Egg Bodies

2009 

Lauren drew egg shaped bodies 
One thin border separated the spheres 
from white, unpopulated backgrounds. 

 
With the painstaking exactitude 
of a three-year-old who has not learned 
to use a straight edge 

 
Lauren drew lines—hair, perhaps pins, 
arrows radiating out from the boundaries. 

 
I scoured for form and function—realism, 
and could never grasp that her art, 
sprung from the body-heart, 

 
a primal architecture 
not from head. 
 
Lauren said, “This is you” 
handing Warren an egg. 
 

It was easy to assume  
the lines were a study of his beard. 

We joked about this egg—at least— 
not being bald. 

 
For weeks Lauren drew radiating eggs, 
strewing sheets throughout our apartment 
common as the repeating patterns of ferns. 

 
I imagined each was another 
portrait of Warren, 
that her wariness of his company 
was appreciation 
 

until the evening she blurted 
she didn’t want him visiting 
whenever daddy was away. 
 
Lauren upturned her bowl of salad 
over his head and giggled. 

 
Warren’s head at last 
was mimicry, not model, 
 

and her reaching out 
was in a language even I understood. 

Yeah

 2006 revised 2026

God gives me a bed of tears—

that, and a wicked case of crabs.

Then he calls me a whore.

 

All around me prophets cry out:

“Come; let us return to the Lord.

For he has torn us, but he will heal us;

He has wounded us, but he will bandage us.

Let us press on to know the Lord.”

 

Frankly, I’m getting tired of this shit.

 

Every time it looks like—maybe—

I’m chosen,

he picks up the tab,

lets something slip—

how it felt to make that first poplar,

introduces me as more than a friend—

 

then he disappears.

 

No calls.

He leaves my body

stricken, desolate.

 

I’m sure he’s fucking someone else.

 

Then the accusations:

How the faithful city

has become a harlot.

 

He demands a confession.

And when I give it—

he calls me a liar.

 

Oh, he heals all right.

 

Rips my heart out,

then— I love you,

some grand gesture

lifts me off the couch,

perfume over rot.

 

Oh yeah.

 

Let us press on.

I Am Not Familiar With Sunshine

 2017/2026 (Tarot, the Sun Reversed).

I am not familiar with sunshine.

My mother is a rain cloud

and my father is gauze

saturated with chloroform and mud.

 

My energy diffuses,

dulling itself—

like pitted silver a century old.

 

But that was long ago.

 

Why do I forget

the horses we rode out on—

manes unbound,

no matter how many flowers we braided in.

 

All those voices

insisting

we were bright.

 

Still, I remember

the heat warms us,

the lawns brown

and the dirt cracks.

Tarot Judgement

 

That moment I faced myself—

unvarnished,

tempted to shut my eyes,

to stare at my feet—

 

that moment startled

like a small blue bird

in the wrong season.

 

Who have I ever been,

but slightly outside

my own knowing?

 

And still—

something in it lifts:

 

not only the record

of my failures,

but what I have survived.

 

A reckoning,

without mercy,

without disguise.

 

I reach for blue—

blue crystals, aqua quartz—

something to hold

while I learn

to look.

The Vow

 2015, revised 2026. (c) 

When I told him

that our intercourse needed to be

more “vagina-focused”

he became implacable—

a scolded child.

 

I felt his feet dig in,

his muscles tense for flight.

 

By the time I was ready

to bed him again

he announced he had taken a vow

of celibacy.

 

He said he found no pleasure in it.

The act was empty.

I was empty.

 

My desire, he said

implied possession—

something he now meant to avoid.

 

Jesus, I thought.

The lengths some men will go

to avoid satisfying a woman.

Ace of Pentacles

 

Today—coins, comfort, a garden.

 

She sits on an ornate bench

by the koi pond

bread in hand—

sourdough ripped apart,

moose milk cheese.

She eats it slowly,

as if it might run out.

 

Today she wears mulberry silk.

Once, her mother

made her clothes

from flour sacks and sheets.

 

When she goes quiet,

her assistant stands still,

waiting to be told.

 

The King of Cups

The King of Cups
is sometimes uneasy
with his responsibility.

He serves as pastor,
keeps a shop,
writes poems
no one asks for.

He aches at every infidelity—
small thefts,
insults like papercuts,
teeth knocked loose
in bar fights.

He speaks of forgiveness
as if it were a practice.

He offers his hand
too quickly.

And I don’t know why,
but I distrust him