An offhand remark you make reminds me
Of the IV plunging into the back of my hand

This thing I needed to birth the idea of you
This thing that left me black and blue for weeks

Yes, it was worth it — Yes, it hurt a lot
Nothing much plonking between my brain cogs

Aside from the what-the-fuck-am-I-doing of it all
At the time I didn’t know if it was worth it

I didn’t know if there would ever be a time
When I didn’t want to commit seppuku

To scoop you and your brethren out of my guts
And your mama, so kind as I bawled in her car

Squinting past the agony to reassure me
It’d be over soon—she, too, could never imagine

(You)

C’mon Evie! Let’s see the world together! Let’s get married! Evie sees no ring. Evie’s father wouldn’t approve. A disgruntled drunk with a violent streak. Evie’s brothers left her to do the caretaking. To do the women’s work. Evie lives in a city everyone has heard of, but it’s a city past its glory. There seems to be dust everywhere. Every morning the priest can be seen feeding pigeons in the square. Wrinkles and creases around the eyes of Evie’s workmates. An exhausted city. A 5:00 o’clock bell tolling. Frank with those shiny eyes and a smile that looks like it’s been everywhere. At movies how Frank makes her laugh. How in the dark he always smells like salt and seawater. 

Frank says it’s a boat and it’s big. It’s morning. The ship’s horn rings through the air. There are seagulls because there are always seagulls in scenes like this. So much commotion as feet press on and luggage scrapes the boarding ramp. A dead city arisen in crisp morning air. Beginning of sunhaze. Frank is already on the ship. Calling out Evie’s name. As if a disembodied voice. As if Frank is already a thing of the past. Frank is already so far away. Frank frantic calls out again and again. Evie remains shore-locked as the ship slow glides the ocean. Evie! Evie! Evie! Sometimes she still hears his call. Sometimes she remembers the thrill of when life ached for her. Laughless she sits alone at movies. She swears she still smells salt and seawater. 

*Loose reinterpretation of James Joyce’s short story, “Eveline.”

what happened at my consolation

knee deep in virgina 

bluebells, in floodwater 

dressing at best

like an American dagger 

our feelings drop

from the trees  surprise 

isn’t all that surprising

I am embodying the next 

verpa bohemica before my neurons

can acknowledge satisfaction 

I am full stop for the wrinkled

growth before the real

bonanza comes 

I have a diabolical lip 

moistener I could distribute more

evenly  I have extended my invitation

into the metallurgic future 

I am fully contained in this 

premature briar 

when I am 

telepathically crooning 

I still break out 

in somatic bruises 

when I grieve loose

fur is more likely 

to cling when 

I am lonely the understory

doesn’t give a fuck

if anything emphasizes

its dutchman’s breeches 

when I am delicious in 

some skin or other 

it doesn’t matter 

no one is calling back 

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

A few days ago
one of the deer put her head
through the little fence I’d put up
to keep her from eating
the fledgling daffodils

She was definitely trying
What do you think you’re doing?
I asked, which startled her
& she threw her head back
to the left in a big Not I gesture

taking the fence panel
with her

They’re nearly blind you know
& impossible to reason with

Just lower your head
Just look at the ground
Don’t look at me, the ground
—it will slide right off
you silly animal

She took a few steps & then
a few more. She hung out
with the rest of the deer
for a while like that—the stupid fence
dangling from her neck

like a stockade or like a muppet
crashing through the letter H
They just look at me
when I talk to them, rarely run
but we’re not doing so well

on the English yet
I saw her today with the same
group as before—two other adults
two young adults & herself
—free. Oh good. No fence.

All that was missing
were my daffodils

Once at a party I bragged about making out with a girl from Iceland. I said she was friends with Bjork. No one cared. Once at a party Moby kept going around asking everyone if they knew who he was. No one cared. Once at a party someone said Stephen Malkmus is here. The kind of people that cared were the kind of people I didn’t like so I pretended not to care. After the party I listened to Pavement for three days straight. I kept singing to myself Write it on a postcard Dad they broke me Dad they broke me

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.

I tend to look at the clock
once or twice a week
when the numbers
are my birthday.

Sometimes three times.
It means nothing.

In the woods today
the clock thing didn’t happen
because I’m practicing not looking
at anything other than the woods.

I took seven pictures
of various patterns in the birches,
which aren’t white—though
we all agree to call them that.

Sometimes silver. Sometimes gray.
I’ll look back at the pictures,
never show them to anyone.
I might tell you about it.

It had been raining, and it was raining. Everything around me was happening in a language I didn’t understand. Often, I would just listen to the rain the words floating around me but never sticking. There was an erected crane and on the first day of rain it was partially obscured by clouds. But it had been… It had been raining for so many days. I couldn’t remember which direction the crane was facing as one part of the sky was indistinguishable from another part of the sky. 

In Tokyo it had not been raining for 10 days but it felt like it had been raining for 10 days. Green leaves saturated in water. Feelings fragmented into a memory of a time. I was living in Portland, and it rained for 10 days. I took the bus. The distance between the bus stop and work my feet would get wet. All the bushes looked like wet yarn. I would go to Honkin’ Huge Burrito for lunch but because it was raining. I didn’t go out for lunch. Outside the store window where I worked busses were honking at cars; the street covered in leaves.

I hated my job. I sat in the breakroom reading Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain. My stomach was mad at me. The words mostly floated around me. I was zoned out thinking about eating. My hand turned the pages. I can’t really remember but somewhere in the book. The main character goes skiing and maybe it was avalanche or just a white-out. I thought he might die. It was a moody book where I could be deceived into thinking everyone would die sooner or later. And they would all die trying not to be disappointed. But they would in fact die disappointed. Anyway, I inhabited the fear of snow.

Anytime I find myself in intense snow the fear inhabits me. There is no snow. Only heavy rain and puddles and smelly buses all running late or never showing up. It was the 9^th day of a 10-day rainfall. On the 11^th day I rode my bike to work. As I approached the bridge, I saw people leaned over and pointing to something below. I biked slowly. Then dismounted. The sky was splattered with cotton candy clouds. Below was a park and the table and benches were submerged in water. I imagined being submerged in snow. I got back on my bike. I went out for lunch. I got a Honkin’ Huge Burrito. Because it had rained for so many days Pioneer Square was flooded with asses. There was not a single place to sit. I took my burrito back to the break room. I opened my book. The burrito tasted soggy. It was sunny outside. People were happy. 

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.

Tiny Opera
~ for Page Loudon

Telephone rang shoe buckled bicylebicycle clickclickclick crashed I attempted a deep squat my leg skittered out behind me I pulled myself up hanging onto an embarrassing item yelped I’m okay I’m okay to no one tweet tweet sang the goddamn birds meow said the useless orange cat even baby orca pushed her giant head out of the water and giggled (I’m lying about that part) I cursed the garbage truck rumbling by in the valley above those fucking noisy animals my son said you’re too old for this then I pretend murdered him with a switchblade comb and ketchup blood.

The End.