wide-eyed & ragged
my old girl
throwback to childhood
alley-cat poster
trash can art
/ / /
/ / /
Came back from Arizona to my spirit-kitty having gone mostly blind. The slope has grown steeper in my world.
Link to the “alley cat” by Keane poster. Or Gig.
Your bookkeeping has given way, numbers tumbling like the Yahtzee dice. You 76, at the 5-year survival mark, turned over the checkbook — can’t subtract anymore — and now little black dots send signals you know you should know. The score isn’t what it should be.
/ / /
/ / /
Happy birthday, dear Mother. (Ed/ note: I moved this from the prose lines.)
After the burn, rain. Soon rivulets will stream steep slopes, swamp creeks with dark ash. But for now the still forest is yet needled sepia, a ghost. The ground a carpet of smoke. One standing fir bark-stripped: Jesus on the Mount, hands at his sides. One valley over, two elk cows graze a green-fringed streambed.
/ / /
We turn over the family stories again & again, a reunion of witnesses to crimes we participated in, an Aha! to new data. Each others’ versions more archaeology than telephone game. A blood version of rock-flipping. The kinship of I never knew, of I never knew you knew.
/ / /
It is frustrating to write with my so-called smart phone. I will revise to include some italics. As well as the missing meat. Had a great time catching up with a favorite cousin. Wish this stone captured it better.
(Added the italics I wanted, post publish date.)
Worn floor. One step down to laundry & mud. Two to spare room. Along the seam a ridge dizzied by lack of craft. A marble lost, rolling like a pitched plank. A stern rebuke to waves. Seasick, walk this uneven floor. Pity those who, trapped, can’t evade the slippery slope, no matter how oblique the angle.
/ / /
Drunk men stand too close & ask for direction. Passive-aggressive, I say no. Then tell them to cross the tracks. They look native, sepia skin, narrow sun-slit eyes. I was born here, too, twice. Then flew. Died my hair. Bought sunglasses to lose. Assumed a damp identity covered with a thousand mosses.
/ / /
two corners
four girls
six-inch heels
acrylics, cigarettes, rhinestones, spandex
free market enterprise
sweet studies in plurals, pluralities
/ / /
Smile through the glass
& wonder: Do they smile back
at me or their own face?
/ / /
summer smells
like tomato plants
tempted to grow along kiwi
trims & lilac shoots
cages like these are encouragement
support vs. incarceration
/ / /
Damn but I love the smell of tomato plants.
blue blossoms
a banquet of stars
one of the flickers
drilling cake
soft rustle
of sparrows wending
through a plot of bamboo
uncaged feast
under the suet cage
foragers all
/ / /
(I think this wants to be in a formal form. Will have to try that. Another time.)
A FINE KETTLE OF FISH 