I think I'll take my whiskey neat

God, God,/ what do I do/ after all this survival?

I think there is a point where all the sorrow and the pain and indignation at the unfairness of the universe melts into anger and rage. "My Lord, why is goodness so hard for me?"

"I hiss at him, I want him to know/ danger/ is coming from both sides. You can't even/ trust what you love."

This meanness is truly what we do when we know how helpless we are. Sometimes, when I'm swallowed up in rage by my own incompetence, my own inability to do things that would have come easily years ago, my pointless clawing at the glass like the cat in this poem, I'm suddenly reminded, "But wasn't I good once?"

One Function of the Line Is to Order, Another Is to Cut

And a tree bends in hunger for both.

You don’t know how much I’ve wanted it,

How many times I’ve dreamt me open.

June. The blistering yolk of the highway.

July. A forest of bodies in marble and fieldstone.

Beloved, when your lips skip down my throat.

The puckers run and last for weeks.

A bough creaks. The line ends.

August. October. February.

We are different from most

women, my mother says, we endure.

We are human beings, my son, almost birds, / public heroes and secrets.

I should remember to post here more often. Sometimes life moves faster than I can live.

via Poetry magazine