9 of Swords

 5/4/26 (c)

Nightmares

in the devil’s hours—

 

every mistake,

including my birth,

all the miscarriages—

 

my body agreeing with my mother—

9 of Pentacles

 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.

Cruelty

 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.

Knowing

 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.

 

Locating Hell

 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.

That Spring

 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.

Suitable

 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.

               

Happy Hours

 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.

Doctrine

 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.

Reciprocal

 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..

Betrothal 1976

 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.

 

 

Accepted Everywhere

 4/2026 (c) 

In the 16^th 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 18^th 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.

Inheritance

 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.

9 of Wands: Persistence! You'll get there.

 

9 of Cups. Exalted Love

 

9 of Cups

 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.

 

The Four Queens: of Cups, Swords, Wands and Pentacles

 

You Asked Me For My Number

 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.

Do Over

 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.”

The Knight of Pentacles

 2021 (c)

 

It is not that he is immovable.

He is responsible.

 

He is hired to guard

what others have gathered—

to consider whose labor,

whose wanting

made it so.

 

He dresses for the role—

not expression,

but recognition.

 

He knows accounts—

savings, bonds

what will be his

when the time comes.

 

He thinks of Paris—

wine, a young woman,

a weekend spent

 

But he does not go.

 He is guarding.

 

He keeps the numbers strait,

the doors locked,

his hands clean.

The King of Pentacles

 2021 (c)

He keeps champagne in his desk

for when a deal closes well.

 

Once, a deal closed early—

he took the staff kayaking

along his waterfront property.

 

He trusts the material world.

He avoids sand pits—

litigation—

prefers solid ground.

 

He trusts his body—

the sprawling home and acreage,

his kind, reliable wife,

his educated children.  

 

Everything in it’s place.

 

Don’t envy the King.

 

The wine is open—

and no one is drinking.

 

 

Egg Bodies

2009 

Lauren drew egg shaped bodies 
One thin border separated the spheres 
from white, unpopulated backgrounds. 

 
With the painstaking exactitude 
of a three-year-old who has not learned 
to use a straight edge 

 
Lauren drew lines—hair, perhaps pins, 
arrows radiating out from the boundaries. 

 
I scoured for form and function—realism, 
and could never grasp that her art, 
sprung from the body-heart, 

 
a primal architecture 
not from head. 
 
Lauren said, “This is you” 
handing Warren an egg. 
 

It was easy to assume  
the lines were a study of his beard. 

We joked about this egg—at least— 
not being bald. 

 
For weeks Lauren drew radiating eggs, 
strewing sheets throughout our apartment 
common as the repeating patterns of ferns. 

 
I imagined each was another 
portrait of Warren, 
that her wariness of his company 
was appreciation 
 

until the evening she blurted 
she didn’t want him visiting 
whenever daddy was away. 
 
Lauren upturned her bowl of salad 
over his head and giggled. 

 
Warren’s head at last 
was mimicry, not model, 
 

and her reaching out 
was in a language even I understood.