up or push it
down. Put it aside
or bury it with frosted
cream donuts and

chocolate. Drown it
in one-hundred proof. Cover
it like the weathered
shingles on your

roof. Patch it like your
ripped denim jeans. Iron it
out so no one sees
the seams. Pull the splinters

one by one and stick
them in the corkboard with
your black push pins. It's deep
and dark like the sea and bleeding

like a sonnet. Wrap it up and
tie it like a bonnet under your
chin. Now head held high. Fool
them with that wide-tooth grin.

robins splashing
in the white porcelain
bath as I laugh at
two tangled squirrels

tugging at the same
nut. Rolling ***** of fluffy
grey like a ball of yarn they
make their way to a bare

patch of grass with a little
hook and sass. I spy a cornflower
sky with a julep smile as a sunflower
shakes her golden head in a raised

garden bed. A cottontail
nibbles on clover as I roll
over in my knitted hammock among
the trees, living life at ease.

into stone that she's thrown
into a lake. They skip and bounce
like an earthquake. They're so
cold they froze into icicles

on her face. She ties them up
in a bow like a shoelace. She shoots
daggers from her eyes, like lightning
bolts from the skies that take

a man by surprise. Once they
were a river that overflowed into
the land, the city streets like a brass
band. But after years of the flood

the flow had stopped like
clotted blood. She cannot shed
no more. They're all dried up like a
corpse's pore.

with yellow teeth. I hang
the pieces on my door
gathered in a wreath. If you
touch me, my jagged edges

will cut your hand. Some
days I strand fragments of the
glass when I've time to pass. I wear
the reflection around my neck

in quartered sections like
Aztecs. A jeweled medallion
tattooed on my breast, burning me
in the sunlight, in flames upon

my nest. The whole me distorted
in the fractured glass. I'm manufactured,
not built to last. A young girl becomes
a prisoner of her past.

on his arms and shoulders,
weighting him like sandstone
boulders, from someone larger
than him, with mountain

hands that knock down
trees, limb to limb. It hurts!
It hurts! The boy said. His eyes,
swimming pools of ******

red. Bad boy! Bad boy! Sit in your
chair. He'll slap your face and
pull your hair. His mother cannot
eat or sleep, to see her son

bruised and beat. This is
a wicked world, men punching
boys and ****** girls. I have no
will to live in it. A black eye,

a split lip. Hands around
his neck, in a tight death
grip. Nothing here changes.
We are all strangers.

For Alex

you've been sobbing for
years. Collect them in a paper
cup till they fill up the rivers
surrounding the mountains. Eagles

will drink from fountains
you weep. Water the grass and
your garden with them. Build up
a forest from a thin little stem. Collect

them all in a pool. So, on a hot
summer day the neighborhood kids
can swim and stay cool. Splash in the
puddles they make. Fill up the oceans and

lakes. Don't be so quick to dry them
off of your face. Wash your clothes. Make
a bowl of soup with the salty brine. Drink
them. They're cherry wine.

before age two,
before she walked or wore
her first pair of shoes. She
held down the fort when

daddy left home. He was
the type of man, that liked to
roam. She soldiered on through
her mother's drunken nights,

when dear old mom knocked
out her lights. Mopped up her
***** on the kitchen floor. Home
was a place she called

war. She didn’t have ribbons
and satin dresses. Her mouth,
filled with abscesses. She wore
thrift-shop clothes, moth-eaten

ones, with quarter-sized
holes. She dropped out of
school to get a job. Not a day
goes by that she doesn't

sob. But she holds her
head up high because she
has a new home made of
paper. She calls a poem.