just like that

for whatever reason
summer maybe
the writer took a break
did not worry about which way
to arrange the alphabet
did not concern herself with the organization
of superlative adjectives,
did not wish to impress with
her catalogue of dictionary.com sparklers,
was not obsessed with how
to make the nouns any prettier
than they already were.

today the writer
pushed her hands into the earth
fingered the weeds
and felt the roots give way.
just like that.

it was a simple matter
of tugging at the unseen things
relying on
a fingertip of intuition
closing eyes to a blinding sun
and pulling.

later
rising from the garden
lined with dirt
skin streaked ochre
her back hot from too much exposure
the palms of her hands
a mulch of spent stalk and frantic insects
the writer realized
how guiltless she felt
abandoning the desk, the poised pen,
how much she didn't miss
that ludicrous arch her neck had to make
to shuffle the contents of her head.

and though her legs hurt
and the backs of her fingers
were tracked with rose thorns,
and though she had been bitten at the ankles
by a flock of mosquitoes,
the writer saw how the sweet peas climbed
like teenagers,
how boldly the bell flowers took to the pathway,
saw how each plant angled itself
without apology,
with a kind of voraciousness actually,
a green and wanting hunger,
to get its full measure of sun.

and with a kind of glee
the writer realized
how much she, too,
was flesh.

returning

i like, sometimes, to imagine myself
a beach, this long white swath
of sand, complete with interesting
seashells, abstract driftwood, a bumbling
gull here and there, beak bent on feeding,
a ribbon of froth at my edge, and everything rather
even, mostly, a lilting landscape but just barely,
solid but yielding, convinced into shape
by time and circumstance and intuitive
direction.

when i imagine this it's because
i've already drifted.
legs fumbling in blue dark water,
aiming for bottom but finding
nothing, and instead weaving themselves into
the detritus of ocean,
seaweed, gulping fish, a frenzy of plankton,
lost or losing ground, the horizon too far back,
a shapelessness altogether
and the great dizzy question of
where am i?

it is so easy to feel that lost,
thrown from all the home bases
we tag daily for safety.

if you are lucky,
there is a gift of a day when
a stretch of morning is taken up only
by morning itself,
a sleep taken up only
by sleep,
or a decision
like the one i made yesterday
to simply toss out one of the shingles of fear
mottling my rooftop.
to say to myself, i'm going to stop worrying about this one thing
i'm killing it off. cutting it off. tossing it out.

and it doesn't really matter what it was,
the fear i mean,
because it could have been anything.
it could have been any old thing
and it would have been the same,
that one patch of brackish seawater
i realized, at last, i didn't need to swim in
to stay afloat.

and to toss it out
was to return not just to the swim itself,
that blue dark water destiny,
but it was returning
to the beach too,
to the lilt and wisdom of sand,
to the yielding, frothy edge of myself
from which the horizon,
in its earnest, perfect geometry,
is, it seems, at its most
visible.

relief

to sweep
the kitchen floor clean

to pick the dead leaves
off the ailing strawberry plant

to fling the catalogs
into the trash

to unpack
the laundry pile

to replace
the frazzled toothbrush

to open the toaster
to perfect toast

to feel your pulse
in your own wrist,
your ankles, your stomach

to forego coffee
and not languish

to wear a new
green tanktop

to dance in the livingroom
to the same song over and over

to eat
with your hands

to wear flip flops

to be on the verge

to let things go

to let yourself go

to let all of your beautiful frailties
go

to discover
you are not wrong about some things

to discover
you are right about the one thing

to wake up
knowing you are loved

this
is relief.

the list

i want to tell you about the list.
the list of delayed tactics,
unmade appointments,
oil changes, brake checks, blood checks,
forms to send in, subscriptions cancelled,
the great god-fearing list of what to throw away
and what to keep
from the bookshelf, the closet,
the art bin, the medicine cabinet.
a list of expired pills and razor blades,
things that didn't fit, and glue that didn't stay.
heaps of scraps and scribbles
and all that gets shoved aside
because i just can't fucking bother.

i hate this list.
the agenda-less agenda,
the mulch of daily minutiae.

i say, when it rains, i'll
get to it. when it rains
i'll call the doctor, get the car serviced,
rummage through cabinets for old baking soda,
crackers gone soft, chocolate bar wrappers.
when it rains, i'll...
now you fill in the blanks.

a rainy day, i say. all i need
is a good rainy day and i'll do it.
get it done. when it rains,
i say, watch out.
the collosal spring clean
will come
with a vengeance.

and today, rain,
rain
and no vengeance,
the list bulging at the seams
like always
although today's rain brought a fix-it ticket
from a local cop.
my front plate - missing two years - and yeah,
it's been on my list.

now
embarrassment,
blood in the cheeks, heart pulsing,
a scramble,
the dig through a bulging glove compartment
and apology and
wait, wait, i know it's here,
proof of something i had no proof for,
because i lied to avoid the heavier fine,
and it worked, for a minute,
although then there were hours at the DMV
waiting
waiting
waiting for the number to come up.

i thought of the list then.
my list.
and the price we pay for neglect.

even though i admit i got off easy.
twenty-seven dollars easy.
and the chance to check this one thing off
at last - a small, glorious,
misbegotten victory.

bone tired

sometimes, i think there's nothing better
than to come home stripped down, nerve-fried,
wanting nothing more than a hot bath, or
the urge to hold the fridge door open wide.

you lose, for a moment, your talent to fix
the broken window, the friendship gone awry.
you want to eat, goddammit, or sleep,
or close your mouth around your thumb and cry.

you hurt all over - the neck, the feet, your heart,
tonight you are done in, too far gone, expired.
forget the mail, the dirt, the gilded guilts.
enough of that charade. you're just bone-tired.

it was this - all that thinking. your big head
wrapping itself around too much at once. poor
thing, you outdid yourself, drove too long,
ignored each timid thirst squeaking from your core.

now all you want is silence, something vanilla-scented,
inoffensive, neutral, a mild accompaniment to the beating
of your own wildly palpitating heart. your body has been doing
all this work, whinnying its complaints, overheating.

ignore the viral ringing of the telephone.
unwrap those legs from overbelted pants.
forgive yourself of all your monstrous wants.

how gentle

despite the gathering rain
and the unkind wind
the gardener bent toward the earth
and dug just as deliberately as ever, eyes down,
not noticing the rest of the world
had hastened indoors toward
television sets and reheated dinners.

the air was thick as a mattress.
heavy as chimney soot, dark as a
fox thief poised on his hind legs, waiting.
no one else was interested
in this kind of weather,
the impending roil of an electricity tantrum.
instead, they turned up the heat inside,
made microwave popcorn,
read their horoscopes.

the gardener was mindful only
of the soil, the integrity of its
chemical composition, the ratio between
nutrient and mineral,
and earnest calculations followed
while inside the heated, halogened homes,
there was a rage
of infomercials.

i'm picturing the gardener's hands,
a matrix of skin and patience.
how gentle
the fingertips must be
for this work of pressing the earth,
coaxing a home for that one precious rooted thing
out of the feculent,
breeding chaos.

dinner

"Dining out is like love. It should be entered into with abandon
or not at all."
- Harriet Van Horne


if this had been sex,
i would have squirreled it away,
kept it secret, not told
a soul except, maybe, in an anonymous
blog, and if it had been there,
i'd have claimed a kind of unwrapping, revelation,
near-religion, even,
a tongue revealing all of the places
i'd always ignored, or misunderstood,
thinking them unnecessary, facile,
disposable, incapable
of feeling anything.
if this had been sex
i would have extolled the virtues
of a tongue.

actually, no. i'm lying.

if this had been sex,
i don't know what
i would have done, really,
because if you have this kind of sex
you feel, afterward, trite with adjectives.
the language you've been using all your life ceases
to be sufficient.
you know that to talk about it with anyone
but your new love would be sheer
embarrassment, an exercise
in devolvement, you reduced
to awkward hand gestures, the occasional deep sigh,
and lots of sentences that end with,
"I think YOU can fill in the blanks."

if this had been sex,
i wouldn't have been able to tell you a thing.

but this was dinner,
and it began with a single pair
of radishes.

(to be continued)

kiss

take your fingers and place them
like latticework
around your lover's neck.
cup your palms around the jaw.
press thumbs
to each earlobe.
do not move
more than you absolutely have to.
imagine, for a moment,
you are holding porcelain.
do not let go.
do not let this go.
forget about your mouth.
a kiss
is all
in the hands.

how to say yes

begin by making
your own espresso.
read
for one whole hour.
clear the countertops
of last week's mail.
do not attempt heroic acts
of laundry.
go outside.
stretch, from your calves,
toward jasmine.
this is how to say yes.

this is how to say yes.
ignore the shower.
stay dirty.
quell the urge
to vacuum.
fingerpaint instead.
make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
add potato chips, baby carrots.
drink from a juice box.
no, slurp.
return the overdue book.
write the overdue check.
forget about
the overdue phone call.
this is how to say yes.

this is how to say yes.
take the trash, finally,
out of your car.
drive anywhere.
find Britney Spears on the radio.
sing with her.
come back
the long way.
have a glass of good wine with dinner.
inhale
a piece of chocolate cake.
fall briefly asleep on the couch.
luxuriate in the surprising warmth
of a thin throw blanket.
wake up long enough
to tell someone you love them
over the phone.
realize, after you hang up,
how much you meant it.
carry the thought
upstairs to bed.
tuck yourself in.
notice the grace
of your closing eyelids.
this
is how to say yes.