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—

On the Meaning of Six

 (8/2025) 

In the 1600s Kepler presented a coherent theory:

planets move around the sun—

in ellipses, not circles.

 

 (The number 6 symbolizes balance

 and harmony).

 

The earth is not the center.

Humans are not the center.

Humans are brutal censors.

 

(The number 6 encourages selflessness

and duty).

 

Invaluable to navigators, Kepler’s theories

challenged world views.

 

Strangely – for those times—

the church did not execute him—

 

even though his own mother

was imprisoned for witchcraft.

 

(The number 6 is a balance between

material and spiritual realms).

 

“If the earth were to stop drawing

its waters to itself,

all the waters of the sea

would rise and flow towards the Moon.”

 

(The number 6 seeks alignment

and stability).

 

Kepler died of fever, no more, no less

happy than any of us.

Lineage

 (8/2025) 

A die-hard misanthropist, I haven’t even bothered

to acknowledge kin on Memorial Day. My great-Aunt,

however, holds regular seances to communicate

with our ancestors.

 

She has tracked our lineage all the way back

through slave-holders and land barons,

through castles and mud, past four-footed mammals,

squid, and synapsids. She has found us living

on a hydro-thermal vent among tube worms,

limpets, and shrimp.

 

I wonder just how disappointed my ancestors are

at my inability to weather the cold—

my deep fear of equally deep water—

my lack of gratitude for what others may have done

to make my small life possible—

a quiet endpoint whose only sound

is breathing.

Back Seat

 2/28/2026 (c) 

Who am I? (A woman) and where do I fit in the adult world?

(I wasn’t meant to fit in. I was meant to shake the very foundations of “normal”)

(like every woman) born into the shadow of the bomb, into the dawn of Aquarius.

 

All (our) houses (become) haunted by the person (one) might have been.

Wraiths and phantoms creep under (our) carpets.

Life is but a procession of shadows…we embrace them so eagerly,

and see them depart with such anguish.

(This) inexorable flow of the river of time,

(our) deep disappointment in relationships that… failed.

 

Leading a human life is a full-time occupation

 

(In a sexist society) …the most despised

and dispensable person…is an older woman.

(I) ha(ve) no value or purpose to men.

One day (daughter,) it will be your turn to play the role of the woman

who took the back seat, waiting for equality,

politely fading away while achieving fuck all.

 

I am frightened of things staying the same.

Wanting

 2/28/2026 (c) 

This was a class assignment, to write a poem using mostly plagiarized lines from other books. I ended up sourcing from 7 books and adding only the refrain as different takes on a line from Lacan. 

Consider this fact: just about every human has the fantasy

that he or she would make a good friend to a wild animal.

That a child was once kept twenty-two years in its mother’s womb

 by means of witches, and when born it had hair, beard, and teeth.

It’s said that after arriving in a new place,

we will have replaced the entirety of the water in our bodies

with that of the local watershed in just a few days.

(In everything, I am left wanting.)

 

When asked to count their heartbeat for a short time,

 one in four people are off by about 50 percent.

The body is the home we never leave.

We have lost the context for our longing.

We are disconnected from nature but anaesthetized

to the enormity of that loss. Our overemphasis on rationalism

has sent the feeling life into atrophy.

(I never let them see me wanting.)

 

Economic insecurity is the greatest thought inhibitor of all.

Class war is the critical battle of our time.

Foundations, Think Tanks, and the university—

 

the torture chamber buzz of anxiety that afflicts students today

(I am tired of wanting.)

 

In every settled community, the ploughshare

is of greater value, though less glory is attached to it

than the sword or any other weapon.

Reject making a virtue out of taste and consumption habits.

Be heretics. We should blaspheme.

(wanting is engineered)

 

Eschew not only capitalism but also colonialism and imperialism.

(In everything, I am trained to want.)