Dusk, mosquitoes, lilac and thunderheads
Step down from the sky balanced on breeze and the undersides of leaves,
The river is choppy and rushed, shouldering past the piers of the bridge
The night is about to swallow itself whole.

Bald heads rock steady on screened-in porches
Lick their lips in hungry anticipation
The first streak of light and piercing crack
Shatters the horizon

She was last seen in the soccer field. She went there when she was a child. She is still a child. It is all weeds now.  Everyone else is gone or leaving. The old factory is still standing by, as empty as a house.

She was last seen lying on her back, cheek pressed against the black top of the highway, all yellow streetlight and blinding headlights. Small town, summer night, a crown of weeds and flyaways.

Trying to stifle a giggle, she forgot to scream.

Bleary eyes and Italian films
I live alone
Or, I may as well.

The man in the movie said
We've got to stop wasting time doing things we don't want to do.

Want, want
"Funny how suicide is do and die"
Is a line I think about a lot.

Railroad bridges don't have guardrails,
Which is dangerous for pedestrians
Or, convenient.

I pray
everyday; I'm
still not quite sure to whom.
The Father and Son aren't really
my type.

It took
eighteen years to
see God as a woman;
The most welcome sort of Holy
Relief.

I got to thinkin'
Hotels is just big beehives
At least we comfy.

Legs pinched and yellow as ginger root
My hands like yams, and belly,
The whole of me looks plucked from the underground,
Topped with a thin sprig - enough hairs to count in an afternoon
Face pink as potatoes in the kitchen,
Eyes plain and brown.

A trip to the market yields a bag of onions
and whispers of the monster woman.
If I am a monster, I am a recluse
Curled around and polishing the opals that grow fat as melons inside me.

Cut, I do not bleed.
My veins only hold the roar of a thunder storm
Field mice find homes in the folds of my ankle.
The weather cannot be contained in my blood alone;
My open mouth stumbles like rain drops thucking in mud.
Angry, I howl sunlight.

I used to be a school yard socialite,
But was always twice as wide as tall,
And a careful turn would tumble three of my comrades
It wasn't long before they turned on me

Back then I thought that children were the cruelest creatures
All rocks and fierce joy,
But the mothers watched with condemning eyes,
And snarled.

Today I am two days of unwashed hair
I am the comfort of the couch without pillows
I am the floorboards holding sunlight
I am fuzzy teeth and white lies
I am the carpet that needs vacuuming
I am my mother in the garden,
And my father working downstairs,
I am the sunburn on my chest,
Like the heart on my sleeve,
Born from foolishness instead of courage