For Kath Bloom

Push in and
pull out

push in
I say to him if

"Adrienne Rich were a
song-singer,

this song, she would
sing this song"

Rainwash and beeswax
are both better

for the black air than our
religious attempts

How many must I buy before
I am no longer lonely? consider
consider

How many shall I buy to show
them I'm pretty
consider

and

can I hide it all hide hide
so that he will keep loving me once
he starts?


We're not new anymore daddy.

And I am not I, am I.

I am
only as fucked as the man

I give my life to.

How Sweet It Is

He stood you up. In the movies there are always extenuated circumstances that cause the boy to stand the girl up. He was biking to your house on that long country road, but then he got a flat tire, and then he got a ride from a kindly old man in a Studebaker, but then the old man had a HEART ATTACK, I swear ta God, so I drove him to the hospital. And before he died he told me, “You go find that gal of yours. She’s a keeper, I can tell. Take care of ol’ Custer for me (hacking cough).” So that’s how I ended up with this basset hound and I put the bow on him because I feel real bad I missed your special dinner, baby.

But that’s the movies and this isn’t, it’s real life, and that means cold pasta in a pyrex bowl that you curl around your fork and stare at as if it fascinates you, while you think of how he stood you up. But it was not well done, not even interesting. He’s not coming around with a melancholy dog wearing a blue bow.

Whenever something good is supposed to happen, you are happy, so you listen to Karen Dalton sing “How Sweet It Is” and you think, perhaps I will know. But then the good thing doesn’t happen, so as an entertaining twist to your script, ironic or something, you listen to “How Sweet It Is” every time you are disappointed.

You fall asleep and dream you are taking a walk with your mother. She tells you to let it all go. You wake up tired, in a cold room. It’s too big, and the door lets in the night draft.

"From whence" comes the feeling of relief? I want to know which direction to face as I scrape my peeling paper

Plaid On Plaid

It is chest pain, asleep-in-your-boots and dreaming. It arrives inevitable after things like cradle-rocking and long tracks of small tea-colored buttons. Everything is an opaque "remembrance of," "rug burn," and "plaid-on-plaid." Oh it felt like fall this morning as rain swept across the hearts of the trees! If only to come up bearing a mussel, I believe I would dive deep, for "This mussel like my lung is open in air." I am feeble and blue beneath your searching light, we both were wool-palmed and bowed. Wrap me in your hands for I am cold open your mouth for I am not always so quiet as this I will lisp somethings your way and go on wet walks

Beautiful Girls

Chamomile tea tastes like some sort of benevolent grain much honeyed I remember one long moment of a day spent eleven years old. I know beautiful girls they're so beautiful they make the word new once more they have such delicate little faces such sweet wincing eyes and they break hearts by the dozen, ratta-tat-tat-tat and even I do although I'll never believe it. Being that I am "Supposed to make two homemade-pumpkin-pies-from-scratch," I am considering blanket refuge, "Hello and goodbye! Sorry!" The trees are now the color of pumpkin pie because "To everything (turn turn turn,) there is a season." This is the season of teatime, tree turning, cutting loose kindly lovers because they do not send me, and giving thanks for the beautiful girls. They're so beautiful like woodpeckers when you see them you go "Ah!" When they look at you you look over both shoulders and when they leave you you think o sweet vision. I did not want to leave much but wanted less to stay, someday I will know-

Sidewise In The Stacks

Cash me out, I'm tired and hopeless, I'm falling sidewise in the stacks. Only my skin is young, a deceitful beacon. I am sick in the usual way, and in an unusual way. I am sad enough to wish I had a hound. "Remember this for me," I said to some fellow as I walked him to his book and sang, "Cue are es, tea you vee." "Sixty-one," he said, walked out later with his heavy burden like a Christian. I have felt a wild desire to do simple things. To reclaim my ottoman, drive to Seattle for a cup of tea and a curfew so early I don't see the sun go down but from stove-side or vague-window. Very small yet largely unsolved mysteries stitch my day with scraps of color. The mystery of the house ghost, the mystery of Ol' Custer. The mystery of how the hell am I going to make that much pumpkin pie? I would give much for just a brief moment with Christ. I would give back the very pretty things I've bought for a piece of peace made from scratch. I was frightened I'd forget sixty-one, but I sure remember. It is easier to buckle than to holler that I can't do this alone.

A Church For All Sundays

A woman I never expected! A real "Young Lady!" She arrived, a sort of guest, and I saw her, and knew her: Not a child, but retains the topography of a child's face. She wears clogs, and has tattoos, wrapped around pale, loose-goose arms. She has large, square hands, one finger cut with a peridot. She seeks bells: a church for all Sundays. She seeks: Saint Christopher, pollen swirling in tea, the sound of the rosary being said on the Catholic channel, her grandmother's deep-set, round-brown eyes, smiling, like bells, her soft paper skin, and mass at the old mission, with it's ceilings "On High," the votives. There is no church like that in this little town. The buildings are new, post-even-asbestos, it is a new sort of "Catholic," but she intends to accept it anyway -if only a little- because things aren't all "Black-n-White" to her, because she done grown up. All is not simple. All is fucked! All is swell! Peace be with you and-also-with-me-hell-I-work-hard! Grandma, let's walk to the beach, let's play croquet.

dear torn heart and tangerine

Dear torn heart and tangerine, it is oolong tea-time again, and I am "dismayed," all things gold and orange feel in fact like love and home, but has it really been a calendar year, and yes, it has- I am so far away. I have mentioned, I know, that I live in Olympia, Washington. I am largely unknown and bear similar plumage to many of the other birds. I live quietly, make silent mistakes. My sorrows are only loud in their vibrations, shaking brittle ribs, I am learning to say Hail Marys, I prescribe myself nine hundred, they go this way: Hail Mary full of grace. Our Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen. Being a writer means that a large part of you will never be understood by the people you love. Even not or especially by the ones you share tangerines with, brew tea with, I threw in much of the bag and L. said, "Oh" or "Whoa" and "Too much" and "Other words" that did not make me feel "Loved" but rather "Cold" as it was in that immaculate home, I thought it was nothing now, was gone, but I have surmised it is a rind I still press between my fingers. And finding oil there I cannot seem to let it go, to let it rot.

Bell

I am afraid of nearly everything, the louder whispers of the library, things that go bump in the road, gas cans, can rims. staff infection, spiders and their unhatched issue, meningitis. I am afraid of needles to the spine, the hospital kind, and of schizophrenia, alzheimers, and to a lesser degree, epilepsy. I am afraid of going crazy, or am crazy with fear. I had not drunk tea in days, it seemed strange, to have not-- until this morning we woke and it was "light out," but not light, there was no slight sun, but rain and rain. And I made a pot of tea called "Russian Caravan" tea because it tastes of burnt Siberian forests, and I gave him the deeper cup because I only trust myself not to spill on my pretty bedding, the sheets of which, by the way, are smeared now with the things that leak out of your skin when you are tattooed. Things like "ink" "blood" and "plasma". He is as warm as socks and his feet sometimes function as socks for my arches, when we lay that way. He put his hands on my neck, he meant nothing by it, I know, but I had to shake my head, say no, tears starred my eyes and my throat wrapped around a heavy stone and I remembered something that I am.

Sometimes a pressure builds in my head, one which needs to be let, needs freely to ache in the opened-wound way. And I feel like the little boy in "The Polar Express" when he realizes that his bell is gone and that there is a hole in his pocket. One he may even forget about, the better to lose other things.

i work in a library.
i read books about

fen bodies, tattooed
princess long time ago
real dead soft feet still.

i wanted to be open like
a rose.

i find that i am
cold hands indigo and
fractured, unto

this
day.

i was buried in an
oakland yard november.

resuscitated in the
New Year,

dead again by may.

tattooed
princess long ago
real dead soft feet still.

slapped by ice.
crouched in front of
the electric heater

The Queen of Hungary

A queen, he said, touching my face. I bathe it every day in The Queen of Hungary's water because I think I'm special and I deserve beautiful things and maybe they'll make me feel better but they don't much, but that's okay what the hell I still need a clean face.

I keep talking about what great taste I have but I don't think he realizes that I'm talking about him. He's funny and smart as a whippet and I like all of his tattoos but I don't think he really notices when I say nice things to him because when I say salty things they just have more stick. And the things I say that have nothing to do with him have the most stick of all. I assume this but don't really know because I am not him and therefore do not know his mind, also I don't feel like asking because it's early on for things to be hard and there is plenty of time for that later.

Here in Washington it seems like men are pretty good at rolling with the punches. They don't expect women to be all of those old-fashioned things with old-fashioned words like "vapid" and "persnickety". They don't draw their hand back when they feel your hairy leg or bat an eye at your armpit. Back in California, I felt that being real pretty and skinny and witty was a fairly high stakes game, so I wore a lot of makeup and didn't eat and took drugs and read books and I was just as sad as you would imagine.

Now I just bathe my face in The Queen of Hungary's water because IthinkI'mspecialandIdeservebeautifulthings and I eat chili and go to A.A. meetings and read books and I can get used to being respected but I sure can't seem to get used to someone treating me sweet.