Day 25 of #the100dayproject

Color in Winter

Red dress, streak of rain,
late winter incantation,
a bare branch maple, silhouette
memory of red, sap, and green.

The cherry blossoms haven’t come.
But there, a woman walking in the grass,
her dress like lipstick red tulips,
each fold of fabric, a petal.

Tulips once drove a country into madness.
In such a dun-colored place,
color can create a hunger for summer,
for the hot sun, respite from the heart of cold.

The woman turns, flourishes her dress,
half gone, it flashes like traffic lights
on wet pavement, stretching
into darkness at midnight.

If only the red could heat the earth,
force the cherries into bloom,
help the crocuses to push up
their spots of color, their docile heads.

Day 24 of #the100dayproject

The Craft

Writing is a persistent sport.
There is no peak age,
there is no zenith.

Just the day-to-day plodding.
The chair, the pen, the time,
towards an undefined meandering.

Despite the blood and work,
through all the sleepless nights,
there is never a guarantee of words.

Day 23 of #the100dayproject

I am therefore

I am the paradox
I am the word
The metaphor
The energy within a poem
I am the absent and the obsessed
I am the absence of words
I am the blank space between words
I am also the ink.
I am the pause.
I am the exhale.
I am the inhale.

Day 22 of #the100dayproject

Some thoughts...

The difference between a first draft and a revised draft is passion and intention. In revision, passion is tempered by intention.

I dreamed that the crown molding had arms reaching, stretching toward another arm. Trying to touch, to make contact. A yearning.

These are the chambers of my mind, wandering through the echoes of memory. Some of the memories are my own, some are not. Some of them are borrowed.

Day 21 of #the100dayproject

The Boys

The boys used to knock on my window. And I would bask in their pre-pubescent beauty, dream they would kiss me through the window screen as if I were Rapunzel. I would let down my hair and follow them through the forest and eat berries that they handed to me. I would fall under their spell and we would grab fistfuls of leaves and wear them as clothes, camouflage our growing bodies. We would play at war and at life. I would sweep the forest floor with branches, they would bring me their trophies. I would challenge them with my imagination. We would climb the fir trees and steal cherries from the crows. We said no to nothing. Always yes yes yes. Until they packed their bags, all the while saying no no no. I said no no no. And that was the last thing we ever said to each other.

Day 19 of #the100dayproject - Mirrors

Mirrors

Trees know what we don’t know:
To live fully, they just need to stretch
up to the sun & reach down into bedrock.
Air & anchor, their branches & roots
mirror each other and fan out
like hair on a pillow, extending
towards the sun & the earth’s center;
every inch of growth closer to their temple
is an act of worship, a pilgrimage of living.

Day 18 of #the100dayproject - The last day I wrote poems in a café

The last day I wrote poems in a café

The café was full of people dripping
from the rain outside. I sat at a long table
flanked by many different people
sipping their coffees and eating pastries.
I talked to the woman across from me,
asked her what she was writing on her laptop.
She wrote content for hospitals and the CDC
and she was writing about this new virus.
She was worried about it, but she nor I
knew that this would be the last time
we would sit down in a café to talk or
strike up a conversation with a stranger.
We didn’t know that it would be the last
time we would see other faces without a mask,
or exchange breath as if the air we breathed
wasn’t shared between everyone in the café,
as if our breath was ours and ours alone,
but just like the long table, our coughs, sneezes,
sighs, laughs; everything was communal, collective.

Day 15 of #the100dayproject

Mirrors II

All mirrors are charades, deceptions,
it can show you what you are, a body,
but itself shows a body without volume
a body that doesn’t take up space.
Wafer like or like a waif, my mirror-self
a malnourished doppelganger, a shadow,
never a whole. And I wonder sometimes
how much envy my second self holds
always the mirror, but never the mirrored.

Day 14 of #the100dayproject

Mirrors I

My old house came with an art deco mirror;
spotted with age, losing its silver backing.
It leaned elegantly against the basement
wall, elegant and fragile like a snowflake
that could melt or if cold enough, keep shape.
Each time I descended into the basement,
I would look like a ghost had inherited my body.
My eyes were not mine, my mouth thin,
and my hair flowing as if I held a static charge.

Day 13 of #the100dayproject2021

Body Parts II

Having hands is to have purpose
to do, make, destroy, take, give.
Each point of a finger, each flick
or pop of a knuckle. Every hand
contains a universe of skin, bone,
muscle. Bone moves like piano keys
trying to breach the surface of skin.
These fingers like hammers, pens,
spoons, wrenches. All of them dancers
who have rehearsed and rehearsed
and finally ready for the show.

Day 12 of #the100dayproject

Body Parts

My feet, how forgotten they are,
those joints and strange bones.
Crustacean like, born in a paleo-
lithic era, no mouth, eye, nose, or ear;
just creatures carrying all that weight,
like Atlas holding Earth on his shoulders.

Day 11 of #the100dayproject

Grit

I carried three gallons of water
On my back, descending
Into the cradle of Coyote Gulch,
And I carried my blood, sweat,
& tears out, climbed up red sand dunes.
I walked until my feet blistered
& bled, until I thought my body
could not take any more pain.
I kept walking, still I moved.
Night closed around me.
I walked through the desert,
The stars opening the sky
Into a charred lace.
I was not afraid,
I was sure.
I could not leave this earth
without sharing the sacred,
my pilgrimage through
our planet’s temple.

Day 10 of #the100dayproject

Landscapes of the Body

I’ve been to dressing rooms,
tried on bras, dresses, pants,
& blouses. Each article of clothing
like trying on a different self:
Who I could be, what I would be.
If only I could fit this body
into a new self.

Day 9 of #the100dayproject

Late night walk

I walk through the snow
and sit down on a bench,
watch the snowflakes
illuminated by street lamps,
falling like feathers
tossed from a pillow.

Day 8 of #the100dayproject

Winter

Snowflakes fall on the city;
powerlines, buildings, cars
and roads paved white, smooth.
Beautiful. And the homeless are cold.
The homeless have nowhere to go.

Day 7 of #the100dayproject

ingesting the fragments of creatures

I eat flies everyday,
milk and black, their wings
a textured cereal, their legs
the bran, whole wheat.
From my tongue, I can tell
where they lay their young,
where they fly from one
rat infested gutter
to the garbage heaped
outside the front gate.
I guard my mouth
as I guard my body,
but thousands of legs
and wings ingested,
a war field of body parts
shimmering in bags
of rice and flour,
the many eye balls
of sweltering insects.
No matter how hard
I try, I eat the world
and the debris
of its creatures;
I lick my lips, wash
their brine and death
down with wine.

Day 6 of #the100dayproject

 

Day 5 of #the100dayproject

 

Day 4 of #the100dayproject

To Debate a Memory

I was in the field, then I wasn’t in the field
I was in the moss, under the cedar, but
It wasn’t a cedar, but a redwood and
I wasn’t wearing mary-janes, but always
In my mind, I’m wearing mary-janes.
I probably was barefoot, but I cannot
Say for sure. I was there, my skin pale
Against the wet green of the trees,
I was there, but maybe I wasn’t.
Maybe it was a dream, multifaceted.
Reoccurring, maybe I walked there, but
I was naked and it was not daylight
Maybe there was the moon silvering
The dew on the grass blades.
I know I was me, I know I had a body
But I do not know my age, I look back
And my body is like water, flowing
Changing, I am never the same,
And the me that was in the field,
Or in the moss, was that me or
Was that another version of me?
Maybe all this time I am someone
But not myself, only in the present
I am me, but in the past, the person
That was me is not me, only pieces
Of a body and a mind that if put together
Might look like me, but isn’t really me.

Day 3 of #the100dayproject

Rose City

All those years of awe for the city, my city.

Walking down the park blocks,

I watched protesters setting camp in the grass

under the cedars heavy with rain.

Occupy Wallstreet in the Pacific Northwest.

I would take the tram into the Pearl to find

abandoned warehouses turned into shoppes

and five-star bars and restaurants.

The bookstore on Burnside 

still rough on the outside, but inside

color and gloss to appeal to Raleigh Hill clientele.

I was a college girl who stopped at the smoke shop 

and leafed through the lit mags smelling of tobacco. 

I could never afford to buy any of them.

Now that I’m back, the store smells more like e-cigarettes 

than cigars, its windows broken by the riots,

boarded up by rain-soaked plywood.

I used to think anything was possible.

I used to find inspiration in the rain 

and in the graffiti on the brick buildings.

But now I realize ‘possible’ is anywhere I am; possible is in me.

When I left those years ago, I found what I was capable of.

I found myself to worship, day after day I built myself from the ground up. 

Nothing in life is easy, but when I visit an old place 

I look back at who I was and who I am,

and I’ve found that I’m always the sum of both parts.