Grandma Louise

 3/18/2026 (c)

Grandma Louise used a cane,

turned sideways around furniture,

around baskets heaped

with air dried sheets

already gathering dust

smelling of lanolin.

 

Grandma Louise washed her hands

with baking soda and vinegar

below the kitchen window,

pausing to watch Grandpa

 mowing hay.

 

The youngest two girls behind her

shucked corn, shelled peas.

 

Nothing was thrown out.

Husks refreshed the mattress

five girls shared.

Pea shells slopped the hogs.

 

When I met her, she was old.

She sat upright in a side chair,

hands in her lap,

turning her face to look at us children

 

we were useless.

Like Him, Once

 3/18/2026 (c)

His premises may be wrong—

his conclusions about me, preposterous—

still, he is a thinker.

 

He puts in the effort.

For that, I forgive him—almost—

his sermons

on god’s role for women.

 

He says I was a sinner the day I was born,

and reminds me I haven’t stopped yet.

 

I try not to pity him, I remember

 

I was like him once,

a child of a different god,

riding a bus

toward Hollywood Boulevard,

to save the sinners.

 

I was already uneasy

with the truth.

 

Until I realized

I didn’t have it.

In the Right Hands

3/18/2026 (c)

 

In the right hands

even a feather may be a sword.

The written word, the spoken—

both can cut.

 

A sword may point;

may strike—

offense, defense,

practice for inconsequential battle.

 

A sword may be melted down—

rings or nails,

tools for building.

 

Raised high, it rules.

The feather—

tickling, teasing—

draws no blood

 

and still

leaves a mark.  

 

First Lesson

 3/18/26 (c) 

Even before I was born, I knew

it was best not to inconvenience Momma.

She was unconscious, unaware

how carefully, how quickly I slid out

from her unwelcoming womb

into the loud, jarring world.

She missed the first abusive slap of my birth

and spent the rest of our life trying to replicate it.

The Room Without Light

 03/17/2026 (c)

After decades of absence,

I am in my parent’s bedroom.

 

They are both dead

so the bedsheets aren’t pulled

to military perfection.

 

My siblings and I consider

living here again—

together—

in this asbestos-plated house,

 

where paint has been emptied

into the rhododendron bush,

the roses pulled out.

 

Everything is painted a muted pea-green.

 

A four-bedroom house and still

we fight over this room—

the one that doesn’t get light.

 

My sister and brother

have homes out of state

I have a home in this city.

 

Still, I know

 

I will be the one

who can’t stay away,

 

can’t stop looking

for an ounce of warmth.

Curriculum Vitae

 3/14/2026 (c)

The incessant started

after my tubal ligation.

I wanted to—but didn’t—

gut myself with a boning knife—

spleen myself open

at the top of the stairs.

Every month lower lumbar

and I soaked—unsuccessfully—

scalding— in Epsom salts,

or my abdomen and twenty

ibuprofen did nothing—

clots the size of mice.

 

Different experts said somatic, anxiety, weight—

a Priest said sin. I was Eve’s curse.

I needed subjection.

 

This. For over twenty years.

Pills. Pain. Blame.

 

I am going to turn my pain into an opera.

Singing boosts immune function

and releases oxytocin.

 

I am going to write a memoir

about my pain

and show others how I threw it off—

or how I kept it around forever.

Either way it is satisfying.

 

I am going to tweeze my eyebrows

into a permanent scowl.

I am going to add the history of my pain

to my elevator speech and into my resume

and someday I may scratch it off my bucket list.

 

Good Bones

 3/14/2026 (c) 

Thirty years after the civil war

a newly developed 1%

made up of the richest 4,000 in the US—

gathered at the New York Waldorf Hotel

to celebrate their accelerated wealth,

status and determination to keep it all.

 

The agricultural country flipping

to Industrial—

thank you, Pennsylvania Railroad.

Bless you, Standard Oil.

Your untold wealth kidnaps our dreams.

 

Thank you, townships, your hungry

populations crowding into cities. 

We’ve become tools—

 

My legs suffer sore locomotion

over concrete cracks and uneven floorboards.

My back is bent.

I disintegrate from the inside out.

You’ve made my body into another worn structure

ready for you to rezone and bulldoze—

or at least, abandon.

 

Thank you, Barons for those cold steel beams—

as if they are “good bones”.

 

All those lies about living forever.

All I want now is to sit and drink coffee

and read a few good books—