Ouch

I tried to

put a thing together

but it ended

up sounding like

dry twigs snapping like a

chilled pinky finger.

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I wonder if my body

or my husband (What's 

your name again?)

will release me from

one of these prisons?  I lay

here wondering if its

a cell of graying, stretching skin

frayed in its edges and cuticles.

Minnesota’s nickname is “Land of 10,000 Lakes”;

"Land of 10,000 Liver Spots" is my body's

nickname. Dotted and mottled lakes of

blurred brown leaking into vacant

pale spaces a field misspent, bereft. Or is

it four walls with a 10’x12’ checker-board

floor stained with urine. Whoever

thought that pale-green paint

(sea –foam is for mother-in-law suites)

soothed hot, leaking nerves was an asshole.

Obviously he doesn’t know

a thing about ripe pain.

The point, of course, is

that I cannot.

Harvest

I must admit,

I thought I’d never

hold your hand.

Remember when we

walked to the cemetery? I

should have been more

considerate of your feelings

and your upbringing. But your

skirt hemmed just below your

mid-thigh panted for you.

We lay down, the headstones

above our heads, steely cityscapes

against an empty sky.

A shadow within a shadow,

colder somehow, even

under a sun that exposed

more than we were

ready to see.

The headstones became dead stones,

interrupted your rhythm, my timing

so we crushed nearby

corn stalks to hold our body’s

weight against the sharp field

and we kept time like

ancient metronomes.

Love Collides

A girl alighted

along a leaf-strewn path unaware

of the birds

that frolicked before

her. On a bike a

boy rode frightful

full of wrath

on a collision course with

love, for sure.

For a lad

such as this it will

be hard to

mend a torn

heart from where there is

nothing to rend. 

Ulcer

How does a gut

know the difference

Between:  a dread, or a disquiet, an unease—

it follows me: from the breakfasttableto

mydressertomycartomyjobtomylunch

tothesuppertabletothelaundrytomybed

tomydreamtomysoul—is there such a thing?

And:  an expectation, or a calm, untroubled—

it follows me: from the breakfasttableto

mydressertomycartomyjobtomylunch

tothesuppertabletothelaundrytomybed

tomydreamtomysoul—is there such a thing?

That comet explodes at the same bizarre

rate with the same intensity and

meanders and mazes itself through

the width of my capillaries

and the chutes of my veins

bleeding itself out of my

yielding pores.

That kind of rage and celebration

are troublesome dance partners

dancing a crooked two-step

with no music.

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There is a sound:

It reminds me of

brown paper towels from

the men’s room being

coerced into drying dirty hands,

And walking on bleached

cornhusks through a maze

at a pumpkin patch louder

than an exhausted hay ride,

And an apology note crumpled

by a hand that wants to write what

it wants not what

should be written;

I imagine the dark space of

the paper towel rounded sharp,

and the shadow of the husks

a damp dark,

and the words an emery board on

too short a nail whisper just past

the note.

All of those crevices, all

of those slight and grand chasms.

There’s a kind of finality to that sound:

of drying hands,

of walking on dead things,

of the unrealized stab of a word.

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When I feel like a dried chicken bone

ready to crack and splinter, or

brittle sandpaper that’s been wetted

and dried, wetted and dried, or

a throat that’s parched and gagging,

I imagine it all like baking topsoil.

I want to get into my car and

drive, drive, drive:

There’s something to be said for being honest

with someone else. But doesn’t it say more

when I’m honest with me?

If my car bent itself into or around or

through or behind, into shards of

cartilage and marrow, burgundy and

full of rot,

it would not be so bad, I suppose.