On Temperance Avenue,
Southeast of the city of Fowler,
Is a ten-acre vineyard
Planted to Muscat of Alexandria vines,
In the true sense of the old world.

Near the railroad tracks and old highway,
Raisin packing, and packaging plants,
And their chain-link fences.
Hundreds of solitary vines
Over one-hundred years old…

counting smoke plumes
on the mesa horizon
while yucca spire buds
remain un-blossomed.

Between rocks guarding
the front door, a sunflower
stalk bends. I welt too.
Yellow flames wake the air.

Two trees came down across the neighbor’s lawn last night
with the rain, kissing the gutters along the roof, knocking over
patio chairs, but everyone inside, just safe. We are uphill
from the flooding, where the beachfront parade of restaurants
were washed away

Having played aces at the poker table in one dark
Corner of the bar and been accused, drank
Sloe gin fizz then kissed the girls (the music was just great;
The women naked danced demurely on tabletops slimy at Jake’s Bar-n-Grill
Whose neon sign announced “This Place Will Make Your Ladder Climb”)

It’s not the end of the world, though it could be, but the sun
came up today and I’ve had my morning coffee, while, at the same time,
Yellowstone stood rain-smothered, the Midwest roiled in the midst of a heat wave,
and millions across India and Bangladesh lost everything to raging floods and landslides.

On a corner lot

nestled among two story homes
wooden swing sets
and paved driveways
stands a glass greenhouse.

The universe lurks
in the magic of the hours:
the evening sun slides behind
the ruins of an old stone house

and the cholla thicket, strewn
with the wreckage of windblown leavings—

A lump hammer propels me close
to buried root, each head-heavy swing
a blow at resistance. I want to lash
the stubborn vines to scaffolding

so they’ll grow upright, as we want
for our children—as I raised you, my child,

My father built the cabin by the river
himself, and built me a treehouse
on the riverbank and two kinds of swings:
one with a tire you sit on and one to hang
on upright. We found a wounded duckling
near the pond, and nursed it back to health.

To raise a child who loves herself,
remove the word “beautiful” from your vocabulary.
Replace it with brave.
Smart.
Creative.
Kind.

Instead of her hair, her eyes, her skin:
Notice her soul.

Fly from that house
clad in cotton dress & aviator cap
with its cracked leather—you knew you’d need it
someday.

Ride mistral through
a sky casting its greys over a landscape
brown with mud & blonde with barley spikes
bending.

a torture fund
for the poorer:
a rampant righteous dance
themed: taxidermy of piety

so hot do my cheeks burn
in hypocrisy
lost to our lessers

How can I still be sad about ancient pains?
These tidbits of lost connection strewn like bread crumbs
to delineate a path back to the witch or warlock
who cast this spell of forgetfulness
“the better to manipulate you, my dear”

When I hate myself I reach into photo albums
and pull the child version of me into the present.
I make myself look at that boy
and say the awful things I have said
to the mirror in my mind.
The condemnations rush away
like the refugee raindrops that scatter

Stripping one
of one’s
memories
the cruelest of outcomes,
by design
or
predetermination

the moon will be like the sun
& the sun will be like the seven
who bind up our trauma
& mend the wounds inflicted by our flesh

I walk north where garlic mustard grows
with heart-shaped leaves,
clusters of tiny white stars.

Their slender stalks border a trail
into the woods
past a brook where the deer drink.

I wait for the next appointment knowing
it will arrive as another scheduled day
where I’ll put my body in a stranger’s hands.
That person in white will study my numbers,
listen to my heart, press fingers into my flesh

I never imagined being a mermaid
Other girls talked of curly hair,
seashell bras; all I saw were scales —

Water felt like a second skin to me.
I could glide and swoop, avoid
imagined obstacles at speed.

six silent, shaken years
as I traversed the borders
between genders

my father’s tuque
he gave me
one snowy day, leaving home

We tried to comb out the glued ponytail of the first Barbie
and dress Ken.
The basic Ken came with a bathing suit, but you could buy a sleeper set:
brown and beige striped pajamas.

(Before Meditating)
Doorway into adjoining room’s debris
boxes blankets pillows piled in childless crib
window fence smokeless chimney lifeless tree
its branches as bleak as a hopeless soul.

My bluest eye that is without the blue,
But the blue within to make up the two
Continues to reach its color by blue
Without any division from the two

It’s time, you say,
it’s yours to make the call of when to stop
to feel the years
attack your joints and swell your knees until
you don’t agree
it’s fair to be in so much pain to move around
from bed to chair