Under my wings (I think) I’m ticked by patterning sea salts.
A friend once told me that the crystals between whispered
Currents shifted and blazed the cracks of coral reefs
Were once bits of my father’s flesh, the old king of the sea.

I forget him sometimes, I was so young (and how young I still feel)

Harpooners search for me, but I lost pride the day I watched him slink
To the bottom of a different floor. Sand as his coffin.
I swim, splitting holy tides. These are the only places to
Find some sliver, a chance of a peaceful mind.

All things move apart in anticipation of my coming.
I glide and close my eyes and wish I could hide away from the stares.
It’s as if the pieces of the world can’t decide where they belong.
The krill still flop over broken bridges and hug my frigid chin.

I still weep.

So long I have lived without you, Father. So long without the twirls beneath
Strict and structured families of fist. I let those schools pass as they learn what I never will.

I’ve learned more about the wooden tables, carved by men without gills or scales.
The tables and chairs spread low across the floor
Dropped from shipwrecks my father caused so long ago
Tattered chips still float and other games that I don’t know.
The Queen of Hearts learned that she, too, loves to swim beside earth’s core.
Once I asked her of the crown adorning her head. She did not blink.
I wouldn’t know how to answer either, if she asked me how I became the King of the Sea.

The second shot screamed and
restrained the rest of the grins and claps
lapping up milky, concrete streets
Something internal
dictating inhumane reactions out of her, wanting to
sew jagged parts of skull together, later,
hoping the American public might help thread a needle
Her hands weren’t steady like they used to be
Maybe chaos could be wiped and shed cleaner than
Blood bathing white lace gloves, that covered quivering fingers

Stained skull, candied like cherry juice
seeping from George Washington’s cherry tree (people
believed so, even then) chopped down
slowly imprinting fibers of cotton and silk
blends, suddenly transformed into the world’s
dusty blue jeans
Lady Liberty’s iron once tried to rid the wrinkles of

How lightly the President graced roses
white as a reflection of fair weather culumus clouds
Thermals thanked by American weathermen, now watching
Glory tucked away in the past deep into a date to remember
November 22, 1963
“Dallas, we have a problem,” nothing else could be said
Bushes of roses, sprinkled with presidential blood

Cloth, camel cushioned seats lined his head
a motioned grave, she refused and swept
fingertips, vacuuming shards of cheekbone, scraps of
A previous moment still standing as she reached out again

Smothered by sweat seeping bodies
their chance for a moment, a starred moment, “I was there,”
their excitement unwelcomed, unfamiliar through lighter versions of
governmental suits and the mist of adrenaline
Her body tensed, sniffing the air for his scent, wanting to sense
His fear, too

I am missing the spoon for the sugar bowl.
Rippled like rocks licked by the Pacific in the 60s
It is somewhere away, shining like tails of Peter Pan’s Pixies.
Looking down into the glass opening, the hole
Is now occupied by a plastic fork I kept from a bagged lunch Wednesday.

I used to scoop a mountain of crystals onto a perforated
Paper napkin, the sugar camouflaged above its blank stare.
Grandma would grace strawberry fields before my chair.
The scarlet berries plucked by her arthritic fingers, dated
And bursting with memories of great-grandpa’s farm in Cokato, Minnesota.

I will never drift away from that healing kitchen counter,
Not away from the times gingerbread dough, spread
All around it or the Neosporin smeared across the thread
Of seams of cropped shorts as I ran out to bike more, even louder.
Never could I forget Minnesota summers when she wasn’t so frail.

After all, I need a sugar spoon, so I can’t break away
So easily. I have to attach and remember popping cans of Coca-Cola
And live between those memories, not perceive them as fables and tales.

Without a shielded case surround his head
The revving world would never say what’s said.
How sweet he lives beneath a clouded lie
But laughs and writes and shuts his mother’s eye.
In blackened caves and cracking creeks he’ll speak
Of God and all that shares a curious peek.
A creased lovely nose points to dragons, toads
A day he’ll know as he plugs in sharp codes.
Almond eyes search for a will to mean
Peach doors compose the thoughts and glittery sheen
Of winter. A waxing sled moves, becomes
The symbol of his wild broods, his beckoned drums.
Dear brother, know that spirits may be guides
Toward murdered praises that the earth betides.
What will he have in place of past sorrow
A heartache of untouched grace thumping through
He’ll leave beside the road curved up above
Whispered dirt and moonlit walks, cloaked to shove
The speech buried around his head, uncased
The memoir of his name, once known, erased.

The softened pads of warmly, tightened skin
Closed over chords and venting stings of sound
No speech is raised above the fields of home
She only squeaks and hopes a sign will show
A ***** beg within her towards the goal
To free the words that make her become one.
An inch of time climbs up upon her back
She wrinkles puffs of laughter, irons frights.
Remembering memories all around her grow
Without a tingle of her thickened skin.
The sun did move along the trees that day.
The sea now waves beneath her blackened feet.
The world now pulses up and down her spine
And fly and fly again and wander nigh.
The trunk, her brain is hollow without guide.
She’s lost the end and given up her pride.

Within you there’s a place that makes you free
Drink through a straw, for life is there to be.
Now you, the moon can slip beneath the sand,
Without a fear to lose this sacred game.

I, before your hands found me, would fly
Past murky, flaxen winds and uncloaked, brittle trees
While ticking, tocking years marched by.

How could the earth behind the bleeding sun so simply sigh
At prideless princes, careless bees and frightened, frigid fleas?
I learned before that I, without your hands, should always fly.

Speak and thread the eye of quickly and softly luring lies.
Until I play in clouds of light, gently, sweetly, please
Forestall those ticking years that slip so easily by.

Wearily I pull worn reins, thinned and tattered, below the tie
Then pray for whispered secrets and rolling, trusting, fearless seas.
I wait, but still without your hands, I learn that I may fly.

Without much left within me but a withered, ragged cry
I’ll offer up the edgeless, vast and countless shuffling sea.
We’ll watch and share those ticking years that go so quickly by.

The smell of autumn rainfall, filled with dew and golden skies,
We lay beneath and count the scars the swindling jet planes leave.
Unlocked and healed, without your hands, I know that I can fly,
But pray that ticking, tocking years go slowly, slowly by.

The skies, with heavy clouds and smoky soft-filled light,
Morph into days that furnish this reality, defined
By slightest laughs that bounce between a mother and a night.
Young kids may never find a closed place or a door declined.
I find myself along the curvatures that shift the heavens up in ration
Of the crunched leaves, sought by guards who wonderously fear.
People, tall, (and puzzled most) ask questions, without all hesitation
I bit my lip so hard the other day and metal filled my mouth
Reminding me to never to smile harshly underneath
Before I never could quite feel
Content. I did this time in case the blood was lodged between my teeth.
I ripped the seams of four long strips on across a banana peel
This time, I heard a thick voice, say, “no and don’t you go.”
Now and then, I wait and listen, smile and soon it shows.