there are times when
I consciously feel
your fingers running
across my skin,
through my hair;
feel your lips behind my ear,
feel your heart beat closely
to my chest.
there are times when every part
of me is connected
to every part of you.
but nowadays, my mind often
wanders -- your hands are on
my hips, and I think of
the laundry, or Hemingway,
or yesterday's news.
it is the nature of the mind
to separate from the body.
it is human nature to disconnect
and detach. the mind tends to
wander off on its own.
you kiss me and I think of
my plans for the summer
and recipes for tiramisu.
there are times when
I am aware of all the ways
you touch me;
but lately, most times
my hands don't feel
like my own.

she wrote about love,
as if she'd experienced it.
in truth, all she knew
about love came from
Neruda and Yeats and
Nicolas Sparks. the
only love in her life
was the unrequited
kind, but she wrote
about the loves that
lasted, or faded, or
blossomed, as if she'd
ever seen it happen,
and wondered if any
of the poets she so
admired had written
about fiction, or if
they wrote love as
they felt it -- but then,
who, happily in love,
has time for sonnets?
who writes, unless
for the vain belief
that words can fill
a void?

prom itself is just an overglorified dance
the after party is where the real fun begins
sitting at the kitchen table of my best friend's house
sipping strawberry margaritas her mom made
then progressing to shots of tequila
and playing shots uno, steadily getting more and more dizzy
until i'm trying to twerk on a wall
and calling my friends to tell them i love them
pretending to be a koala on an armrest
updating my snapchat story so people at other gatherings can be jealous
forgetting how to pull my pants back up in the bathroom
talking to my ex boyfriend for an hour on the phone, telling him
exactly why i didn't dance with him at prom
and that i fingered myself for a boy
and i wanted to tell him and everyone, for that matter, about her
but i didn't because rejection and rumors are my worst enemies
he stays quiet and the only sound left is
my frantic whispering that i hope i stay this happy in the morning
because sober me lays in the deep end of the spectrum of sadness

Asked to write a poem of yellow, what could I possibly have to add that would celebrate this word found within the sun, the moon, at times, the stripes of a bumblebee, a butterfly, a yellow jacket's sting,  the brilliant splash on a painted bunting, the goldfinch, canary, a yellow breasted warbler, baby chicks, a rubber duck, a baby duck, too, a dandelion in spring, a sunflower, a rose of sorts, a lily, daffodils in a field of wheat, rubber boots upon your feet on a rainy day, a slicker, too, a school bus, a number two pencil, a taxi when you're running late, a tangy lemon, a banana, sometimes a grapefruit, butter on a pancake, egg yolk for your western omlet, lemon drops, cheese, macicheese, and a cheese pizza, too, yellow hair on a farm boy, a piece of straw in his father's mouth, his yellow-haired beautiful sis, her yellow polka-dotted dress, a yellow kitten, a dog in a sad movie like old yeller.

So nice, the color yellow, on a sunny day in May.

r ~ 5/3/14

I was at the entrance
of the high-rise apartments
and I phoned my grandma upstairs
and she offered me her instructions:
“Well, Josie…I’m at 354
you got to hit the green, square button
with your elbow
at the entrance where you are;
and I’ll release open the glass doors
and then go to the lift on the right
and punch the button with your elbow
and then get in and punch 3
with your elbow
and then when you are up on 3
look for Unit 54
and punch on its button with your elbow
and I’ll open the door”

“OK, easy, grandma…
But why am I punching all these
buttons with my elbow?”

“What?” my grandma screamed.
*“You mean you are coming empty-handed?”

Were the world mine to give,
I would keep it.

I saw his mouth.
I thought he’d ripped.

From you I learnt
that true love was
and endless cycle
of hello and good night.

Yet you and I
were stuck in a vortex
of stay and goodbye.

I am three pages into the most honest letter I’ve ever composed to a brother when I realize I’ve been writing with my finger.  I tell my daughter it isn’t crying if you’re drinking.  she’s asleep.  it’s there she hears a piano.  sees a typewriter.