I worry I can no longer pretend
anything,
my face gone clear as a billboard
and as large,
telegraphing what it is I have
for sale, or worse,
what it is I’d rather hold back.
I worry that I’m now a balloon,
obvious as I blot out the sun
for a moment
before I travel on,
invisible, but bound to
strangle a sea bird or a turtle —
some creature that finds me subtle,
not clear enough at all.

____________________________________________________________________________________________
Today’s optional prompt at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads was to borrow a line from another poet. I borrowed “I worry I can no longer pretend” from Tarfia Faizullah’s “Poem Full of Worry Ending with My Birth.”

We do not live at the last outpost of the world.
Our name is on the door — granted, it’s misspelled,
but it’s a good approximation. Would someone
look at Cavichia and Cavicchia and say they are
different, and it must be the wrong house?
That’s not what I said to Chaithra in the chat,
though I did say I was upset and that
the delivery person must not have tried
all that hard, since we were sitting at home,
one, both, or all four of us, all day long,
and never heard a buzz (it’s not faint,
and also the dog erupts every single time).
Chaithra said that she was addressing this as
a very high priority, and that she would extend
my Prime time by a month, and that it was
a pleasure to assist me today.
That was yesterday.

____________________________________________________________________________________________
Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads was to write about something I’m waiting for, without saying what it is.

Caffeine is anti-inflammatory,
so I guess I may as well.
There is no end to this misery
but time, and to move when I can —
to rethink and suck my teeth
in panic when I move wrong,

amazed at what can hurt
when a back is not strong.

Last night, I walked our dog
but never reached the park,
holding on to fences, lampposts,
begging her to understand
why we couldn’t play ball,
why she couldn’t be a dog

pulling at her leash while I
hung back in my fog.

Every time this happens,
it’s like a bill that has come due
for weight not lost and strength
not gained, and all the stress
pushed down and down
to lower vertebrae, unseen

but then screaming,
the ghosts in my machine.

And every time this happens,
I say what I’ll say now:
I’ll do better and live better,
go to Pilates class and breathe,
sleep more and worry less,
and never come this way again

because I’ll be different
from how I’ve ever been.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads is an invented form called an A L’Arora. Also, I was really stupid yesterday and moved many heavy bags of compost when I was recovering from a minor back pain problem, which then became much less minor (as you can see).

Thank you, Elizabeth Arden.
Behind your Red Door,
you have made my face
perfectly oblong,
shatterproof.
My head swathed in bandages,
my body in a white gown,
I am a patient
at your hospital of beauty.
Only you, Elizabeth Arden,
know my true mind,
what lies behind this mask
that I hold — only you know
the secrets
to perfect eyebrows,
a mouth that says nothing
except
that I was here.

____________________________________________________________________________________________
Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads was to use one of two photos. I chose this one, which is by Adolph de Meyer, for an Elizabeth Arden ad from 1927:

Witchetty grub

I am
I eat

sap

and I eat sap and I eat sap,

a good plan
(the only one I have).

When I gain my wings,
I will lose my mouth.

So it goes.
We all must fly

someday.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads was to write as another living being, such as a woman in feudal China. I skipped that second part and decided to be a grub — and in researching the grub life cycle, I found the witchetty grub in particular.

The weather in here
is stormy
and hungry,
banging shutters
and screen doors
because it can.
An in-between rain
makes umbrellas
necessary and ridiculous,
and it spits
all over my hair.
The weather in here
is yellow, sulfurous.
When will it change?
I don’t know —
tell me what you’ve heard.

____________________________________________________________________________________________
Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads was to write about the weather.

Maybe I am a tribe
of bees,

solitary, but talking nonetheless.

Is it an antitrust violation
to discuss
the price of pollination,

the going rate, flower to flower,
of transferring the dust
that starts the world
again?

____________________________________________________________________________________________
Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads was to think about what poetic voices we draw from. I thought about how I’ve written before in the persona of a solitary bee (probably more than once).

I appear in yearbook photos
and classroom photos
(a preschool one on wooden chairs,
and I’m not the only one showing
my underpants — dresses were short
in the ’70s, and I was 3 years old
or 4, because this was Nashville
and we moved to Seattle when I was 4)
but anyway, I appear in photos
of groups of children
starting in Nashville (or should I
call my homes by their actual names? —
suburban towns, not cities, but
the city names help with
echolocation).
OK, in Brentwood, Tennessee,
and then Kirkland, Washington,
Thief River Falls, Minnesota,
Englewood or Clayton or Dayton, Ohio
(this one is a puzzle because where
were my schools, and what was the nearest
suburban town, but then should I echolocate
to where we lived, which was just within
city limits — Dayton?), and then
Worthington, Ohio (oh, Worthington!,
went our alma mater, sing we now),
I appear, and these are the places
where I was with other children, daily,
available to be photographed,
though a whole other small, semiprivate life
occurred before then — Columbus, Ohio,
before Brentwood, Tennessee, and before that,
Redmond, Washington, though I was born in
Bellevue, Washington, at Overlake Hospital,
which my husband and I drove past
a few years ago, on one of those trips
we take because I must loop back
every so often, over and over.
Overlake
sounds like a good place
to start from, begin leaving
frost on other people’s windowpanes,
mysteries in other people’s photo albums
(or shoeboxes),
and I know that it snowed
on the morning when I was born,
in the place I am not from.

____________________________________________________________________________________________
Today, Imaginary Garden with Real Toads had an optional prompt (I mean, all of this is optional, but this was more so), to write a poem inspired by Alice Merton’s “No Roots.”

There’s a second person now —
her name is Fran.
She’s really good at all the things
I don’t do well or don’t like to do,
such as
cleaning anything or
saying no to you
when your requests are
awkward or ill timed, and cause me
to avoid email or voicemail or Facebook or texts
for days on end
Fran says no so smoothly that
you end up feeling glad, caressed like a kitten,
with only the smallest sting of rejection,
so small, you can say
you must have imagined it.
As I said, Fran will also do housework,
paperwork, a host of -works,
but mostly this one:

No.
No, thank you.
We are delighted to be asked but must regretfully say

no.

____________________________________________________________________________________________
Today’s prompt at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads is “second.”

The sky is literally a thing.
I’m not sure you know
how to knock on one door
and get one right answer.

Dandelions are seldom alone
but when they are, they align
themselves by fences, grow
as large as in Allegra commercials
before those could tell you
what they were selling.
But dandelions, real ones,
aren’t selling anything
but themselves

to bees

and anyone else who knows
where to find the key,
how to come in.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

From a prompt to write about “one,” at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads.