The stirring fossils
         The thirsting sentence
Under the ruckus of Monday night hooligans
          Three o’clock
The letter falters
           in the frozen arms of a shaken breath
Water stems up the legs of a boundless monster
          *I am going away- you won’t hear from me

Her eyes looked like she'd cried, but her face was an island.

Her oceans were troubled-
tormented with waves and ripples
and the occasional
oil spill.

Her palm trees swayed
in the industrial-strength
night and folded down, absconding some
miraculous treasure.

Her sky was not everlasting and I could
draw the line
where the clouds would descend
over her
brilliant blue.  

They
were rumbling,
any stranger
could see. Her poolside vistas
trembled and down fell
the empire she called
her paradise.

Though it was never truly
hers.

She was ugly.
A snake of a girl- beady
blue eyes and
blood-red toenails.

The small snigger creeping
up through her perfectly
kept teeth as she spat
at the garbage
of the street: the creatures
she couldn’t see
through her beady
blue eyes.

Her mama would dress her
up in yellow ribbons and green bows.
“Why honey,
you make a sweet little
dandelion,”.

She liked to be
a dandelion, but secretly
she dreamed of being
a marigold:
                                                                ­                       Lips parted to the sun,
                                                                ­                                       seeds planted
                                                         ­                        in the rich soil of her own
                                                                ­                                             blackness.
She wanted to be a marigold.
But she was just
a dandelion,
stepping on petals and
weeding out whatever
she longed to be.

A lithely swallow.

A dipping in--  
laying into the flesh.
Finding its
cracks, burrowing
deeper. Pushing
through that velvet sound--
the emptiness
the melancholy
the desperate cling
of the sweat.

Dangling just off
the tip of the fingers: a cliff.
Before the ragged
sealine stretches
its tendrils
all-engulfing.

Sometimes
I see a picture.
A picture of a woman
in a kitchen.

Her hair is tied back. But sometimes
it’s not.

Sometimes she winks at me.
A knowing
smile and twitch
of an eyelid.
Sometimes.

Sometimes she’s angry.
Drenched
in the sweat of steamed
broccoli and cauliflower.
Sometimes.


Sometimes she’s cleaning.
Scrubbing her kitchen
spotless. Red tomato
sauce and broken
glasses.
Sometimes.

Sometimes she wilts.
Beside the petunias.
Black
and purple.
Blue
and pink.
Sometimes.

Sometimes she’s spilling.
Water flooding
over the counter
top and stuck
to the clotted drain.
Sometimes.

Sometimes she sees me. Usually
not.  Sometimes she smiles. Usually
not. Sometimes I help her. Usually
not: sometimes.

I liked when you sang me salty
lullabies, and kissed  
the leaves on my forehead.

When you bundled me
up in sand and soil,
carting me off the county fair,
winning an honorable
mention.

How I miss the parting
of your lips, the lurking
smile: always
there, always
hidden.

Make me a dandelion
crown, and shepherd me
through your shoulders.  

You can see the whole
world from up here--propped
up on the tombstone.