Poetry

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”

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.

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

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

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.

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,