Poem Welded Together from 47 Titles
(Poem-a-Day 2019)
I used to be a roller coaster girl, a spoiled child.
My eyes have seen what my heart has felt.
The body remembers hunger, love songs,
what it’s like to have nothing to do,
to shout Now what?, letting the emptiness
become my government.
*
At night, five moths in the gloaming,
in the roiling night, the changing light.
I never figured out how to get free
of the lap belt, to say “I am a hummingbird,”
to be a meadowlark, be makebelieve.
*
Will you say a prayer severing the circle,
a prayer on joy and sorrow, on anger,
on Jakarta, January, a prayer for the youth
of Florence, Kentucky, for all
the inevitable just-about-to-break-out
sounds in the fragmentary blue?
*
We are all waiting for answers,
for a louder thing at the grave of the forgotten,
so many untitled names: Dear Nainai,
Dear Deliliah! I imagine each woman—I picture her lips
are copper wires; her hair is a petting zoo;
her heart is a trumpet.
*
Half girl, then elegy, somewhere deep in the cell,
in the mortal lease, there is a war within myself.
In the final loop-de-loop, I can see this much
and more—triple moments of light
and industry, one geography of belonging,
of color, of landscape, of tenuous rope.
I Was Me
I dreamt we were in our old kitchen:
You were you, and I was the vegetable peeler.
I peeled carrots for you,
long strings of orange longing,
but you were too distracted to appreciate
them. I peeled cucumbers,
sparing the sweet white
flesh and taking only
the hard, waxy rind.
I wanted you to put more
vinegar in the dressing.
You were wearing a yellow
flowered apron and singing
the wrong words to "Pink Houses."
I wanted to tell you that if it had to be
John Cougar Mellencamp, "Hurts so Good"
was a better choice. But my lips
were two razor blades angled to slice
skin from bone. If I could only
press my sharpest self
against your lips, maybe take off
an eyebrow. Your new girlfriend
was trying to peel an apple
with me. I wanted to scream, Apples
are not vegetables! Get a different peeler!
She's an idiot, you know. She made you
give up cheese. Is lactose intolerance
catching? Later, I heard
you two in the other room, spooning
on the couch like lettuce leaves,
and I wanted to hurl myself
head-first down the garbage disposal.
In the morning, as you tried
to put me back in the drawer, I got
you, took a small hunk
out of your finger, and you bled.
