Another Of My Kind

I ran with another of my kind
until the earth split,
the chasm dividing us like a riven bone.

Below, the damned, more numerous than lunatics in April.
Above, angels with hooked talons, singing for a drunken god in the stunned hour.

Sister! I called.
She answered, but faintly,
our common language already corrupted, scattering.
_______

for G Man's Friday 55 and for Fireblossom Friday at Real Toads.

Red Diamond

Perfection manifests colorless--
on light entire, the faultless cut is fed;

Your bride, intact, will give her sweet pale hand
that clasped those lilies cool enough for dead.

Give me the fortunate interstitial defect--
the flaw that splits refraction thread by thread;

My damaged, love-bitten throat commands your gaze, dear,
when I wear my black diamond choker, or the red.
_______

 

Meghan

The grass that April seemed stunned,
as if winter had kicked it out of the house.

That was the year of the fiery crash
and the bullshit sermon.

Daisies came up in the graveyard,
and the spring sun went down easier than it rose.

You were Meghan of the tractor pasture,
my baby of the barbed wire ditch.

You showed me, all those times under a sickle moon,
how a Scorpio's kiss can make the earth move.

Mama said it was the mines settling,
but all I believed in, that April, was the gospel of your arms.

Summer came, and the cicadas sang, then died.
Later, we knocked pecans down from the trees,

gathering them in our jean jackets spread on the ground to be forgotten
as we got drunk on illegal beer and each other's skin.

April is always a rainy, uncertain month,
and summer, here, can put a good woman in the madhouse.

Anyway, it's only March, and colder than a banker's smile,
but I woke up thinking of you, Meghan, so I called in queer and wrote you this poem.
________ 

image: Emmylou Harris

 

Celestial Seasonings

On my coffee mug,
girl & dog.

I saw myself in her,
years ago,
when I was a woman fallen overboard,
sinking.

I was a ball of string
unwinding right down to the speechless bone.

I shall be this girl, I decided, not thinking it was anything more than a wish.
I shall have a border collie like this one, too,
named Bosco, because...well, because of a certainty I could not have explained.
He will be mine alone,
unlike my spouse,
unlike my child,
unlike anything I do or say or move through, now.

When the one who would soon enough trade me for madness asked,
"What are you thinking?",
I said, "I am thinking I will grow my hair long."

Girl & dog on my mug have faded;
alone among them all, this one has lost its paint,
and gone faint.

The company stopped making the tea it came with,
and I have gone back to coffee, and my own skin.

Look at me, long-haired, though it is going to silver;
look at me alone, back to being the poet,
and look at the black and white friend at my feet.

I made my life from a five dollar mug.
It's gone to white while I am a vivid red,
waved in front of the world like a dare.
________

 

Mime

when you pontificate
from a to
z,
i seem to agree
if tacit-
ly.

when you decide
uni
lateral-
ly,
it never bothers
no, never mind
me.

i'm not a wife
who nags or sighs;
but don't think i'm
some saintly mime--

the officer asked me,
were you
here?
perhaps in
bed?
or even
dead?

far be it from me
to bend his ear--
and so,
I haven't 
exactly
said.
_____

for Kay's challenge at Real Toads
 
 

Nurse Gina

Nurse Gina is a Sister of the Creolan Mission.
She has not attended any recognized school of nursing.
She does not submit to any formal schedule,
and she does not date your doctor, fumbling in the break room like a teenager.

The Creolan Sisters have a mission on Earth,
and their mission does not include such tawdry stuff.
Here, have a hit of holiness
from the fingertips of Nurse Gina--
don't bogart it.
Don't think that this is anything but transformative.

The Sisters have seen
how you fail;
how you have fallen open like a dropped cardboard box in the rain.
They have seen how the very bones within you have drifted,
leaving your tired spirit to gasp on the sidewalk of sickness;
They come as you expire,
bedeviled,
so weary that rain stops half way to your face, as you look to the skies.

Now,
Nurse Gina appears.
She will not clip tedious notations and reports to the foot of your bed,
nor crank it to an upright position like some angelic elevator operator.
No.
She will climb in with you,
her skin miraculous and dark from the sunny cliffs at San Creola;
you will believe that a compact and very feminine sun has covered you,
and she has.

Here is a new narcotic,
one of healing,
one that sharpens perception
even as it soothes the overburdened lonely chambers of your heart.
Kiss her, and know that you are loved--
not only by Nurse Gina and the whole of the Creolan Order,
but by the Goddess herself.

She has reserved for you a holy bounty
which She created even before the seas themselves--
the seas Our Lady presides over at her sacred birthplace,
where the waves undulate and smooth themselves over every trouble
just as Nurse Gina does
in the restorative hour before dawn,
when she reminds you of who you are
and why you are worthy
of her tender attentions in the first place.
_________

IT'S HERE ! OUR NEW BOOK !

Hello, readers! What do you suppose three cultured, educated, lovely ladies might get up to of an afternoon?

Three beautiful, sunny lasses, with a will to work a wonder, what might they do???

Well, if they are Mama Zen, queen of the short form and a natural born storyteller; Hedgewitch, noted form maven and mistress of the mythological; and Fireblossom....um....celebrated doorstopper, they might combine to write a book. And we did!

Our book is called Gemini/Scorpio/Capricorn, and it contains three sections, one with my poems, one with Kelli's, and one with Joy's, plus a little surprise featuring each of us, at the end of the book.

I speak for all of us, I'm sure, in thanking Marian at ALL CAPS PUBLISHING for helping us make this book a reality!

Even Catblossom can't contain herself: "It will do, if there's nothing on cable. Besides, Simpson is good looking."

I have wanted to do this since forever; putting this book together with such talented friends only makes it even nicer.

Now go buy it. We need the money!
________

"carpe diem" sign created by Dani, my Sista Poet!

___________

Whoa, hold the phone! My collection of short stories, Night Blooms, is also available! 

Buy it, too! I still need the money!