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DAY 1: HAIKU
Hey there Delilah I hear his hair is magic What do you need more? DAY 2: COUPLET Heart, you gnaw at my lungs, unable to form the words to keep you from starving. DAY 3: ACROSTIC Diderot believed in passions Reveled in a blanket of wished-upon stars Extended his arms until fingers were Airplanes and nothing flew higher than their Motors. He thought someone else's love was reason Enough to love himself. Reason had no place in passion. DAY 4: TERZA RIMA The sleep that paints my face grey is weighted down by a laundry list too long to do in a day I'm dirty socks; days un-kissed an uncharted route from the lines on my wrist. My forehead marked by shapes of doubt Forever aching to figure me out Arms open, shouting, "I'm here for the taking!" Piece by piece; a person breaking. DAY 5: RONDEAU Blueberry picking on an upstate farm a wicker basket on the crux of my arm hands blue, lips blue, tongue too. even the sky looks sadder without you. don't sound the alarm. Wearing two sweaters but still never warm legs sticky-sweet from your blueberry charm When the fruit rots, what's left to do? Blueberry picking. Winds shift and bees start to swarm buzzing around the fruit on my arm lips blue, hands blue, shadows you once knew everything reminds me. blue drenched soles on an upstate farm Blueberry picking. DAY 6: EPIGRAM An unfinished cup of tea is a waste of a perfectly good Saturday. DAY 7: FREE VERSE Back when knotting maraschino stems was a sign of womanly ambition I learned to twist my tongue inside out to present my lover with a gift. The equivalent of seven goats this proof of my femininity was constructed to speak volumes from a tiny piece of earth. Aren't we all searching for that which proves our worth? DAY 8: GHAZAL DAY 9: SESTINA My mother cleans teeth for a living a smattering of dentures and baby whites whose owners have nothing but stories from Lego-building days; lives smaller than the pieces they put together to lives cemented in tooth decay. Rooted. Uprooted. They all talk about life like it's already happened. From the lines on a face, we can piece together what's happened or else, how their hands had once imagined living: pulling life from the ground, rooted and faded like my tea stained window sill, off-whites jumbled together like what becomes of our favorite stories If we are all just stories in the end, who will remember what happened long after we've danced at each other's weddings together? I contemplate the importance of living while the color in my eyes scatters against the whites. My toes rooted in the ground--rooted to past-stories of too many egg whites and healthy mornings where nothing happened but we were living alive together I'm keeping it together ripping pages from my Book of Life, rooted and bound so tightly, I forgot what it felt like to be living. I yearn to be bigger than my stories; to know more than what happened but how it felt in post-Labor Day whites. Throwing caution to the wind; staining all my whites until the colors tie dye together shock, hope, now-or-never, rooted in a life that hasn't happened yet. A slew of bedtime stories, dreams for the living. My mother is rooted in calcium-deficient whites that piece together stories of dreams that happened; from living too cautiously before they put the words together. DAY 10: LIST POEM The Four Questions, Passover Morning 1. Will your extended family like me? 2. How do you expect me to show up empty-handed? 3. You ready for a lifetime of this? 4. Why is this night different from all other nights of the year? DAY 11: CINQUAIN Soup comfort warm dripping steaming stirring the best part about a rainy day in Midtown Soup DAY 12: TANKA made for sunny days prospect park, union square mart hat and sunglasses light peering through the window hand in hand in shorts with you DAY 13: QUATRAIN When moving the dining room table don't get nostalgic at all. Remove all that moves, if you're able otherwise, watch your things fall. DAY 14: SENRYU I met a woman who asked me about living which I'd hardly done. She sang heartbeat songs looked back on 93 years-- promised I'd regret Since I believe here I am dusting off the dreams I tried to forget Since I believe her I am rewriting promise refusing regret. DAY 15: SOUND POEM (called Let You Down) (stacatto) tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk (legatto) booooo booooo boooooo (stacatto) tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk (legatto) booooo booooo boooooo (stacatto) tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk tisk (legatto) booooo booooo boooooo ughughughughughughugughughugh DAY 16: EPITAPH She was quick, curious, playful and strong. A voracious reader, wanna-be ballerina, she saved old snapshots and her emails piled up because she never wanted to forget anything good.
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Let me be the ink stain
on the corner left dimple From where the pen bled, and your smile leaked words so quickly, you kept bleeding- until the pen dried up and your creation was a skeleton: like you. Long torso, with arms that make liters look like soup cans and water taste like mother’s milk: Nourish me. Let me nourish you, with a hope that hibernates in the wrinkles on my tear-stained toes and feed you with a spoon made of tulips and thyme. Let me be the way you wish to go on the map that I will draw for you with tattered pages from the book Moses stole from god. For it is in the subtext of each commandment that thou shall not abandon those who make you their home. Let me roll up, both your legs, the invisible fraying. Let me nest you in a hide-away made of stars and sunrise, nestle you between the pieces of Ursa Minor so you will always find your way. thou shall not abandon those who make you their home Let me remember the night mother ran away, with blue watercolors framing her broken eyes, to be back by morning, painting her mask with a normalcy saved for rainbow reflections and the solitude of dust bunnies. Let every knock-knee bend to the floor, as daughters worry that their loves won’t ever return to the beds they made three-times over--as if fitted sheets are the reason it's three AM and he's still not home. Let my fingers envelop yours when miles fold like vanilla and cream and hands are spatulas softly watching worlds collide. thou shall not abandon those who make you their home. Unhappiness is a genetic
trait, passed down amongst the women in my family. For as long as I can remember, Misery’s hid in the crooks of our eyes. Where our tears were taught never to fall. Our eyelashes learned to be strong: hold things keep our eyes open. What happens next is So, I’m sorry, if you wanted to love a whole person. Two hands that divvy responsibilities, two feet, on soda cans, balancing the weight so neither gets too heavy. I'm made with one of each taught only to extend. But I can string together what sounds like a prayer, for a Friday night Kiddush though neither of us will know what we’re saying. I am a pauper because you think talk is cheap. I can only string words together: backwards hearts and upside down squares. It’s like us, geometry: it looks right—but it’s not. And I’ve thought of about a thousand ways to tell you that. But infinity is the opposite of definitive and our thumbprints are so unique that we could try to match them up forever but they will never be the same. I would rather not blame the people who built me but I am a flawed machine. My tears are blood, my spit is blood, the way you pronounce my name as you fall asleep is blood. The proud I cannot make you is blood. And I am unhappy. But right now you'd be filling car tires
with faulty memories. Hot air that would peter out before the highway. People get stranded by lies like that. There are no words
that come after goodbye and I am afraid of the silence. (3)
She gazed at me expectantly water boiling in her eyes instead of one baby, they’ll be three. A soft hand on her belly tender look, simple disguise she gazed at me expectantly and asked if I was happy. After countless pregnant-tries, instead of one baby, three. I’d dreamed of a big family but nothing quite like this surprise when she gazed at me expectantly, I wondered if there’d be room for me in a home of warm disguise, instead of one baby, three She gazed at me expectantly, instead of one baby, they’ll be three. What Water Destroyed
four bath towels we stole from le parker meridien on your twenty-sixth birthday when we were the only ones with pool access. a bath mat I bought online that says 'clean' on one side and 'dirty' on the other. It's all dirty, now. two new toothbrushes a pair of socks you forgot an old note i left on the mirror, 'i love you so, handsome.' He said a group of kites is called a mockery laughing at the way I chase my string through Central Park on our staycation. The little boy whose Spiderman kite resembles mine but fits in his tiny hands so that the string bounces off his lifeline and across the picnic blankets. We grabbed the sheets off our bed, soiled in soil, before laundry day. Speaking only in British accents like we could be other people. How I Clean Our Room:
Your things first. They cover the floor. Dirty socks and pennies. The copper change goes in a mason jar labelled 'Fun Monies.' They'll add up to something some day. The dirty socks go into your maroon hamper. I fold the shirts you can wear again, refold my shirts in the dresser under yours. Restoring order. The last time I did something
for the first time it was you. And the shock of being a person who still had firsts sounded like the end of a sentence with the typewriter's first ding! As if, screaming "I'm new to all this." Please be patient with me. |
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