may.22-23.2011

           

                       

                        often, i am not thinking  about my family

and then           becoming a monster, both of us

creative,

              a mother once pausing

            with bad thoughts

that stick

  in relation to whiter things,

what we consider teeth

children don’t know about wind    or leaning

but they            get to feel their own personal weight

                        & we can put more sections in

                                    that involve my adult steps behind yours

                        our shoulders humming together

            it is not easy to  start thinking about    gravity

            &         what it wants,

picture  rows of feet and how

the height of a body

makes pavement a lot less

     of traveling

it’s this kind of  stacking that

i wish i knew,

how to weep

or at least

pile myself big enough

to hurt people

                  often          i am      proud of the things

            that come out

            but forget about

their leaving

so i       eat unusual foods

outside

                        or near grass

so that i can

                    feel different

toward you

when we’re in the same room

you remind me of

that [one] time

you were so good,

  you said

what

         about          my family

            or my name, once  inhabited

 by little balls of light

                        & i said

let’s be more like shoulders

                        i would never kick anyone

            in the ribs

                        but only because

                                    i cannot reach them

may.22.2011

 I apologize ahead of time        for  all   the

photographs that have               never

                                                been written

for the limbs

we talk about           frequently

bcuz

we have a lot of them

&

they can’t distinguish each other

little categories, sure         

but just

blowing into empty space

           

            slowly

& it’s been a           very

                                    complicated

                               relationship

with my

                                                anything really weighing

on my

                                    last time i honestly can’t

really start meeting folks,    how i relate to mine

the only way     i can     ever      really         see you

           

            through displacement,

you, or glasses of old cabernet

you, or windows with dirty hand signals

you: (a little bit) tricky long-distance

from/manipulation/or/that time we knew about walking home

i would sleep

                        /if i were     something else/

stop being fooled by

                        constant breathing

so i could

  harness

my

    peripheries

in getting lost

                            if i could just be

                            OK

                            and

                            sleepy

but instead,

i am not moving at all until

the week before i am                comfortable,

since there are things          i just can’t say,

but what if i just    deep down

remove the     years ago parts,

            and remember the good fortune

            standing between us

            and what it looks like

            to be a daughter

            when i finally think i can

            stick my hearing around

            the corners of your mailbox

            or tell you about

            the risk of changing topics

            or

            the fucking conversations

            you might compare me to

            if my ears became bobcats

            and i stopped saying thank you

but first, i wanted to

                        get all this down,

so i took my right leg

and then i took my left one

then my right

April 27th, 192011

i write “Derrick” in a love poem,

thinking this means people may fall

for,

thinking people other than me are,

sometimes sideways and once,

a small placing like hands or chalk lines,

once tipping over like names that don’t come from,

once naming something inside a person who feels empty.

one time, “maybe people will fall in love with you.”

somewhere, buried in my closet.

somewhere, only my cat knows how to arrive.

sometime, forgetting who it really was.

a certain kind of shimmy, once two-fold, once the better half.

the name, only halfway.

Day Twenty Five/seven/4

as far as               formulas go

it is the capacity

                  

                                    of things in slices

                                                mostly

  where i understand

the importance

                            of literal meaning

how we

            sometimes

walk into

                                 all of it, at once

no sudden                                             basements

            or positing, like

chains    or    family    units,

     pluralities of

          neither           pointing

              backwards

            nor recognizing             numbers that shift

this is why language needs:

without soft               understanding,

my legs             are    no less likely

  than foreign

          words,                                                          kind of

  couches   that suggest  themselves,

by no means     comic

                        editorial

                        overinsightfulness

lost within armchair

&terrible cruelty

here, a first sentence

  is like a strange face:

burdened with the      responses

of lonely dogs,

  not necessarily

            completely

                                    realized,

but a similar

  craving      than

                           horizon,

          was once inspected geography,           was often

the ground,

    approaching our hands                          and

and all anyone can   be

is where the sunset may       happen

thirty years later,

                       our legs

                        continually

                        bending backwards,

trying to remember

                                    once

            fitting our knees

                 in appropriate          categories

           

            or a right   angle   that

used to be                        something,

                                                pretty



after K

Day (Sixteen).2

“I thought I would die if my name didn't

touch me, or only with its very end, leaving

the inside open to so many feelers

like chance rain pouring down from the clouds."

                        ~Rosmarie Waldrop, CURVES TO THE APPLE

it was always about         choosing

                        up or down

it became                    a filled in space

            where my thoughts didn’t        breed,

sufficient already

like babies who don’t know       about their own

                                                     swimming

i became aquainted with stairs

                        couldn’t move through them    slowly

            i have to get them over with

i just felt                 spoken     

          once too many times

in            places where

                                    rain is still surprising,

my lack of thirst    gathering me

            troubled and wanting looks,

when fingertips    are all i know     to write with

so i       sometimes

 turn them inside out

make them                   bigger, bent up slightly

 talk them through a     

                            good deal             on

baskets of fruit,  places they can

curve around,     if that can be

                                 like getting at wholeness

i just felt     knocked over

                  monstrous

             a little too much like               tires

or a professor    of warmth      in

                                    the middle

                                    of bathing

a day    free of seasons,

            trying to count the ways

            people        go home

trying           to be more like

            real things,

                        hands around glasses,

things we         sleep close to    and

   press out of ourselves

                                    in the morning,

the times when you                 sturdy, filled with pewter

                    became my

                                    [despite myself]

rather than a bed,

                        prone now       to weirdness

in large areas, fields, big numbers like death

or taking off     my bandages

before

setting them down                   in your

                                                estimated

                                                fire