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Threads of me

These are some of my threads, my poems. I hope you enjoy them and that they find you at a moment that you may need them. Feel free to share them with anyone you think they might have something for.  

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all poems by Laura Alfonso PhD. all rights reserved.

My little general

I can see the trepidation sitting on your stiff white lips

as you get out of the car with your British determination.

You walk beside me, a little general marching to the battlefield.

I can almost hear your whispering “Stay calm and carry on.”

You look straight ahead not breaking concentration for screaming preschoolers or lost binders.

One foot then the other, a silent battle march.

There is no drumbeat counting out your steps to the first-grade building.

I ask to carry your backpack just for something to say.

You, my wise general, realizing that your soldier may need some gesture to shore up her courage,

take your backpack off your shoulder and offer it up to me.

You were thinking of your army, trying to assess your regiments, go over your strategy.

“Well, Jack, said ‘hi’ to me yesterday. That was the first time anyone ever said ‘hi’

and Joey didn’t complain when he had to sit next to me

and the teacher didn’t point out anything I did wrong all day. Well, only in the morning.”

“It’ll be better today, my love.”

I join your march, fall in line, one foot and then the other

to hide my one tear and then the other.

 

Weeks later, I sit in a room, across from your teacher and her assistant,

In the child chair they have solemnly drawn up across from their two adult chairs,

heads and knees of warring countries gathering,

pausing to discuss the battle’s progress and perhaps outline their demands once more.

With that look teachers get when they know they are armed to shatter your world,

pitying and a little self-contented,

believing they are fighting on the right side of the war.

“He’s not adjusting. We know that he is new

but he is not adjusting and there are many areas of concern.

We think it’s because you carry his backpack.”

I stare in disbelief.

Most would have deserted by now

but my little general marches on and lets me carry his bag.

A Circus....
Then Another (13 years later)

There was a crowd or at least it felt that way

when I was laid on my back and opened

like the curtain of a circus tent.

You, my child, burst forth from me, screaming at the cruelty,

all red and fire, testing those new lungs for utmost effect

as the hands reached between my legs, snatching you from me.

When the circus was over and they had finally left us alone,

I wrapped you in a pink blanket I had brought with me.

I whispered so they wouldn’t hear us, “Not to worry.

They had to do it. They had no choice. My body has betrayed us

but a necessary evil because there is so much more we need to do.”

I assured you that this unearthing was merely symbolic

and I would fit your life right back into mine.

 

Today, the world is all fire and brimstone in your estimation.

You are juggling daggers and I am trying to dodge them, while balancing on a tightrope.

You are bursting forth, testing your false indifference and sham spite for utmost effect.

I feel your hands reaching into me, snatching you from me.

When the circus is over and you are collapsed in tears on your bed,

I wrap you in a pink blanket I have just bought for you.

I whisper so only we can hear us. “Not to worry.

We have to do this. We have no choice.” Your body has betrayed us

but a necessary evil because there is so much more you need to do.

I know this unearthing is not merely symbolic

and that your life won’t ever fit right back into mine.

​

​

Name

I have taken

a different one for myself

(little choice really)

as mine does not get me.

Names quixotically charged with so much

fault, can barely charge windmills,

not to mention

the pinning themselves to brains

or (perhaps) the pining

for the honeycomb spaces of gray.

(So perfect for hiding or making love in,

the same really).

Shakespeare laments the roses

but even when they lay in trenches

as envoys of peace

transversing, gliding on heuristics,

reliance on electricity

and its translations

and trees, the trees,

the trees are required

for the piling and crocheting of a person.

 

I have cast mine.

(Don’t worry, my love, I think we can survive this.)

Cast names, though,

they lay restless,

discontent with snake skins,

bedding instead with grasshoppers

to survive the untelling,

the untelling of the grass,

the untelling of the names.

Names,

rusting there, to a patina

so enviable

(envy, as you know, an owning of its own),

artists swoon and sweat

at palettes

(attempting pigments that can hint

as much with hue).

Patinated (or patented) just so,

so even I,

(gazing at this shade

of swallowing and swallowed)

don’t know if grasshoppers

(so unaware, my dear, of the importance

of names to us)

mean to call

or, with more intention,

sing or slay me

by that burrowed, buried name

(unlikely, I suppose,

as exoskeletons seem inadequately conducive

to betrayal)

and orchestrate

a symphony of the past

tense,

(as they chirp

in collusion with the night)

drenching skin conspiring

at each cell’s forgetting

(and urging me once more to cross my legs

and sing as well).

​

The mango tree

I swear there is a second, lover,
pulled from Zeus’ lung,
through holes in the ozone,
something akin to godly
(at least by proximity)
when I can no longer index
all the different layers
between the flesh of me
and the pit of you
and we are that secret,
that secret of the mango tree.
In this second,
my neck unwrinkles, sheen, smoothing
toward you
on your knees at fifteen,
praying and pretending, at once,
to own me.
The tracing of Orion
on your back could reveal you
(to me,
to me, to reveling, to revelation).
In this second,
when the bee does not announce its thorn,
I pitch the question with wings affixed
high,
high into the sky
(I do, my dear, I try)
‘Why can’t we have more than this second?’
but before my question can clear this density
(ours and the atmosphere’s)
I turn and see its fallen,
creature beside me,
lying bruised and half-gnawed
like the squirrel-ravaged mangoes
lying outside,
outside our door
and the flies,
so ecstatic they’ve been invited
to waltz,
cavorting with our swirling,
shed cells in the wind.

​

​

​

Silk Road

We are China and we are Rome.

We are linked by the Silk Road.

We trade in children and breaths though,

not horses and silk,

but they are still in the story.

You fell into my teacup

from a mulberry bush up above

and I unraveled your cocoon

and pulled at the silk of you.

You lay there,

the soft flesh of the inside of a lip.

To be fair and offer you something,

I showed you the heavenly horses

that gallop through me.

Entranced with their wildness,

you felt the need to tame them.

I distracted you with children

but you were not moved.

I gave you my breaths

but you were not moved.

You wanted my horses,

to master and ride them.

I don’t own them.

They just ride through me.

I know it's 2am

I won’t stay much longer

​

Don’t mind me. Really.

​

I’m just constructing

a hall and a room

and then I’ll leave.

 

I promise.

 

Quietly

or maybe I’ll slam the door.

Just for effect.

You can keep that too.

 

The hall, the room…..

 

Oh, yes, it’s for you.

 

It’s the—what if, maybe…..

 

 

 

I have filled this house with slippers

and the feet that belong to them.

Framed moments hang on these walls

to testify.

I have constructed sense

from stochasticity,

pulling a thread right through it…

 

but that hall and that room…

it haunts.

​

​

Hera's Hurricane

Hera:

I am potable water.

Don’t walk by, judging me a mirage.

Come quickly,

and make hurricanes wonder at your might.

Hurry, don’t let Saharan dust distract you.

Let patio furniture and trees mock butterflies.

Cast off all the roof and structure of me.

Lay bare my toilets and inner sanctuaries.

Leave me cleaved and razed in your wake

so even the indifferent adjuster will shed a tear

at the utter destruction of me.

Leave bits of me strewn across state lines.

When my earth inventories itself devastated,

stomp through bringing your floods.

Leave me a waterlogged write-off.

Then, come tiptoeing

and count out my pieces.

Itemize each blade of grass.

Pin them in a frame

next to those mocked butterflies.

Paint me back by number,

making sure you get the dark purple of me right,

the purple of bleeding violets.

Don’t condemn me to a lavender.

 

Mere Mortal:

Be assured that I could do all that.

I could make you wonder

in your evening cleavage and lace

when Poseidon, Boreas, Zephyrus, Eurus, and Notus arrived.

As you drown down deep,

I could make your soul settle in your feet,

as I tear at each piece of you.

But unlike Prometheus,

you, chained, would beg for the dive of my beak,

each time once more.

I could condemn you to the fate of Tantalus.

Be assured that I could do all that.

You would tremble

and wonder if finite time and urgency 

was kept from the gods

because even Aphrodite would go mad.

But what of Zeus?

Can your taste be worth his wrath?

 

Hera:

I have suffered the expectations of his bed too long.

We lie,

the air stifling with dust motes and had-lovers.

They both settle thick,

coating me as kitchen gloves.

They have muted my fingers.

Love without texture is arguably indifference.

And yes,

the ambrosia I offer you

when you take flight from the curve of my shoulder

and pass Icarus,

with his mouth still open with flies and awe,

seconds before the first drip of chemistry

disturbed his ecstasy,

will make you wonder at things yet unnamed.

And when you topple

because things without names cannot be sustained,

you will land on the soft hill of my belly

and admire the flare of my hips in the distance.

While you are still debating between the height or the fall

for where Paradise lies,

I will let you taste the gold of secrets and apples.

Don’t be afraid of Ladon.

He purrs.

Like Zeus,

he no doubt will be busy with the Hesperides.

Negligence does beget opportunity.

Besides, I promise that I taste better

mixed with fear of consequences

and regret will pale to even Zeus’ wrath

if I pass by untasted.

 

Zaragoza

I went to Zaragoza in search of my parents.

It had occurred to me to warn them one night,

as my mother cried in her bed

and my father quietly closed the front door and drove off again.

I booked a flight to Spain and asked the travel agent to subtract sixteen years.

I ran on cobbled streets shouting their names.

Old ladies yelled back from balcony windows,

cursing me in Spanish, something about siestas.

Finally, I found them at a bar with a plate of calamari.

My mom, an exotic heroine escaped from the oppression of British normalcy.

My dad regaling her with a future of palm trees and a promise: ‘a doctor’s wife’.

I was about to go up to them and tell them that this, no matter how it felt,

would not turn out as they expected.

Remind her that she hated palm trees and ‘a doctor’s wife’

was a shifting of her person to possession.

Their dreams, however, circled and danced in the air of the bar,

twinkling stars, pieces of light, sparkling, swirling, slipping in and out of drinks,

pausing on the tips of cigarettes and in the cuts of the crystal on the bar,

dipping in and out of their eyes and playing on the walls.

It occurred to me that maybe, even if I told my parents the price for these moments,

they would agree to pay this tab.

I walked out and left them there,

dreaming at the bar.

They have the right to their light no matter how it fractures…

​

....but I can’t pretend it was selfless.

I also felt three eggs wobble inside me.

​

​

I know where

I know where the devil perches…

He perches on the lips of that six-year-old boy

who runs straight for the new swing at the park

where my four-year-old son’s Asian eyes

leave the sun outdone each time he pumps his legs.

“Get ninja boy, go to China and buy noodles.”

 

I know where God resides…

In my boy’s “Hi-ya” as he karate chops the air,

tiger pounces to the ground

and comes to announce his good fortune.

“Mommy, that boy wants to play ninjas with me.”

 

I know where the devil perches…

On that hospital bed (no visitors allowed),

on the COVID floor,

when it clicks for the man

that he’s going to miss the debriefing meeting

he’s always had on his schedule

when he was going to tell her all those things

he actually meant.

 

I know where God resides…

On the knock on the door of that brick house

(he laid himself thirty years ago),

by the hospital janitor

who has come to tell the wife

her husband says he’s sorry he’ll miss the meeting

and he only ever meant he loved her.

 

I know where the devil perches…

in my knowledge that each year I pass the day

when I won’t be able to have all those conversations

where all the felt things unsaid happily expand.

 

I know where God resides…

In the memory I’ll hold onto

of you telling me

as you looked at me, your daughter,

standing outside her first house holding her first baby

that you’ll get There first to get everything ready for me

like you did here.

 

I know where the devil perches…

In the unyielding sobs of my six-year-old daughter

as her vulnerability pushes up against her

and for now, given age and place,

she shapes into,

that mommy is going to die

and Neosporin doesn’t fix that.

 

I know where God resides…

In letting me fill my arms with her each night

and mourn my death with her warmth

and partake in the thankfully ephemeral devastation

my absence will leave for one person on this earth.

​

​

​

In these sheets

Our merged-something

(so inadequate a name, I know,

but I haven’t learned to hold it yet)

fathers (or mothers) art and Heaven

(a reverse birthing of sorts)

in these sheets

and here, at night,

our hallowed shadows play by name

until I can pin yours down

and sew it to your knees.

You appeal to all my kingdoms

and their lost girls,

that follow me hidden,

falling in line,

(the gravity in their curtsies)

pounding, reverberating,

charming, chiming

the cadence of home,

the sigh of cells, of evolution,

of our inevitability,

much greater than even

the gestalt’s shadow.

You,

promising me Neverland

is stitched within and done,

needn’t be fretted about

or even sung about,

(shhh, don’t iron it out my dear, you say)

all manners of earth and Heaven,

there in the creases,

in the threads that my fingers

walk upon, laying those others down,

dominion need never look around.

You split the atoms

so we can tread or fly,

padding the buoyancy

of us, as small gods,

(don’t worry it feels spacious here,

just ignore the corners and their bruises)

with flutters of salvation

and waves of ‘there need not be more’,

(at times, it coughs and sputters)

hefting our weight

of finite and trespasses

(or maybe more hopeful,

finite trespasses).

You sneak me into war

against those who might see us,

offering me up

as a false queen

to battle the last swallow of time

and those who would behead

thumbs of opposition.

When finally

alarmed by your error

and its laughable delivery

in taking my frailty

for the glory of nebulae

rather than the guile of worms

and unstable atoms,

you order me through pocketed doors

until, at last,

when the work of the flesh betrays us,

I am made to tremble

down a plank

with my painted, dripping halo.

In these breast and milk hours,

your shadow nurses

me and all my lost fractions

which somehow,

you have claimed

(it is true, I have allowed)

and it is in these sheets,

our church,

that we practice never landing,

(a reverse praying of sorts).

​

​

​

​

My daughter

Your breasts are coming.

They are merciful though, seeming to take years,

letting me slowly adjust to this.

The other day you called me to your room,

spread out on your bed in a way that announced

you were completely unaware of the woman in you.

You were clutching your belly and calling out “Mommy”.

“Mommy, mommy, make it stop.”

You begged me to stare down God.

“Can’t you make this go away?”

Your body has taken you hostage.

The little girl is not ready.

And even though you are now, a tiny woman,

you wanted to crawl back inside me,

back to when only my body could sacrifice.

​

​

​

​

​

My promised lover

We have both known for years

that I am hers alone.

At nine, she laid me down,

upon my trundle bed

and whispered in my ear

“Weaved into breathe, my dear.

We are promised, my lover.”

 

She loves my birthdays best,

puts on her nightclub dress,

takes down her wanton hair.

She and the candles dance.

Sometimes I steal a glance.

Heavy the wax and air,

such sweetness drips bitter.

In those sparking fires,

her burn for me is there.

I am so desired.

 

On some nights, we lie close,

not yet touching, of course,

I whisper of moments,

greedily she snatches,

and re authors by might.

 

Sometimes she startles me,

approaching from behind,

so unexpectedly.

Mostly though she watches,

always just over there.

 

Again, just as before,

eyes down, I turn to her.

I whisper- No. Not yet.

Please, I am not resigned.*

 

*Edna St. Vincent

​

​

​

The death of a fish

I watched a fish die today,

partly (I am not that brave),

and wondered at the lack of fanfare.

Since there was not another fish to bear witness,

I felt somewhat obligated.

The fish struggled to the surface,

swimming vertically,

as if the air might suddenly have the answer

he hadn’t thought he needed.

Or maybe all creatures aim for the sky,

a soul-jerk reaction,

a fish Hail Mary.

Giving up,

he lay on the bottom,

gasping incantations.

I walked away.

When I returned,

the fish laid stiff.

Perpetual motion is the soul’s job.

(Don’t let the scientists tell you otherwise.)

I went out to the trashcan

to throw him away

but there was a lizard there, under the lid,

and I wondered if I should tell the lizard

what had happened today.

Instead, I buried the fish under two rocks,

mostly so as not to ruin the lizard’s day

and also so there were stones to roll away

in case he was to rise again

in fulfillment of fish scriptures

that I may have been unaware of.

An obvious fix,

more so than a profound idea.

​

​

​

​

For the sky (or a mother)

(I am wailing this

in time to the pounding of the drums, the clouds or your feet,

for you)

 

Once you held all.

So much abundance.

Cradling fullness,

nursing at your breast.

It, rocking you too.

Holding storms, tempests,

floods, monsoons and life.

Even Posiedon,

never knew this weight.

Only the satiated sky,

for one brief shining second.

A reign so complete.

A full kingdom held.

 

Pity you, pity.

No one gets to keep

this much Camelot.

Empires nurse within,

the topple of their reign.

All was made to spill,

drench this hungry world.

A rain so complete.

A full kingdom lost.

 

You were made for ache.

​

For the sky (or a mother)

​

​

​

​

​

Blanket of beads

I have a blanket filled with glass beads,

for anxiety, they say.

I am a blanket filled with beads,

full of daughters and sons,

stuffed inside me,

from birth,

traveling with me.

My beads, though,

are slipping out, my dear.

Some have fallen out,

wailing your legacy.

Others have spilled out

wrapped in my blood.

I am becoming lighter.

My gravity is seeping.

I am starting to rise,

lifting upward.

Will you still love me in the sky?

​

​

​

​

Unanswered calls

I have a dog,

a success in evolutionary terms.

The wolf has become unquestioning.

She follows beside me

wherever I walk,

eyes waiting for the next way she can obey me.

In our house,

I have tasked her with sleeping beside my son.

Each night I command her

to leave me, who she prefers to all,

to guard him in his sleep.

I’m always surprised,

on mornings

when I wake

before him

and call to her,

she will not come,

as though to say,

in this one thing,

I know better than you,

I will stay and guard your heart.

​

​

​

In the dark

You always want the lights on,

but I love better in the dark.

The sun it fills me, misguided,

but the night, with its questions of God,

unzippers the tear of me naked.

At night, I am an oyster,

oozing, gelatinous, milky-white generous,

fueled by inconsequentiality.

By day, though, I often fathom myself a pearl.

Take this wisdom that I offer,

I offer you advantage,

take me in the dark.

​

​

​

Him.....not me

You were around one,

when your brother was born,

into our space between.

Whenever I reached out to hold him,

you would howl,

presumably bemoaning my betrayal

of our pact

written in the fluid of amnion.

 

You were nine,

when I got you a puppy.

Whenever I reached out to touch her,

You would yell,

“Don’t touch her. Whatever you touch, loves you better.”

 

It was him you were after, not me.

​

​

​

It's just the natural course of events

No one questions why the San Antonio River turns here and then there

why the wolf must howl when he sees the moon.

No one questions why she remembers the first time

his eyes and fingers saw the skin of her smooth breast

and reinvented her virginity

so she settled into, moved into really, that shudder of delight.

 

No one questioned why when she came to notice

the clock’s tick-tock on the wall, counting sideways,

she ran to claim the baby she spied in the caboose

a few minutes before the train pulled away

and panting and sweating offered the proof of his legacy to him,

while pinning his mortality to his shoe.

 

No one questioned why he didn’t notice her pulse,

her breathing becoming fainter until she hardly thought of his touch.

No one questioned why he didn’t wonder at the neurons his absence freed up

and the axons that were rusting once the firing had been doused

or the fibers in her pulmonary walls that slowly, very slowly,

when they finally returned to their original size,

were slack enough, just slack enough

to be the right size for that other man who noticed her shallow breath

to spread them and steal in and quicken it.

So why do they question that?

​

​

I construct you

I construct you,

(a you, I can love)

each night just before bed.

I gather up that day's fallen pieces.

Always when the light is low

with Sisyphus advising me.

At first, hunched over the drafting table,

(this type of work cannot be done by anything but candlelight),

brick by metal rod.

I work first on your hands.

I had put God there

but when I noticed everyone admiring

the patina and the flames they can conjure

I took Him out to hide Him better.

Sometimes you come into the room.

By then, I’m spread out with all my materials,

licorice and bolts and leaves,

spilling out on the parquet floor.

“Let’s go to bed” you grumble.

“Almost” I mumble.

I wonder that you don't feel my work,

my erasing, my polishing, my mending,

the gluing of it all.

​

“Finally” you say, “you’ve come to bed.”

I allow you to raze me in a second

and then the pile of us sleeps.

Each morning when we wake,

you extricate yourself

and get straight down to the daily work

of deconstructing you,

after your doppio, of course.

​

​

​

​

That moment

That moment that you die

(there, ahead,

do you see it pacing?)

makes me love you,

desperate-like,

urging each drip,

squeezing and coaxing,

the wring and wrung of you,

so when at last

you are flung, cast,

I have won

and all there is,

is ragged,

dried and all tried,

for I have gulped you down,

drizzled you drop by ounce,

through me.

You are gurgling,

babbling,

reigning.

Let anyone try carrying away

the course of this river,

this course of you

that runs through me.

Ha! Time has walked away,

now, a fool

with his seco and emptied you.

​

​

Wholly in God's Landscape

Hail curious white rabbit,
following the lacking grace of time,
plunge my lord deep
(yes, the curtains do tell at night
of the reworking of the blessed
inconveniences)
slowly, slowly.
I’ll drink this laughing portion,
belittling me as woman,
so planted in our origin story,
quivering on that one blade
in the shade of the Taj Mahal.
Adam slayed and castles came too late.
This,
so when at last,
blessed river-fruit whisper
secrets,
I may ride upon
their vessel wombs.
(As the closest we can get
to the underbelly of someone’s God).


Mother thumbs have
not released us from Adam’s ribs.
That forseeing of the foreseen
has rooted in us
this amen-obligation,
a command weaved in cells to ‘Take One’.
I have become our Father’s creature,
whispering nonsense incantations,
(but don’t worry my lord,
often the heart mistakes the slats of bone
for the bark of trees outside its window
and dreams of flight)
and even slugs make art in Heaven’s garden.
Glistening need not announce its source,
besides there is no one listening
to my hallowed needs and abashed truths,
plucked sometimes by name
when I am brave or scoured
(yes, I know this is when you look away).
I must tell you, though, that even as I lie
here, here under you,
I’m always hoping for a kingdom of my own
where the proportions of your will

can let me sigh, undone
but instead I am shuffled and righted
(how you love me so righted),
no room for the dismantling of Heaven.
So many ways you give me this day,
and I, here, slurping your daily bread.
I have tried beseeching
the cat and the tide,
both being so unbound by consequences,
neither understands trespasses, though,
or how they come and go
(and like you, look away).


Every race for the undefined
ends at our tangled riverbed.


(Forgive me my lover, my reader,
it was only yesterday that I was told
that holes hold so much
promise and dress as sin.)

​

​

I don't know how to be here
For my daughter

I don’t know how to be here.
Do I run at you like the cat,
marking, like bruising the apricot?
Have I claimed you now,
knowing signatures own paintings?
Can I sign you, my love?


I don’t know how to be here.
Do I caress like the wind,
making off, a guilty thief,
with cells,
almost imperceptible?
Toss them up
to dance under their rain
(or {who am I fooling} reign, your reign).
Will you miss the stolen tea spoon
at your feast of fine silver, my love?


I don’t know how to be here.
Do I learn to knead
without leaving proof?
So lightly, at my wheel,
fingers caressing, shaping.
Their pressing absent
on your porcelain beauty,
attesting to my skill.
Can only stars in this universe do that
or can I arrange you too, my love?
How shall I love you, my love?


I don’t know how to be here.

​

​

This morning
(for my littlest)

This morning,
we crawl, thick as thieves,
stealing back into my bed.
We lay.
I tell you,
you can skip school
and come and nap the morning
with me.
I say,
there is a choice in this day,
you can always stay.


So young
but you already know.
You roll your eyes at me,
laughing-
there is so little choice in this day,
you can’t stay
and instead run off to

ready yourself for school.


There is so little choice in this life-
you can’t stay.

​

Morning

This morning,
when I emerge into the early light,
palm fronds are scattered everywhere.
Lush and vibrant green,
strewn across my driveway
and lying claimed on my grass.
It is obvious Time did not seize them.
God must have been at work last night.

​

​

​

Please return

Our Father,
Sometimes my feet seem so far away.
Art they in Heaven with you?
And my hands, hallowed be their name,
seem nowhere to be found.
I am convinced they must be in Thy kingdom,
just around the corner of my vision,
beside you, vacationing, waiting for my letter
but I’m not sure, if the postman ventures there.
How will my will be done here on earth,
if I cannot whisper to my hands and feet
how it all should look here where I reign
because they are there resting beside you in Heaven?
How will they know how to give me each day,
let alone arrange my daily bread,
if they repose at your side?
Forgive me my trespass and impudence, Our Father,
and I will forgive those of my hands and feet
for their trespasses against me
and their abandonment of their civil service.
I implore you to lead them not into the temptation
to give up their war in exasperated futility.
I know they are tired of posing as deities here
but please deliver them back to me
and I will do my very best to restrain them from every evil
but, Our Father, do understand it is so difficult


as you did give us free will.

​

​

​

Relativity

You, letting go of what could have been a life,
(Sentenced, you had no choice but sacrifice)

saved me the living and her plans.
I hardly paused at twenty-seven.
More recently, I have found myself calculating your age
in relation to the three I have now.
If I could have understood you as a brother or a sister,
maybe I would have etched your sacrifice a little deeper.
(Of course, your sacrifice allowed for them too.)
A decade later, tests would come back, possible genetic abnormalities,
more tests needed.
My father tried to prepare me to focus on the living once again.
But this time, as I waited,

I ached,

for the maybe loss of their brother or their sister.
Can life and mourning be so relative?

​

​

​

My brother calls

He says his childhood memories are seizing,
a merciless epileptic fit.
He feels exhausted,
tired of slaying
rebirthing cloud-dragons.
Drained,
wielding an impotent adult sword
against memories that are sealed and bound
to a tongue he can no longer discern,
he wants to sentence our parents.
Don’t.
You can bring anyone to their knees.
Besides, precedence and God come calling.

​

​

​

Unpacked Me

A series of furies were designed
and packed in my suitcase
for company into this world.
Knocking at your door,
that innkeeper of yours
who now, may wonder at the wisdom of such hospitality,
welcomed me with unwitting arms,
lugging my frightened but undaunted baggage
across the threshold,
gracefully ignoring the stench.
As time went on,
all manner of things spilled out,
children, my furies and things that smelled far worse.
You loved me still,
sponging off your boots daily.


The question lays there, in her own room,
if I could love you like that.

​

​

​

Hospital stay
and ultrasounds
every other day

“Open your knees. Let them fall apart.”


I cannot take this peering.
Every other day, I am a star,
leaping from my body
to hide among

fluorescent lights.
I am delivered,
watching from above,
a star of Bethlehem, of sorts.

​

“Open your knees. Let them fall apart.”


I watch hanging from the air,

she who is me laying there,
an alchemist, growing mysteries and answers,
in a blue cloth gown,
a stable, so humbly housed.


The machine whines as it is turned on,
perhaps it wants no part of this,
willing to let mysteries transpire.
But you, so benightedly man,
come to splay her open.
She is on your schedule.
Poking, gloved,

probing her pierce,
that first stigmata,
the tear gifted to Eve to be passed down to Mary,
to birth His answer to hell.


You peer in trying to glean salvation,
clumsy hands between her thighs,
adjusting your search with flicks of your wrist,
(is she not sacrificing enough?)
Searching the black and white pixels,
a lamentable translation,
you, as though the fourth magi,
early arriving,
come to stare into her womb,
with your invisible sounds echoing,
claiming through your science,
to offer a gift to the one who is gifting.

​

I am in the air, watching,
pitying your task,
knowing you cannot fathom this.

​

​

​

​

The declaring

There was a night,
when you were so recently come onto this Earth,
so newly ripped from myself, a proxy god,
when you gathered all my betrayal within you,
balled up your tiny fists and howled.
Your skin turned crimson,
as though an octopus,
approximating the shade for fury,
iridescent blue rings burned through your skin,
the cipher of warning.
I ran to you,
to soothe you in my arms,
to be your answer,

to be your answer.
You wailed and wailed louder,
matched only by my desperation.
I am ashamed, now, to think of it
but for a moment
I considered shaking you

so you would tremble too.
Instead, I placed you on the bed,
leaving you there to deny me
and declare yourself.

​

 

​

​

​

This morning
(for my littlest)

This morning,
we crawl, thick as thieves,
stealing back into my bed.
We lay.
I tell you,
you can skip school
and come and nap the morning
with me.
I say,
there is a choice in this day,
you can always stay.


So young
but you already know.
You roll your eyes at me,
laughing-
there is so little choice in this day,
you can’t stay
and instead run off to

ready yourself for school.


There is so little choice in this life-
you can’t stay.

​

Dyslexia

I have been saint. I have been sinner. I have been human.
I have been mother. I have been teacher. I have been tormentor.
I have been Oppenheimer, disbelieving as I saw his tears fall. What have I done?
I have been scared. I have been courageous. I have been Joan of Arc.
I have been Sisyphus. I have been Hercules. I have been Quiritis.
I have been angry. In my shameful seconds, at him. In my bravest moments, at God.
I have been Buddha. I have been Rasputin. I have been lost.
Mostly, I have been on my knees.
Why, God, give him a mind that flies, dreams that soar, and forget to give him wings?

​

Shhh, my child, the mama penguin doesn’t ask why.
She just takes her baby down to my ocean and there, she teaches him to fly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​
 

​

Each night

You have slept beside me since you were born.
At first, I would gather you to me
so our hearts could whisper and reminisce
as though still lying within a body.
Ever since you grew some agency
and could navigate this bed,
you have slept perpendicular to me,
asserting your aloneness
and mine, as well,
rejecting any obligation or promises
I may have thought our hearts had made
but always with your feet touching where my heart still whispers.
Even the atheist holds out hope.

​

​

His first lamb

The flowers came to her,

whispering of divine joy.

She laid down to let them in.

 

"I must tell you the end" and He did.

She fell to her knees.

"No. Please, no. I cannot bear this."

"I will hold you."

"It will not be enough."

"It won't" and He turned away.
 

​

Peter Pan

Our merged-something fathers art and Heaven
and there, at night our hallowed shadows play by name
until I can pin yours down and sew it to your knees.
You appeal to all my kingdoms and their lost girls and whispered boys
who come and house inside this wrecked will of mine.
Promising me Neverland is stitched and done
and needn’t be worried or sung about,
where all manners of earth and Heaven
never need show up for daily roll call
or chronology or bread.
You split the atoms so we can tread or fly,
padding the buoyancy of our small gods with forgiveness
that coughs and sputters but still hefts our weight of finite and trespasses
or maybe more hopeful, finite trespasses.
You snuck me into war against those who could see us
offering me up as a false queen
to battle swallowed time, gnarled temptation and beheaded thumbs of opposition.
Alarmed by your error and its laughable delivery
in taking my frailty for the glory of nebulae
rather than the guile of worms and unstable atoms,
you order me through pocketed doors
to scurry from catapults and slippery mermaids.
At last, when the work of the flesh betrays us,
I am made to tremble down a plank.
My halo does not reach as far as potential.
In breast and milk hours,
your shadow nurses me back to dissected seconds
that house me and all my lost fractions
that somehow you have claimed and I have allowed
and it is in these sheets and churches that we practice never landing.
 

​

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