Throwing in the towel
At the moment, I'm more excited about reading poems than writing them. Not unusual at all. Just part of my ordinary rhythm. Another year, perhaps.
At the moment, I'm more excited about reading poems than writing them. Not unusual at all. Just part of my ordinary rhythm. Another year, perhaps.
[Here's taking a stab at something different.]
MANTRA: You’re such a fucking martyr, Ginger.
[Misuse
of the word martyr here.
My own happiness is
my only cause.
But OK]
What would make this real for you?
You're a big girl. Figure something out.
FIGURE: You on a stump massaging your arches,
your crimson rucksack curving my back.
FIGURE: Ivy choking the wildflowers in our garden.
FIGURE: Trauma as coin of the realm
& you wearing out the arms at nickel slots.
You need a fetish for your failures. I am that fetish.
Perhaps we’d better not bring up the sex.
You’re such a fucking martyr, Ginger.
[Oh, I get it now.
You’re Jesus & I’m Rose of Lima.]
I forgot how pretty I was wearing your thorns--
Unwritten
"With my burned hands, I write on the nature of fire."
I’m trying to get your attention.
I’m trying to lie on my side and pretend I asked for it.
I asked for it in a barrel over Niagara Falls.
I asked for it with my hands on fire and you trying to blow them out.
My hands, like birthday candles, marking the passage of time.
Like birthday candles, my eyes flaring up and going dark again.
Again was the only word in my vocabulary for seventeen days.
Seventeen days and nights I repeated your name down a ventilation duct.
Seventeen days and nights no one answered.
I was lying on my back asking for it.
I was trying to get your attention.
Unwritten
Unwritten
I resist the view the way I have always resisted
this town its mess of bricks this granite ledge.
The river is the only thing I’ve ever come
to terms with & not even the river (which has a name)
but the water passing through.
Dust to dust makes sense, I suppose, if you’re digging up
graves to make space for fresh dead—
(which begs the question: who will tie my white hair
around his wrist when the time comes to switch
the houselights off for good?)
Why bring death
into the scene at all, except that my mouth
is unusually dry
& my intelligence mostly water
& there is a mirror at the end of the tunnel,
we were told
that justifies these barren days.