 100,
and each time abandoned the project.

The challenge is called Oceans Seven,
and by the time Marcia Cleveland
finished the ginormous feat of swimming
all those channels and straits,
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
she indeed earned ownership.
As in, Her Oceans Seven.

Starscape obscured by
countless swarming pixels with 14-inch wingspans;
but no tangible color or form.
No sound, at least none perceived.
But there was something…
a presence felt. No, not felt. Not exactly;…
a presence known by reputation not senses, as mammal, not bird.

A hot September
morning flames fire to heaven,
Golden Lucifer.

Anticipation
to culmination: a bloom,
its cacophony.

Is there a planet where words silence
a cannon’s demented mouth?

Here, on Earth, furious iron roars
past all reason, past all pleading.
No warding it off
with incantations, prayers,
poetry.