Monthly Archives: April 2015

A Sun Unsung: NaPoWriMo 2015, Day Six

When there are no birds,
will you do the singing?

Somebody has to—
otherwise, that morning
doesn’t count, and we all

have to trudge toward afternoon
unheralded as the clouds peel back
a hot dog sun or a hard-boiled egg

sun, not anything to be
celebrated, particularly.
It’s dangerous,

to let this happen. A sun unsung
is one that might chose to come

closer
and closer
and closer

until we burn in our
adoration. So it’s better,
safer, if someone does

the singing, and I’m
wondering (if there’s
a day without birds)

if that someone
could be you.

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Two Different Banana-Seat Bikes: NaPoWriMo 2015, Day Four

Maybe you would like to know
what my hair smelled like when I was born, or
what I thought about when I reached for
dust mote sunbeams and my hand came back
empty. Maybe I wonder about you in your
stiff white shoes, your hair a different color
than it is now because the second your life
begins, it sets about to change you. Maybe
years later, you and I rode down two different
hills on two different banana-seat bikes in two
different states and wondered about each other,
in a way, whether this thing that has happened,
ever would happen. But most likely, we were
thinking only about the wind, the gnats, our
sweat, how not to add new scabs to our
old ones and, as always, how not to hear
our mothers calling us home.

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When She Left: April 2015 PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day Four

We took all the saucepans down,
the pots she hung from a metal grid
in the style of an ’80s movie or
a spread from a magazine,
like the ones she would buy
at the grocery store and then
try to fit us into. But with our black eyes
and skinned knees, and everything chipped,
we would not fit. So, in time, she quit making
chicken Marsala or Marbella or whatever it was,
and we ate those frozen dino-shaped nuggets,
barely warmed. When she left, we all watched
out the window, straightened ourselves up,
tried to look presentable at last. For once.
We knew she was really gone, might not
ever come back for those pots—but
we boxed them up for her anyway,
one inside the other, however
they would go.

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Automatons of Love: April 2015 PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day Three

If you believe you’re a machine,
then I believe it, too. Your circuits gleam
as your teeth flash—a mouthful of
white dinner jackets. You’re plugged in
to another time, a different stream
of impulses; the satellites that move me
don’t move you, leave you staring
at your baked potato in a supper club
of your own design. If you’re a machine,
you’re a damn good one. If you’re
a machine, then so am I. Yes, so am I.

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The Feast Begins Anew: NaPoWriMo 2015, Day Three

Once, there was a little bat whose nose was made of gold leaf.
She flew on wings of silver floss when the moon was so low
it almost touched the quiet ground where field mice ran along,
pulled on threads they couldn’t feel, by an unknown, unseen hand
as the bat stopped at all the flowers waiting in her realm,
gathering pollen, nectar, and their dreams of children yet
unborn. That whole world waits now for her return, on a night
when the sky is a picnic blanket of stars, and the feast
begins anew, the bat awakening her wings for flight.

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Going Back to Bed: April 2015 PAD Chapbook Challenge, Day Two

The secret is in how it rains,
the sound of a woodpecker
through the bathroom window,
open for the first time in months.
It’s a new thought again, that
windows can open, outside sounds
can come in where it’s quiet,
and a breeze can intrude,
just a shade too cold. There’s
no dog here to jump and whine,
break the stillness with
palpable desire to go out—
only the goldfish, contained
as always, and pecking
through the river pebbles,
and the box turtle, on some
unknown and silent errand.
Two children are still tucked up
in loft beds—if not asleep, then
not yet asking for anything.
The secret is in the walk back
down the hall, past the fish tank,
opening the door to the hush
before the world finds us.

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Still, There We All Were: NaPoWriMo 2015, Day Two

We are all stars,
and I saw each one of us
in the milky brew
over the bridge that crossed
two small streams
and a swath of tall grasses
at the Girl Scout camp that,
truth be told, was not
far enough from the lights
and the sprawl of us
to be much darker
than in the city.

Still, there we all were,
in Orion’s belt, say,
or the Big Dipper,
faint though it was.

I saw you and me, all
our loved ones and strangers—
both living and dead—
but most of all, my daughter,
beside me on the bridge,
tangible in flesh (and coat
and boots), turning
her moon face skyward,
saying, “Wow,” as

the other scouts ran on,
laughing and screaming,
poking holes in the night’s
silence, caught up in some
great vision other than this.

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