Earth Stars
The women strap me down
So you won’t fall
Watched me climb
unaided as if on a leather
vault in the center of a gym
A needle in my hand swells
the women unfold my arms
blue Velcro holds them down
One woman smiles as she ties a belt
around my waist The bed’s so small
In a moment you won’t care
I won’t see the lighted telescope
slid inside my womb
though after it will feel
as if a child has been hammering
a mallet on bone
inside an ache the same decibel
In the forest earth stars are small enough
to hide in your hand all five corners
fold into the center sealed like a pie
Curled up ready to spill
Dwell is lead astray hinder delay
They need water to open let
the down inside blow away
My Life is Not a Riding School
He switched the headlights off as we drove
a lightless country road orange trees on either side
Drunk the driver laughing Heavy thrown things hit
the sides of the van thudding I imagined aliens or
survivalists jumping on adhering like Spiderman
Or just the dark made manifest attacking us
The blond woman in the community center that used to be
an elementary school told me to look up manifestation
It was pouring rain it was dark it was Christmas coming
broke at the end of the world drumming day & night
through the floorboards in my one yellow room the only
escape a song of my choosing hot water with lemon
& plastic Last time I heard this song I was on the road
from the beach in Florida palm trees & ditches both sides
sun I took for granted Manifest struck by the hand
palpable evident a hand + akin to Apparent to the senses
Evident obvious plain clear Bodily form of a spirit Next
she says look up craving Mange before craving & chinchilla
rodent fur coats from the Andes a fanciness from childhood TV
Chine a cut of meat containing part of the backbone
does someone crave that chewing the crannies
Crave is to demand what’s right To beg The synonym is desire
Compulsion: that which compels driving force Compel:
together + to drive see FELT (Archaic) to gather or drive
together by force as a flock Unmanageability
is not in my dictionary Manage: mano is hand. Originally
to train a horse in its paces cause to do the exercises
of the manège Manège from Russian Manezh a riding school
Un – Not lack of the opposite of My life
is the opposite of a riding school my life is the lack
of a riding school my life is not a riding school
Surrender: up + to render To give up possession of to abandon
to give oneself up to another’s power esp. as a prisoner –
why is that so appealing like sleeping? To give in
to something yield Accept: to take see HAVE Obsession:
the act of an evil spirit in possessing or ruling a person
Obsess: to besiege + SIT To haunt or trouble the mind
Demoralization: to throw into confusion Abstain: to hold
back from + to hold The delta of a river looks like a tree on fire.
booby trap
naomi shihab nye said she always told her son when he was little
to talk to strangers to ask questions she said if you are lost maybe
they will point you in the right direction I liked to purposefully
get lost in cities turned around until the buildings were like flames
I’d stared into too long I tried this in chicago when I’d gone
to a booksellers’ conference the giant rooms like the twin cups
of the booby trap back home I thought that if I paid no attention
to the streets signs I could run into my life by surprise the one
that always hid from me my horizontal parallel existence where I
could manage money find love grow my hair long I chose a nice
restaurant not based on a guidebook or suggestion just the look
of it brick smiling diners the host seated me at a tiny 2-top
& seconds later he began to seat a dark-haired man at the matching
table beside me stopped smiled motioned toward my empty seat
& with his eyebrows asked if we would like to sit together I hesitated
unable to see how this man would fit into my horizontal parallel life
but it seemed silly to say no seemed my life could fork in ways
I could not imagine he said he was a doctor or a student doctor
waiting for his doctor friends who must have had medical
emergencies I mostly believed what people told me back then
he wanted to show me a building that appeared thin
as a credit card or with a dark hole through the center some
architectural masterpiece with a flaw I walked on the sidewalk
with him a man passing us stared at my face with the desire
to do me violence & the doctor asked did you see
the way he looked at you? I was more afraid of all the mosquitoes
in the air the one that landed on me by a wall that looks in memory
like the great wall of china & the doctor slapped my arm
smearing it with the blood of the previously bitten person
my germ phobic brain was busy with fear but I still remember
the stranger’s face as if I already belonged to him but he’d
bide his time store his anger this could have been a story
you read in the paper because there was another sight the doctor
wanted to show me only on view from his apartment & when
I declined he said he’d get something from the apartment a jacket?
so I rode the elevator with him feeling smart that I wasn’t
going in a girl with the automatic smile & hey of tourist
florida but somehow I did enter the apartment as if he’d
opened the door on the wall of windows & the dark had called
me in we drank tea on the balcony & I thought how easily
he could pitch me over we were so high up twenty floors more?
then he gave my hand some kind of shiatsu massage that extended
to my shoulders & when he reached my breasts I wondered how
medical or healing or oriental this massage had become
I know you’re thinking idiot girl how could you be so foolish?
unfortunately my body had begun to relax on the green padded
workout bench responding to pleasure so that I would give in to it
then jump up to leave & he would massage me back into the green
I could still be there or wherever else he had plans for me to be
in a tub where he’d use his doctor skills to empty my body of organs?
but sane adrenaline ran through saving me from this horizontal
life & while he left momentarily for some mysterious implement
I dove into my clothes like water & flew out the front door
he followed rode in a cab with me pleading
but by then he was a dull weapon a shadowy begging
presence ghost I escape by stepping into my own life.
- Three Poems - March 26, 2016
