Month: June 2010

Still haven’t

I don’t see my shape
anymore. It seems to have
wandered off. No,
I think
I may have left it on a plane

Poor stunted
Can’t say a meaningful
thing
without a “!”
between us and

We look for
and it takes either one
certain
or the world — or at least
several roomfuls of

These children say
the answer is within
I
should be asking
their questions

Tell everyone I’m looking for
my brother
who smoked joints and
country&western music and
had depths I never saw because
and because
he crashed
when he was
24
and I was
26.

He was so, so old
and I was
so, so young.

But that isn’t it.
No. That isn’t it.

half

On the first day    at the beach
I walk east
into a howling
Holding my black hat on my
Then I go back

On the second day
it rains
I work on my

On the third day
it’s calm
I walk east again
Flies diving in under my black
Trying to get under my sunglasses
Feet — only — in the sea
Hem of my black skirt getting
Black shirt a ride for
I walk east as far as
and I think
What if I just kept walking? How far
would I
Without my purse? Without water?
I left my purse in the
with my children
And the thought of if I
just didn’t
It is a thinkable
but not something I would
So I go back
and on the way I forget half
the words I

But what’s the point of living if you
don’t
somehow even if only
touching through wires

(First published in Creatrix)

Alone before the plasma screen

He handed her a feather
a tall black feather
pulled from his tail, said
take this
home with you.

Was that all
he could spare? One feather?
His tail and wings were ragged. Maybe
he wandered around leaving a trail of feathers
in this place and that place,
the flicky ash of his
personality, his
potential.

Some kind of energy seemed stored
in the feather. How to
release it? Flutter? Tickle?
Giggle? Stare, wave? No-no-no.
Burn! Burn!

Alone before the plasma screen
she lit a small black candle,
held its destructing waxgas to the feather’s
tatty frond.

She closed her eyes,
savoured his acrid organic smoke,
received the small strokes of his heat,

curled shut around the burn
as a trail of flame fused the synthetic plush
of her family-room floor
and slowly consumed her just-constructed,
abstract-geometric, bravebright
blockout drapes.

(First published in Creatrix)