My mother washed the day's black grime (landays)

Every night, from the edge of the tub,

My mother washed the day's black grime from her hard cracked heels

Every morning, she boiled new water

Kettles lined up to ferry the heat for Daddy's bath

The days pile deep inside the front door

Futures seep in through the eyes of the grubby mesh screens

I wash in flows of magic water

What does it matter to me whose belly I laugh with?

I cannot choose the feet I dance on.

Neither did she. I watched her from wakeup to breakdown

Borrowed soul (landays)

Mending my cloaks, hiding my bruises

I sat by the shores of my borrowed soul and noticed

Picking up what floated through my hands

All the lonelinesses in brightly colored bottles

So pretty in the graveyard sunshine

So see-through in my fingers, cradling the old truths

I sat with my soul in my two hands

Yodeling to heaven, knowing nothing, growing light

So quiet, the broken-wide soul shards

And in the earth I felt the drums of my foresisters

Dear survivor (ghazal)

What was the whispered word that crazed you?

Whose was the promise-tipped arrow that grazed you?

Carpets of birdsong. Lifetime of silence.

When was the last time pain amazed you?

Now in the unnumbered hours, tell me

Why all the hotheaded prophets praised you.

Safe in our cave of blankets and cushions

Speak: which was the final kindness that dazed you?

Your dog. Your guitar. Bitter whiskey. Old stories.

Where are the wounded wolves who raised you?

Fish in Silver Hallways

I am a fish in silver hallways

Terrifying to you, or terrifying to me?

There are so few questions left

I have sat with you around giant tables

I have eaten with you in the sand

I have played with your only children to keep them from burning

You close your eyes when you see me coming

Dig the holes I want to fall into

Break the old love knots I inherit

And I? I dance around your prairie fence

I turn my back to kiss your brothers

Toss my head to kiss the falling sky

Mend the arcing hoops as you throw them

There are so few meals left

And the children cannot know

There are so few rhymes left

And the fires must not reach them

I close my eyes when I see myself coming

Dig the holes I must fall into

Break the toys before I inherit, inherit, inherit

Look, the nametags are slipping off the handles

This is a place we have never been

The screen points fingers before we can hunt our playmates

We talk in opposite categories, saving it up for another year

We go dark in opposite nightcores

This is a place we have never been

Terrifying to you, or terrifying to me?

There are so few questions left

I was never told (landays)

I was never told there was a key

I spent those years hurling myself at the locks instead

Somewhere in the basement is a list

Of all the bruises, turning their fairytale colors

What is the thin space between the files?

Why does the handwriting sing in your mother's voices?

What can I tell you first, young Marie?

I watch you through the backwards glass and you won't listen

Whatever I write now you erase

I waltz as slow as I can. You shoot at my ankles

Name the children, quick, before they fade

Fold them into peace cranes, jump them through the love canals

Scoop the tomorrows fast as they come

Count the dreams, swim the lost caves, know they will never stop

Throw the minutes high into the air

So that there will be time for the race before they fall

I will count the names we've forgotten

You and I, so earnestly holding onto the hands

I will swallow the key at midnight

So that the fairytale colors finally make sense

Mute in your memory (swarm of words ghazal)

Mute in your memory I melt under a swarm of words

In my head I preach a love-twined platform of words

Shredded and sliced, the angry language that serves us

In shared arms I singsong the daily reform of words

I sling your body to the hot remembered fourwinds

Forgiveness a blessed icicle in your snowstorm of words

Nothing rhymes or reasons, no pattern pulses twice

Wheels grind sweet inside wheels, brainstorm of words

From your biglife to my smallroom I loft you alive

The touch of your stray hair is the oldest form of words

Free rebels atop the mountain we stand through the years

Cut to our stony selves in the long sandstorm of words