NaPoWriMo #22

Red Town #14

I grab the tail

any tail, to keep

a thing from getting

away     

NaPoWriMo #21

Red Town #13

Home Depot 

your trees are beautiful

in this weak light

spring is so new 

it is about to disappear

completely     for some

reason I get lost

on the way home

ambushed by hundreds

of girls in plaid skirts

schoolbuses and safety

guards     the whole 

world working to keep

them upright     I see

everything from behind

a windshield and wreaths

come down, invisible ones

on my head and by their

feet     there is a roaring

a man in a storefront

gets out of his chair

leaves his building and

walks toward me

mouth moving     words

no different than pacing

toward me in this light

NaPoWriMo #20

Red Town #12

it is probably too hot for the magnolia

I feel irritated by heat and light

sensitivity     I am always cold

there is always a little flame of cold

in me     when I breathed last night

I could see that there is no line

between me and the trees

and that my breath is also theirs

this is not to say that I own 

them in any way     I belong

to them     they are trying to

raise me in the way they understand

NaPoWriMo #19

Red Town #11

red wing blackbird

chickadee, dachshund

squinting, the blossoms

and leaves on my level

for once     I try to go

to the movie, end up

just walking around

I hate that I'm about

to say the sadness

comes too     not 

sadness over death

or loss or something

broken again but

the one that has always

been here, sitting

in me like an apple

or hand but also 

the same as the sky

or specific hand

the one I think about

no, is close to me

nearly all the time

is no closer to my 

throat than yesterday

NaPoWriMo #18

Red Town #10 you drive up to Maine with the chainsaws and I'm still here guests were invited it was my wedding but I didn't know a soul I told one that he was not welcome here not welcome in my dream or elsewhere the guests slept in sleeping bags and as usual there were secret rooms, hallways a strange bathroom I called the whole thing off right before it started there are so many roads in here I take all of them end up alone in the cabin drifting apple blossom, a carcass sleeping because it is spring

NaPoWriMo #17

Red Town #9 the window was enormous for a storage room I have been let back in I can't really say where the main things are skin, the buzzing of the kids' phones, retreating, and not breeding I don't think I will breed I need these rooms and I have them; rooms are also one of the main things

NaPoWriMo #16

Red Town #8

at the boarding school

spring is coming

spring is coming

at the boarding school

it is a canticle, year-end

recitation, Springfest, Tulip

Concert and they let them

out to the malls in honor

of their new haircuts

someone is rolling the chairs

down the hall and the anger

explodes behind the eyes

it's all another way

of saying lust, this substitute

for crying, it isn't singing

really; it's melting

all pirate boys and telltale

girls into the hallway

the hallway where they wait

to go on

NaPoWriMo #15

Red Town #7

we sit at the one bar in town

this is before the stumbling 

walk around the storefronts

everything closing or burned

to the ground    the girl

who sells jewelry is also

our bartender    she tries

not to listen while we talk

about our history with Satan

Satan    the names looks so 

strange now    the devil    he

was the clinking that came

from the electric heat at night

pitchforks and sharp hammers

not blazing heat but a warm

summer night was his time

he came while I slept to make

my heart bad    my head full

of something like radishes maybe

sharp, summer, surprisingly hot

the sun gone now, the fence

blacker and blacker against

the garden    it must be so dark

out there    when we leave

it is soon after the fire    one

dark hour the buildings were there

now they are something else 

because nothing can disappear

these are the rules of matter

NaPoWriMo #14

Red Town #6

Sir is a kind of person

I feel like a person today

birds spinning, sky permanent

and lickable, even feelings

eeking out a living

working backward from

a smoking oven

I guess how to walk

the twigs underneath

twigs under everything

the baby bison chewing 

grass, the mouse skipping

over the surface of

landscape, technicolor

sea of prairie, the church door 

locked and a woodchuck

stuck to my hand

he is inside still and

I got out and I'm the last

one here, a kind

of person, a name

walking around

calling the things what

they are

NaPoWriMo #13

Red Town #5

I report to myself first thing,

hands normal, eyes something

or other, the feeling of waterfall

behind them and a face nearby

I do my work by watching

here comes the rain again

raining inside and also under

it is too loud now so I must go

NaPoWriMo #12

In the filmstrip the men follow the women in a dance, because God said that women create things. Men can't bleed so they destroy themselves in other ways. "Your canoe is here," says my intern, so I put on the boots and wade through the mud to the shore while the sky bleats in a voice made of sad colors. A crimson ribbon runs through my heart. I am made of tightly packed deer hearts bound in pine. I give you this letter before I leave you. We are the last real lovers in Indiana and I am good at repeating this in a variety of ways.

NaPoWriMo #11

Red Town #4

a word that means effigy without

the destruction lying there at rest

a word that goes beyond model

maybe a kind of mannequin

my dreams are full of mannequins

coming to life for just a moment

to motion to me then wooden

again like something in the snow

far far away from here a dirty

cabin in a dusty sky, sooty

snow, piles of logs, something

sad inside and down the road

in the old hills the brown

wooden person, so small and 

forgotten that we have to stand

still for a moment, right now

I have to stand still to think

of this doll, really, is what

it is until I can slide back

and here I am again, yours

I can talk, reckon, comply,

abandon, wither, listen, repeat,

forgo, stall, repair and hope

this can take place without me

NaPoWriMo #10

The timing was off but I agreed

anyway. I didn't agree exactly

but I faced the wall as you 

indicated. My face is in

the process of shifting.

I'm not talking about a mask

but a different face under

my face, healing and pushing

the surface face off like a scab.

There was a picture of this

in an old book depicting

foreign film stills. The woman

wore a veil and the face below

was ancient and smooth, faraway,

still. I will stay here until

my process is over. I am 

weakened, fallow, and yet

dust might be born from me.

NaPoWriMo #9

Red Town #3

There was no Jesus

in my version

only squeaks, shadow,

the divine doubt.

But how to tell

you that I was more

Jesus than anyone,

love embodied, as

close to doubling

my body as you can

be. Here in the peak

district, I throw my

voice and God throws

it back to me. He

doesn't need lists

and praying, feels

only through the hole

in his head. Praying

is when my holes

and his are somehow

aligned, like a box

found in the woods,

abandoned and clearly

yours. When you are all

at the campfires I will

be in the trees.

NaPoWriMo #8

Red Town #2

An ice show or horse show

piglets, rhododendrons

rain close or far away

approaching or just here

scabs, pens, boredom

the only way out through

the eyes, windows

some leaves, varieties

of mulch or dampness

the temporary gardening

section and its magic

at night; you leave

and are in the sky

without knowing

without being warned

of a change you are

different and the things

around you become 

tiny houses, doll pills

piles of stairs

NaPoWriMo #7

Red Town #1

A haze of white houses

underneath the sky

where I decided to live

until directions arrived

I lived on a tall hill

in the middle of things

Within me were red

spirits like dogs

circling or retreating

I'm saying that inside

was like dogs waiting

not for commands

or for a human to walk

through a door several

times a day with things

but waiting in the way

that everything is waiting

everything is waiting

to put two feet together

to sight into the air above

a bed or stay somewhere

awake, unheard

NaPoWriMo #6

After Transtromer

on a back road near my town

the sun leaving

the dust becomes weaker

it is a crystallized lizard

I am one of his eyes

the sun slowly goes away

as I crawl into myself

I am dense

and stillness becomes invisible

on my skin

a language disappears

when I hold this paper to the clouds

I know I must return to my town

and hover on the edge of its forest

there are no footprints there

but a fern can erase everything

everything moves toward it

but I keep on with my leaving

NaPoWriMo#5

It's like a river, a river of the mind. The bonneted

and bearded take their picnic in the truck and have

to eat in the truck because of the snowstorm. It can

snow anytime here. Like everyone else, we live by

waiting. The husbands and wives pretend there

is something real out there in the blizzard. Through

the windshield they can see the faraway river, the

cold stones on its banks. The storm is over in a few

minutes and then they can go and pick their way

through the wet leaves. They go before they finish

their food: a collection of twigs. We watch from

underground. They stare at a river until they are eyes

or nothing. Love piles up because there's nowhere

to go.  There's nowhere to go in here.

NaPoWriMo #4

The rat room of the lab was small and smelled

like hot skin and pellets. There was a bench

in case you got tired. Once my dad gave

mouth to mouth to a dying rat and this chivalry

defined him until he told me he needed

it to live.  Whenever I need a break I go to the

widow's walk and try not to spit on people.  I've 

always felt most at home among leaves.  Especially

at dusk up there do I feel this sense of going back.

I think about the bat my dachshund killed, my ex-husband

saying "I don't think you want to come in here"

with the bat blood everywhere and the dog

staring at me with her true nature revealed.  There

were all kinds of showdowns then, biological

and otherwise, and usually I ended up crying

at a salad bar or smoking in a tank top

on the porch to show my neighbors how wizened

I had become. It was important to show things,

not as they really were, but through the double life

I seem to need in order to keep repeating things.

NaPoWriMo #3

I'll go on

like a springboard just a few feet above the ground.  When I sit on the floor I imagine the roots connecting me to the centuries of ground.  But I live on the second floor of my house.  Everything must be imagined.  There was cooking around me; not my cooking, but the creation of something. There were several wholes and relatively few parts.  Not in the head where I always imagined these things would take place, but floating somewhere else, in a place I also have to imagine.

NaPoWriMo #2

Spring Always Makes Me a Little Bit Angry

The deer appear to be dead and cover a hillside.  The light comes back from the seventies for a while to make objects hazy and endless.  I look over the landscape, trying to own anything but even this trying makes me tuck back into my sleeping, the sleep I carry with me everywhere like a cave.  Soon I see that the deer aren't dead but sleeping, some twitching a little, all breathing the breath of the close-to-gone.  The breathing is here and makes a haylike place to rest so I don't have to go down the hill. There is a little flame in each eye socket though the green here is soft and old.  Each flame takes a deer deeper into its hillside. Each hillside takes a deer and turns it into breathing.

Memorial

Memorial

Don't start with birds.

Instead, everything happened

in or around time.  There are

more and more vague ways to say

birds did wake me up at dawn.  Every bird

is also an ending.

I wanted so much for a thing to be about

something other than transformation.

Two stone angels on a mountain

looked up and then stayed that way for centuries.

It was the year of power tools.

I walked around everywhere as if my head

was wrapped in a towel.  I listened

only to people who wore sandals.  Death

skipped me again.  Leaves were the same

as always: they went away, they came back.

NaPoWriMo: Day One

I just wrote the first draft of my first poem for the month!  I will post it later today, as I'm hoping that I can revise it.