Tarot: The Lovers

 09/2025 (c)

On paper the lovers would likely have not felt the attraction

Their uniqueness seen more as disparity than as harmony.

One of them is a tempest. An updraft. A whoosh.

Another is a soft rose. A square of velvet.

There is water. Sometimes stagnant but usually gurgling and slurping.

There is fire and there is stone, but who is to say which one holds what cards?

What split-off personalities do I need to re-unite? Just how much love

may I give myself?

I recall the obsessions, the perfect fit of two hands touching

as though touch were a new thing.  Turning his off-hand remark

into a koan, into a worry stone to rub away into an iridescent hue.

I recall the ideal weather, the luminescent being whose flaws

didn’t require forgiveness. Even fault lines were perfect. 

Part of my soul is a tamed bird. Part is a wagon wheel.

Part prefers solitude. The other is already looking for a way out.

Sport

 (2009)

I remember fishing, once.

Caught nothing I could keep. 

Under three inches and thin as my middle finger. 

I unhooked the hinged mouth

and threw it back, already dead, or if not,

left to live out its days

with a gaping hole in its mouth and pain. 

This is what is called "sport".

To alleviate boredom I attempt my first BlackOut poem. March 7, 2025

 

Mewling

 (c) 2/25/2025

Most nights I stuff myself, ravenous

for high-fat foods, alcohol, anything

to push my skin outwards, to increase the plane

the surface, to create space, a range

so that my skin will be brushed

absentmindedly on the sidewalk,

walking in and out of doorways.

I look for opportunities to visit the doctor

and though it pains me to be seen

I drop my drawers in a second. 

All those mammograms. The pokes and prods.

The drawn blood. The speculum.

It is as intimate as the transactional

pedicure, manicure, and massage.

And in grade school I was the target,

pummeled on the playground every few days.

Maybe that had nothing to do with their demons.

Maybe I was genius, making myself mewling

pathetic, a kicked dog. Maybe I knew

it was guaranteed touch.

And Still.

 (c) 2/25/2025

No trip to the Louvre. No fumbling je veux

as we ordered croissants. The plan for Paris never happened.

The week in Tobago, the delicious honeymoon he promised.

All the sea turtles nesting on Irvine Back Bay. No. 

No cross-country trip. And no new couch

even after he ripped the back off my old sofa

 to free his pet corn snake.

 The newest model mustang was repossessed. 

The fake job he listed on the sale document,

that job he so bragged about, no income.

His whole resume a fraud.  Degrees unattained. Positions

never held.  The zirconium wedding ring

to symbolize his love. So much like my father. 

Every year with him was diminishment. And still,

I stayed.

Flash Memoir: Self Portrait in Drab

 (c) 11/2024 

 

“Come here.” Sofia instructed us to lay hands across the stack of fabric bolts held in the turn of her elbow.

The fabric bolts were similar: a faded buff, like overcrowded sunflowers that should be relocated, and in turn, over-patterned with beige, ivory and pale-yellow flowers. The size and pattern of the florals differed, though those differences were slight.

I almost instinctively hated all four of the prints. Neutrals, off-neutrals, they made me feel mute. I also hated the Simplicity Jiffy dress pattern we’d prayed over. Its movement-enhancing elastic waist, the puffy sleeves, like a plea for romance and marriage. And then that wide ruffle around the hem was one to many nods to femininity. At least our deadline prohibited lace trim and rosettes.

Lois, Cindy and I dutifully walked over to lay our hands across the fabric. How much paler we all looked than when we arrived at the Mission Base seven months earlier.

Sofia began to pray, “Dear Heavenly Father,” followed that with a litany of things we were thankful for, such as the apples a neighboring rancher donated for our breakfast, my minimum wage, part time job that provided the bus fare to the mall, and now, this wonderful opportunity to connect with God.

She prayed, “and God, we ask that you guide us to the right fabric, for your glory.”

I opened an eye to look at Sofia and wondered if this really was important enough to bring to God.

The four of us were interested in dance. Despite my aunt’s reprimands about dancing magically leading to fornication, every Saturday night you couldn’t get me out of the all-of-three under-age discotheques in the Seattle area. All that glamour and glitter. The shimmer and shine. The jewel brights. It was difficult to remove those colors and cuts from my wardrobe. It was easier to remember to slap on a bra every morning, overtly modest, since I was called in to the base leader’s wife’s office every couple of weeks. It was about my presentation every time. It seemed to bother so many different people for different reasons.

The night before our shopping excursion Sofia had showed us a photograph she still clung too of herself two-years earlier. A photo predating becoming saved. In it her hair was spiked, and while she didn’t have a tattoo, her nose was pierced. Now that was exotic, the piercing. She let it grow back. In the photo Sofia wore a basic black-tee, a leather biker jacket and combat boots. Scowling, Sofia looked so edgy, confidant even. I think Sofia meant to show us the photo as an indicator of just how far Jesus had to reach for her to bring her over to this maudlin femininity of ruffles, bows, and demure knee-skimming skirt lengths.

“I feel guided to this one.” Cindy touched a medium-sized floral bolt with a nail she no longer lacquered. Clearly our Heavenly Father had guided her.

Lois felt guided to suggest a different medium-sized floral bolt. Which of us had the shortest path to God’s heart?

“God’s not speaking to me,” I said, letting Sofia be the tiebreaker.

We scheduled a performance at a neighboring church’s Tuesday night service. I’d written a short story about a young boy being saved while walking along a beach. Battering Waves. A wise old man. In hindsight, nothing remarkable. We didn’t have musicians and even though we had a cassette player we couldn’t find a single song any of us wanted to move to. Lois was in the process of finding suitable bible passages to accompany a dance.

None of us were trained in dance. Not even childhood ballet lessons. We couldn’t articulate whether what we were doing was considered free-form, modern, jazz or whether we were just four 20-somethings swirling haphazardly across the shag. Creating choreography and trying to remember it when we performed was a complexity at least two of us couldn’t handle. Every movement slowed and repeated ad nauseum. A lot of lifted arms and gazing upwards.  And performing in prairie-girl dresses? I hadn’t seen that before. And yet, all four of us felt called to use what we were calling worship dance and testimony.

Eventually, our dresses were sewn. They were too formless to need fitting. Cindy and I slathered on some eye color, but Lois and Sofia had already given up on cosmetics. According to the script my role was that of a hapless, hopeless young boy and I suggested that I wear dress slacks and a button down.

“I’m sure that will be convincing” I said, “all also honor God, since he directed my writing in the story.”

After much prayer and listening to God thankfully that the others agreed I did not need to wear that hideous dress.

During a swirl with an upward gaze and arms opening to God, I heard a man gasp, and another say, “Oh, so beautiful.” Suddenly I felt certain our message of redemption was getting through to the audience. I was hopeful that should the minister end the service with a call to the alter at least one person would have been moved by our dance to walk to the alter.

After service I was approached by two men who wanted to let me know how beautiful the dance had been. How beautiful I had moved. How beautiful I was. They didn’t mention the story line, nor whether the movements put them into a worshipful space. I have been one to hang on to any small bit of praise or validation as though it were the last meal of my life, already snuffling for more. Clearly, I’d been living on the base long enough, because I was more concerned for once in giving the glory to God. I had no sense that they were going to find a quiet spot and pray. I interpreted the look in their eyes as being as desiring as the looks in the discotheques. 

The next day I was called again to the Base Leader’s Wife’s office.

“I’d like to steer you to join the Children’s puppetry team.” 

Okay. Puppets are fun. “I want to dance though,” I answered.

The minister had complained to our base leader. I was too seductive. I portrayed a seven-year-old boy wearing a baggy button-down shirt too seductively.

“I didn’t even make eye-contact.” I paused. “I had my hair pulled back into a bun!” I was mentally thinking of all the ways in which I had definitely not been seductive. Maybe it was the blue slathered around my eyes. It wasn’t my smile; I hadn’t smiled. And yet, I had broken one of our strict for-females-only rules: Do not entice men.

“I didn’t entice anyone,” I said. “It’s their responsibility to control their own reactions. It’s their responsibility to deal with their own lust.”

But apparently, it wasn’t.

The next week I was on puppet making duty, safe in the craft room. Even if I did perform, I’d be hidden inside a large cardboard house. Foam, paint, and bright colors manipulated by my hands. My body, completely invisible until the final curtain call when I could reveal myself, draped in beige.

Tarot: Queen of Wands; Reversed

 (c) 1/12/2023

I didn’t sign any papers; it was mutual. A handshake.  Culturally driven. Just the way things are.

 The team of umbrageous doctors included the Capitalist bourgeoisie, Land Barons, and a Deaconess spouting sacramental catechumens for the sake of modesty.  Through their surgical intervention my tongue would become my husband’s tongue. Sutured. The last domestic stitch he would undergo.

 I saw him unconscious on his own metal table, breathing through a sheer shroud of gauze. Delicate. Almost pretty.  An anesthetic fog. Not even his vulnerability bothering him.

 I’d been told that having only bravado and masculine posturing, he would recover by speaking my words. He would summarize books I’d read and told him about as if he’d read them. My meticulously formed opinions would be his conclusions. I thought I was fine with this. If my words came from a male mouth, then they might be listened to. If my tongue were patched onto his tongue, he would finally say meaningful things. Beautiful, fanciful prose, like a fountain from his mouth.

 Almost too late I realized the lie. I was the only one able to speak my truths. I struggled through the drugged stupor, and brandishing a scalpel, I killed him. Many say I over-reacted. That I crossed a line. That I should have aimed for the Doctors. Others, that I am truly, a woman.