I wear a white dress with a pink ribbon in the hem. I hold my white parasol, sit, and exchange glances with your sharp eyes. You lean in and my lashes fall. A red-hot poker melts a fat candle without touching it and the exposed wick ignites. You just want to play around. My strings lie loose on my chest. Fiddle with them. Wind them taut to a perfect pitch. Play till they sing. Wind, wind, wind till they snap. Break them. All along I just wanted you to break them: just break them well.
Category: Poems
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If Umbrellas Could Talk
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Gazing at iridescent coals we remember at leisure the wet logs we used then jettisoned, the dry ones we trucked too many of, the rolled magazines the fire choked on, the lighter fluid the flames absorbed as quick as we poured, the ineffectual pop of the lighter sacrificed to the pile. When we placed leaf next to leaf, stick over leaves, stick next to stick, log over sticks, log next to log, tending over logs, we had s’mores for a time, tending fire.
Tender
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After dropping you off, I find myself in a friendly gaze with God or The Great Mother. I smile for a blissful moment, returning occasionally, humbler each time. It shifts a twinge down right, down left, journeying its way down the hidden pathways in the glass it clings to.Precipitation
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A certain inner peace, quite safe and pleased with herself, wherein there is a certain knowing of the world whereby wherever she alights upon the world that same pleasant fastidiousness whereupon she chuckles with herself she chuckles with her acquaintance wherewith the unknown and uncouth are handily known and tamed: a traveling tea party
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1. Receiving, knowing it is more than I can repay 2. The giving of such 3. The twainGrace
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Little boy: patience, or, at least let yourself be. You don’t see the angels loving you, the humble intricacies of your snowflake, the mountain you pirouette from. I admonish you: love yourself, still, only if it be thine will, lest you deprive the least of your lovers of a tittle of your jot. Nurture yourself, breathe, grow, should it suit you. The bright Devil burns, still not yet God.
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Art is a gift, something intricate — oh, stark something.
Bitter Pith
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It hurts my feelings, this lump of heart and soul, eons in the making, gathering together my humanity into something presentable only to have you taking it with a grain of salt, being skeptical, doubting, and awaiting proof.
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I withdraw to my hearth confident all have fires within, this public thing notwithstanding.
Hermit
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Wind weaves through my wheat, sun–touched, tender nubs heavy with grain lifting up to the sky. They bask. Would your giant hand brush through them, feel their thoughtless, supple stipples bounce upon your flesh before they burn brittle? Just whim and I gasp as your nails unearth the moist crumbles of my cake. Fallow me easily as deep as an entire man.
Whole Grain
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