mom worse.

please send good thoughts her way.

belief

I was born and the nurses swaddled me in sterile gauze to soak up the rain. I was born and my mother’s heart went missing. I was born when the Americans claimed the moon. I was born with all the whiskey I would drink sparkling like glass chips in my bloodstream. In this chilly prairie eternity, there’s nowhere to go. Those who are broken press up against death and cry to God, and this slip into belief binds us to one another. It is a murmur of an opened reliquary; all that is left of us is rippling with the river through the city. Certain bells toll and they are never heard, hidden in graves, ringing in coffins, resounding in dirt. Wanting something pretty out of grief, the widow of a radio repairman builds wind chimes from vacuum tubes and roots of grass. She belongs to those who want to hide. She considers disappearing so that she will be declared dead. Let the stars pinch shut your eyes. Be happy that joy is rare, that your name counts for nothing, that your soul adheres to your bones. Be happy, because love conquers all. Our days are relic-filled, and we stare down the long relay of twilight to darkness. Love conquers all, but we break our own hearts every time.

my mother ...

... has broken her leg and is not well. All best wishes for her.

the television era (rev 3)

1.
Do you remember when you were five, back in the television era, when you stood in front of the TV screen and switched the picture off and on and off again, watching the reflection of your face magically appear and disappear in the glass with each turn of the knob, while the real story collapsed into a staticky white dot that quickly blinked out into blackness? Do you remember the curled brown backs of fallen leaves crumbling against the curb as the hurry of passing cars whooshed them off dashboards and back seats? Do you remember things slowly getting worse, each season wiped blank, predicate and cause-and-effect rustling like birds’ nests untwining in the maple trees that canopied our street? Barely old enough to tie our shoes, we tried to grab hold of worry swirling in mid-air, the mitten-muffled clap-clap as we chased dying things in the wind, each fragile part of speech I caught broke like cracked ice into a stutter, and you laughed because I was so serious and bedecked my red stocking cap with a sheaf of leaves stripped to their useless stems.

2.
Tonight, I can’t pull the truth through the spaces in between snowflakes. Everything that is not sky turns to sticks and is struck by a wind I can see but not feel. I open the windows and confess what I love but should not love. In such a dusk as this, I don't want to live unadorned. Standing in the yellow light by the back door landing, I tilt my head back, gather a mouthful of snow, and pray, let me swallow magic.

3.
And no, I cannot free the bird trapped underneath my skin even though its wings beat me into speech, these shattered lines, my mouth crackling with static as I burn away the kiss that turned into lover and then other. It is never so quiet as when you pass me by. I press the ellipses of my fingerprints on your shadow. You might pause, feel something, look back. And then turn away.