Deep in the heart of the countryside
The tiny sturdy two-teacher school stood
Hidden between the tall trees and fading footsteps.

Many years ago, it finally closed its doors,
To all except for the traveling vagrants
Scurrying mice, spiders, wasps and black crows.

How could they have missed it? Surely there was
wetness and rising tides, juices that rampaged

in spring, stamens and carpels in the garden,
swelling and presenting. A whole paradisiacal world

Don’t go stalking my spirit
when I pass.

Let me fly so you can go on.

The end is the end, but it isn’t, too.

A faint waxing half moon of pink has risen
temporarily (I hope) where I gouged
my forehead on a painted hook screwed
into the door upon which to hang a holiday wreath

When I die, bury me in a bright red dress,
the colour of the blood that pushed through my veins
the fire of life and love’s caress.

When I die, bury me with red bright lipstick on,
to dilute the grayscale of mourning
brought by the passers-by.

My aunt had a dear friend named Clara Sandoval
But my mother did not approve of her at all.
One day when we were alone, momma said:
“I do not like that Clara Sandoval.”
She added “and I don’t want you to trust her either
No matter how much chocolate she brings you.”

Spearing the oil-sheen shell,
the feathered and gossamer wing,
the snail-curved scales,
Marley pins their still life
now dead, arrays in prismatic
patterns like Fibonacci,
recaptures their stained-glass flight.

It seems as if you still stroll across a fallow field,
Walking forever past all the things Nirvana offers,

And you stumble onto the right words that take
Their place around the Great Mandala,

And the air that rises on the road you left behind,
And everything that cannot speak after you—Now

Red ribbon around the bark of an old oak tree,
a present to the woods, a marker to a walker
down its dirt paths. This afternoon I am the walker.
I pause at the tree and wonder at the sight
of a violent color tied up amongst mineral green and dirt.

Peace through strength—
our strongman’s favorite slogan.
When will they learn?
You cannot gain peace through bombing.

Divinely guided, cross hung around the neck, Bible in
hand, quoting scripture as we bomb foreign land—
Sanctified greed, embodied in tailored suits.

all night the bear is coming down the mountain
bound for the strong river
running down to the distant city
but still she comes,
swimming, dripping, shaking her fur in the Tivoli
mud banks,
loping through pussy willow, rose brier,
inhaling honey suckle

A song by The Beach Boys
washes through satellite dead spots.
Riding in a used Corvette
the kind with the hammerhead headlights
that flip up and down.
Papa’s hands wave and point above the gear stick
like he’s discussing spots on a family burial plot.

I tried guile at times
And haste often, but far worse
Was the unknowing. . .

I said it slowly
But did not forgive myself
For being truthful. . .

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.