draw a map
Barcelona begins in your temples,
which are full of time
but that's just a place,
just a bit of pressure. Start feeling
objective, Wisconsin or New York,
there, heat
and caffeine, not pain,
exactly. Minnesota there
is just a buzz of median highway strip.
You can drive all the way to Montana,
westward and relief! You'd hoped
for Oregon some day idle
as help because there are oceans
and there is not some day, without time
there is only Barcelona. Still.
Things move through your physical
brain and you are sheltered,
stuck in a cafe from rain fragrant, you
are warm and fed but you weren't
being. Just in the West,
alone.
Barcelona begins in your temples,
which are full of time
but that's just a place,
just a bit of pressure. Start feeling
objective, Wisconsin or New York,
there, heat
and caffeine, not pain,
exactly. Minnesota there
is just a buzz of median highway strip.
You can drive all the way to Montana,
westward and relief! You'd hoped
for Oregon some day idle
as help because there are oceans
and there is not some day, without time
there is only Barcelona. Still.
Things move through your physical
brain and you are sheltered,
stuck in a cafe from rain fragrant, you
are warm and fed but you weren't
being. Just in the West,
alone.
Parade of Rogues
You'd never pedal your stamps
unless we asked you to
and we always do
all
little kids have arches like mine
weary in a 5'o'clock queue
yellow packages plastic
packing tape smudges
into heat
by now you should know; it's been
years, Post Madame
in clean canvas
ears of rose
quietly
unburied from nut-brown shoulder-
length (tender shoulders
in canvas!) it's been
years, Oh you!
Postmistress
of roses!
I always
do.
You'd never pedal your stamps
unless we asked you to
and we always do
all
little kids have arches like mine
weary in a 5'o'clock queue
yellow packages plastic
packing tape smudges
into heat
by now you should know; it's been
years, Post Madame
in clean canvas
ears of rose
quietly
unburied from nut-brown shoulder-
length (tender shoulders
in canvas!) it's been
years, Oh you!
Postmistress
of roses!
I always
do.
A disposable blue salt shaker
the plastic kind you get at the gas station
at the junction in Ovando
when you've decided to stay at Seeley Lake
for Thanksgiving being
a highway family and a gas station
a hearth, a road keeps pulling you
beyond bends and bends
in relentless snow, plastic
salt shaker rolling a light
grind in the scallop of aluminum
baking tin you bought for the turkey not
thawing in the hatch
for holidays, let the station run
run on, Mom is snoring
in the back seat, you at the wheel reeled
almost-all-the-way-up, Dad lightly giving heavy
suggestions. Uselessly lovely
ice, grey-flecked peaks and sky of opalescent
haze, a baby's colossal stone tongue sinking
into mud and deep pine black and smeared
snow. A place feels in this tire-slush
hush moving outward and inward and aging
and you say you nearly understand the man who killed
and Mom, O gentle dreamer stirring
in the back, she just nods.
the plastic kind you get at the gas station
at the junction in Ovando
when you've decided to stay at Seeley Lake
for Thanksgiving being
a highway family and a gas station
a hearth, a road keeps pulling you
beyond bends and bends
in relentless snow, plastic
salt shaker rolling a light
grind in the scallop of aluminum
baking tin you bought for the turkey not
thawing in the hatch
for holidays, let the station run
run on, Mom is snoring
in the back seat, you at the wheel reeled
almost-all-the-way-up, Dad lightly giving heavy
suggestions. Uselessly lovely
ice, grey-flecked peaks and sky of opalescent
haze, a baby's colossal stone tongue sinking
into mud and deep pine black and smeared
snow. A place feels in this tire-slush
hush moving outward and inward and aging
and you say you nearly understand the man who killed
and Mom, O gentle dreamer stirring
in the back, she just nods.
Jogging Poem
Was it you I saw
loitering by the porta-potties
in the clatter
of pine needles
when I stopped to flick a rock
from my running socks?
Of course not.
I'm at least a million miles away. Here
under the picnictable shade it's easy
to feel close because
of cut wood, or burnt wood,
and the little breeze that smells like Waldport
in June even though it's Mediterranean
February, how terribly lonesome.
In these flights of farness even
I smell the sea
in the downy back of your neck
riding in the back of my sister's van
and under the rectangle of rearview
you catch my hand
and I hear the soft scrape of your knuckles
as you rub your neckbone
and distill that seasmell.
Even that, after all
and as nothing as I here
have to do with anything, I think
on dark trains
and in discotheques
but small stuff can be strong
and lodge in socks
Was it you I saw
loitering by the porta-potties
in the clatter
of pine needles
when I stopped to flick a rock
from my running socks?
Of course not.
I'm at least a million miles away. Here
under the picnictable shade it's easy
to feel close because
of cut wood, or burnt wood,
and the little breeze that smells like Waldport
in June even though it's Mediterranean
February, how terribly lonesome.
In these flights of farness even
I smell the sea
in the downy back of your neck
riding in the back of my sister's van
and under the rectangle of rearview
you catch my hand
and I hear the soft scrape of your knuckles
as you rub your neckbone
and distill that seasmell.
Even that, after all
and as nothing as I here
have to do with anything, I think
on dark trains
and in discotheques
but small stuff can be strong
and lodge in socks
Reading Lolita in Bed
I'm speaking awfully abstract now from my sheets
cotton of light by morning to pigeons which I hear only when
I feel turned on (don't take this the wrong way) like
a zombie and the air
entering my throat
is rigid because stones are too old,
because I've been alone for a long time in this head
and have to make do wine or water or coffee
and I take sips from each an even number of times to protect me from the air
which will choke me if it wants.
I had a dream in my bed which is the same bed as ever
once long ago that you had stood next to me in a cafe
the same cafe as ever and because I make things out of air
I had to get up and see you, same as ever but you
handled my change like a water cooling my throat at a party
I touched your back to move past like the air has to do and you
took from it impossible to
decide a girl is pretty can pull her out of a bed or up a mountain (it's just
one boot in front of the other) just now I heard meadowlarks
because you weren't looking or because you were and
you stayed anyway and You can't.
I'm speaking awfully abstract now from my sheets
cotton of light by morning to pigeons which I hear only when
I feel turned on (don't take this the wrong way) like
a zombie and the air
entering my throat
is rigid because stones are too old,
because I've been alone for a long time in this head
and have to make do wine or water or coffee
and I take sips from each an even number of times to protect me from the air
which will choke me if it wants.
I had a dream in my bed which is the same bed as ever
once long ago that you had stood next to me in a cafe
the same cafe as ever and because I make things out of air
I had to get up and see you, same as ever but you
handled my change like a water cooling my throat at a party
I touched your back to move past like the air has to do and you
took from it impossible to
decide a girl is pretty can pull her out of a bed or up a mountain (it's just
one boot in front of the other) just now I heard meadowlarks
because you weren't looking or because you were and
you stayed anyway and You can't.
creating a soundtrack for health
we worshipped tape deck and broadcast simon and garfunkel righteous brothers
tv-room sofa dad’s mustache always fretted with reeking membranes of rum.
i left him for the porch--paper-backs and crickets soggy drawings in the mossy spring.
blackberry summers i severed grass daydreamed of boys with highschool hair assembled
my bicycle watered dirty lettuce gardens felt ashamed to think about shaving my legs.
we worshipped tape deck and car stereo the beatles led zeppelin jimi hendrix.
outside in the cracks of the rhododendrons spiders sustained the same for ever and still
cruel queer smells seeped from dad’s room his tan eyes unfocused his eyelashes tangled.
i left him for the grocery store—egg noodles and cream milk butter alien-scented potato.
back in the car stuck between that steaming machinery and the velvet underground
searing floor of the parking lot pressed the sun sank me into my seat.
i left my seatbelt on dragging thoughts through all the things i could be angry about.
girls from school all those poor lovely people dead and mom buried in those tv lights but
her jaw sifting not knowing where to put cheeks arranging lips tiny trickling sounds.
i worshipped my cd player radiohead and nick drake and once dad but now he’s watching
and who are belle and sebastian and when did you get so tall and are you a lesbian now? but just
now let daisies dangle upward from the ground tufted little honey bees dipping and the sunlight
and i worshipped them all this song braided in and i smelled the potato in the bag next to me and
i leave the car somehow and when i open the door i’m sure we’re all mumbling toward better.
tv-room sofa dad’s mustache always fretted with reeking membranes of rum.
i left him for the porch--paper-backs and crickets soggy drawings in the mossy spring.
blackberry summers i severed grass daydreamed of boys with highschool hair assembled
my bicycle watered dirty lettuce gardens felt ashamed to think about shaving my legs.
we worshipped tape deck and car stereo the beatles led zeppelin jimi hendrix.
outside in the cracks of the rhododendrons spiders sustained the same for ever and still
cruel queer smells seeped from dad’s room his tan eyes unfocused his eyelashes tangled.
i left him for the grocery store—egg noodles and cream milk butter alien-scented potato.
back in the car stuck between that steaming machinery and the velvet underground
searing floor of the parking lot pressed the sun sank me into my seat.
i left my seatbelt on dragging thoughts through all the things i could be angry about.
girls from school all those poor lovely people dead and mom buried in those tv lights but
her jaw sifting not knowing where to put cheeks arranging lips tiny trickling sounds.
i worshipped my cd player radiohead and nick drake and once dad but now he’s watching
and who are belle and sebastian and when did you get so tall and are you a lesbian now? but just
now let daisies dangle upward from the ground tufted little honey bees dipping and the sunlight
and i worshipped them all this song braided in and i smelled the potato in the bag next to me and
i leave the car somehow and when i open the door i’m sure we’re all mumbling toward better.
Corollary
maybe it's tiny maps you've hidden
blue-green behind the shutter of your eyelashes
long ago this town was watery, photosynthetic, insurgent
now rivers and canyons hide in tiny fish scale, in that secret swish
behind your lids where they live again only in flash
flash when your smile projects their light onto walls.
I don't know you but I know your hair
Pattee Canyon dirt—I mean August drought dirt when
stones of the creek bed (which once looked glassy and
blue-green under the swirl of breeze-and-cottonwood dazzle
like your eyes) become the color of dust and sunlight.
I've never seen you in the sunlight—only in flash of window
in the cafe where you work—and I am much younger than
my sisters who tell me there is no secret
but I don't think the known can travel person-
to-person (otherwise all those books I read
would have given me more years than twenty-two) but can only be harvested
from frozen acres and water and heartbreak and
I'm thinking there are so many good secrets like chewing
slowly and wearing sunscreen
some lead to cruel love and war and murder but
they are the only maps we have to this town.
and because I was twenty-two when you slid
into the window-light I saw the momentary comet
of your face, and if we were married I wonder
would your face be beautiful behind spinning dust
of headlights, under the gray-yellow light of years,
kitchens, I won't say I love you, no, because I don't
know what that means and because there are
secrets and I won't mind if I never know you as long as
your hair keeps the weather warm.
blue-green behind the shutter of your eyelashes
long ago this town was watery, photosynthetic, insurgent
now rivers and canyons hide in tiny fish scale, in that secret swish
behind your lids where they live again only in flash
flash when your smile projects their light onto walls.
I don't know you but I know your hair
Pattee Canyon dirt—I mean August drought dirt when
stones of the creek bed (which once looked glassy and
blue-green under the swirl of breeze-and-cottonwood dazzle
like your eyes) become the color of dust and sunlight.
I've never seen you in the sunlight—only in flash of window
in the cafe where you work—and I am much younger than
my sisters who tell me there is no secret
but I don't think the known can travel person-
to-person (otherwise all those books I read
would have given me more years than twenty-two) but can only be harvested
from frozen acres and water and heartbreak and
I'm thinking there are so many good secrets like chewing
slowly and wearing sunscreen
some lead to cruel love and war and murder but
they are the only maps we have to this town.
and because I was twenty-two when you slid
into the window-light I saw the momentary comet
of your face, and if we were married I wonder
would your face be beautiful behind spinning dust
of headlights, under the gray-yellow light of years,
kitchens, I won't say I love you, no, because I don't
know what that means and because there are
secrets and I won't mind if I never know you as long as
your hair keeps the weather warm.
just a little shit-talk
silence fit nice with the
still of July dusk and you
on your cruiser a few
feet nearer the canyon than
me on my roadster. flat
asphalt made you nod without
looking at me. I don't see
why I wouldn't have told
you a story. we just met.
I wanted you to know me but
your head dipped then
a bit. your face sloped
seemed you already did.
under
cottonwoods there was a
dance of silhouettes where
the road began
to furl up the hip of the
mountain which had been
yellow sun and now
in dimmer air held the
glow of that day. shades constant
while I loved you more
sometimes and sometimes less.
I could tell at a bend
for a snack because i
saw your eyelashes
quake in the still.
later your fist
tightened on handlebars when
I just couldn't drop
the subject. you must
have wanted to beat me.
I was watching you
when I sped over the slick
mud and you laughed when
I fell then swerved in
my tracks and hit too. you
were still laughing.
still of July dusk and you
on your cruiser a few
feet nearer the canyon than
me on my roadster. flat
asphalt made you nod without
looking at me. I don't see
why I wouldn't have told
you a story. we just met.
I wanted you to know me but
your head dipped then
a bit. your face sloped
seemed you already did.
under
cottonwoods there was a
dance of silhouettes where
the road began
to furl up the hip of the
mountain which had been
yellow sun and now
in dimmer air held the
glow of that day. shades constant
while I loved you more
sometimes and sometimes less.
I could tell at a bend
for a snack because i
saw your eyelashes
quake in the still.
later your fist
tightened on handlebars when
I just couldn't drop
the subject. you must
have wanted to beat me.
I was watching you
when I sped over the slick
mud and you laughed when
I fell then swerved in
my tracks and hit too. you
were still laughing.
On Being an Angel
After a just
breath summer
(peach mumble blackberry slump),
strange to be so
restlessly content
(musical-spined).
I finally
lined my mailbox
(dun brown rabbit fur);
finally arranged
all the teacups of
things that
have been said
(sideways slide of eyes).
I told a fairy tale rather awkwardly and I feel very small.
(I am sad and proud and sad to be proud but sad).
Oh my bed lies flaccid waiting for me; I cannot reject it and will go now to be bones in it.
breath summer
(peach mumble blackberry slump),
strange to be so
restlessly content
(musical-spined).
I finally
lined my mailbox
(dun brown rabbit fur);
finally arranged
all the teacups of
things that
have been said
(sideways slide of eyes).
I told a fairy tale rather awkwardly and I feel very small.
(I am sad and proud and sad to be proud but sad).
Oh my bed lies flaccid waiting for me; I cannot reject it and will go now to be bones in it.
Poem for a conversation on a telephone
In June I learned the quieter streets
to your apartment. Over alleys
and the fusion of dim moons
our slide was sideways. You followed me
down Higgins in long strides.
In the streetlight your verbs
looked muscular, your eyes bruised.
Your lips and the sound of your spine
by the river seemed big. Between
my white socks and polka-dots, I saw
the strange field between words and things
where people come together.
Because I allowed myself to wander
sidewalks and daydreams I thought
I loved this world or myself.
I wrote fairy tales. For years
I'd been using pencils
so I'd be forced to not erase.
I started this poem on a night I don't understand
changed. We have to go elsewhere.
I can't arrange the days, stones, things that were said.
Summer was warm so my shape depended.
Against the things you said I kept setting wrong.
I felt small. Hoarded needles. Didn't want dinner.
Just the same, I eat.
My mouth loves its own circular grace,
shedding the frustration of things that were whole.
to your apartment. Over alleys
and the fusion of dim moons
our slide was sideways. You followed me
down Higgins in long strides.
In the streetlight your verbs
looked muscular, your eyes bruised.
Your lips and the sound of your spine
by the river seemed big. Between
my white socks and polka-dots, I saw
the strange field between words and things
where people come together.
Because I allowed myself to wander
sidewalks and daydreams I thought
I loved this world or myself.
I wrote fairy tales. For years
I'd been using pencils
so I'd be forced to not erase.
I started this poem on a night I don't understand
changed. We have to go elsewhere.
I can't arrange the days, stones, things that were said.
Summer was warm so my shape depended.
Against the things you said I kept setting wrong.
I felt small. Hoarded needles. Didn't want dinner.
Just the same, I eat.
My mouth loves its own circular grace,
shedding the frustration of things that were whole.
To an old friend from Big Sky Village
Town is not the same.
There are yellowbells and sunlight and people I can't,
though they live in town, call townspeople.
Nothing needs scouring so rushes are left alone
and the brewery only does business with travelers.
These people look like boiled eggs perfect in their cups,
ski lifts which are bright against the hot sky like clean dishes.
I couldn't find a bar.
Your shadow in the hotel looked like Fred Astaire.
I looked away.
Because I needed a poem I imagined
driving through with a dying aunt but all our meals tasted like water too cold for the flume
and in a town that's always afternoon it's hard to admit you're afraid of being alone in the ground.
And it isn't the same. Next to deglassia
I couldn't remember loving words,
looked at the page and this was the next one, wide
because there were no margins
because I stopped imagining them.
For no good reason
you are crouching in the needles.
I didn't want Judy to die but I hoped those towns I walked with you would.
Or I would. And then write others.
It's been years in all places and I've been good near and far myself,
made gentle poems and neighbors, dug biscuit root
and just a moment ago I was nothing on a clean steel bridge,
sun extinguished a match lit in the larches far below
but now I must be remembering everything wrong.
There are yellowbells and sunlight and people I can't,
though they live in town, call townspeople.
Nothing needs scouring so rushes are left alone
and the brewery only does business with travelers.
These people look like boiled eggs perfect in their cups,
ski lifts which are bright against the hot sky like clean dishes.
I couldn't find a bar.
Your shadow in the hotel looked like Fred Astaire.
I looked away.
Because I needed a poem I imagined
driving through with a dying aunt but all our meals tasted like water too cold for the flume
and in a town that's always afternoon it's hard to admit you're afraid of being alone in the ground.
And it isn't the same. Next to deglassia
I couldn't remember loving words,
looked at the page and this was the next one, wide
because there were no margins
because I stopped imagining them.
For no good reason
you are crouching in the needles.
I didn't want Judy to die but I hoped those towns I walked with you would.
Or I would. And then write others.
It's been years in all places and I've been good near and far myself,
made gentle poems and neighbors, dug biscuit root
and just a moment ago I was nothing on a clean steel bridge,
sun extinguished a match lit in the larches far below
but now I must be remembering everything wrong.
poem from a foreign country, thinking a little about top forty
I stood singular still and watched a crow at the fishmarket/
his eyebaubles his walk caffeinated invented him, framed him/
a small and important old gentleman, black black suit/
I felt under this seeing a pebbly significance/the stumbling of this crow a shrine which reminds to forget/but I remembered you who I also watched and who also invented me with watching, with why does she stare at birds
I felt this catching of sight, your making of me
but you needed my fishmarket visions so little
And this is how I arrived--past iron gate down alley of carsounds/
room selected way pointed behind hallways staircases heavy locks and there a bed/
quilted, dotted with a succinct pillow, blue suitcases stratified, an open window/
I watched the passage of an unfamiliar sun across the strange wall of afternoon.
And became a traveler, a witness of comings and goings. Outside to the left of my new windowI found your broad brown face housing certainty and distance which drew closed/
between your black black brows with each rushing crackling drag
of a cigarette. Then I thought I knew the meaning of drags.
I stood singular still and watched a crow at the fishmarket/
his eyebaubles his walk caffeinated invented him, framed him/
a small and important old gentleman, black black suit/
I felt under this seeing a pebbly significance/the stumbling of this crow a shrine which reminds to forget/but I remembered you who I also watched and who also invented me with watching, with why does she stare at birds
I felt this catching of sight, your making of me
but you needed my fishmarket visions so little
And this is how I arrived--past iron gate down alley of carsounds/
room selected way pointed behind hallways staircases heavy locks and there a bed/
quilted, dotted with a succinct pillow, blue suitcases stratified, an open window/
I watched the passage of an unfamiliar sun across the strange wall of afternoon.
And became a traveler, a witness of comings and goings. Outside to the left of my new windowI found your broad brown face housing certainty and distance which drew closed/
between your black black brows with each rushing crackling drag
of a cigarette. Then I thought I knew the meaning of drags.
teacup collection
--
we dropped
with a burst
pronounced from the clouded grave
cement prisms sloped from your porch
hit the toothy sidewalk
into the gap
here
water could touch us
--
we fixed our scarves
around our heads
(proud of our waves
you and i both) but
we waddled
shrubs old women
laughed as sisters
though
i never told you i dreamed
i kissed a man with black hair smelling
thick of apples
and met you in the morning
deposited by the peculiar
universe
--
you tell me
under great palmate maples
over sidewalk tectonics
how afraid you were as a boy
i take you firm in my palms
your arms veined
i marvel at your devotion to suffering
i never eat
you titter but
this is you precise
a thin man now who lets feet soak (mine
safe in tall boots)
for the sake of what we call rain
--
denim sucks at the backs of our knees
we holler in dirty wet
overtake frowning facades on front street
(i wish to be a thing tiny and sexless
to love in ways
being a woman can't confuse)
perspiration
stuck about bricks
lulled now
we see your places
(a desert sky flanked with a thousand crested sparrows!
a graygreen riverbed tells moonwort daydreams!)
--
past lignin-flap screen
around coffee noise
we inhale to earwax intimacy
we descend together into teacups
sip steam
hot fogs
yellow letters
we remembered from faraway summers
now
i see unburied
black scratches you've grown a beard
ragged patches of pink skin
textbooks and telephones slide wanton from my palms
exhale
and shoulderbones
now
this only thing happened in the world
--
we dropped
with a burst
pronounced from the clouded grave
cement prisms sloped from your porch
hit the toothy sidewalk
into the gap
here
water could touch us
--
we fixed our scarves
around our heads
(proud of our waves
you and i both) but
we waddled
shrubs old women
laughed as sisters
though
i never told you i dreamed
i kissed a man with black hair smelling
thick of apples
and met you in the morning
deposited by the peculiar
universe
--
you tell me
under great palmate maples
over sidewalk tectonics
how afraid you were as a boy
i take you firm in my palms
your arms veined
i marvel at your devotion to suffering
i never eat
you titter but
this is you precise
a thin man now who lets feet soak (mine
safe in tall boots)
for the sake of what we call rain
--
denim sucks at the backs of our knees
we holler in dirty wet
overtake frowning facades on front street
(i wish to be a thing tiny and sexless
to love in ways
being a woman can't confuse)
perspiration
stuck about bricks
lulled now
we see your places
(a desert sky flanked with a thousand crested sparrows!
a graygreen riverbed tells moonwort daydreams!)
--
past lignin-flap screen
around coffee noise
we inhale to earwax intimacy
we descend together into teacups
sip steam
hot fogs
yellow letters
we remembered from faraway summers
now
i see unburied
black scratches you've grown a beard
ragged patches of pink skin
textbooks and telephones slide wanton from my palms
exhale
and shoulderbones
now
this only thing happened in the world
Letter to Jorge Teieller from the USA
My grandfather never sang to the black roots of almonds.
He never spent cold days, as I do, in rocking chairs.
I write in India ink; his home was the city. His garage held a truck.
He endured the wind driving, elbows tucked in, cigar lit, cursing Ike.
My grandfather was an orphan and an immigrant. The morning was a vast chunk of Kansas.
A plow. A bottle of whiskey.
Those years even God didn't know him.
My father appeared one day in Chevy grease in the California garage.
Grandfather went on playing poker in the dining room with smoke and linoleum.
My father sat alone with Orbison records while other boys tortured stray cats in the alley.
Put tiny mirrors on their shoes to catch the secrets under girls' skirts.
Father dreamed of being an accountant, of seeing the Badlands from an RV window.
He watched the news. I was born between programs.
I tried to touch earth but only found the wet sod of suburbs
which sounded like basketball hoops and GNR tapes.
I never heard desire in that dirt, food or destiny or maps or dreams,
never knew the language to speak with onions.
I knew telephones as small as minnows, things that were inexplicable but somehow sustained us,
I was told, but still felt despair, saw my parents almost die of silence in front of the television.
I watched storm clouds; felt drawn to sparks; took lovers.
I go on placing my hands in every stream, crouching under pine boughs in the snow, testing berries.
I look for things that I can touch: there is no other escape.
I will sew my daughters' dresses.
A hearth will be lit.
My grandfather never sang to the black roots of almonds.
He never spent cold days, as I do, in rocking chairs.
I write in India ink; his home was the city. His garage held a truck.
He endured the wind driving, elbows tucked in, cigar lit, cursing Ike.
My grandfather was an orphan and an immigrant. The morning was a vast chunk of Kansas.
A plow. A bottle of whiskey.
Those years even God didn't know him.
My father appeared one day in Chevy grease in the California garage.
Grandfather went on playing poker in the dining room with smoke and linoleum.
My father sat alone with Orbison records while other boys tortured stray cats in the alley.
Put tiny mirrors on their shoes to catch the secrets under girls' skirts.
Father dreamed of being an accountant, of seeing the Badlands from an RV window.
He watched the news. I was born between programs.
I tried to touch earth but only found the wet sod of suburbs
which sounded like basketball hoops and GNR tapes.
I never heard desire in that dirt, food or destiny or maps or dreams,
never knew the language to speak with onions.
I knew telephones as small as minnows, things that were inexplicable but somehow sustained us,
I was told, but still felt despair, saw my parents almost die of silence in front of the television.
I watched storm clouds; felt drawn to sparks; took lovers.
I go on placing my hands in every stream, crouching under pine boughs in the snow, testing berries.
I look for things that I can touch: there is no other escape.
I will sew my daughters' dresses.
A hearth will be lit.
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