Breaching

 3/20/2026 (c)

 

Aunt Beulah was so pleased Ronny came home alive.

For three summers he sat cross-legged in the front yard,

Pea-green jacket, smoking home-grown, laughing—

which was strange. No one did happy in our family.

 

He finally manned up, got some shit job in Seattle

scrubbing toilets and patching drywall.

 

Vietnam wasted Ronny, was all dad said, and once

Ronny is a waste.

 

I never heard if Ronny had killed, or crept

through underbrush in a scraggly formation

of camouflaged boys—

onslaught of torrential rain, shrapnel.

I never even asked if he had a nickname.

like Injun, or Tonasket.

 

Nam and eventually Ronny became two more topics

we did not breach at the dinner table.

Mealtime was silence and hate shoveled down

with slabs of beef broiled into charcoal pucks.

On a good day, Dad ranted about gold diggers,  

racially inferiors, that Management Prick.

It was not our place to join in, but to take it in.

 

At night Mom and Dad drank Jim Beam and fought,

their resentment worming through the oil duct into my room. 

By my teens it became all about me—my deliberate mediocrity,

the marijuana in my sock drawer, my slutty influence on my sister.

I was the source of all unhappiness in that house.

 

Boarding school—good money after bad.

They wanted instead to sign me up, ship me out,

slap a devil’s piano in my hand—

 

They hoped I’d die.

 

Because Ronny left it—

because his name, my name

patched above the heart, confirming me on a short list

of combat survivors, I slept in Ronny’s coat,

 

my bedroom a triage where I bandaged wounds

peppering my frail psyche.

 

When I reached the point of no return and little fight left

I undertook a three-month hunger strike—

a siege as inviolable to me as it was invisible to them.

 

And when my sister wanted Ronny’s coat, she took it

and I let her have it.

At The Comet

 1999 (c) 

After the art-house movie

God and I walked to the Comet for beer.

 

He leaned against the bar,

poured back an IPA

and ordered another.

 

“Christ, you read too much into it,” he said.

“Can’t you take anything at face value—

 just be entertained?”

 

I started to answer—

something about the director,

how his films used to mean something,

how big budgets had changed them—

 

but he was already looking past me

to his friends racking balls.

 

“Christ,” he said,

let’s shoot some pool.

God's Work

 1999 (c) revised significantly 3/19/2026

God’s Work

 

God rages and paces the construction company’s hall.

He hires any man with a pulse,
willing to work under-scale.

The drywaller shows up drunk,
if he shows up at all.
The electrician deals drugs from his van.

Carpenters hammer and hew,
lifting rafters off-keel.

In this heaven, it rains every day.
Every sunset flawed.

If you don’t praise God,
no paycheck. No one stays long.

It is all patch, re-patch,
temporary repair.

God damns the painter
who buys his own tools on God’s account.
Damns the plumber who sleeps on shift—
while pipes burst
and water floods the floor.

God stands back,
hands clean.

He couldn’t lay a tile,
fix a breaker,
plumb a line—

and still calls it his.

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—

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.)

 

What Speaks

 2/22/2026 (c)

“What speaks to us, seemingly, is always the big event, the untoward, the extra-ordinary: the front-page splash, the banner headlines.” Stephen Harrod Buhner

 

I aim to look at the small. The ordinary.

The moments I interact with a bird on the sidewalk—

 

hello Robin,

hello Crow,

 

a chickadee that would fit in one hand—

if it would trust me, and better that it doesn’t—

 

or to watch my cat eat, a beast tamed

with bowls and catnip;

who stalks me room to room

and sleeps on my keyboard

while I try to type—

 

the sudden surprise of scent

passing by an Aphrodite Sweet shrub,

or Lilac, Honeysuckle—

 

hello Perfume

 

I choose to walk by them on my way to work

rather than the more efficient concrete

sidewalk a block over—

 

Moments I don’t tell anyone about.

They are not big enough—

 

I miss and see less often slugs and worms

that rise and writhe across the sidewalk—

I read that they are trying to escape drowning,

but stranded, they starve.

 

Perhaps my longing to see them is misplaced,

how rare to see the underworld

expose itself to the sun—

 

I always feel like I can smell them—

it’s petrichor—

rain on dry soil, geosmin spores, earthy aerosols—

 

I want to carry all these intimacies,

like suggestions, like small moments within dreams

blurring into the day. I want to wear them

like a film over my skin—

 

Last month I saw the crocus in a neighbor’s yard.

Frequently they arrive in late February,

just before the final frost. But this was January,

And somehow I felt grateful for their hope.

Tarot: 8 of Wands

 (c) 2/2026

Eight wooden staves, with spring growth nodes—

none whittled into spear points—

fly across your path, quick and chaotic,

an imprecise mirror of your thoughts. Who knows

whether you have the discernment to catch

any, if not all?

 

Some may think they will form a fence

or be used to strike a foe—

but each staff is utility itself.

 

I once took four, along with burlap and rope

and made a message board at summer camp.

We posted gratitude, gossip, and duties.

I once peeled the bark and carved figures into it

like love letters swapped with my friends.

I used one for a macrame wall-hanging.

 

With good soil and water, the staves

could be replanted, grown into a grove.

With kindling and matches they will warm us for a night.

 

Don’t believe the staves may only be used as weapons.

 

Tarot: 7 of Swords

 (2025) 

So many ideas still swarm in my Aries head,

but now like a dust cloud.

I haven’t enough discrimination left

to choose the better of my ideas. Look!

I’ve already lost two thoughts,

like dropping swords, points buried in the mud.

These are likely the best two, but who knows?

I’m forgetting memories, rejecting plans.

 Pharmaceuticals, or age, or just plain tired—

I walk into battle fields and kitchens both

not sure what drew me there. It was some object

I needed to find, or an online task, some duty,

a necessity, and already

most of my mind’s blades have become blunt.

Carrying them in a bag on my back

has become burdensome. It’s time

a protege should pick them up,

but no one has the vision I seem to have lost

I shouldn’t have imagined myself impervious to age.

Tarot: 8 of Swords

 (c) 2026 

All my doubts form a fence—

my insecurities a blindfold—

and the stories I tell wrap me like loose ropes.

What if I find the stories sweet?

What if I find pleasure in the lies?

The waters beneath my feet are shallow,

and nothing in my heart is so deep

as the rivers of previous weeks.

In the distance I hear the obscene hurrahs

of soldiers finishing war games—

wiping blood from their blades.

The King and Queen in their castle are half-asleep.

I am insignificant and therein lies the beauty--

I can stand still and think.