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

The black swan fluffs
her dark wings, red beak
as surprising as the peacock’s
white plumes, gauzy half moon
wedding veil and the fact
that they both bore offspring
for the first time

The smell of sawdust I breathe in
As I work on the assembly line.
The monotonous, mechanized creation of orange crates
Gives my spirit peace – a stranger’s peace.

Valley oak
And rolling grasslands
All wildflowers in the spring
Dotted with graves
Backed up to the foothills
Blue mountain peaks
Uplifted behind them.

It changes names as it rushes east
– Toll Road, Turnpike, Thruway –
supernatural, this ribbon of concrete,
where our brand new Buick,
swept back with its fins,
can fly, leaving the flat lands behind.

it whispers its way through to me, the night,
in the dying light of day, the things done,
the slow dissolve of sense, the list of smiles
ticked one by one from memory, a frown
or inimical face, best forgotten:

Stay in your seats
and remain calm.

I am sure St. Bona of Pisa
said the same things afloat
when leading crusaders
to the Promised Land.

I hear in jail they beat you
with soap in a sock so the bruises
don’t show. I ride South
on the Greyhound

to Bloody Sunday, Bull Connor,

with a hodgepodge pile of stuff
to make a bouillabaisse or salad of leaves

build a mansion or lean-to shack
protect from elements and enemies

fashion a tiara or a sassy sash
so as not to scare the children

We climb the steps of the synagogue when Annie asks, What is Jewish?
She is the child of a Jew, a son I raised to tell a story
with the fanfare of a performer on The Moth Radio Hour.

loci of suffering’s
my measly attempt
to lower stress level

a crying need warns
me off phantasmagoric
pathologist’s post-mortem

when i was a child,
momma told me:
sticks and stones
may break my bones
but words
will never hurt me.

i am neither the seed
nor the fruit –
You water
me in the in
between;

between love and
the weeds
where i hide,

A month after our daughter was born,
we planted a white dogwood. I didn’t know
the legend of the crucifixion wood.
I just liked the symmetry
of the four-petaled flowers, plump white crosses
with bright green pistils in the middle.

when the night’s
dark eyes won’t lift their lids
the sun
won’t cheer the day awake
storms
lose their breath
oceans
forget their flow

The subordinate clause clattered to the asphalt:
Because I didn’t want to be a house flower.
He fluttered his fingers like a hitchhiker. He hoped
to thumb a ride from a dependent clause,

dressed in white
your deep eyes pierced the daylight
*Araminta, defender of the people
when you crossed the line to freedom, the stars opened up all around you

something in your heart made you pause, turn around, breathing

First explored by Spanish Army troops
From Mission San Juan Baptista,
Led by Jose de Guadalupe Cantua,

Son of a prominent Californio Ranchero
In the 19th-century Mexican era
Of early California history

First at sunrise,
Then at sunset
You ebb away
leaving me suspended.
My kaleidoscopic charms
laid bare at the altar
of jumbled cowries,
flowers of the sea,