The Conjunction Holds
(with a verb in the wings)

Not the leap,
but the plank between banks—
its grain remembering
both shores.

Not the shout,
but the breath that lets
two voices
share one lung.

I am and,
I am but,
I am although—
the quiet ligature
that keeps the torn cloth
from drifting apart.

The verb would run,
would strike,
would bloom—
but I stay,
a hinge in the weather,
turning both ways at once.

Here,
in the seam’s small country,
I keep the quarrel and the kiss
in the same sentence,
and call it
poem.





.

the night whispers the black water fall of ashes
that bloom into the sparrows of sorrow...


the sorrow sparrows are back again
sitting in the tangled woods of twisted trees.

Van Gogh heard their voices
bouncing off love's walls.

the sorrow sparrows are leaning into me.
my sad eyes, dream of you brother.

I lean into the soft lit room
searching for love's quiet hours,
with sunlight flickering through willow trees.

"don't cry, darlin," my wife whispers.

I grew up along the Brazos River
Not far from an old cotton plantation.

By the time I was a child, it was in complete decay
And it left the same in the lives of those
Who had been slaves for generations afterwards.

I remember the first time those descendants
Rode our bus to their raggedy old school,
My generous, childish heart ached for them.
Much later, they'd go to the nice modern one.

I made many new friends on those rides.
I let Cookie brush my hair, as the other girls stared.
She was "high-yellow" or bright, as they would say.
My heart thrills to see them now grown, come into
The beauty of life as it was meant to be lived by all.

Yet, now evil forces seek to undo that.

Three minutes of song
flooded my brain
with images of that night.

It felt like I was there again—
you,
me,
and a deflated mattress.

The window rattling in the rain
as we whispered
our darkest truths.

It’s night now, baby.

Do I still make you stare—
stare into the sky
the way we once did?

Or do I melt
like a snowman in the sun,
leaving a puddle
for you to run through—
laughing,
barefoot,
untouched.

Just three minutes.
I’ll be sure to skip it next time.

But for now,
you can consume me.

They said I drowned,
but the truth is softer:
I laid myself down like an offering.

I spit river into their open mouths.
I bit the lilies in half.

Silk turned cathedral.
I let my dress balloon with river light.

The earth had nowhere else for me.

If you pressed your ear to the surface,
you would have heard me humming.
They didn’t write that part.

When they pulled me out,
I still had violets in my teeth.
I still had the nerve to look alive.

If ruin was the crown they gave me,
I wore it dripping.
I wore it bright.

You think you know the story:
girl, river, grief.

But the water was warm that day.
The sky was a soft ache.
I was tired of carrying everyone else’s ending.

So I wrote my own.

Not drowned.
Not tragic.
Not accepting their ending.

Arrive in a neighborhood not mine.
Phoenix sun splits the mailboxes,
Cracked cement, bald lawns, deflated kiddie pools,
sippy cups gone brittle in the sun.

A toddler screams
until a sibling gathers him inside.
Helios whips his chariot down the street,
steals my parking space.
White Shell Woman hushes the child
with a wind of cool dust.

I buy
donuts, Cheetos, pickles-
eat them in the car.
Gas station sink, hair and grit.
I scrub off orange powder.
Kokopelli swings from the paper towel rack,
flicking drops of water onto my face,
flirting, laughing at my small hungers.

Cemetery, sitting on the hood.
Graves hum in the heat.
Yours more-so.
Hecate steps from the shadow of a mesquite,
offers me three paths,
none of them home.
Coyote pads along the stone wall,
head cocked, grin sharp,
watching my pulse quicken.
White Shell Woman whispers:
Run.

The blood in me stirs-
knife-bright, restless.
I step off the hood,
already fleeing toward
any other life.