5/11/26 (c)
Measuring my worth in cups
is not as tangible as it first seemed.
I use a dry cup for the bones,
a liquid cup for the blood,
measuring spoons for eyes and teeth.
I think I am accurate.
Discrepancies pile up.
The sum of my parts
is less than the whole
All my better parts are weightless
and lack the volume to measure.
I need to find a scale I cannot tip.
5/11/26 (c)
Sometimes I set a fire
just to set a fire.
I take someone’s lunch
from the community fridge
eat it at my desk.
When the notes go up
to quit stealing lunches—
I tape trolling signs beneath it—
It wasn’t that tasty anyway.
I keep that part of my life
anonymous.
I need fellow warriors
to fight beside me.
It’s a thrill—
to flex, to fume,
to throw opinions around—
what needs to change,
who has to go.
Alone, I am just cruel.
Together, we call it justice.
5/11/26 (c)
I draw a hot bath.
Turn screens off.
Essential oil in the diffuser.
Soft jazz in the background.
Returning to a good book,
I wait for my mind
to loosen its teeth.
The only thing missing
is a black cat’s company.
5/10/2026 (c)
On the Monday my father died
three strangers reminded me to smile.
Behind a wire fence
you stubbed out a cigarette
like you were killing a roach or trust.
Hey, smile lady.
Why grieve—
it’s a woman’s obligation
to improve the scenery.
Barista, you paused before frothing cream—
you’d be prettier if you smiled.
There it is. I got it—
from the executive suite.
That day I felt freed
of my father’s body shaming:
fat girl, hips too fat, thighs too thick
ugly face—don’t cry!
No man likes a sad woman.
His shaming—but not yours.
I’d rather read alone at the bar
than
hear unsolicited advice
and poorly executed pick-up lines.
Calamari intrigues more
than your touch ever could.
I remember
you wouldn’t hire me.
Over-qualified—
your clients couldn’t accept a woman.
Mediocrity is the white noise
behind business.
When you promoted me
for less than the man
before me—
and after.
They had families to support.
My daughter counted
as little as me.
When I threatened to sue—
unless you quit asking for blowjobs,
stop pressing me against
the walk-in freezer
to bite my earlobe,
You molested me at 7,
raped me at 21,
and again at 56.
Age did not protect me.
Was it good for you?
Single American men,
on the day my father died
my duty to love any man died.
Draft from 2015, FINALLY deep edited. 5/8/2026 (c)
For Art T
1.
I waited six thousand miles
and twenty-four years for your birth
to some other mother.
With every one of my five miscarriages
my womb emptied
unformed and inert pieces of you.
I seek to enfold you
in rich endometrium mulch—
delay the final push
as you wrench free—
silence
where there should be screaming.
There will never be a natural birth
between us.
2.
Drowning americanos in the coffee shop
you spoke about your childhood in Yerevan—
haunted by a century-old genocide.
You were lyrical about Inanna
and pre-Hellenistic goddesses—
heady describing
Communism’s collapse—
insurrection is your pornography.
You were twenty-four years younger.
So much knowledge,
you even corrected my English.
3.
Abruptly
you kissed me.
Our nose posts clinked together
like a flamenco dancer’s castanets,
a precise, complicated rhythm
one had to live to know.
I inhaled your exhale, lavishly,
slow as savoring champagne, your exhale—
the only air worth breathing.
And for a moment, I thought,
maybe I can do this again.
4.
When you found me
I was storing fat
like an American black bear
preparing for hibernation,
an aging mammalian alchemist
no longer cultivating milk.
Little remained
of the desires rising
behind stalagmites—
this want so sudden, unexpected—
it felt violent.
I am too old for colostrum,
milk gone thin—
I am a fraud of a mother.
With you, what else could I be?
5.
You traversed continents
and wherever you tarried
mothers surfaced—
mini-mothers, mothers-to-be,
monotremes, marsupials,
wounded women
hooked by the chance
to nurture,
to be in your narrative.
I am not the only mother
to tongue-trace
your indecipherable map of ink—
to touch the steel-filled,
the empty piercings
scattered like initiation wounds
from a tribe existing only
in your imagination—
I am not the only mother to think
I could thread them all
with fish wire
and tether you to my skin
connecting us
in a resplendent amalgam of pain.
I was never the only mother
to molest and exalt you.
6.
I tell you—
You are the gist of all my memories.
Every recollection holds you—.
we are two incoherent stories
that merge into a whole.
I tell you—
I was in the shadows at your birth
I watched your naivety break.
It was not my place, not my skill set,
not my doing or undoing
to move you from fugue to joy.
Yet I am but a ghost
of your mother
crossing through.
5/9/26 (c)
I step away.
My city apartment becomes
a mountain retreat in dead winter—
Gaia’s womb
where I gestate
listening beneath
the surrounding chatter.
5/9/26 (c)
I remember
brushing off the dirt,
rubbing my knees, crying,
then standing.
My friend survived leg bone cancer—
for a decade now
has limped, a cane for balance.
Another, wheelchair bound,
removes prosthetic legs
at the bar for comfort.
A single misstep can set me back two years.
Together, we stand
though we do not easily stand.
5/4/26 (c)
Nightmares
in the devil’s hours—
every mistake,
including my birth,
all the miscarriages—
my body agreeing with my mother—
5/3/2026 (c)
I did not think I’d live this long,
to see my shadow and self
fully aligned—
both anxious,
still speaking harshly—
in agreement.
I am rich with time
not angling god to give me more.
Behind me are dead monsters—
Minotaurs, idealized boyfriends,
sadistic bosses.
I did not think
it would feel this luxurious.
from the mid 2000's & incomplete. 4/2026 (c)
Cruelty attended my birth
and when Mama said she didn’t want me
Cruelty claimed me.
Cruelty even attended my grade school—
knuckle-sandwiches to the gut,
a little terror on the playground.
Cruelty was worse at home.
Cruelty loved me
more than the others.
I got the belt—
my brother got the buckle.
Cruelty’s love was fickle.
Cruelty drowned my cat.
When my cousin molested me,
Cruelty wished
he’d thought of it first.
I married Cruelty to keep him close.
He pawned my jewelry,
ran up my credit cards.
He couldn’t stand my success.
There was nothing about me
Cruelty didn’t criticize.
Sometimes I grow tired.
But whenever I leave—
he’s still there.
Another 1990s poem finally finished. 4/2026 (c)
What do I know about angels,
Cherubim, Seraphim—
Incubus, Succubus—
an assemblage imagined
to praise or accuse?
If man is in a forest and an angel falls
how is it we pretend to hear it?
I don’t know about Russia
beyond its shifting sprawl on a globe
juting into the Chukchi Sea.
I have nothing I can say about Marc Chagall—
beyond comments about color—
his visceral use of red,
I misinterpret the floating brides,
mules on roof tops, rabbis—
which may symbolize wisdom or intolerance.
I was never one to cherish my roots.
Why do I feel required
to understand everything—
and understand nothing?
I cannot remember the last time
I used the word medulla oblongata,
and when in pain—
am uncertain it originated
in intestine, muscles, bones.
I know myself so little.
I know my lovers even less.
Sometimes I can calculate
what will make them smile—
a surface spark.
Beyond that,
knowing is fiction.
Started in the mid 90s. 4/2026 (c)
I was trying to place Hell.
I was certain it lay
beneath Earth’s crust.
The core is hot enough—
but what man can pass through that mantle?
Brush aside leaves and litter,
push through humus, clay, sand and silt,
shovel dirt too dense even for water—
eventually one hits rock.
What then?
It’s a long wait ,
no guarantee tectonic plates
will shift enough
for souls to slip through.
I found similar problems
trying to locate Heaven.
Outside gravity there is no “up there”,
only finite space
looking infinite.
Angels in white—
eternally screeching
rejoice, rejoice
What is the point of that?
God could be perfect,
omnipotent, everlasting.
God could be anything.
Let’s say God has a hair-lip
limps. Wears a colostomy bag.
I think he is ineffectual,
even if somewhat loving.
He keeps himself distant
letting humans be humans.
4/2026 (c) a rewrite of a 1990s piece, never finished.
That spring the playground games shifted.
We girls no longer linked arms and marched
leg over leg, sweeping up boys
like in a trolling net, or a steam roller.
Hopscotch and jump rope were now
miles behind us.
We lounged on the grassy hill
chaining daisies, pointing out
the charm of one boy or another
playing baseball in the field below.
I couldn’t quite manage
the daisy chains’ precise knots.
The heads kept popping off.
Other girls took up my chains,
said I was incapable of delicacy,
better suited to gum wrappers
or pop-tabs.
That spring we started writing slam books,
pointing out each other’s new fat,
training bras, braces, our bodies
exploding outward, remade
into something unfathomable to me.
The cooler girls spent a lot of time kissing,
tasting the boys,
as if the boys were consumable,
were endowed with a nourishment
I was starting to want.
4/2024 (c)
I had no vocation for religion.
My pastor saw it.
When he baptized us
in the compound’s pool
he asked—three times
if I committed my life to God.
He asked the others once.
Cindy—my roommate—
regretted kissing a past boyfriend.
Chastity mattered more
than Cindy ever would.
While drying off
I’d given Alan a look— I thought said
I was suitable to marry,
despite a broken hymen.
Alan looked frightened,
and moved to the other side of the pool.
4/2026 (c)
One ate wasabi at happy hour,
another horseradish and coffee,
then leaned in to kiss.
One didn’t regularly bathe.
His sweater stiff with dried sweat.
He tried to cage me in an embrace.
Another knew that rape would be time efficient.
One complained that I was bossy,
then insisted I take the lead
and plan everything.
Several were already married.
Many lied on the dating app—
about age, height, occupation.
In person, they all man-splained.
Each of them said
they were willing to try to love me.
4/2026 (c)
In missionary school we were told
Adam and Eve had sex—
that is why God evicted them from the garden
though I was never sure how they could
populate and subject the earth without it.
All forty of us in the commune—celibates
male and female, sworn
and re-born virgins—
eschewing kissing, intimacy, romance
except for the six married team leaders—
told us
that Satan enters the soul through used genitals,
access points that couldn’t be plugged.
Satan worming up through secretions,
embedding his tail in the uterus,
putrid whispering into our ears
told us
marriage was a church
and fornication ruined the foundation.
Better to be like the early church fathers:
Ammonius searing his flesh
with a flame-red iron,
Old Pachon placing asps onto the scrotum.
I found that furtive, unfinished
hand-jobs from Merzog kept me safe
from the ultimate sin—
my pleasure.
4/2026 (c)
I don’t know, call me old-fashioned.
I never got into erotic asphyxiation.
Maybe it was because after months
I still never knew his last name,
or where he and his family lived,
only that when he texted
occasional offers
of what felt like timely,
necessary orgasms
they meant his meaty hand
around my throat,
pressing—
until I pictured a snapped hyoid bone
or a busted mandible, trachea.
I felt captive.
He wouldn’t engorge,
couldn’t ejaculate
and I believed this threat of harm
was the closest to pleasure he’d come,
and I am, if nothing else,
reciprocal..
4/2026 (c)
I can’t picture it now—
the celibacy Michael and I vowed in 1976
when we were seventeen and nineteen.
He moved from Washington to Texas
and I thought it was love.
In 1872 England,
the age of consent for prostitutes
was raised from twelve to thirteen.
I was never a prostitute,
though Michael’s friends suspected I was.
They reported every indiscretion—
a hallway conversation with another boy,
that joy ride with friends in Victor’s cloth-top.
My virtue proved through betrothal
bound me—a chastity belt,
wrapped feet, that wouldn’t carry me away.
4/2026 (c)
In the 16th century
the Scientific Revolution was new—
the sun quit revolving the earth,
yet, witch trials flourished.
A quick escalation—
gunpowder—
which my great-great grandfather used
even in the 18th century
to blast a throughway in the Rockies
and the shiny bayonet
in the Puget Sound war,
stealing Nisqually farmland,
destroying cosmologies.
The M16 cousin Ronnie lugged
across the Mekong delta
guided missiles, drones,
high-volume production
my nephew used
in Afghanistan.
Science so effective—
everywhere I go
my language is spoken,
my money accepted.
As if I am civilized,
as if the story I’ve been told
is believable.
As if I couldn’t reject it—
even if I wanted.
4/2026 (c)
Like my ancestors—
drinking leaded water,
living on labor and bootleg—
my body resists happiness.
Doctors blame my behavior—never named,
so never changed—
for the anemia, failing kidneys,
the miscarriages.
I carry four generations of blood—
and everything hurts.
4/19/2026 (c)
There is enough—
the wishing well filled
to the high line,
its mouth enclosed by
stone teeth, worn blunt.
Some draw by bucket and pulley,
trying to quench
the thirst of many.
A farmer uses a cup
and drinks during breaks
to replenish what he’s lost.
I use a porcelain espresso cup—
fragile, diminutive—
sometimes I use a thimble.
I drink often,
so it does not flood me.
3/31/2026 (c)
It’s hard to say what counts.
I don’t think it’s fair to me
to start tallying up
sex partners before the first orgasm—
or without one.
Without orgasm
sex is either practice,
or punishment.
So I won’t count Mike, Charlie, Paul or Eddie.
Counting starts with my husband.
That’s one.
Except Charlie nearly came through for me
thirty years later
in a rare encounter—
two-fifths of vodka
mutual grieving—
the untimely passing of his best friend—
my boyfriend.
Theoretically, do repeats count
as one, or two?
Still at one.
Chris, Warren, and James—
all impotent.
Chris groped me for hours every Friday
in the back booth
at the Fifth Avenue Bar and Grill—
I got home, climbed on my husband,
fantasizing about Chris—
how would I count that?
René is two.
Five years—more or less.
He enjoyed breaking up with me.
It made me pathetic and needy.
I won’t count anyone I was with
while René neglected me.
That discounts Kevin, Al, and Hoyt,
all married
who would probably appreciate
if I didn’t count them.
I don’t count date rape.
I am still at two.
I’d like to count Don—
that relationship was significant.
I can’t add significance—
everyone was—
a grade school crush
a first kiss,
a love letter with check-boxes to return—
we’d be up in the 100s in no time.
I’m sad to say, Alex counts.
It’s hard to count a stalker—
always there to remind me
I stopped thinking he was special.
Alex makes three.
Until I started this poem
I’d forgotten Gavin.
If one is forgettable
they don’t deserve to be counted.
For four years Rick made four.
And you,
inquisitive,
don’t get to be 5.
2015 - rev 2026
When my daughter—
twenty-three, pregnant,
unemployed, single—
asked me if I would do it
over again—
if I would go through
with it,
or would I abort her,
let some fundamentalist Christian
family
raise her—
Christ, I said “of course,”
and kept twenty years
of do-over scenarios to
myself.
Because if I could do it
again,
I would not have married
him.
My sister warned me—
I knew better than
everyone—
even when I didn’t.
Every promise turned out
empty.
I realize now I should
have married him,
taken out life insurance,
killed him myself.
I would have worn my
wedding gown
let it catch the
blow-back, then buried him in it.
Then I would have flown to
Mexico,
learned Spanish—
crusaded for the girls in
the maquiladoras.
My problems are universal.
I’ll never learn
Spanish.
I’d instruct my younger self—
studied computers,
get a job at Microsoft,
retire at forty—
a stable home,
psychoanalysis for my
daughter,
private school.
I could have married for
money.
Love turned out to be a
prison.
How could it be her,
if there was a different
father?
I am afraid to say
it.
If I could do it over again,
I would not have married.
I would not have been
pregnant.
It would be best
if I could go all the way
back—
be born into a kinder
family—
not alcoholic parents.
How could it be her
if it is no longer me?
As a mother I know
the answer
can only be
“Yes, Honey, I would do
it
exactly the same.”
