Poetry Storage

No! I don’t want to sleep!

I want to write!

I want to craft!

I’m living and breathing NOW

My pen is sirening NOW

Work schmurk

Who cares!

My muse is HERE

Mother Moon is HERE

Please I have to sign

Poesy visits so rarely

I MUST continue

I MUST go on

Oh no eyes no I beg

Do not grow weary

I NEED this for heart

I NEED this for soul

Treacherous mouth

How could you yawn so

The beat of Art is LOUD

The echo of of a line is LOUD

Oh brain you can’t!

My last line of defense!

The page weighs HEAVY

The ink dries HEAVY

Possible Title: I think I was meant to be a river

There are words

Rumble rolling in my mouth

Boiling hot and queasy

There is sickness in my chest

In my lungs my breath

Channeling venom out to my body

In mere seconds my fingers

Are rising at my throat

Bruises banking on makeup

Looking to roots as a sieve

I do my best to leave

the air cleaner than I found it

But I am sick

And I cannot heal faster than I am harmed

The poison is building and I know

I am a dam not a river

I should dig in my heels

I should push out my toes

I should try harder

After all, why wouldn’t I?

I am crumbling

Watching the town below

The one that grew in my shadow

Where the mothers come to say hello

While their shoes pass over pebbles

Sending bits of me careening

And my mother…

She didn’t ask to build me

She never trained or studied

But she was given cement and tools

Did the best with what she had

If she notices a crack

She digs a bandaid out of her purse

Presses it over fissures

Barbie against a Maelstrom

And here I am, unmaintained

But how would she know that?

Again, she never learned how

And she won’t learn now

After all, why should she?

I am rapidly degrading.

Tension swirls in eddies

Against my parapets

Down in the gallery there are fathers

Toting along sons and daughters

Pointing at turbulent tides

And my father…

He brings his friends by with pride

Firmly pats the wall of me

Shows off the roaring reservoir

Remembers feeding me buckets

When I was just a puddle

And never stops

Each day he brings a bucket

And a story of his day

Enjoys the rain and snow and sun

And dumps a bucket kindly over the side

As the water level rises

As the water begins to crest

As the creaking and groaning grows

He has never been wrong

He has never once turned the release

After all, why would he?

But I can feel the land

On either side erode

Can feel where my stomach

Has shifted, settled lower

Can feel where the sluice gate

Has buckled and the spill way

Prepares for the flood and

When the trickles first appear

The town is not shocked

Is not surprised

Is not concerned

Because they do not see

No one ever examines me

The engineers don’t seem worried

And so, why would they?

And then I am broken

Language tears in torrents

Tributary-vomit geysering out

In one, ten, hundred, thousand

Cubic square feet per second

Scoring canyons into the landscape

Smashing through stick and stone

Devouring decades in waves

Mudslide memories collapsing

Swallowed by the weight of screaming

Leaving nothing unsaid and all unforgiven

Until only river remains

I stand in debris, alone

I consider rebuilding

I don’t after all…

I remembered something today

I used to lay awake at night

Giddy

Imagining how I would tell you I’m pregnant

Scene after scene

Tiny shoes in a box

A pacifier in a cupcake

A shirt that read - Grandpa

I dreamed of the way

Your laugh lines would fold

Your crows feet would land

Dreamt of you reaching for me

Sobbing into my shoulder

Dream-you was overwhelmed

Over-honored, over-loved

I would imagine

Pretending to be upset

That you posted on Facebook first

I would imagine

Accepting gifts

With all your favorite logos

In all your favorite colors

Taking pictures

Giving pictures

Holding your hand at the reveal

Handing you a bundle with your middle name

In every version of my future

You were there

In every version of me

There was you

We haven’t spoken in years

I’m more alone now than I’ve ever been

No lover, no children, no father

It’s a shame how people change

Or stay the same or reveal themselves

It’s a shame how I mirrored you

Saw the cracks in the glass

And I never asked you to fix it

I only-

Begged you to be gentle

Begged you to see them

Begged you to look

And it’s a shame that I’m the one here

I’m the one remembering

I’m the one dusting off daydreams

When I’m the one who had to leave

I miss you

But today -

I felt you walk across my shadow

And your dna that made me unraveled

Dissolving in sunlight - I stumbled

Fingers clawed to my own chest

Darning my darkness together

With pining needles

Shivering cedar smoke

Basted with bird-spit thread

One impossible thing

Made possible by my will

I’ve worked too hard for too long

Learning the reality of me

To allow this misstep a foothold

Your path continued

I realigned-Barely

For someone you claim to love

Father, what do your eyes see?

Examine the full moon mass of me

Pale where you are red but—

My hair is your hair

My eyes are your eyes

My hand is your hand

Hear the same lies

Sliming from the same smile

Compare our rolling bellies

The matching curves

my stomach follows flips

In the same anxious rhythm as yours

Do you see yourself?

Was I only an Echo?

As I continue on my own path

Shadow bruised but unbroken

I do not know if leaving you was right

But I only need a mirror

With a kiss and a sigh of relief

It’s been three years since she last slept

January is already taping flowers

To the ceiling

Anticipating spring, renewal

I stand outside December’s door

Listen to the soft sounds of her breath

our last conversation ringing in my ears

Even as January sings and dances past

In a blaze of firework yellow

Champagne tipsy from the moment she arrived

I remember the feel of fingers

cold rough hands gripping mine

The sobbing cough

Endless apologies waterfalling

From trembling icicle lips

The burdens of December are heavy

Because the world is Dark she smiles

The pressure of expectation

The cry for distraction

She lives in a liminal time

both too late and too soon

There is no hope for her

And though she spends night after night

Listing out grievances

She is but a messenger

Gagged with bows and shimmering lights

Wrists shackled in garland

She repeats back the record

Displays the fault lines

Bares hearts like trees

Stripped and shivering on a solstice

But in the quiet between breaths,


I heard her voice soften—


A whisper weighed in frost.


"I carry what you leave behind,"

And with that, she drifts into sleep,


A slow exhale of wind through naked branches.


January, glittering in her haste,


Will not remember her wounds,


Will not see the shadows


 staining numb bruised hands—


But I will,


And for a moment,

Just right now,

Just here—


I rest in the stillness

Mountain root has begun prying through my chest—

Tendrils tactless as they graft along my pulmonary veins;

My neck must be extending as the ground grows

Because my head seems heavy, listing in cloud dew.

Is it oil or water that drips my hair lifeless along my giraffing throat?

Feet firmly planted, arms now too short to reach my thoughts,

(So great the distance, I can no longer see which way my fingers point)

On the curve of the horizon I watch the stars spin as leaves flood from tongue.

Newborn Yew and cypress twirl down, tirelessly twisting away from blind fingernails,

Scratching what I pray is my name into the bark.

Am I carving words or caving wounds?

My lungs heave before my earth trembles;

I call myself Thomasson

Halcyon, Daughter Nuclide

I call myself Vaseline Glass,

Or apophenia

I pluck nouns from life like I’m cleaning a bird

After the slaughter

Harshly I yank out the tail feathers

and hot glue them to my wall

Gently I drop the downy underfeathers onto the floor

And blindly I toss the naked carcass to the side while reaching for the next chicken

I’m STARVING

Everyday I listen

Head on a swivel for the next word

To clothe myself in

To nourish myself with

I cram feathers into a label maker

I can only describe the mundane in epic

A trip to the grocery store becomes The Odyssey

A casual coffee conversation: Hamlet’s soliloquy

I am a chicken dreaming of becoming an astronaut

Cursed to know that I have wings I cannot use

And the world has heights I cannot reach

I’m starving

And because I am starving, my sisters and I

will Devour all life below us

I will swallow down the heads of a thousand lizards,

Gorge on insects and mice, feed and dictionaries

Still - I am starving

Safe to eat because the coop keeps out the foxes

But what is a fear of foxes when the hand comes reaching

To pluck feathers from a well fed bird they will not eat

I’m most alive in the 3am Cool Damp

Breathing in wet as the Moon Creep descends

Beneath rumbling clouds it’s easy

To forget the tok of me

And I can stand in dark drizzle

At the Semi end of the Walmart parking lot

And ignore the iridescence on my feet

And breathe deeply and softly as Other nature

Attempts to anoint my brow

and if this were a movie the rain would fall

at the beginning of my eyes

Before gracefully slipping on downy cheeks

Cleansing me, body and soul

In reality i am filled with petrichor

and petroleum, half rock and half solution,

A whole fool luxuriating in concepts,

Clinging mist, and the distant hum of cars

Escaping the mass of liminality divided

Into three lanes of equal space

And it’s all I can do to lean back

Against my own liminal spaces

And focus on the happiness found

In the absence of 300 toks

Permeable rock, please take a breath

How valuable you are for cleansing

Let the grief linger only in small hidden pockets

Soft and easy to slice

Firm and hard to break

Under fire grow strong

Under pressure dissolve

Earth built a crust to protect you

So that you may protect water

Sweet limestone

Protection and cleansing are not your only properties

The world only grew because of you

Skeletons of life became you

A persuasive preservation

a thoughtful threat

Let the rain carve out reason

Then Drip down from the rooftop

Early morning fog floats the moon

Crepe myrtle blooming on the roadside

Lesser grackles alight on every stop sign

Greater grackles still have time to bide

Hurry along the old steps, tiptoe through the grass

Lagging behind in my own breath heavy cloud

My socks and shoes soak with dew

Leave them at the door they are not allowed

Feed the fish, feed the dog, feed myself

Avoid the empty photographs

Bright backgrounds void of life

Collapse into the couch and laugh

I am alone as I always will be

October is a taste on the lips

Not quite slipping through

A simmering wait

The Wednesday slump

8pm after dinner coma

Mounting anxiety hidden

With sudden joyous cool relief

The sun fed up

Unfairly unappreciated

Melting summer fires

Breaking softly

Secretly burning white hot

Inside the hearts of coal

Welcome the looming darkness

That will soon after drag by

Sweeping down into pits

No light no freedom no life

How conveniently we forget

The aching quiet creep of winter