Cryptozoology
Age 1: I screech when my mother leaves the room, fitful for a nipple, her arms powdery, unconditional.
Age 2: I flash teeth; she stops nursing.
Age 3: I throw things. I can read. DOG. MAD. GO.
Age 4: I climb the bathroom shelves and cannot get down. I’m stuck, forever. My mother snaps a photo before lowering me to safety. The next day, I do it again.
Age 5: After watching a comet of bare-chested boys jump their bikes off an exposed foundation, I dump my bike in the dirt. At the base of a towering pine, I pick gravel from the heel of my hand and swallow tears. I realize speed and lift are necessary for flight.
Age 6: My father is cold in the morning, ablaze at night. At church, I learn the concept of sin. I repeat, “Fuck you, Jesus” in my head, worrying I’ll go to hell. I get my sister in on it, just in case.
Age 7: On a warm day in late spring, I bend to open the garage when the first strong rays of the season hit the back of my neck and detonate a grenade of joy. I imagine a million pennies. For the rest of the day, I pop wheelies in celebration of large numbers.
Age 8: Miss Ouellette is my favorite teacher and her gray hair is a halo of kindness. I feel safe when I’m in her classroom, so I eat up everything she offers.
Age 9: I am tall, dangerous, fast. I dream of flying. I sharpen sticks, hunt creatures lurking below the surface of puddles reflecting cloudless skies.
Age 10: Retainers on my teeth. I have a crush on my 4th grade teacher even though he cares little for my loud mouth, my desire to be captain, my hand waving high with answers. I am the quarterback at recess. My mother shows my sister and me the fine art of soundlessly latching doors behind us.
Age 11: My father threatens my mother with one pistol, two bullets. At school, I get in trouble for talking too much and my seat is moved to the back of the class. From paper, I fashion a dunce cap. Perfect the smirk.
Age 12: I am wrongly accused of cheating on a test and a giant red zero appears to the left of my name. Injustice lodges in my throat. Rage is fuel, I realize. Coldness creeps in and stays.
Age 13: Cruelty is the culture of junior high. Small homogenous groups of pubescents laugh hysterically when confronted with difference. I question what’s funny, and drop a few rungs on the social ladder. I’m called weird for the first time. It rings true, so I adopt it.
Age 14: My eyebrows are furry caterpillars. A boy asks if I can touch my elbows behind my back, and when I try, he stares at my chest laughing moronically. At home, my father interrupts my chocolate ice cream by predicting my large body will only get larger, then pulls his truck out of the driveway before the ice cream melts in the bowl. That night, I gaze at myself in the mirror and wonder if I’m gross.
Age 15: I do crunches in the bottom bunk. Eat less. Smell better. I want clothes we can’t afford, so I steal them.
Age 16: I take off my stolen clothes for a boy who takes his stolen clothes off, too. I adore his bottom lip, his white teeth, his deltoids. Adults hate how excited we are to touch each other, so they heap shame on us. We ignore it, fumbling our way into pleasure.
Age 17: I finish my homework before the last bell, ace my tests. Chronically bored, I seduce my neighbor, a man twice my age who wears white tube socks with white hi-tops. I scramble up a ladder into his bedroom at night, slip under the sheets, mock him when he trembles.
Age 18: I’m sick to death of my mill town. I drink Tanqueray and eat hallucinogens. I write “Pink Floyd changed my life” on the back of a tee though I can’t name a single member of the band.
Age 19: I am accepted into an esteemed liberal arts college. Most of the students there don’t get me or don’t notice me. With no credit card, no car, and dry cleaning ticket, I realize what makes a collar blue and what makes one pop. WASP seems an appropriate word for the sting they leave behind.
Age 20: I fall for a man whose unsettled weather raises hairs on my arms. He’s a handsome, swirling, low-pressure system. A month into our fling, I’m introduced to his habit of discharging old trauma through violence. In the bathroom at my mother’s house, I tend wounds before slumping into the kitchen to burn a piece of toast, making a vow while slathering it with butter. A few weeks later, I board a plane for England where my new, bespectacled Liverpudlian flatmate tells me he’ll piss on my clothes if I don’t let him into my bed, so I do.
Age 21: I’m fat, depressed, my head stuffed with John Donne. Over the phone, my sister asks probing questions and lasers through my hazy answers. When she arrives, she glares so hard at the Liverpudlian we all hear the ping of his retracting cock. When it’s time for her to leave, she takes me with her.
Age 22: My father and his fiance are killed in a motorcycle accident. I agonize over his last moments, convinced they were shaped by regret. I request a viewing of his body. The bruises on his knuckles are visible through layers of concealer, his hair politely combed.
Age 23: My friend, Sadie, convinces me to pack my bags and head west. We rent a house. She feeds me, shows me how to grow vegetables, and lets me borrow her car. I commit to therapy.
Age 24: I get a job working with broken children. I get punched, kicked, and bitten. I make them breakfast, braid their hair, restrain them from hurting themselves. Most mornings, I’m up at 5:30am to ride my bike forty minutes through dull Pacific rain. It’s a crucial, minimum wage job.
Age 25: A rejection letter tells me that I will not get my MFA in writing. I have pistachio ice cream, shake a blanket out under a silver maple, and fall asleep watching quaking leaves.
Age 26: I fall in love with a Scorpio poet. He is Italian and Irish with eyes that burn. His nose is beguiling. We are glorious together, self-destructive.
Age 27: In all senses, I have no shame.
Age 28: I enter graduate school and ditch the Scorpio for a man with liquid brown eyes, like a doe. He smells good and pays for brunch. I decide this is it.
Age 29: My brain is exercised daily, as well as my body.
Age 30: In the company of women, I cook, laugh, cry, dance, and learn.
Age 31: After a match every Thursday night, the women’s soccer team I’ve joined gathers at an English pub to swallow beer, grub fries, and sing songs. I get engaged to the doe-eyed man, his addiction to pornography a problem I can solve.
Age 32: I have an affair with my fiance’s best friend, who is married to my friend. I’m a friend fucking a friend. One night, I’m startled from sleep by an ominous hiss: rot will soon reach the core. Two weeks later, I board a plane and fly home, slamming the door on a city that allowed me a decade of growth.
Age 33: Back in Maine, after a spiritually and financially impoverished winter, I meet a woman who smells like toasted coconut. She’s mastered the charcoal grill and howls with approval when I snarl, ripping fat from perfectly seasoned ribs. We play card games until sunrise, sleep in a backyard tiki, float the river in a dinghy. I leave her late-summer, heartbroken. I’m disappointingly straight.
Age 34: AffairMan flies across the country with a novella of reasons why we should give our relationship a go. Nine months later, we have a daughter. Infancy drains me, so I ask my stylist to give me a haircut that will make me look like David Bowie. My long hair falls to the ground.
Age 35: My heart bursts with love for my daughter but the sleepless tedium of new momhood has whittled me into a nub. I discover most new moms feel the same way, except the religious ones, who are lying, and the rich ones, who aren’t.
Age 36: Spontaneity is a raisin living in the crack of the couch. My daughter’s eyes, a mighty green river.
Age 37: A good friend, a gay Mi’kmaq man and lover of sushi, holds a fat piece of unagi between chopsticks and announces it’s time for me to journey. He offers to guide me, but I decline, fretting appropriation. He laughs at how white I’m being. I befriend Black Water Snake, but write about her carefully, since whiteness has pillaged the language I’d like to use.
38: On most days, I’m irritated with my husband and argue relentlessly for equity in domestic duties. A couple’s counselor advises us that it’s never good to keep count. I ignore her advice and tally my husband into submission. Good sex keeps our marriage afloat. He’s a musician, I tell my girlfriends, so he can do ten different things at once. Their reaction tells me who is having regular orgasms, and who is not.
39. I hang art and dig flower beds. Organize my closet, scrub floors, cook from scratch, wash and dry endless dishes. The unparalleled sweetness of co-sleeping with my daughter is an easy gratitude in a world that can feel predatory and cruel. My husband and I discuss the prospect of opening our marriage. Instead, with his help, I found a nonprofit.
40. I eat magic mushrooms on my birthday and have repeating panic attacks in a bar relentlessly strung with Edison bulbs. The next morning, after a shower, I examine my body and hate nothing. I do a celebratory dance. Within seconds my daughter joins me, celebrating what she doesn’t understand, her crystalline laughter refracting through my bedroom.
41. Chaos erupts in our leaderless country when a pandemic is allowed in with little fight, slaughtering groups of people already shouldering our sins. Overnight, my role changes from devoted professional to stay-at-home mom. My husband, busier than ever, scurries away to his office after breakfast, a bunker of normalcy. Spring is long, dull as dishwater, my normal coping skills whisked downstream by a steady current of stress. Like legions of other parents, once my kid’s eyes shut for the night, I pour a stiff drink to catch a wave of dopamine.
42. A line from Samuel Beckett makes its way to the front of my face, glowing from the page: Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. I crack books instead of beer, force myself to read the same sentence over and over, words leapfrogging until they settle. Readitating, I call it. It helps. I polish off a large stack.
43. Back to work I go. Back to school she goes. Miraculously, we’re still married. It takes a year to heal.
44. I’m bitter, but my sense of humor outpaces my bitterness. Our daughter fills the house with song and dance. Her bright eyes and pink cheeks are facts.
45. I spend an entire week arguing that anger is a primary emotion, pissed off that it’s understood as secondary. Occasionally, I let go of everything and dance ecstatically. I walk three miles every day, identifying local weeds and trees, acquainting myself with them through every season.
46. “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” I come across these words and and they free me from a sticky trap. Love may not always exalt, but it should never debase. I read those words, too, and the words remove an old splinter.
Tips On Keeping Your Head From Exploding
When you’re trying on a sweater at Marden’s and it’s an adult size medium and you get stuck in it because the neck is sized for a toddler and you’re claustrophobic so you jerk about and a sudden web of electricity spreads across your back and you know immediately that you’ve fucked something up trying to escape the sweater that is trying to kill you and when you try to raise your arms your body says freeze and you’re ready to drop to the floor and roll under the door into public shaking with ignominy and begging forgiveness but suddenly in your head as clear as a bell is the voice of your friend Robin who once warned with the seriousness of a March sky the dangers of freezing up in the fist of pain because freezing will only make you more frozen and the antidote to freezing is moving so you get your ass up from the dressing room bench and halve yourself at the navel and drop into rag doll and let your spine decompress while your levator spasms like a dreaming dog and eventually you can remove the sweater that is trying to kill you and you place it on its hanger and politely hand it to the woman who works the dressing room and now you’re in your car crying from all the stuff that is trying to strangle you and you remember that not-crying is another way to freeze until you get so cold that a tiny bump to the noggin explodes your ice-head into a fractal of pink crystals but this is not the case for you today because the tears are warm and loose.
When you’re attending an event and your niece shows up and you haven’t seen her for too long because of stupid adult things and stupid adult shame and she aims her brown gaze at you and her irises are two holes thumbed into rich loam waiting for seed and she blinks with confidence because she knows her worth and she holds you locked within her bright disappointment well then you brace yourself and open the garage door to your soul and dump the trashcan on the cement floor and sort through what’s real and what’s imaginary and then you close the garage door and offer her a seat in your lap that she refuses but instead she sits very close and within a few minutes her hand creeps into yours and you are both exquisitely aware that there is an entire table of sugary confections at this event but maybe it’s best to avoid it because there’s no sneezeguard and so many dripping children but then she looks at you and you look at her and yolo so the two of you walk up to the table and you snag a mini cannoli and a chocolate round thing filled with chocolate stuff and your belly is full of sweetness and your head thaws like frozen cookie dough on a warm countertop and it no longer feels like hot pie spattering with cherries the kind in the thick red sauce that bubble and splash the inside of an oven like a crime scene while caramelizing the air.
One way to keep your head from exploding when your friend calls you and she is drunk and suicidal is to tell that friend if she kills herself you will kill yourself too and you will find her in whatever circle of hell she’s landed and eternally chase her with a sharpened stick so that her death will not be the end to her suffering and then after threatening your friend who is threatening herself you will stay up with her all night providing endless distraction until you can tell she’s too tired to murder who you love and then you will call her in the morning when she’s sober and remind her to look for a therapist as well as seashells and casually bring up that you’ve spanned many centuries as friends and you’ve always loved her and there is no difference from how the two of you were in 2403 BC except now there is TikTok instead of clay tablets and you are both laughing and a bit sloppy with oxytocin and though you know her heart has been minced and glued together and minced again you tell her that a bedroom wall spattered with blood and a gun dropped to the floor will douse the pilot light of your heart forever it will destroy it with freezer burn and you’re not fucking around and she best throw out the bottle of Jack or you’ll fight her but you’d rather give her a long hug and play with the dog then wash your hands and chop onions and she says okay okay you love me okay and you do love her you do.
If you’d like your head to stay whole and not explode into bits when walking with your mother who loves you with an intensity that stuns perfect strangers but cannot stop talking about all the ways the world will end you can ask her to hold your glove so you can take a picture of dew on a spider web or say whoa look at the shades of brown in that pasture of goldenrod and point out the tumor-shaped galls that provide homes for the larvae that the chickadees eat through the winter and when your mother offers a challenge and says there is something even more beautiful and points to a frozen puddle to be cracked with the tip of a duck boot in the deep quiet of February and then she talks about the birds who eat daily from the feeder outside her kitchen window you relinquish the game and your patience is a larva nestled deep within a gall that your mom can pick and eat like a chickadee and you can dissolve into her belly and fly with her through the miracle that is mother and tree.
One way to stay sane and not slam your head against the soapstone countertop when your daughter is yelling at you because she dislikes how her hair looks after sleeping for ten hours and you’re staying calm in order to model emotional regulation but inside your guts are spattering like hot cherries and threatening to caramelize the air is to take a coffee mug in your hand and pretend there is a special juice in the mug that is red and berrylike and will allow you to bounce over houses fly over entire lawns and rivers and with a single sip lighten into freedom because this red juice is a heart blood elixir and now you can bounce upstairs and calmly demand she stop being rude and once she chills the eff out go fix her pony with the special comb that doesn’t snag the baby hairs that still edge her forehead and don’t you dare be mean to your husband once the bus picks her up but instead give him a sip of the red berrylike juice and tell him you will have sex with him mid-air as you are bouncing over the city where you grew up and are still learning to love and everyone will say oh look a spy balloon and they will run to get their binoculars and guns but some just their guns and you will almost get shot which makes the sex more exciting yahoo and those who had the smarts to grab binoculars will see your husband and you stuck together sailing over houses in a pornographic way and someone with a very powerful camera will film it and you and your husband will be YouTube sensations and then you can retire early and buy a beach home and you will not allow your head to spatter like a cherry from guilt because you’ve won the lottery of free time and luxury and instead you will accept it and enjoy it and sprawl across the sand and your head will bob with the sea because you kept it from exploding and this is how you do it.
another bootstrap murder
“You look tired, hon.”
“Yeah, I’m not feeling great. Spring allergies.”
“I have spring and fall allergies. Hard to think straight when your face is dripping, I take fexofenadine and something my naturopath gave me, expensive, but worth it, though this week I ran out and I haven’t had a chance to refill because last week, I lost my cat, Marmalade, who I’ve had since she was a kitten,15 years I had her, I loved that cat like a parent loves a child, probably more, and you know what, I couldn’t believe this, she died exactly 7 days after the anniversary of losing my husband to a rare flesh-eating bacteria, the poor man suffered like you wouldn’t believe, and the doctors, the doctors, they just threw their hands up and watched him die because these days, they’re only it for the money, everyone’s in it for the money, moneymoneymoney, not me, I was a teacher for 35 years and I was there for those kids, I don’t care who they were, what they looked like, black, white, green, purple, rich, poor, and now, just look at them, these modern kids couldn’t care less if there was a mannequin standing in front of them, all they care about is their phones, they don’t go outside, they don’t see the sun, they don’t talk to each other, they just sit and stare at their screens and eat junk food and do the tik tok and you wonder why there are all these school shootings, these kids are half mad from staring at their phones and playing video games, terribly violent games, fake games that look real as life, and the whole point is to kill kill kill, what do you think that does to their brain, in some you have to even kill police, on purpose, can you imagine that, it wasn’t like that when I was a kid, we respected authority, we had to work, we had to help around the house, we had to be polite at the dinner table, we had to shovel hay until our hands blistered, I had one friend, Frank Carter, who lost his arm up to his elbow to a brush mower, poor guy, but he did okay for himself, left farming for Wall Street and now he’s rolling in the dough, in fact, he called me last week to invite me to his daughter’s graduation, med school, surgeon, she’s incredible, not a lazy bone in her body, unusual, that one, and that reminds me - Ma’am? Ma’am?! Are you okay?! Ma’am, you’re bleeding! Someone, call 911! No, no, I don’t know, sir, we were just chatting and her eyes rolled back and she started bleeding from her ears and she collapsed, spring allergies, she said, poor woman, I have spring allergies, spring and fall and I’ll tell you what, I suffer, boy oh boy do I suffer, but I’ve never collapsed like that, never.”
Pine Street
In my dreams,
you’re a hermit
whose hands shake,
spilling tea,
holed up in the block
across from Bourque’s,
reticent to connect,
painfully lonely.
I visit
three times
before you crack
the door.
Your apartment is tiny,
stale, 3rd floor.
Smoke curls
from an ashtray
dropped atop
a stack of books.
Where have you been?
Do you know I have a girl?
The slat back chair
where you sit
at the window
is short a spindle.
A flutter
grabs your gaze,
- a bird -
your fingers twitch.
Hello, I say, Hey.
You look away.
In the center
of every dream,
a riddle, how
to end a story
that lost
the middle.
In my hands
your feet are brittle,
birdlike, your beard
still brown.
Jesus washed
the feet of Peter,
Judas, too,
sole to palm
slowly,
lowered down,
in my hands
you fade
before what aches
is laved away.
The bird outside
is a just a pigeon,
cousin
to the dove,
the washbowl empty,
water snaking
down
the drain.
Outside
your door,
trapped within
the building’s wood,
a pervasive must,
sorrow in the grain,
my hand along
the varnished railing
collecting
years of dust.
Outside,
fist open
to the air,
À tout à l'heure.
In bitter
summer heat
I saw your truck,
it’s rust,
watched it
disappear,
hurrying east
on Pine Street.
Just A Nice Lady Enjoying the Beach
Stretch of sand.
Unforgiving sun.
Walk around freely.
In your bra and undies.
Basically.
Time to relax.
In this very loud, public place.
Feel that endless gaze?
Assessing your worth?
Swimsuits aren’t for swimming.
A tiny wave can remove a top.
Shake your hair out.
Let loose.
Bikini bottoms are made to be too small.
Don’t pick your wedgie.
Run to the water.
Sprint toward it with joy.
Feel your ass quiver as you run.
Butts are where fat is stored.
It shouldn’t look that way.
It should be smooth.
Like a bicep.
Tight and round.
It should lift as if it wants to take flight.
Like it wants to crawl up your back.
Men are looking at it.
Women are looking at it.
While they watch men look at it.
Men feel watched.
Don’t make them upset.
The men.
Or the women.
They’re at the beach!
Don’t ruin anyone’s day.
With your body.
You’re 64?
Why don’t you look 16?
You’re fat?
Better strut.
Or get eaten alive.
Wear bright colors.
A neon green sarong.
Confidence is hot.
Big juicy butts are sexy.
It might be too much.
Men will decide.
The ocean is freezing.
The water feels like winter.
Nipples poke out.
Sexy.
Obscene.
Jesus.
There are children here!
Go back to your towel.
Freshly shaved legs love that salt.
Lay down.
Just chill.
Wet legs attract sand.
Brush it off.
Exfoliate raw meat.
Flip over now.
Uneven tans are for farmers.
Tan the backs of your thighs.
If you don’t you’ll look dumb.
You can’t be healthy without Vitamin D.
It has to come from the sun.
Not a pill.
Don’t get skin cancer.
Excess sun causes wrinkles.
Sunscreen is necessary.
Sunscreen is overkill.
Are you hydrated?
Dehydration wrinkles skin.
Beer?
White Claw?
Monster?
We’re out of water.
A seagull is harassing a child.
The seagull steals a potato chip from the child.
Right out of his hands.
The child is shrieking.
Wait, is he bleeding?
The mom can’t stop laughing.
She is taking pictures of the shrieking child.
A seagull shits on someone’s cooler.
OMG. Used condom.
Full of seamen. Heh.
Heh. Heh.
What?
A Great White was spotted a mile off the coast.
You cannot see your feet in the water.
Too much seaweed.
Come back in!
Further!
The ocean smells funny.
Something is rotting.
Your lips are blue.
Let’s get out.
Here’s a sandwich.
There’s sand in it.
Let’s go for a walk.
The ground collapses.
It’s good for your knees.
Those small, stabilizing muscles.
So important.
What’s that over there?
Wtf, is that a tampon?
Who does that?
There is no public restroom.
Public restroom is $3 to use.
Cash only.
We should climb those rocks.
The ones slick with seaweed.
In flip flops.
This tide pool is full of orange foam.
Beautiful.
Your lips are burning, hon.
What is that transparent gob?
It looks like a booger.
Don’t touch it.
Might sting you.
Even if it’s dead.
Oh, yeah, sand fleas.
Itch cream fell out of my bag.
Last summer.
I have some aloe.
There’s no actual aloe in it.
Look at the ingredients.
Crazy, right?
Let’s go back.
Here’s some fruit.
Covered in sand.
Is that woman blasting Celine Dion?
That is not beach music.
That man is scowling.
He asked her to turn it down.
She turned it up.
Dizziness is Vitamin D flooding the system.
You’ll be fine.
You’re thirsty?
White Claw?
It’s basically seltzer.
Chill.
OMG, look.
His and her MAGA hats.
That’s actually kinda sweet.
Makes me think, though.
That article.
“Top 5 Things to Know Before Taking Your Firearm to the Beach”
Look!
A banana hammock!
No way!
Hero.
Oh dear.
That child is pissing in the sand.
Right next to the sleeping woman.
Dang, she’s lobster red.
That’s gonna hurt.
Weird to think the sun can poison you.
Skimboarder just bit it.
He’s laughing but he seems hurt.
Selfie?
How about 500?
Don’t get me wrong.
I love the beach.
Restorative.
facebook algorithm
it was the guy I broke up with in high school
after only two weeks that was most aggressive
in the 67 comment thread on Facebook
never making a coherent argument
blathering cruelties followed by a strange
insinuation that he keeps a secret wisdom
anyone who dared question
deemed fools clowns radicals
our hearts halved by grief
19 children in their classroom
making music cut down by a boy
with venom in his veins
ceaseless bullying a stutter
his wrath turned 18
armed with a weapon
so powerful
there was nothing
for parents to hold
guns don’t shoot guns
fucking snowflakes
fucking clowns
in high school I dumped him
because he shotgunned
a rack of beer
burst into tears
yelled at invisible objects
farted like a dog
the two of us alone in the woods
cans at my feet his anger rising
Gotta go I said
his rage barreling round
eyes swollen nose dripping
he punched a tree
for the next two days
he parked in my driveway
head on the steering wheel
I want you back he wrote
in a note stuffed under a wiper blade
in the school parking lot
I’m sorry it didn’t work out
my car door swinging open
It’s not going to work out
But the note? he said
head cocked leaning forward
grinning oh the flash of fury
when I drove off
I heard he hated me
he fucking hates you
can’t wait to read
what the libtards
blame this on
he comments on the post
of a woman grieving
senseless violence
oh, oh,
let me guess
toxic masculinity
Okay, Boomer
Richard, born in 1949,
who insists on Richard,
never Rick, or Dick,
sips Coors Light
from a glass,
lights a cigar,
and tells the story
of how he clocked a man
in the street
who catcalled his honey
- the nerve, he called her Honey -
is now going on
and on about why
he finds it
discriminatory
that Black people
can use the N word
but he cannot.
Love Games
You’ve been deeply depressed and complaining about shit for nine months straight.
It occurred to me today that I should remind you how in our 20s, we spent evenings
relentlessly board-gaming, your competitiveness and tendency to win up against
my performative cheating, sliding my red pawn Home with the edge of my pinky
when you glanced at your phone, dropping unearned pieces into my pie
when you left the couch to dig through the fridge for a beer,
but now you grump all the time, you’re overwhelmed and sad,
intolerant to noise, your voice buried in a mantle of stress.
Once, long ago, your holy lamentations sprung from too little time in a day
to give life to the swell of song in your body, but now the dog has to shit,
the dishes are endless, your work knows no bounds, and there’s a patch of ice
on the bottom step waiting for prey.
Like everyone, we carry new hollows in our hearts,
these past two years the wreck of how we used to know things, how we did them.
We tucked ourselves into a small, protective ball
and I unfolded before you did.
I’m waving to you.
Please come out.
Everything is still broken.
Do you remember how I hated that song you wrote for me once,
about how you’d love me even when I was old and no longer beautiful,
and how I lectured you about how lame it was that you were the hero
saving me from inevitable invisibility, how the patriarchal lie of fading charms
would not stop me from savoring the passage of time, from perennially blooming,
from dancing in wild elation at the fucking improbability of our existence,
and here we are a decade later, pouring love into one concentrated place,
our kaleidoscopically clever child who is kaleidoscopically challenging,
the only person I’ve met more prolific than you.
Come back to me, mischievous friend!
I can see you.
Do come play!
Will you break from the stress to remember how long ago we collapsed in the grass
of a golf course, exhausted from all of the touching, sprinklers set to midnight timers
suddenly releasing powerful jets of water, your face below mine
contorting when your asshole took a direct hit?
You couldn’t run away - in our communion you’d lost your glasses -
and from the safety of a summer maple I watched you high-step
like a newborn fawn through the wet grass, blind, naked from the waist down.
When you reached me, water dripping from your hair,
back in the grass we went.
Honey, stop scowling!
Don’t make me buy you a shotgun and a rocking chair.
A wool blanket for your lap.
Don’t let this world bleed you of sublime word and song,
all your shades of blue.
Come close.
Look around.
Let me whisper some blasphemous thing in your ear, wait, wait,
are you laughing, just one more, let me find a pointy stick to slay the raptor
that daily rips your liver from your ribs and pecks it to shreds,
let me yank open your folded arms, kick you from the cliff,
plunge your head into icy waters, douse your heart and throw a match to it.
Honey, I can see you.
Come play with me, goddammit!
When you’re not looking I’ll slip an extra piece into your pie,
edge your blue pawn Home with a subtle finger,
blend color into your monochromatic sleep.
I’m a profligate cheater and I’m helping you win,
you won.
Let us hold hands and together be unrepentant,
let us see what gold we can mine from our grief,
let us see what greets us in the warmth we make
from these long cold nights.
Intermittent Fasting
I’m thinking about a Facebook post about intermittent fasting while slicing English cheddar for a towering ham sandwich.
4 days a week, posts a Friend, I only eat during a 6 hour window. Combined with regular infrared saunas and a weekly coffee enema, I’ve never felt better, or more optimized.
I went to grade school with her long ago. In 5th grade, she wore boat shoes with socks, excelled at floor hockey, used marker to list the names of the boys she loved.
Now, there’s a picture of her in a weight room looking cadaverous but smiling, eyes shining with wolfy hunger, each rib countable. A filter has been applied to her teeth. Between her lips, a solid block of sparkling ivory.
Bitchily, I picture a different scene: Blood dripping from pointed canines, eyes the color of sulfur, tail flagged, mange. (I know her husband.)
You too can thrive! she advertises in cursive pink across the flat canvas of her abdomen. PM me for packages and special rates.
Fucking crazy, I think ungenerously, annoyed that my sandwich suddenly seems indulgent, the punishing art of calorie restriction ubiquitous, glamorized, shaming my honey baked ham from the screen of my phone.
Lawd Jesus, I’d starve! one woman quips to everyone’s delight. She follows her comment with a selfie, a jar of fun-sized candy cradled in the crook of her arm.
The fasting woman responds: Lol! I eat clean when I’m not fasting. And I’m never hungry when I fast. 😉
There’s a collective roll of the eye. A wave of collective shame. We suddenly feel our asses in our chairs, gingerly finger the rolls of our neck, crave Mountain Dew.
I toss a crumbling piece of cheddar in my mouth, the alchemy of fat and salt opening the sluice of dopamine.
Cheeeeeeeese.
*
My friend, Anna, improvises charcuterie when I visit. We kick back in old lawn chairs, rest our feet on the wide cedar planks of the garden bed, and share hunks of marbled salami cut with a pruning knife wiped clean on the leg of her jeans.
Try this, she says, and pops a ground cherry from its paper husk. It glows yellow in my palm, tastes sour and tropical. Check it out, she says, rubbing leaves of Korean mint between her thumb and forefinger, filling the air with the scent of licorice before mashing it between her teeth.
I crack the tab of a skunky IPA, 16oz split between two mugs brimming with foam, the back of our necks reddening in the sun. Chickens aerate the soil, gobble the scratch we toss in front of them. Tiny dinosaurs, Anna remarks, and wonders if we’d run from them if they were suddenly the size of trucks.
We identify wildflowers, walk for the sake of walking, talk about mothering, our fathers, fathering. We eyeball traffic, count how many people drive by while staring at their phones. We talk about our ongoing affairs with various technologies.
I tell Anna about my daughter’s favorite book, a story about Baba Yaga, a witch of Slavic lore famous for her repulsive nose. Her hut stands on stilts made of chicken legs, and her black cat salivates while she cooks up children she’s stolen from warm, safe homes.
Anna snorts, matches this with her son’s favorite book - a Russian tale about a nose that flees a man’s face and makes a life of its own. Noshe! her toddler requests, nauseating her every time she arrives at the part of the story where the nose is discovered in a loaf of sourdough.
We talk about men’s noses, how beguiling they can be. We talk about disappointment, bird behavior, the five flavors, our hatred of the winter wind.
Back inside, Anna clears a spot on the kitchen table and shares a pop-up book she’s made by hand, each snip of her scissors dimensionally dizzying, terrifically precise.
We eat olives, bread, share another beer. When it’s time to leave Anna gives me a hug. I drive home, neck warm.
*
I turn off my phone.
In addition to English cheddar, I add romaine, stone ground mustard, salted tomato, bacon. It’s three stories and tilts to the left.
I take a bite.
What washes over me can only be called sandwich joy.
First Person Dream
You were vexed with your father this morning because he woke you from a dream in which you were a flying werewolf. Dada woke me from the best dream, you cry, yanking the comforter over your head.
I peel the covers back and kiss your forehead, and in a gentle, singsong voice, ask, Well, do you think you could draw this werewolf for me?
My question is apparently enraging.
Your feet tantrum, sending the comforter boiling, but there’s ten extra pounds of winter blanket and you can’t sustain the weight. Your torso bursts forth, green eyes glowing, cheeks flaming pink.
Mama! you snap, your entire body vibrating, It was a first person dream. I can’t DRAW myself because I can’t SEE myself, duh!
I open the blinds. Swallow laughter.
Well, damn, I say. How was the tree canopy?
You howl with indignation and retract into the covers. I tiptoe to the foot of the bed, lift the corner, find a toe and give a gentle tug. You shriek like you’ve been stabbed in the kidney.
I zip out of the room before you can burst from your den, down the stairs, slippers suspended over gleaming cherry. In the kitchen, your father sits at the table, a playlist called Christmas Jazz offering merciless tidings. He’s timed it perfectly. My favorite mug is full of freshly pressed coffee, still steaming.
I hover at the counter, near the dishwasher, prepare oatmeal with maple syrup, cinnamon, extra cream. I can track the path of your feet above my head, the opening and closing of the bathroom’s pocket door, the drawers of your pine dresser slapping shut as you choose your flamboyance for the day. Joy surges up my neck when you start down the stairs.
You stop at the bottom step. Scowling.
I can’t help it. Laughter shoots from every hole in my face.
You’re such a pain in the ass sometimes, I say, my arms reaching past your shoulders, your forehead tucked against my chest, my nose in your hair. And I’m the luckiest mom in the world.
You let me kiss your flaming biscuits ten times, each side, and eat your oatmeal while sitting in my lap, the canopy of trees stretching green and for forever.
thirst thirst thirst
As I age, and my spirit gentles, I find that I think differently about what's "attractive" and what's not.
As I age, and my spirit gentles, I find that I think differently about what's attractive and what's not. Lately, what arouses me is bearded white dudes driving oversized, gas-guzzling trucks, just LAYING on their horns, like, just putting their strong calloused palms on the center of that steering wheel and PRESSING IN with all their might and letting the dragon they ride - I mean, their truck - release those loud sounds of emergency that can stop a heart, and aiming that terrifying sound right at a little Corolla, a stupid little grey Corolla with its hazards on, with some dumb chick helping some old bitch out of the passenger seat, man, when I see that, I'm like, YEAH BIG BOY YOU TELL EM, your mama loves you and NOW I LOVE YOU MORE you furious hypertensive giant, look how you scare everyone within a mile, look how you frightened that teenager on the corner trying to cross the street, cuz no one gets in your way, do they, and OH YES, you just keep blowing that horn and shaking that angry fist and tempting me, keep it up and I'm gonna use that weird step stool thing attached to those big trucks and I'm gonna climb right into that passenger seat and I'm gonna grab your wild mane and turn your head to me and I'm gonna reach real slow and I'm gonna use my thumb and forefinger and I'm gonna pluck a pacifier from my purse and I'm just gonna STICK IT right in your mouth, YOU LIKE THAT DON'T YOU! boy, I'm straight gaggin,’ what's a bitch to do but thirst thirst thirst.
Talons
~for Ted, who is as groomed as he is fictional
Big night tonight.
Had a glass of water
and didn’t refill the Brita.
Didn’t smile in commiseration
when my husband shed a tear
at the years of practiced patience
keeping me steady while helping
our 10 year old with a devastating
set of math problems.
“When I tried,
she was uncooperative,”
he reports, gloomily.
“Yeah,” I say, blandly,
sipping lukewarm water,
“I’m a miracle worker.”
I created a profile
on Match last night.
I’m so sick of things.
No, I don’t hunt.
Wow, big fish, bub.
Sure, I’d eat your venison.
Hard pass on the MAGA hat,
the gun guy, the feral-faced
50-something named Boobs.
Are you filthy, fit, fat,
hairy, smooth as a seal?
Age, race, weight, height?
I don’t care about that shit.
I just want a tender pot roast,
a heavy fork, and a generous pour.
I suppose he should be vaccinated
for polio and tetanus;
no bubble to click for that.
Now that I think about it,
I write from under my king-sized
comforter, screen dimmed,
Do you snore? Moisturize?
How often do you change
your sheets?
Do you regularly trim
your toenails, I ask.
Can you julienne a carrot?
Thoughts on chatty dentists?
Your mouth cranked open,
packed with tools, cool with that?
Wait, here’s a good one.
Would you wash a bra
with a dog blanket?
Scrub everything
in the sink
but the fry pan?
Seriously, will you
leave that for me?
I need to know.
I’m a straight, white,
middle class lady with bangs,
bored with being bored,
each deepening wrinkle
the zipping up of rage
- laugh lines, I’ll say -
touch them up with filters
that lighten disappointment,
direct the eye away from erosion
of seaside cliffs, dying coral reef,
and drink enough wine to text a friend
a picture of my tits, le sigh.
Kidding, that’d be classless,
instead I'll scroll Zappos
or West Elm
since everyone knows
privilege isn’t hot
and best saved
for overpriced cocktails
with loud groups
of exfoliated women
enchanted by what
they don’t have,
exhausted by what they do.
In the morning,
dehydrated, idiotic,
I’ll place my hands
around my husband’s waist,
gaze lovingly at my daughter,
and use the last of the cream
before driving into
a blood red sunrise
for breakfast and a motel
with Ted, who texted
a pic of his feet,
toenails freshly
clipped.
Necromancer
for Shauna
The chicory is in bloom
and the solidagos are taller
than me, their hairy fingers
gilded with golden dust,
quaking in the afternoon
breeze, the bees.
Pearly Everlasting, yellow eyes
wrapped in paper husks, stare
uneasily in all directions.
*
The landscape is blazing
in amber and gold, and
on this quiet stretch
of path, I can recall
your voice, how you
shook a ponytail free,
how you gripped
your pen when your time
was wasted
how you wore a watch
set to the needs
of your dogs
and in these memories,
darkness blooms
beneath my feet,
panic coils
and springs loose,
supersonic scream
dropping dead two fawn,
the doe, the fat groundhog
with its mouthful of clover.
*
Every August
we lounged on a blanket
by the river,
years of friendship,
fingers wandering
small piles of green
river rock we’d collected
after lunch, huckleberries
and cherry tomatoes,
cross legged in cowboy hats,
I praised your breasts
in that black bikini.
You waggled them
in response, dark hair
shining with sun.
They’re mighty, aren’t they?
You tossed a tomato my way.
Worthy of great celebration.
*
Later, on the hike to the car
you paused on the trail
uncapped your canteen
casually mentioned
the vast stretch of sorrow
that lives just under the surface,
offered me a glimpse, as if by mistake
- frozen winter lake reflecting
mountains capped with snow-
and I slowed, confused,
leaned closer to peer,
questions forming
when you drew the curtain,
capped your bottle,
shifted your pack
and began to walk
at a quickened pace,
back stiff, turned away.
*
Later we met friends at a club,
squeezed lime into frozen mugs
frothing with PBR and danced.
I love you! you said,
waltzing to a pop song,
catching your breath.
We shared a pillow
that night. ankles touching,
carafe of coffee in the morning,
Don’t talk until the second cup,
you warned.
I loved you for that.
*
Today, horror feeds
a furnace of rage
-you died by suicide -
and my thoughts lift me
like a bad spirit,
feet hanging,
eyes bulging,
supersonic scream
shriveling apples
from the branch,
draining color from the
cornflower sky, leaving
a stretch of steel,
a surgical table,
a bad omen -
I need to ask
questions
that smolder,
I need to howl,
toss you in the river,
pat you dry,
hold you close
and kiss your forehead
like I would a child,
whisper Come back,
I Loved you,
And Why.
Your last moments
taunt me, twist soft,
unprotected places,
make me feel
I might suddenly,
violently, unwind.
*
I can
feel you here
with me.
Tell me
your demons
by name
let me shake
a broom at them,
a fist,
shake from you
the grim ending,
shake from me
the thoughts
I’m left with,
your face twisted
with suffering
I can’t
understand.
Come closer, listen.
Please, just
wait.
In the past ten years
when I thought of joy
it was you I recalled
ankles touching,
green stone,
black bikini -
and now when
I think of you
it scares me.
*
There is always
silence,
like death,
before the levee breaks,
before the body
hits the ground,
before the waters
drown the path,
flood
the forest,
the home,
the cities,
the beds
we no longer
share.
Grief flows
downstream,
the direction
of shattered
hearts, each surge
of sorrow
the language
of a heart
that reaches
for what it can
no longer
hold
each salted
drop filling
unbearable holes
with cold lakes
reflecting mountains
capped with snow
we didn’t know
what you couldn’t
tell us
we didn’t know
and now we
collect memories
like stones
the sky
blooming
blue as the chicory
that lines the path
sneakers on pavement
palms wet
with tears
that’s just it, friend,
I love you
like you’re still
here.
*
What
I’ve learned
from speaking
to the dead,
from speaking
to you,
is that grief
assures us
that we loved
and it’s that necessity,
to love, then,
to weep,
that makes less
the depths
of grief.
*
Memories piled
like river stone, you,
sun in your hair,
me, collecting,
refusing to forget
our joys.
Lists
My mind
is overgrown
with lists unending,
malignant, their own blood
supply of attention, obligations
bloated and unchecked, dependent
on a steady diet of unfinished business.
My mind became overgrown with growing lists.
I promised to take shears to their rootlets, pour acid
where growth continued, snaking and tough. To the list
I added Do what you must to stop multiplication and worked
diligently, head down, one by one crossing through with black
marker the extensive catalog of tasks, but when it came time to
retrieve shears, buy acid, I found desire turned to rot and instead used
the day to help my husband make space in our garage for his shiny new Ski-Doo.
20 Instances of Death
I.
I think he’s waiting,
my mother whispers
over the phone.
Mom!
My jaw clamps.
Can he hear you?
She ignores me.
She’s pressing buttons
on the microwave.
There’s a sudden scratch
- she’s dropped the phone -
a whirring, a ping.
Whoops, she says,
Gotta go.
*
The dining room table
has disappeared under mail,
pill bottles, receipts.
His arthritic neck cranes
above the brown recliner,
C-SPAN, volume maxed.
I stand behind him,
kiss his bald pate,
inhale Bay Rum.
Lauren!
he says,
eyes filling.
*
Dysphagia and cookies don’t mix.
I’ve unpacked my bags
and changed into sweats.
I kick back
in the gold recliner
and spin to face him.
I fit funny in the chair,
still imprinted with my Gigi,
gone a decade.
We eat Oreos.
Share stories.
He chokes the rest of the night.
II
On my 16th birthday,
he took me out for lunch
to discuss spelunking.
When you explore dark corners,
he said, you’ll discover creatures
it will take a lifetime to understand.
The rewards are never immediate,
he cautioned, reading my brow, But it’s
how you avoid becoming a dull adult.
III
He moans in his sleep.
I should pull a chair to his bed,
keep the covers tucked
to his chin.
Instead, at the threshold
of his bedroom,
I count breaths.
Three shallow....
Nothing.
I wait.
Wait.
Wait.
His eyes snap open, widen,
legs kicking violently
under the sheets
before he gags,
sputters,
sinks.
Scuttling back to the couch,
I nurse an awful hunch:
I’m a lily-livered,
yellow-bellied rat.
NO.
Astride a chestnut mare, dirt-stained,
traveling the forest edge to headland,
my mare stops. There’s a sudden chill.
Chin upturned, battle ax skyward,
ruby lips part to release a war cry
so fierce a killer whale breaches.
The thought fills me with embarrassment.
I eat.
IV
Cheyne-Stokes.
He stops breathing for 62 seconds at a time.
My mother times it on her watch.
I can’t stay underwater for that long, she says.
V
He spends most of his days underwater,
a rainbow trout gleaming over green
river rock and clouds of emerald algae.
Whirligigs blur the surface.
Moving closer to examine
speckled olive, slick of rose,
a shadow.
His caudal fin snaps,
propelling him upstream.
VI
You should learn how to play
World of Warcraft! says my brother,
over his bowl of spicy Pad Thai.
“Sad? Kill an abomination!”
VII
His heart is failing, says the nurse.
My mother brushes his forehead.
My sister holds one hand,
me, the other.
A failing heart can be restored
by a closed circuit of love,
I chant magically, childishly.
VIII
We think he is minutes away.
We think that it will happen
in the next few hours.
We think we should start making phone calls.
We think we should page the nurse.
The doorbell rings.
“WHO IS RINGING
THE GODDAMN BELL?”
he roars, furious, foaming.
IX
When he dies, I suspect it will snow.
Or it won’t.
I read my horoscope.
X
I dream of falling
backwards into a pot
of black ink.
Blind, clawing for surface,
lungs tight, fingers scrape
the bottom.
Wrong way.
XI
I had an affair,
lied to my friends,
quit my job,
moved home,
unpacked my bags,
settled in to help him die.
At night, I collect pillows
from every room, arrange them
so I’m at the center of a den of bears,
their warmth protecting me, a child
dependent on an adult who is me.
XII
I must leave the house.
I meet my brother at a dive,
suck down two beers, two cigarettes.
In the wooden booth, I can still smell it.
It’s impossible to escape, I tell him.
Yeah, he says. Can’t trick death.
XIII
This hospice nurse
smells like fabric softener
and 10,000 cigarettes, her voice
a potato peeler catching a nail.
“MAURICE, CAN YOU HEAR ME?”
If I were him, I’d pretend I’m dead too.
XIV
We crush Lorazepam
in a spoon, add water,
mix it into a syringe of morphine.
When we administer
the medicine, we lift
our tongues, too.
XV
I need my nephews.
I need them to crawl all over me,
hug me, jump on things they shouldn’t.
When they show up, people shush them.
It’s just too much right now.
They leave.
XVI
My mother, my mother, my mother.
She doesn’t know what to say,
so she crouches, shouts:
“I’m 61! It was my birthday yesterday!”
His head rolls toward her.
“61!” she shouts again,
her face in his horizon.
His eyes spiral like a cartoon.
He smiles!
XVII
I want a man to rescue me.
I want never to make mistakes.
I want never to lie.
I want death to be silent,
bloodless, painless, quick.
I want, shamelessly.
The thought fills me with shame.
XVIII
I sit in an uncomfortable chair
repeating my mantra:
Death is oceanic,
courage a raft.
The mantra morphs:
Death a shiver of sharks,
fear a bucket of chum.
XIX
The hospice nurse suggests
we tell him that we will be okay,
that he can let go, that the dying
need to hear they’ve been enough.
My mother points out that he is heavily sedated.
“Yes,” she says.
XX
The door to his bedroom is cracked.
A sliver of violet light
crosses the carpet,
climbs the bone white wall,
flannel sheet pulled to his chin,
lips bloodless, a grim crack
through the bronzed sheet
of his jaundiced face.
His fingers are stiff,
shiny, waxed.
On the edge of his bed,
his hand in mine,
my thumbs knead
until there’s
warmth,
an ember to tend,
palm softening,
unfolding.
In the center,
a fissure,
whorled, widening,
mouth of an
inkwell,
black ink.
We mix,
blind,
sediment sinking,
dark hum.
Vision merges.
His bedroom, violet,
swift current
of memory,
rawhide mitt, black soutane,
beach rose,
garden tomato, filigree pen,
Roman missal -
the current strengthens,
rips, boils,
propels us through an eddyline,
folds us under
hulking monotones
sunken iron gate, church pew,
barber chair,
headstone,
queen bed, bénitier -
water fills our throats, lungs tightening,
legs cramping,
regret, fear,
regret -
NO.
Thighing through eddyline,
dirt-stained, ruby-lipped,
war cry, battle ax,
clutch,
raft,
release,
float.
A stretch of sunlight and fern,
a warbler’s chipped, bright song,
marsh grass,
driftwood,
silver maple,
bulrush,
a bend in the river
sweet air
the water ringing with truth:
You are enough.
There’s a still, clear pool.
Speckled olive, slick of rose.
With a flick,
he disappears downstream.
I.
It’s almost dusk.
Whirligigs spin across the water.
A car pulls into the driveway.
I let go of his hand,
head to the kitchen to join
the hushed uncertainties of the living
where we’ll pour coffee,
make lists,
sift for meaning,
trading myths.
The Trinity
There once was a woman who loved coconut. The woman thought about coconut every day. The woman thought about coconut every night. The woman thought about coconut all of the time.
One afternoon, in late spring, the woman was reading in a field of wildflowers and sipping from a freshly drilled coconut. Preoccupied with the coconut’s creamy water, she failed to notice dark clouds gathering above her head. As the woman tilted her chin to enjoy the last of its ambrosia, she was struck by lightning.
The woman and the coconut were turned to stone.
Years later, the field was bought by multinational conglomerate with plans to build a parking lot for a casino. Within weeks of purchase, a crew arrived to level the field. One of the workers, Ángel, stumbled upon the stone statue of the woman and her coconut. It had fallen to the ground and was covered with purslane with the exception of a single, pointed breast. Ángel cleared the purslane and lifted the statue from the ground, instantly realizing he’d discovered something sacred – a woman in a state of rapture. That evening, he loaded the statue into his truck and quit his job.
On the seventh day, Ángel made love to the woman and her coconut, kissed her pointy breasts, loaded her into his truck and drove to a cliff outside of the city. With one hand on her stone coconut, the other on her stone buttcheek, he tossed her from the edge. As Ángel walked back to his truck, he heard the muffled pop of the statue’s impact with the ground below.
The woman and her coconut were now dust settling into red clay below.
Lilith
There once was a young Southern man who was raised in a pious home. The young man dressed modestly and had every crooked tooth straightened. Every Sunday, he spent sixty minutes in a wooden pew, his chin redemptively tucked.
Not a single member of his brethren suspected that the young man wanted more than anything to lose his virginity to the devil. Every night, once the household stilled, he ripped back his bedsheets and exposed himself to the night air, waiting for the devil to pounce. But the young man waited in vain, and his penis became soft and cold. Sobbing into his pillow, he’d collapse into a fitful, disappointing sleep.
In the young man’s dreams, powerful urges came to life. A sex-crazed, dark-haired woman with giant buttocks, each cheek like a halved watermelon and breasts as big as truck tires would straddle him, pinning his arms to the bed with unimaginable strength, her head spinning like a top. When he couldn’t take it anymore - not a single second more - she’d release his arms and he’d grab frantically for the horns protruding from her mane, climaxing into swirling darkness.
The young man would wake in the morning in a state of elation, but the moment he realized the sweat on his pillow was his alone, he’d plunge from grace. Shuffling to the shower, he’d weep with despair and watch his seed swirl down the drain.
Years later, the man went to college and lost his virginity to an exuberant feminist with orange eyes. The feminist’s sex drive was insatiable. They found pleasure in each other nightly, and she smothered his face with the dark hair that grew all over her body. When he was ready to come, the young man lifted his head from the pillow, peering into the twin embers of her eyes, his mouth as round as a pie tin. “Food of hellfire!” he’d howl, “I’m avenged!”
“Yes!” she’d yelp, squeezing his nipples with vigor.
They remained lifelong partners but never married or had children. When she died, the man buried her ashes near a golden forsythia. A day after her burial, the bush spontaneously ignited but never burned.