The steam from a teakettle.
To be in love with one's own name!

Funny sort of locomotive!

You left nothing, only the Stevens book
That read:  There is not nothing, no, no never…

Nothing and a yellow bicycle:
Two tires on a rickety frame.

When I do pick up a poem,
It’s to hear the gravel cadence of you,

Softer, informed by everything that spins:
A world, a bicycle, a chestnut tumbling

Downhill the city’s painted a roadside path,
My collarbone’s begun to mend.

The house gets drafty late afternoons
So I learn to cook:

Turmeric, cayenne. Hing & coriander.  
cardamom. Cumin & mustard seeds.

Hing’s a pungent flower called asafetida
And corriander’s just cilantro.

Icy fingers spindle wheels on window panes.
I leave the teakettle to boil.

Spokes of trees shiver in the silverish dusk
Taking lessons from everything bare,

I let in the cold to hear
No stones turned in the drive.

I have an old farmhouse inside my chest,
wooden siding rotten in places and windows
fractured from too many winters,
the roof of which sags near the chimney--
faint smoke-clouds rising, and a light
glowing yellow inside the kitchen, a beckoning

invitation into the faded blue walls
full with portraits of four--my mother, father,
and little sister--brassy frames hung close
together above the wooden table,
nicks and scratches connecting each placemat
like dots of the coloring book page left
magnet-stuck to the refrigerator.

The countertops have grown dusty.
fruit-bowl collecting gnats and mold,
but the zinnias over the sink flourish, replaced
daily and blooming red as the teakettle
rusting on the only remaining stove-top burner,
the others broken, tossed into the garbage
beside the back door, which leads to a forest--

rib-like oaks bent and bowed
over the farmhouse, ivy vines coiled ‘round
each trunk, stretching limb to limb, weaving
webs tangled as the unruly branches from which
they hang, caressing the slumped rooftop
as if to remind the battered, tired building how,
despite everything, the hearth still smolders.

I hate the way her eyes scan me over with jealousy. She's so enviousm but what does she think I have that she doesn't? I'm the diluted image of my mother's beauty, yes, & she wants that. But she doesn't realize that full pouting lips, the large startled etes, the palest coffee-cream skin comes with strings attatched, a think contract she has no idea about, full of clauses & fees. the very last page reads 'Amelia', signed with my blood but written in my mother's decided, sure hand. She doesn't see all the chameleon shades in me, or how I need them just to get by. She has no idea of my longing, my yawning morning yearning for the way she's the same girl every day. I admire he belief in (the lie) that no one can **** with her, while every person I meet makes something in me panic, wondering if they'll be the next to discard me after taking me out & finding that I'm both too much to handle & not enough to stick around for. She can shrug off a punch & barrel through a crowd, moses to any sea, any shore she finds herself at the edge of, while the simple swat of an absent hand creates ripples & gusts that send me tumbling, toppling *** over teakettle. She scans aisles of people, tasting, testing any that are above her minimum standard, but I've never had that kind of freedom; I've always been a sample, appetizer, appease me, please me. babe. She knows as well as I do the desperation for approval, for being desired, but the difference between us is that she refuses to change for anyone but herself while I need people to give me someone to be.

September rain falls on the house.
In the failing light, the old grandmother
sits in the kitchen with the child
beside the Little Marvel Stove,
reading the jokes from the almanac,
laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctial tears
and the rain that beats on the roof of the house
were both foretold by the almanac,
but only known to a grandmother.
The iron kettle sings on the stove.
She cuts some bread and says to the child,

It's time for tea now; but the child
is watching the teakettle's small hard tears
dance like mad on the hot black stove,
the way the rain must dance on the house.
Tidying up, the old grandmother
hangs up the clever almanac

on its string. Birdlike, the almanac
hovers half open above the child,
hovers above the old grandmother
and her teacup full of dark brown tears.
She shivers and says she thinks the house
feels chilly, and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be, says the Marvel Stove.
I know what I know, says the almanac.
With crayons the child draws a rigid house
and a winding pathway. Then the child
puts in a man with buttons like tears
and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly, while the grandmother
busies herself about the stove,
the little moons fall down like tears
from between the pages of the almanac
into the flower bed the child
has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

-Elizabeth Bishop

19 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.” ------- Ecclesiastes 3: 19 King James version of the Bible

Today, I’ve tried thinking.

What that is to say:
Two words, the same, mean two different things. It is an anthropologic meltdown of madness, a twisting torrent of words tearing, a cacophony sweltering like a teakettle steaming. There is madness in the docile, and trees grow on both ends, flowering at the root often moreso than the leaves. I claim to have no wisdom, but in my abounding foolishness, perhaps, I will be wise. Two negatives when multiplied together, become a positive.

In a feeling of staying, I feel I should leave. In a tearing between body, mind, and spirit, one phrase looking as another, seeing two words as something else, saying much and meaning little.

1. Take index finger and extend it in front of lips, holding it parallel to lips.
2. Firmly place it into mouth.
3. Jar finger up and down while sputtering lips.

Much is revealed in obfuscation. Questions answer much more than answers, sometimes.
There are letters in algebra. We teach math with words. To teach is to learn. By learning, we’re teaching…others watch us learn and learn from how we learn…how to learn. Then, we learn from them, those who have learned from us.

One word is haunting in my own work.

“So?”  

Somewhere, this is written already. When it’s written, it’s written already. If somebody else copies it, writes it, then they know that they’ve written it already, and all that they’ve written has been written already.

It’s an implosion of my own thought, today.  I pray tomorrow, the joy of clarity of my own thoughts and writing will return, and regardless, I thank the Holy Lord God Almighty always for all things. I rejoice in Him and love Him deeply, more than all, fear Him, and praise Him, and worship Him, alone. All glory in all things to God Almighty.

I want to draw a sugar fish
Atop of your cheekbone
So it can swim along with tears
And land on your birthstone
I wish to sketch an elephant
Amongst your dainty teeth
So you will never dare forget
That tongue that’s underneath
I need to paint a teakettle
Between your knobby knees
For every time it whistles
You will meet a gentle breeze
But instead your hand picked up a pen
Then turned it to my palm
At once I knew you didn’t need
My brushstrokes to feel strong

The dishwasher isn’t running
So I can’t clean these mugs for our tea.
I try to just use the ***** ones
But the moment of grand illusion,
In which seem like the stove might just light,
Is passing and the water just sits there
Awaiting that spark to boil.

Long after the moment passes, the gas still rushes out
With this rapid clicking sound that makes my whole body
Flinch in its rhythm.
I’m thinking: don’t clean them by hand,
Don’t go get a match.
But I can’t keep my feet
From dragging across this too-smooth
Tile kitchen floor,
To the sink,
To the cupboard.

It doesn’t matter though,
Because by the time everything’s set and ready
The water’s all gone- spilled across the floor.
I don’t notice. Even as the water
Seeps into my socks
I light the burner with the match;
Nothing for it to boil.
Sitting pointlessly on the flame,
The teakettle slowly starts to melt.
I watch that glowing red iron drip towards the flame
And slowly the dampness on the bottoms of my feet
Starts to hit me.

pushes his plate toward me and says he didn’t order eggs.  On the bar-stool next to him a woman in penguin pajamas is filling out a job application.  I take the eggs, replace them with a bowl of acorns and he salts them down, licks his upper lip, each fleshy tip of tongue curling away from the other.  My dad had hair like yours, I say, thick and red.  When I was five I used to brush it, but one day he asked me to and I said no.  He pours dirt in his coffee and stirs it with a piece of wood.  The door jingles open and a young couple stand on the mat shaking ice from their curls.  The woman in penguin pajamas is asleep with her thumb in her mouth.  Soon after that he went away and I never saw him again.  A teakettle whistles and the young couple begins to dance, the bells on their shoes ringing, flashing silver shards of light across the walls.  Forty-five years old, some days still think it’s my fault.  The man with the lizard tongue leans in, mouth opening.  His tongue traces the swell of my bottom lip; I taste salt and dirt.  Outside a catfish swims by the window, its eyes as big as dinner plates.

i wonder how your disco ball girl would feel about a night like this

all my friends say we aren't in the same scene and i am embarrassed to be seen with you but i love the way you button your shirt and the way you are when your stomach hurts

my feelings are raw meat and hard to chew and i drink a bottle of wine in case i'm left alone with you

ten typos later and i have tears in my tights and stains on my lips
melancholia is a mediocre movie and the truest feeling i can muster

i let a boy in through the back door and forget he was ever there aside from the fact that there is long hair clogging my shower drain and the shower in your parent's house is the smallest space i've ever been in

my friends feel violated by the whistle of a teakettle and i spent the evenings of a man speaking gibberish on top of a washing machine

he was wearing a three piece suit with a piece of wheat in the breast pocket and either he was walt whitman or the end of the summer

what have i got to lose

Stars on top of stars on top of stars. Blankets of silver snow. I unzipped my sleeping bag, the one I got for 15 dollars at a yard sale in Monterey. I brought my knees to my chest and thought about my friends and California.

Emily was living in a small apartment in Arcata, with a little garden out front that had dandelions and mint and some tomatoes. Everything in her apartment was either bought at a garage sale or on craigslist. Her mom gave her everything else, which was really only the bed and some silverware. I liked her little brown teakettle the most. “Isn’t it cool? Five bucks at a garage sale in good ole’ Moghetto.” She adored these things more than herself and embraced the simple life she held, her bike, garden, and lack of almost everything entirely.

She had taken the semester off to travel, but she never went anywhere, just stayed in that garden all day, boiling water in the kettle for God knows what. There wasn’t money to go anywhere, and what she got from painting fences or apartments was easily spent at the market on chicken, nuts, hummus, eggs, or rice. My God it was wonderful to see her move around that miserable apartment, showing me every little thing she had.

All the elements of a perfect storm
But there isn't any water,

It's our drought. We thank
The families with thank you

Cards for siphoning
Out gas tanks

Spiced with dry rub
Rust.

Our children are eager,
Learning things you can't learn

From books; jailed women
Shackled to beds, giving birth

To honeybees
And teakettle songbirds.

It's hard when you have
No home to call home

Because snowflakes bring
Out the worst in him.

His dogs use scent to tell
Time. Time to board

Up the windows,
We say,

Waiting out the bone-white
Hunger,

Wondering which way
Is home.

we're all the same, aren't we?
beaming rainwater-soaked prayers through our windows into the cloudy cold twilight or the red morning,

reading underneath creamy lampshade light,
teakettle steam fogging up our wooden cabinet doors,
twinkling kitchen high hats like tiny constellations in a cosmos of homes...

I know that I am not alone in the way the boy sitting in the restaurant window shifted his weight onto his left leg and tucked it underneath him,
in how the girl in white sneakers hopped over the puddle in the sidewalk,
in coathooks and shoeracks and umbrellas and rubber boots,
in the things we have made to protect and aid ourselves against the rawness of the earth.

and I miss your home, your rusty pans in the sink and rough gray towels, your irish butter and frozen burritos in the fridge and nothing else,

but there are so many lives and so many mornings shared among them to comfort me; I am not alone--
we are all missing homes, love, and I am better knowing that I am only feeling what I am supposed to.

It's six am and the haze has settled in.
The teakettle dreams of fire,
and I wander the realms of unreality.
My clock dreams of going forward,
and I wish to turn it's gears back.
Alas,
Both their dreams are fulfilled.

I have this teakettle
of angry
it whistles
when it gets high

sometimes in the shower
i heat the water
until it scalds and suffocates.

a few minutes later
i acclimate,
and do it again

and again

until the whole house
is hazy
with steam,
until you screech
like a teakettle.

then pink and raw,
more sweat than soap,
i grow dizzy and breathless

turn you off

let the recycled air
cool me like mint.

i walk around the rest of the day
with new skin,
glutted and brave,
radiating heat and blood.

*

so, i guess,

my darling,

for me,

eating you out,

is something like that.