hot tub.

your question hung in limbo, seconds from my ears,
trapped in a nebula of rising heat.
your tone, the weight of morning warmth on stones,
a subtle moonlight decanting through the clouds
as a thought might
into a system of sounds.
my tongue, salty and satisfied, gave no reply.
i was staring at your eyes, remembering
the pale blue-green rosettes -- succulents,
like bruised fists -- that clung to the hills
on the road to the seaside town
whose name is trapped in my throat.
they would not leave my consciousness --
fragile yet persistent -- and i could
not coerce the parallel comparison from my mind.
that was when it hit me, and hard.
in that moment i knew what i could -- but did not want
-- to do without. i tried to open
my mouth to say it, still mute from my musing.
realizing your stare, i relaxed my brow
and smiled, contrite.
you sat across from me -- enduring, resolute --
unwitting you'd planted something fruitful and sound
inside this dithyrambic heart.

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dream.

right now, i don't give a damn about anything but this dream, and all i want to do is lie in the river -- and with the cold water flowing over my body, remember how intense it is, each recurrence a mirror of the last: i am walking into the ruined streets of a city abandoned centuries back, and in stride beside me, a creature related perhaps to a wolf, but fiercer. infinitely fierce. and the sun is stabbing through the clouds, its rays like swords used in some heavenly war. and the cold is invasive, softly kneading it's chill into my skin. and the north wind is steadying itself, summoning the rain that nudges our world into life. the beast refuses to leave me, paces its prowl with my steps. right now, i don't give a damn about anything but this dream.

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missouri, mid august.

i can't
repeat a word of the sermons,
not the name of a single fish we fried
in thick, dark oil.

the girls
are getting ready for a talent show,
most of them planning to sing
hymnals, all solos.

we two,
we are spreading blankets over
the grassy hill, getting ready to watch.

Tad brings me
a slice of watermelon, lends me
his handkerchief. he kisses my palm,
tells me i have to write often.

his khaki eyes,
ringed with gold.

his stare,
a tight drum beat.

if god has hands,
they look like his.

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baby brother.

the ground shifts but no one notices the spinning.
no one notices the stop lights or all the chances i missed to enlighten you.

i am here, in the strain, where occurrences fold into a single description.
structures, they re-build themselves & all but we move onrward.

always wanting what you can't have, creating tension
one word at a time, pulling the narrative away until we're lost

& it's lost, left behind in the empty bottle and ashtray.
you, the little bird in the tree that struggles to re-build its nest in the rain.

me, the helpless watcher that panics through the window. always wanting
what we could acheive, some leisure time or some loose laughter.

i'm attempting to fill an empty space with anything: yesterday's news,
photographs, a box of buttons & loose thread to darn our fraying seams.

you, trying to cover your eyes with a blanket after a bad dream.
you just keep falling, and there's only so much a body can take,

but still, your memory flares. i am to attempt a composition, a theory
of resolution and restructure; hands gathered in the lap, syntax folding

in the mouth. this, a testament to us, a document of my
scourge and my heart that is filled with you, something to gap the void

that's stricken from your memory, from the wonderment of what you should know,
and truly. oh, my love, my baby brother, you should know how dearly i love you.

11:09 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

a calling.

whatever you did to attract me, it happened.
you cracked me, reversed the faulted decades
that had martyred me.

i let you inside of me,
you laid me between rocks and tight, bastioned places
and finished in me, crystalline and trembling.

we will advance from this wonderfully piquant start.

we will face the music together, you know,
simpering pensively, singing quiescently
a down home song so faint it's ghostly:

tune of the owl who hears his wife,
the swoon of the wife who tends their chicks.
the high-flying children find the sky
while the watch, watching, forgets to tick.

but see, something is happening. we are
converting, enticing others. and it's not a simple
shimmer, this thing; it's reddening, it's leavening.

it's the moment when we reckon our reckoning.

we are encroaching an essence,
those dizzy lights, those bright white mites
you see after you rub your eyes.
(they can swim there for hours.)

would be, we'll remain until the rumble-roar
of a train at our window summons survival,
the too-loud clamor heralding an arrival.

then we, we must invest in being obvious.

for we've caught up, and equal, mast
the freezing apex of our impossibilities.

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untitled.

your thighs won't let me sleep,
your pedagogical fingers.

i tongue you, then leave you
alone like a mildly dangerous capsicum.

as though to rise right up
against that which is not you,

abut or adrift, this dovetail moonshine:
your burning eyes, my zealous moans.

likewise alongside me, the niche of my chest
cradles your cheek, and amorously.

and i am back at it, black-belted by noon,
awaiting confession where a hand lies slack.

attitude of sight and dogmatic subtleties aside,
we are uncommon as we think.

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brazil.

we walk home,
past the butcher's,
the baker's
the smiling sapato-maker's.

the light
crashes off our sodden skin,
our sandals become muddy
from the clay walkway.

your saliva's
mixed like wine with the rain,
dripping down between my breasts
under the noonday sun.

infant in arm,
her slight whimper
changing to a faint giggle,
from coy to unmasked
like an escalating carimbo rhythm.

green shadows
of hills cast themselves over us,
a pampa-finch rests
on a rock beneath the lasiandra shrub
just outside our unlocked door.

it is late march,
been raining sheets for months now,
but we are lucky:
it always falls through the type of sunlight
that pierces past the marrow.

we arrive home,
empanadas cooling on the smallish kitchen
counter, rainwater collecting
in scattered buckets on the tile floor.

we lie down for a catnap,
baby hushed
with my humming,
lying belly-down on my rising,
falling chest, you next to me,
already halfway through a REM cycle.

church bells ring, and
i welcome them.

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the quiet.

the quiet always lasts longer than it should.

10:48 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

catchafallingstarandputitinyourpocket.

3:51 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

and if you’re wearing a poncho?

"there should be more heart than sleeve, nicole."
he said it with a groundless conviction, such i haven't encountered
since kindergarten when Alicia Funsten told me
that the Easter Bunny was nothing more than a figment of my imagination,
a hoax perpetuated by my family's extraordinary effort.
 "yeah, i know." i said to him, stitch of disgust stuck in my throat,
beat to the punch by that megalomaniacal thunder-stealer.
who does he thinks he's talking to, anyway?
some superficial character from Chicago? Rosaline? Delilah, for Pete's sake?
i could no longer clear the air by cursing, and breathed a helpless "goodness, gracious."
       (it is in this moment, that, had i been the heroic cartoon character,
       a missile or an anvil or a bank safe would have descended
       POW! on his head, right on that tiny scar that crowns his density.)
tomorrow there will be eyes to open and solemn goodbyes to mutter.
he will not like translating my take care as be careful,
but i am jaded, and his lackluster love has inspired me to use
the old language of caution a little longer, dig my nails in deeper.
he had always questioned the gesture of my outstretched hands,
felt that they were only crowding the space he occupied.
       (funny, i used to like being alone in the apartment, waiting for him to return,
       like a fifties housewife, only no house or children to mind. 
       even touching his clothes hanging in the closet used to turn me on.)
it's strange, for a small while everything was laden with extra meaning --
like when i was small and the sun and the moon visibly shared the daytime sky,
i wrote a poem about how they must have loved each so fiercely
that even the strain of separation could not induce them to stop shining for one another.
lord, i envy my former self. -- it's been a long time since i've felt that way.
there are a lot of things a person can fall over, but i don't need to tell him
that he was my tree stump, my sleeping body, my misplaced shoe.
he knows nothing of my sleeves, and that is his tragedy.

3:45 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

wise man once say.

"violence never settles anything." -genghis khan

i opened my mouth
to perform an
in-depth
analysis on the guise
of the game—it's not hard
to trick yourself
into a fight.
consult a beer or two.
the rorschach blot
of a bruise
just under my right eye
looks like a bird
nailed to the wall,
which seems
counterproductive.
"unlock the Buddha in you"
had nothing to offer
on re-formatting,
re-situation,
time travel.
i found a picture
in her backpack
that commanded:
notice the beauty
of this!
so i prayed for her.
i prayed for myself, too.
dear god,
forgive me
for having murderous thoughts
involving sports
paraphernalia.
i suppose i just
really enjoy my face.
then i prayed for my
narcissism.
dear god,
let my conceit fade quickly.
and the bruise, too.
the magnolia tree
alongside 101
reveals hot pink blossoms—
they are curled against
themselves, tighter
than angry fists.
prettier, though.
it remains unclear
whether any of this shit
is working
to keep me grounded
and humble.
i'd hope so.
but like the khan,
whose lineage i share,
and directly,
i am a walking contradiction.
fist in cheek,
foot in mouth.

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the field.

not in summer but in falling,
turning a sum,
and all the hills echo.

and i whisper to you:

whoever you are,
you are lovely;

you don't hear,
so my mind strays far away

and i say to myself:

can starfish be an adjective?
is a hand flung over the eye
a shut eye?
this is a quintessential day for incandescently happy people.

we are hushed by Mother Nature.
we are made still.

and the little flies giggle
around us,
jack and jill in the midday sun.

the withered grass are doors,
and the sun
will find a fine-toothed comb
to coax the blades into opening
another world,

one where we speak
in silence.

where sum and some is same.

we lie still,
our backs forming accidental autographs,
declaring:

we were here.

6:52 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

untitled.

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faith.

part of me died yesterday
a burning effigy just a stone's throw away

faith in you is a travesty under sullen foot soles
such dissonance
or perhaps resounding absence of conviction
impoverishing the appetite of a love so well defined
by the constant inconsistency in your eyes

i clasp my hands
stare at the shadowed ceiling
hold tight to a faith you have forsaken in a whirlwind of uncertainty

you and i are broken

and this bleeding heart of hearts
is under your knife

cross myself just in case you believe with me

second-chance apparitions recite anesthetizing articulations
regarding the perfume of our love-making

such a paradox you've made of my regret
in each kama sutra position i'd find a newly manifest
cerebral flexibility swirling 'round the bedside
holy, grey, innocuous things
a mingling of offbeat sounds
dried austere notes in my groaning voice
harmonies of hopeless grieving afterwards ensuing

my grace is my distress

where exactly do saviors go to die?
why o the fallen rise only to fall again?
for the sake of the horse?

your notion of love is to arrive in me
this, your only true method of expression

arbitrary flash-forwards surge
the infernal seraph of you deceives me
your fiery stakes of true command
a violent, sultry figure of lust flashing through the curtains

illusion?

an arousing authority that certainty can never attain
it clings to me like cobwebs
such a bitter and unforeseen crucifixion

i offer up my love to you

why do you only speak to me through stirs of sibilant sounds?
do you not see i cannot reach the light alone?

throughout the course of this love you have chosen yourself
every day of the week
and twice each monday while you sleep
through my company

so what more have i to blame but my faith?
my illustrious, tragic faith

3:40 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

untitled.

when i look at my clitoris, i can see a scar turning
slowly back to lighter skin from where a man scratched

an inch across with his fingernail, and just before
this, i remember trying to scream as my cervix ripped.

after seeing the trickle of blood, i recall trying to focus
elsewhere by reciting names -- first, middle, last --

of everyone i could think of, though i do not know
for sure if i got all the middle names correct.

while browsing last thursday's cnn.com headlines, i saw a photo
of an x-ray of a man's head impaled with a nailgun nail

that, according to the story, had missed his eyes
and seven centers of planning and purpose inside

that frontal lobe of his and done, really, no damage.
the doctors called this a true miracle,

which made me think that shit does not happen
by cause and effect. though, i do not know for sure

that the story or picture or both had not been doctored
to improve circulation. (as though printed words

and paper are, the same as us, a living body.)
my parents gave me the name nicole marie

for its lingual value. it is pretty, it is french,
and therefore adds up to something i'll never be.

the doctor's report described me as being
of steady age which makes me wonder if some

people's ages are in visible flux. much like names.
i do not regularly sign my middle name or initial.

the doctor recorded fingering me with a aylesbury spatula
just above the cervix to get a tissue sample.

even having been opened there, like my name,
i do not recognize this as a part of my body.

3:31 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment