An unpainted
treasure chest
with the initials
"LP"
No glaze.
--Takes me back to the days
when I made her.
8th grade and I was no
art major.
-But I made her.

Bland, against a white wall.
Unnoticed
among them all.
There's a lid
and a box
but no key
and no lock
there's no way to keep shut
or keep out what I shouldn't trust.

Unpainted, unglazed, just burned.
What a haze.
While I move
to another room,
another wall,
it changes all.

Now white can stand out.
And it won't ever blend in.
Not unless it's put against
a white wall again.

Down through the ancient Strand
The spirit of October, mild and boon
And sauntering, takes his way
This golden end of afternoon,
As though the corn stood yellow in all the land,
And the ripe apples dropped to the harvest-moon.

Lo! the round sun, half-down the western *****--
Seen as along an unglazed telescope--
Lingers and lolls, loth to be done with day:
Gifting the long, lean, lanky street
And its abounding confluences of being
With aspects generous and bland;
Making a thousand harnesses to shine
As with new ore from some enchanted mine,
And every horse's coat so full of sheen
He looks new-tailored, and every 'bus feels clean,
And never a hansom but is worth the feeing;
And every jeweller within the pale
Offers a real Arabian Night for sale;
And even the roar
Of the strong streams of toil, that pause and pour
Eastward and westward, sounds suffused--
Seems as it were bemused
And blurred, and like the speech
Of lazy seas on a lotus-haunted beach--
With this enchanted lustrousness,
This mellow magic, that (as a man's caress
Brings back to some faded face, beloved before,
A heavenly shadow of the grace it wore
Ere the poor eyes were minded to beseech)
Old things transfigures, and you hail and bless
Their looks of long-lapsed loveliness once more:
Till Clement's, angular and cold and staid,
Gleams forth in glamour's very stuffs arrayed;
And Bride's, her aery, unsubstantial charm
Through flight on flight of springing, soaring stone
Grown flushed and warm,
Laughs into life full-mooded and fresh-blown;
And the high majesty of Paul's
Uplifts a voice of living light, and calls--
Calls to his millions to behold and see
How goodly this his London Town can be!

For earth and sky and air
Are golden everywhere,
And golden with a gold so suave and fine
The looking on it lifts the heart like wine.
Trafalgar Square
(The fountains volleying golden glaze)
Shines like an angel-market.  High aloft
Over his couchant Lions, in a haze
Shimmering and bland and soft,
A dust of chrysoprase,
Our Sailor takes the golden gaze
Of the saluting sun, and flames superb,
As once he flamed it on his ocean round.
The dingy dreariness of the picture-place,
Turned very nearly bright,
Takes on a luminous transiency of grace,
And shows no more a scandal to the ground.
The very blind man pottering on the kerb,
Among the posies and the ostrich feathers
And the rude voices touched with all the weathers
Of the long, varying year,
Shares in the universal alms of light.
The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires,
The height and spread of frontage shining sheer,
The quiring signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires--
'Tis El Dorado--El Dorado plain,
The Golden City!  And when a girl goes by,
Look! as she turns her glancing head,
A call of gold is floated from her ear!
Golden, all golden!  In a golden glory,
Long-lapsing down a golden coasted sky,
The day, not dies but, seems
Dispersed in wafts and drifts of gold, and shed
Upon a past of golden song and story
And memories of gold and golden dreams.

I am hopelessly muddled
by the unglazed
remembrances of you
that have been scattered all over
in an already mazed
world
and I am on the ground
whirled

lay it in the heart(h)
and
watch with unglazed eyes.

see the blaze play its part.

as it consumes all to ashes
before it
reluctantly wanes and dies.

I remember as thought it were today, the morning we moved to Cedar Rapids. The funeral day was clear and dry: a frosty autumn morning. My mother was crying.

Behind my closed, damp eyelids, I faced a terrible, inexplicable heartache. I wanted to forget everything we did together. We used to spin pottery, him sitting behind me, guiding my childishly clumsy fingers.

I picture vividly, to the point of tasting, the cold, dry smell of wet clay, and the chalky scrape of an unglazed ***. I kept one on my desk until we got settled.

I threw it into the ravine behind the new old house when I couldn't break the frosted ground for a burial. I cried, drinking in the beauty and stillness of the grey. My breath mingled with the fog.

lathe and plaster walls
divide a derelict

rooms part at doors,
holes
kicked through
and, unglazed frames.
light lingers on fragments
of lyric and latex.

rats scramble away
from nests;
domesticity.
after
bank's dead hand
slapped us
outta the place.

My face
Stole the skin of a diamond
To tote as it’s own mask of
Sheepskin.
Me, being the ever-ovulating orchestrator
Needed to pin the tail on this donkey
Only to rationalize why it is
Only in our nature to scrutinize
Our flaws, like a jeweler.
Each facet is forced to plead their case
While in the back of their mind’s eye
They know they will only be allowed on probation
Until the abuse from the lapidary starts again.
Tell me I’m not a real diamond
But then have the courtesy
To shatter me
Back into young, unglazed sand

1
Though not self-pollinating,
the peony multiplies when isolated.
And so she removes herself from her cluster,
and in her solitude, she blossoms
into a riot of dreams.

2
You are now a sentient being.
Two notes for year two:
You can’t crawl forever;
you’ll need to learn to walk on twos soon.
Your sister is coming.
Be nice.

3
He sits in the glass greenhouse
in a microclimate of his own.
And you are him, in part,
so you stop turning towards the sun,
because why bother
when there’s one revolving around you?

4
In tending to the garden
the gardener learns the plants’ secrets,
and in the secrets he knows
the gardener grows.

5
Grow tall and grow strong
so that the lawnmower might halt its blade;
so that you never have to wonder
what you look like in full bloom.

6
Patchy, unglazed bronze skin—
a hand-sculpted head with glass eyes
now a forgotten garden troll;
his presumptive body
never again filled by the presence
of a father.

7
Grow on the edges,
where the lawnmower won’t reach.
Grow low, unnoticed,
beneath the lawnmower’s blade.
Why must we all bend
to the will of the lawnmower?

8
What happens to a peony
in an overcrowded garden?
This one can move,
And so she uproots us to a place where we can bloom.

9
When you’ve moved houses twice
and moved homes thrice,
you’ll learn to appreciate
even the weeds around you,
because they are beautiful too.

10
Glass shatters when dropped;
blame it on your sister
because Angie doesn’t shatter.
She just slowly cracks from inside out—
you will realize this later.

11
Don’t protect our glass house
by throwing stones

12
Unwatered leaves
grow brittle at the touch
until all at once,
they let you go.
Unwatered people will too.

13
They say after winter comes spring
but they forget how winter creeps into spring
(like how summer’s creeping everywhere).
And it's okay because
flowers can grow through snow too.

14
Remember the garden that grows outside.
Peek into it, and pause
to touch grass while you can.

15
Large realizations dwarfing us—
here’s a little tip:
save a bit more of yourself,
before the realization of your slipping selfhood comes too late
and tramples us.

16
It’s ok to be lost in the weeds,
but remember to hydrate in your meanderings.
Drink so you may fill the cups
of lonely wanderers in your path.

17
Present.

18
Soon it will come time
to remove yourself from your cluster.
So to Year 18 and beyond:
dig your roots deep
and reach towards the sun—
hopefully, one day,
I’ll see you in full bloom.