"Butterfly Carcasses"

A cooler wind blows down
Off Canadian planes, hits the
Water and stalls.
The season of scrolling iron
Gates revealing themselves
Behind baring trees
Is near. And I find carcasses,
Butterfly wings, rubbed
Raw of color, everywhere.

Remember when you
Pled with me, to be of
Some fiber stronger?
So that my color would
Not come off at your
Touch. You wanted no
Responsibility for feminine
Fragility. I lied and promised
Not to melt. And tried
To harvest a calloused
Shell. But it was spring
And life lent itself
To wings, of powdered
Creation, of dusted and
Flitting starvation.

The window is wrinkled,
Old, thick, glass and
Closed. The being flings
And smashes, flutters,
Crashes, and if you listen
Closely—screams in its
Flapping. “What are you
Asking? That I shed my
Colors now? Make myself
Inert, and rip away my wings?
Or else give them patches and
Make them falsely whole?”

You no longer touch me;
Yet you insist that I fly against
The window, bash off
The stripes of history
Which bear your likeness also?!

I will not.
I cannot undress
Myself of words, or
File off the scales and
Colors that are hers!
(Only, hers.)

"Winter Always Follows"

“winter always follows”

There’s a man painting the door
to my soul. It needs repairing,
or at least redressing. And I see,

scrawled on a napkin, slanted
prose inside the bathroom stall:
“Warning: this is broken. Handle

with care, or the cover may come
off!” I find humor in this sadness,
passing my reflection on the dingy wall.

I saw your baby sister walking
down my street today. She wore
the sweater, no expression, that ties

me (physically) to an afternoon on the
rocks of New England. You thought me
beautiful (as he does now. Do you still?)

in your sister’s sweater, with orange
sunlight making my teeth white, blue
water, moored boats, my jeans ripped

wide, until smoothly flowed my thigh,
framed in fabric, from which you became
unwilling to release me. Now, you look away

when I pass. Call a dog, laugh with
friends—too loudly, with too much gusto—
and I bury my face between scarf

and book of poetry. I await my newly

crowned king. He stoops to the
bench, and kisses me. I watch
--wearily—as the color drains from

your face, across the fountain.
It is a small drama, before I retreat
to the cool, damp trees, to remember

and repeat the thud of language
in my mind. The place where my
mentor was married is the same

place where I made my final stand,
told you that you were deceitful,
and had (in moments) treated me inhumanely,

and, that knowing all of this,
I sill loved you desperately. The place
where now a blonde girl, and

a brown boy hold each other,
listening to rustling leaves that will
fall away soon, and make the trees

bare, broken, beautiful—to sway,
ill-at-ease with their deathly lot,
knowing spring will come, with

new love. But in the memory of
their rings they keep my secret:
winter always follows, with its bereavement.

My 51st post! (Has been too long in coming...)

(I literally wrote this about 30 minutes ago. I don't care if it's no good yet, the concept needed to see the surface for a bit. It is an allusion to the sensations of a panic attack...)

"Breathe"

Swallowing pills, tiny, blue, white, yellow,
I lay down and my body twists
to smoke, to choke itself, inside out.

He cradles me, my warm tears sliding
through his beard and down his neck,
our bodies intertwined, long and lean as skeletons.

"The visions and revisions"* haunt me.
Once I was so happy, and happy again,
the ghosts of old pierce my back and numb me.

The physical pain of a mind half-chained
to a body which fights itself is frightening,
soaking up moments of an otherwise brilliant being.

The widower, Death, crawls along my spine
and turns off the power to my hand,
Frightened, I heave and sob, pressing harder

into him. And then a voice, "hush, baby,
breathe. you're okay. please breathe." and
from this bed of lovers rises a memory

of a mother and child, slung over,
like a tiny doll, face blue with absence of meaning,
and the mother, pleading, "breathe, baby, breathe."

just breathe.


*T.S. Eliot

the pill that was supposed to set us free

(perhaps for you, dear reader, this is a bit personal or controversial or icky. get over it. my musings take me where they will...)

“This is not Feminist Empowerment” (the pill dilemma)

I remember now
Why I stopped taking
These rows upon rows
Of tiny blue pills

So I would not have
To lament
The loss of cells
the emptiness of womb
the trickery that is
medical control
over bodily functions

and for what purpose?
To what end?
Lust and bad decisions
Carnal desires
The envelopment of
Arms which I do not
Love unconditionally

And my sacrifice is a
Loss of nature
The inability
To feel in my belly
The germ of humanity
Hopeful, then wasted

Better to waste it
Release it
Than to not have it
At all

Ode to first feelings of Fall

"Ode to first feelings of Fall"


The tiniest hairs
Along my arms
Stand on end
To go outside

Cool and wet
The world is today

The first cicadas
And dead leaves
Belly-up on the path
Flapping wings
Until beaten to death

Buzz buzz
Crunch
Buzz

The world is
Cool and wet today

A line of Canada
Geese
Going home to
My own womb
Spread the sky
Like a tilde
Above some señorita’s
Name,
like the trees:
los arboles