where we live

jealous of the wish I

but I chose

instead I have

but nobody lives in
sitting on a
bed doubles as a

couch it in easy

room to spare room to move room to grow

long lawns
clipped wish

the weeds away



***

but nobody lives in

apart from me
who else do you

no we don’t

know two room
apart
meant for one

flat-footed
efficiency




****

housing six
pensive and full of

wry smiles
oh yes we love the

empty rooms
turned out
pockets inside

****

out of
doors look out the lock out the


view the
sound of passing traffic
louder by five

who will buy
this beautiful

heat bettle
in the treetops
what’s the buzz tell me what’s
happening when the bough breaks the
who will cradle

your hunger

how far will we
rock bottom fall


****

figure eight

six figures


figure it
out, out
damned


spot the difference


****


turtle doves and a
bird in the

hand out
hand-me-downs
hand of fate
hard to handle

cooing

can’t say what we
need

mourning

all fall down


****


no sobbing here but
what you have
they find



wanting

rainy day

drip by drip water wears the hardest stone

cousin air does the same
breathing grit into cracks once, a thousand, many million times

my diaphragm sinks into belly bellows as I
expand contract how often in this
as I live and breathe

when he says
you never she says
why don’t you they say
how could you
galaxies grow between us and I
could let myself fall into echoing
void of not my fault not me how could they

but when I stood on the rim
between huge bright blue and dizzy deep down to the slow green
trickle of ancient river
I knew I am an atom

now clouds rush to where the sun’s glorious rosy will wake us
and I remember
to choose this here now planet

my stone ribs grow strong
wearing all the air I borrow, all the soft forgiving

The vertigo of present time

Snail breath is pushing down the throat of the woman in a room where green light shines staggering through the late summer leaves. She is sitting on a chair, rocking on the square seat that will not move with her undulations as she cannot move from her memories or the air that suffocates around her. Her breath echoes the puff the owl's wings made flying overhead. But that was last night in its cool in its thick in its root blue of moon and she remembers the talons sharp points. Blade at her throat, the cool of metal a rough crush of her ribs. Where did he come from those whiskers rough on her jaw, those rancid huffs of breath. No time to think of why or who, only the instant reflex of do anything not to feel the lava of her own blood.

This morning the shimmer of pavement radiated reflections of the sun but when she closed her eyes all she saw were the skeleton branches of the tree he pulled her under and the white globes of his eyes. She felt cooked in the oven of her four doors slammed shut, the air streaming at her eyes burning but she did not cry. The thin air of heat pierced her nose, sliced the curve of her throat and stabbed her straining lungs. Pull pull away there is pink silk on the path there is jumble in the stomach there is Jack Daniels in the freezer and ice cubes on the stove. She wants to be a wave, crashing, wants to be a motion, endless, wants to be fluid and ecstasy but beneath her is only the cracked eggshells of her stiff reality of her porous heart of her humming shame of her jagged breath of her screen door ripped by neighbour cats that sit outside, lifting paws to the dark within, hooking claws in the metal mesh. Pick pick, they make holes that she can hear. Breathing, she rocks.

finale

Oh I just want to go home, she says, I want to get out of here so bad. Her hand tightens on the metal rail around her bed. She turns her head to look out the window. Clouds moving in.

Another hospital bed, another window, I stood with my back to the sky and looked at the stranger in the bed. They took his eye away and smoothed over his cheek, digging at the cancer. He didn't move, didn't talk.

When I was ten, when it was my grandfather in the room, when his scarred face scared me, I just wanted to go.

Now it's aunt on the bed who struggles for breath. Air bubbles through water and pushes through clear plastic into her lungs. Oh I just want to go home she says, to lie in my own bed.

I take her hand. Feel her thin skin soft with wrinkles. They were pounding on my chest, she says. Why did they have to do that? Nurse says my heart stopped. I just wanted to sleep!

Her fingers are strong but now she sees her long-dead parents in the corner when she says she wants to go home. I tell her to rest.