This Old House
Hips creak and moan like the wood floorthey clatter against. Pangeaic forms,tectonic shifts, I roll from left to right.Your precious breath tides in and out.I bear witness to your being, eachachy joint erodes slowly over time. Your house once, these hips wereA-frame, your growing flesh crochetedwithin. The time came, they unfurledpetals to push you down…
Breath/e
You have beautiful breath, she said.She of height and grace,enviable warrior on the mat.I, small, round, soft in her presence,off balance, out of focus,exhaled my envy and sipped gratitudelike sweet iced tea on an August afternoon.
Pandemic Family
Doors shuttered. Connections frayed– we were downed power lines, sparks in wind. The only way, together, we built fires in the dark. Or, we were sailors on a current flowing to the world’s end. What monsters swam the deep where our bow would tip and plummet? Then, news came. New life. Our hopes and fears…
Chasing Sunbeams
The winter days darkenedfrom tilted hemisphere,the snow squall hate that blustersfrom the mouths of men.Insidious clouds of thickened rageblock the sun with their backsto deprive the warmththat grows our crops.In spite of this we sit indoors:the dog, the baby, and I.Neither know the dreadof Sunday scaries or headlines,bad opinions, willful ignoranceof me and my and…
The Girl on Rural Ave
I rented her the roomon the basis of her earrings.Freckled nose, newly thin,collar bones cutsharp like her wit.We gave thankswith spanakopitacranberries and turkey,Tupperware bowls.Her vintage eye,a thrift store hound,she let me wearher green dress once.I did again, without asking.She knew but didn’t say.Vodka smoothies, red-eyed research.David Bowie, drunken curries.The cheap skillet warped.I laughed and ate…
The Purse
I unpack the bag and pluck out my fears— used tissues pinched by fingertips— the truth of me smeared and hidden lest anyone see I’m leaking. Cringe and flinch at the caricature my husband’s ex must make of me, the time she caught me coveting her well-lit composition and poise. My finger tap, a signalshe…
Composure
I was as round as a meal, as pregnant as a pause, a hen in the chicken coop tending to my eggs. Our friends outside circled around the picnic and my blood drained out in clumps. The fibrous exodus of a hoped-for future inscribed farewells on the surface of the water. I sealed my heart…
White Creek
I The circle looped in on itself no start and end but the numbers on the houses, crabgrass plots back to back like brothers in a hotel bed. We ran barefoot on the new tar road run wince hobble walk with gravel between our toes. We roamed free, no collars no fences like the transient…
To Influential Mothers on Mother’s Day
Here’s the thing about motherhood—it is the entrance into a perpetual, fluid experience that you can influence, but you cannot control. It is a state of relationship to a child born, unborn, yearned for and not yet. It is a moment where you cease to be the primary protagonist of your story. Your storyline splits…
The Thing About Dreams
The thing about dreams iswe build them from the inside.Our eyes close, our minds constructtreehouse cities, disco skylines.Oh, what a world we’d architectif our steel was empathy.A home for every wearied body,joy in blackness, queerness thriving,diversity resplendent as stained glass.Our beauty illumined.Community.
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Writer. Singer. Storyteller. Shiseiji. 