Mother-In-Law's Tongues

 

even

as the edges grow

cutting open my body-womb

spirit sheath,

I speak the wound called poetry

blooming dying leaning to

the light.

_________

A cameo poem for What's Going On?-- "A Cameo Appearance".

In Age

In age, I dreamt myself a child again--
a blown leaf, my parents the wind.

Alone, I dreamt of family again--
my son a child, I rose and fell from the west.

Adored by a dog, I dreamt of dogs--
alive again, and my heart was calm.

In sleep, I dreamt of youth--
desire and sweetness came down from the hills.

In morning, leaves tap the sill--
dog and I raise our heads to the early breeze.
_______

for Micro Poetry at Toads. "Fill the empty parts."

Things Placed In A Velvet Box

It doesn't matter to me, anymore
if your buried name feeds flowers or wasps or nothing at all.
All day there is bread on a board, and a book's pages rolling with the breeze.
There is rain and minutes dying and both the best and least of these...

The things I placed on velvet, in a box
as children or idiots do, with fistfuls of forget-me-nots 
staining fingers blue, as ink will do
when spilled across pulped pages, entre nous...

It doesn't matter whose way 
is the less foolish one
or which moon 
will rise on the ash of a setting sun.

_______

for micro-poetry. 

In This House, The Ghosts

In this house, the ghosts are as common as hung laundry--

they are yellowed newspapers caught behind the lattice-work,beneath the porch.

Down a long straight hallway--the bloom at stem's tip--

a paper lily,

my collection of you, shining with rain.

A woman got in the only way I had left unguarded,

in the steam from a midnight kettle.

She wore silk from Chinese mulberry 

and dismissed me as curator with softness and tongue.

She made her body a maze between me and my lily room,

a baffle for your gifted ghosts.

My desk is in the bedroom now

with an aubade on the wood, in fresh polish. 

________________________

for Micro Poetry "Long Ago Rooms"