While the World Shut Down

 (c) 11/16/2021

When the quarantine hit, who knew,

left to my own devices I’d eat pecan ice cream

and binge murder shows every day?

A kaleidoscope of killings that left me anxious.

 

Or that I’d quit reading. Quit writing

or thinking beyond the polarizing news.

Who’s masking, who’s dying, where is the air

better or worse?

 

I was terrified of breathing—

hanging in limbo while the world shut down.

 I’d lay knotted on the love seat wondering

if I was developing deep vein thrombosis.

 

Even my indoor garden—

it flowered, then turned brown.

On Stage

 (c) 11/14/2021

The Star is undeniable—

surrounded by lesser orbs,

by flowers, birds,

glossy-backed beetles,

and bees.

 

She balances jugs of water,

Neither one outweighing the other.

 

I was a star once, up on stage.

In one hand I held a pitcher

of fear and anxiety,

leaned forward to hold back the nausea—

in the other,

gratitude and self-love.

 

For a moment I was bright.

 

Somedays the bucket of fear

weighs more

than my meagre gratitude can balance.

 

Resentment moves in,

Quietly,

eating away my resolve

to love myself.

 

Other days, I shine.

 

Repetitive Dying

(c) 2019

My average age at death has been thirty-five

and in some centuries

that has been long enough. 

 

This time, I feel behind the mark,

like I’ve lost something,

been buried one too many times. 

 

These cycles

barely even fragments

of memory.

 

I sat on the front stoop,

wearing my red and blue stripped jersey,

marbles in hand, scattered jacks. 

I was six—

freckle-faced,

and all I wanted was

to play with my big brother.

 

When his basketball bounced

off the side of the tenement

and rolled into the street,

how could I have seen that car? 

 

I recall a carriage once,

a train, another car—. 

everyone hurtling

nowhere fast.

 

Of course, I was a witch.  What woman wasn’t?

In Germany. America. Scotland.

In the house of MacDougall

they called me Chorra thon du,

the Black-bottomed Heron.

 

After his death, I turned my husband

into a wandering spectre. 

 

I didn’t drown when they dunked me. 

Branding, burning—

it took the rack

to draw my confession.

 

I did not drown like other women,

but when they bound me

to four others,

and lit us—

I burned just like a woman.

 

Again and again—

life takes me.

 

Widowed among the Igbo

my husband’s family took

my house, my land,

my children.

 

They shut me in with his body.

Flies gathered

at his wounds,

crusting his mouth and eyes. 

 

At sunrise his sisters

threw water over me,

beat me

for not grieving loudly enough. 

 

The one who shaved my head

had not yet grown

her own hair back.

 

Illness, blade, fire, birth—

it comes and comes.

 

I keep hoping for comfort,

or better, for strength enough

to bear it.

 

Instead—

 

I sit in the dark,

nursing gin.

 

Smoking,

as if it might finish me faster.

 

The way I see it,

I am already dead. 

Let it Fall

 (c) 11/14/2021

I can’t shake him, my ex. Twenty-years

after the divorce he still occupies my dream houses,

knocking legs off the table,

littering his foul moods

for me to pick up.

 

I am tired of his returns--his heart

a shoddy foundation, mold and cracks up every wall,

the crawl filled with stagnant water

that will never reach an aquifer.

 

He has paid fornothing.

On his good days he struts, proud

of my accumulation he still feels is due him—

because he chose me as his mark,

some star-crossed Rapunzel who let him in.

 

See how he shies from open window and doors,

clinging to archways?

 

Finally, I suspect he fears my dormant strength—

the thunderbolts I could summon,

the volcanic rock sixty feet below.

 

If only I weren’t still trying to be nice.

 

I have let the Universe shake it in its own time,

refusing anger.

So many disappointing men, and I’ve made sure

they all land softly--nothing broken,

blinding any light that might come in.

 

The promise of a brighter future hinges

on his being gone. Now it seems

that my house has become

my heart’s grave.

 

Come daylight - how afraid we are

to draw the Tower.

The familiar, whether wanted or not

Dislodges.

 

I let it fall.

Let the Season Turn

(c) 11/13/2021

Reckless as a naked babe riding a horse without reins,

abandoned to joy with the welcome sun—

this is the season I’ve done nothing but receive.

 

Down the street the town’s water reserves overflow.

Orchards pulse—flowers and fruit.

The dog comes running when I call.

My favorite season— I savor it,

even if it arrived late, even if it is brief.

 

Then the yard and the small field out back

fill with flittering things—butterflies, dragonflies,

white moths circling the porch light.

Aphids in the foxtail barley.

The ranch cat’s kittens gone.

 

This has happened before.

 

So many summers require a discrimination

that is often beyond me—

so many awakenings, some fruitful,

some dead on arrival.

 

Sometimes the world lifts you—

sometimes it buries you in mud.

 

When the world is ready to close—

a day, a season, a phase—

it sends you back

 

to your own rough beginning.

 

You, fool—

not finished,

but starting again.