Author: Becca

No more day trips
No more gadding about
No more pioneer shit
No more EXT. ARMY AMMUNITION PLANT – DAY
No more loitering while the coal train passes
No more fights on the walkway over the interstate
No more Sunday small towns shut down for God and football
No more EXT. UNDER THE BRIDGE OVER THE MISSISSIPPI – DAY
No more bookshop rack full of gun magazines
No more muscle-shirted men loitering between empty shop windows
No more cafés with manic blonde “welcome in!” echoes
No more EXT. ABANDONED HIGH SCHOOL – NIGHT
Let’s go back home to our sunset walk down the hill
Let’s go back to the nature trail by our old house
Which isn’t the same since they hacked the overgrowth
Instead of sneaking away, you see houses across the creek
And they see you
And you are overgrown
No more crosstown haunts, either, then
I’m calling it
Let’s go home
Before it’s time to leave again

Yesterday, whine and ebb of happy birthday
beyond the bridal bush. Billiards rack of black-clad
post-grads picked over the pillowy stash
I hid near Vonnegut’s house. Battered vole,

battered for hours by the tortie with tags. Don’t touch
the doorknob, the clutch of dresses. This month is to nuzzle
or let fly: handfast the loosening green. I’m ready or not
                   under the phlox rug. Over the blue-black beyond.

*composed by playing Poetry Mad Libs with Molly Brodak’s poem “Going Back to Sleep” from A Little Middle of the Night

now I wish I’d gone even more pedestrian

photo-flash of morning lightning
their “no, you go” at intersections
my jaywalking on diagonals
hopscotching twigs and worms
movie-set rain (wind through wet trees)
black folding chair facing frat house
gas leak? pervasive petrichor again
ROAD CLOSED sign that lies

instead of always wandering around looking for

the sound behind the sound
the taste behind the taste
the touch under the touch
the sight beyond the vision
the smell beyond the scent
the glow beyond the hill
the face beyond the crescent
the bend beyond the break

Not with the cats wanting first and second breakfast, 
          then to be let out to the sunroom and back in almost 
immediately to see what I’m getting into and if their 
          wet food is ready yet. Not with you getting up just as 
I’m sitting down to write, you talking to the cats, 
          praising them in that silly human way and asking them 
nonsense questions as I try to hear words in my head.
          And that’s when I say “Can everyone please leave me 
alone?” in the voice I use to sometimes reply to the 
          questions you pose to the cats, impersonating or I 
guess im-cat-ating them. I had a hot plan to dig into 
          some abandonment wounds, but instead I find myself 
swarmed. Yesterday I was enraptured by a graphic called 
          “Baby Season Rules: When to Help. When to Walk Away.” 
“No such thing as abandoned” when it comes to Turtle, 
          it said. Turtle is “independent from hatch.” Sound of you 
climbing the stairs, staccato music to my ears, though 
          by afternoon I’ll probably be wondering where you are,
then scanning your face for the teeniest of twitches.
          Is “Baby Season Rules” a message from my spirit guides 
who visited me after I received the reiki attunements 
          and let me know they’d been there since my own baby 
season? No such thing as abandoned! How presumptuous 
          to become a healer! Though I’ve always identified with 
Chiron. How presumptuous to identify with Chiron! 
          Sylvia sits serenely next to me on the arm of the couch 
unlike her little brother who’s eyeing up the mirror 
          to see if he can still squeeze behind it even though he’s 
not a kitten anymore. Oh Earl, the mirror stage is over, 
          it’s time you entered the symbolic order. At the very least 
please stop pawing and crying at the bedroom door at dawn. 
          Whenever I put my cats’ needs before my own I wonder if 
I’m doing what my sister does with her kids, making myself 
          always available in an effort to break the cycle of intergen-
erational trauma as the Instagram graphics urge. Turtle 
          is the name of my sister’s dog, I suddenly remember. 
Like Turtle I was independent from the hatch at a 
          young age, closing the door, writing in my notebooks 
while my sisters played and fought in the rooms beyond. 
          Hurt people hurt people; hurt people heal people. 
First an inheritance, then a choice. Like Turtle, 
          I have many homes, and I’ve carried them all along.

Already irises on the alley’s north edge
Maybe you had to wait for spring
To start missing this place
No future in a brown, barren world

Maybe you had to wait for spring
But you can’t miss the place you’re in
No future in a brown, barren world
Today’s T-minus three months

But you can’t miss the place you’re in
Rent check mailed, potluck later
Today’s T-minus three months
Scrub the rugs, open the windows

Rent check mailed, potluck later
Dilated today, bright greens and blues
Scrub the rugs, open the windows
Obeying some kind of silent orders

Dilated today, bright greens and blues
This week the leaves came all at once
Obeying some kind of silent orders
The French doors of their knowing

This week the leaves came all at once
When did you open to the invisible?
The French doors of your knowing
Light rose & sandalwood incense

When did you open to the invisible
To start missing this place
Light rose & sandalwood incense
Already irises on the alley’s north edge

My sister’s apartment was being renovated: a massive ramp jutted out from the side of the building, bricks and debris sliding down. She said we could walk under the ramp to get inside, and I was wary but went along.

Looks like it might’ve been a tornado after all, so it’s good we got out of bed and took the cats in their carriers to the basement just before midnight. You show me on the map where you sprinted down the hill on your bike a few hours before winds hit the same spot. You’re gung-ho about vacuuming; it’s your day off and my comment that we live in filth made an impression. I always think of Bernadette to Lee Ann (“And she says she does not clean anymore—it just makes things more cluttered”), then feel free to stop caring.

Sunny neighborhood walk, air cool and fresh. Picking up tree branches in my path, some over an inch thick, and tossing them onto what they call the right-of-way in this town (one of my favorite Wikipedia pages lists all the names). Texts from my sisters about an averted shooting in New Orleans (sister from ramp dream is there for the weekend; poets were there for the festival last weekend). I see you’ve put our futon frame on the curb.

Reiki I on Zoom for three hours, then an hour break. Cucumber-cheddar-Triscuits-mustard snack you invented. 45 minutes left, exactly enough time to walk over the river and back. The magnolia has lost its blossoms; a moment later on the ground, a stray pink petal like a wink. Geese jab beaks in muddy riverbank. Red-winged blackbirds shriller than any woman unfairly maligned. Crossing the spearmint bridge, hello quarter moon against pure blue sky. Dollar bill flutters in the grass and I pluck it. At the mailbox, name and social security number has been exposed again.

I receive the attunements. Afterward, lying on my back with hands in position, unexpected transmission that boils down to: My guides were down the street from my childhood home all along. Surprise-cry a little. The teacher said something like this might happen, but I didn’t think it would happen to me. After class, dazed for a while, then wander into the kitchen. You’ve made a perfect salad (secret ingredient: thoroughly rinsed red onion in vinaigrette) and a garlicky flatbread that’s weird and wet but we’d still eat it again.

Dishes, cat-treat rituals. Write poem from journal, notes app, and memory while sitting on the back deck until 8:30 when it’s too dark to see, then move here to the couch.

*

Six parts of the day borrowed from Bernadette Mayer’s Midwinter Day: Dreams, Morning, Noontime, Afternoon, Evening, Night.

I planted two soft potatoes in the back yard
just to see what might happen.

I clawed out nails from the top of the trim,
used them to hang gifted Grapefruit prints
next to the bathroom door.

Then a night fragment dangled:

standing on my aunt’s couch, taking down a red tapestry
because it was too much—
her walls were stuffed with paintings already.

The move is a season away
but the moon eggs me onward, waxing again, coolly
suggesting I toss up a few more things.

Why disobey my dream? Why blithely plant a flag
of denial, then hammer it into the earth
for good measure?

I even think there’s time to make a new friend,
which is either a sign of guru-grade mindfulness

or a train that doesn’t quite make it over a hill
and slides back down the rails,

a child shimmering in the vanishing point
of a gravel alley, chasing a ball,

a face squinting at the sunset while dandelions
and violets bloom on the far side of the skull.

A teacher once told me the body’s back side
holds grief. There’s so much you’ll never see

without a mirror: pointy scapula, twisting spine.

And life will go on and on no matter which way you face
or how you contort.

Can I choose, or will I always follow the signs?

Now, every time I head to the bathroom
Yoko is there to remind me:

Listen to the sound of the earth turning.

Listen to a heart beat.

I understand that this place is called Iowa City.
Greenwich Village isn’t a village, either.

It is definitely more fun to be in your 20s in the 70s
than in your 70s in the 20s.

Here’s what you learn by looking at yourself:
nothing.

I don’t even know what forgiveness means.
The 1% that didn’t go with Jesus—those are my people.

A family is a factory
for the manufacture of insanity.

People told me: You don’t understand this country
because you don’t watch reality television.

The most important job in a democracy is school librarian.
This country is insane.

I can’t remember the name of the book, but it should have
been called Nothing I Ever Did Was My Fault.

Most people who say they love to write
are terrible writers.

Except Toni. Toni loved to write.
People would ask her: Why do you like to write?

And she’d say:
Because otherwise you’re stuck with life.

In the 1950s, all children were raised the same:
Children are wild animals. They need to be tamed.

There’s three ways to look: young, old,
or surgical.

If you die young, people think you’re good looking forever.
But you don’t know it. Because you’re dead.

I didn’t even know I had knees.
What’s that? That’s the knee you didn’t know you had.

I smoke Marlboro Lights because they’re like the slut
you can always have. Maybe not the best, but available.

He had a tattoo of barbed wire across his throat
which I know not to be the sign of a Buddhist monk.

You should all be angry with your parents.
There’s no air, no water, now there’s going to be no jobs.

The only job that’s going to be left is plumber.
What was the first thing to break on the space shuttle?

After you graduate from this school,
you should all become plumbers.

Can you imagine a level of moral squalor
when real estate developers look down on you?

Do you have any metal parts in your body?
You afraid of those little mouses?

Cut-a-Bitch pulls up in a boxy burgundy sedan
down the block from The Burn Queen’s house
where it’s not too hard to step up on her desk,
pop the screen out, crank the window, hop down,
dart the motion-sensor light, and slide into the dark
where her friend sits idling, headlights off, radio on,
brass knuckles drumming on the wheel, calling out
to the feather-boa’d, tiara’d silhouette approaching:

Get in, loser: We’re going back to the future of our 40s
to find out if we can love our exiled parts. We’re gonna
cruise down to the east side, trawl the strip for our
child selves, and buckle them safely in the back seat
before our razor blades, Zippo lighters, spiky chokers,
and rusty-hooked barbs come to scoop them up.

the sun sets too brightly
in the wall of windows
behind first bard
casting her in silhouette

cartoon voices
& gestures flatten
into puppetry

best part:

when she jumps
arms waving overhead

becomes the shadow
of the spout
of a whale

*

Three poets walk into a bar.
Second traveling bard
says to me:

“No, it’s not just here,
it’s everywhere—
no one’s interested in
possibility anymore.
No one hangs out
after the show
to drink & flirt.
Even in New York
it’s the same.
No one’s trying
to make a new world.
They just want
to go home to their
stroganoff.”

*

walking home
to my spicy tofu
noodle leftovers
cheshire crescent
moon dangling
between
printing press
co-op & gallery
whole sphere
lit faintly
like a bonus
full moon
I hadn’t seen her
all month
except through
the lenses
of astronauts
what with the storms
& the waning
I would’ve taken
an even smaller slice
is that scarcity
or stumbling upon
more than what
seemed possible
in the current phase

1.
I have emotional motion sickness.
I remember when JFK Jr.’s
plane went missing.
I’ve painted myself into a corner.
I am beyond sick at this.
I hung a maiden on my pocket
going in a rush to answer the phone.
I have so many violets in my flower beds.
More than I’ve seen in 10 years! Help?
I am waiting for a representative
from the moving company.
I have wasted my life.

2.
I’ve made a lot of changes
in the last six months.
I’m still committed to abolition.
I live in downtown Lincoln (Nebraska)
which means I have daily conversations
with an ever growing
homeless community here.
Matt and I are holding the victims
of the Iowa City shooting
and their loved ones
in our prayers this morning.
On both sides of my family,
I descend from witches.
I, in fact, hate the zodiac chart.
I still need to read the article, but
I already have something to say.
I can’t stand myself.

3.
I left my job. I left the city.
I left expectations and demands
I have for my body.
I added some sax. And here we are.
That song is quintessential Tulsa.
I found out I was pregnant
a week before I got on a boat
with no wifi or cell service
to spend three weeks at Arctic Circle.
Another mourning dove
is having her babies on my porch.
The sense that I am about to FLY.
Greetings from the South Bend airport,
where I discovered my first “flight”
is actually a bus.
The room seems smaller
than the roomette I had
on the City of New Orleans.
But I’m glad I did Bid Up.
You must change your life.

4.
I and the Queen tribute band
made the local news!
This was moments after
the Pontiac, IL tornado crossed the road
less than a quarter mile in front of me.
Glad I am a geriatric millennial
who will never need to worry
about people like clavicular
& the “looksmaxxing community”
mogging me on the street
while they jester-cel or whatever.
I know myself to be so lucky
already to have lived for years
amidst horses under a big sky.
I moved here from Philly
because my boyfriend lives here.
My name is Jinx. Now love me. All of me!
I hate my poems.

text compiled from “I” statements in my social media feed capped by the final lines of poems by James Wright, Rainer Maria Rilke, Mary Ruefle, and Brenda Shaughnessy

When your boyfriend calls himself a Marxist misfit
don’t say it’s cute; Marxist misfits loathe being cute.

When he reenacts falling forward to the floor and
catching himself in a springy push-up to look for

something that rolled under the work fridge, say he’s
so strong, yet nimble; don’t ask how dirty the floor.

When he swings his arms back and forth, knees bent,
center of gravity steady, you should feel free to ask

Have you thought about a career as a stunt double?
but accept his truth—a sober It’s too late for me,

still swinging—even though he’s clearly conjuring
a character who then crouches, jumps up, half-back-

flips, and hangs, sticky sneaker soles on the ceiling.
You can ask permission to take a video, but he’ll say

bats can’t be detected by phone cameras, just like
their vampire kin in mirrors. Instead, try employing

echolocation to see if he remembers the old days—
when he was just a man who insisted photographs

snatch souls, then shyly turned his face away—and
listen for the bounceback: a snore, then tiny wheeze.

Long ago but not too far away, Moon was a marble spinning much faster than it does today.

Earth tugged on Moon with all its might until rocky bulges formed on one side.

Now Moon was no longer a marble, but more like a football or lemon.

The bulges were like a bicycle break on Moon, slowing its spin down.

Time went on and on and on and on until one day Moon’s day took the same amount of time as its year.

Did you know Moon has a day and a year?

A day is one rotation and a year is one orbit. Now, they are both 27.3 Earth days long.

This is different from Earth’s moon day, also known as Monday, which lasts 24 hours.

Moon’s bulgy side, its face, now looks at Earth all the time.

Moon’s far side is like the back of its head. One half of Moon’s head is always lit by the sun, but Earth can’t always see that side.

Since it’s sometimes lit up, it’s called the far side, not the dark side, and that’s why scientists never listen to Pink Floyd.

Moon’s face is always gazing down on Earth, which makes Earth happy.

Scientists cannot yet measure the difference between desire and gravity.

Famously yet mysteriously, Moon tugs on Earth, too, and moves the seas around.

The tides are also like bicycle breaks, and every century, an Earth day grows by 2.3 milliseconds.

Many years from now, but not too far away, Earth might become tidally locked to Moon.

Moon would only see one face of Earth, and only half of Earth would ever see Moon.

Does Moon have a favorite face of Earth?

The next time Moon shows up, look up, in case it’s yours.

Whole signs is German
     Placidus is French

and then there’s Vedic astrology
     with an unbroken lineage for thousands of years

     but according to them I’m a Scorpio moon
                    and I don’t like it

                    Chiron cazimi tarot night say what?
     What?

                    I drove to South Dakota with my mom 
     and I was such a bitch
          then all Tuesday I lay in bed and sweat

JournalSpeak by Nicole Sachs
     protegee of Dr. Sarno
          says write a list of hot topics
               journal about one for 20 minutes
                    then burn it

               I journal every day 
                    but probably not angry enough

     He basically cried a lot and ruined his marriage
               but his back’s better

Rape Academy? It’s time for Rage Academy
     I have a business plan!

          All of a sudden she starts whipping out handouts
 
This erotic literature press is gonna be quick and dirty

     “The Rage School That Replaced the Rape School”
          a short story for Black Iris Belles Lettres

Write “Grape School” and “PDF Files” to fool the algo

If you commit to sex for 30 days
     by day 20 you hate sex

Having ten houses is a subset of hoarding disorder
     a conquering-to-the-point-of-psychosis thing

               “Somebody’s gotta be happy” 
                    said the woman who gives alien-lizard vibes
                         in the voice of Marie Antoinette

                         Better if she doesn’t talk at all

A lot of women in their 20s 
          haven’t been beaten down by life yet

     You mean I’m not bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?

I look forward to this newsletter every week
          called “Money with Katie”

Promise this poem will be called
                         “Rabbit Holes & Creepy Trolls”

          Pamela Coleman Smith went to Pratt??

This big boi tarot deck is good for grip strength
     so you don’t get Alzheimer’s

                    Uh-oh, looks like I need a new dress

                         These are the warning signs

     Midwesterners need to take a tip 
          from the New Jersey folk
               fighting over everything

                          Lower your blood pressure

                  Put an end to the suffering

This is the no-more-cards card 

                    (9 of Swords)

      after Diane di Prima, and with thanks to a SASS worker’s presentation in an Iowa thunderstorm 

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	Wait 24 hours, then have a plan in place for safety and comfort* 
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Method 2:

	Have a plan in place for safety and comfort*
	Take four misoprostol pills (200 mg) under the tongue
	Wait for 30 minutes before eating or drinking (no alcohol)
	Three hours later, repeat: take four more misoprostol pills under the tongue
	Wait for 30 minutes before eating or drinking (no alcohol)
	Three hours later, repeat: take the last four misoprostol pills (12 total) under the tongue
	Wait for 30 minutes before eating or drinking (no alcohol)
	This method is 95% effective and usually involves more cramping

*for eight hours: a companion, reliable transportation, pain and anti-nausea meds, no serious illness, no IUD, ability to be present in one’s body for 24 hours, thick sanitary pads, heating pads for cramps, creature comforts such as blankets, pillows, a Netflix queue, or favorite playlist

	to access pills, visit plancpills dot org
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	the first amendment protects our right to share this information
	we do our best to avoid the second person so none of this is construed as advice
	do with this information what you will
	information is power